. : HELLACIOUS : .

The Lamp

After Roz there was no other.

Billy cleared out of Black Avenue and settled in the dead center of the country where cows outnumbered citizens in a profitable ratio.

He bought a farmhouse this time, leaving them in the defunct silo out back for weeks at the time only to return just after Kash ran out of food.

He was amazed if Kash said more than a word every month. He was even more impressed when it wasn't a dark curse in a language he could understand.

After Kash's furious hunger strike in 1973 he became more leery of their silent rebellion.

You don't shove a feeding tube down someone's throat without your view of them change just a littttle.

Once Kash proved they wouldn't actively pursue death, Billy relaxed into his normal confidence and carried on. He hated the glitzy eighties, mostly because the AIDS outbreak made his normal victims hypervigilant around strange men, but he left the decade ten times richer after investing in a young Amerikan named Bill Gates before he struck it big.

Billy grew careless enough he left his personal effects where Kash could find them.

Memories are heavy. Enduring. Why would anyone carry the weight of their soul with them while they're busy ripping others in half?

The D'Jinn roamed through the farmhouse like an archaeologist discovering old bones. The lamp must've been buried somewhere near. Kash never felt ill no matter how far Billy traveled. He tried that little trick back in 2010, taking the lamp with him as he roamed, and the D'Jinn was pinned to the floor until he returned from wherever the fuck he was for two weeks.

Kash spent their house arrest deconstructing the man who'd made it his life's purpose to tear them down.

His journal was prime exploitation material. Tucked away in his sock drawer, underneath this underwear, lay a small brown bible testifying Billy's most intimate fables.

Written across the top in neat, practiced script was: Formative 1798.

Kash opened Billy's journal to the first entry and began reading.

\\

Reel in six trout today.

Pnuts got tall as me.

Pa worry bout rain from east.

\\

mum and pa can't pay me no school.

I got to work.

They don't know I learnin myself to rite.

\\

Kash flipped to the next. The earnest childlike diction was reminiscent of the modern Billy's thought process.

\\

Hate making soap but ma says I gotta.

Henry got the cough reel bad.

Rains come mid week.

\\

Got me a mutt and pa trains im to hunt hares.

I take my oil lantern with me everywhere I go but ma gits mad so i take it out in secret.

Shouldn't be wasting oil no way.

\\

May have nough food to last the frost.

Asked henry from church y we poor if god loves us so much and he says cause god saw it fit that way

I asked y he want us poor and henry says so we can appreceeate heven in the next life

But i wanna no

Why i can't see heven now.