The Smell Of Spray Paint

Nine.

It was shocking how quickly my illusion of happiness came crashing down.

On the last day of my naivety I woke as usual, Gilbert and I talked over a late breakfast and he waved goodbye before he left. I smiled and laughed at what he said and the jokes he cracked and the warmth in my chest spread so much that it tingled and I felt like I was being given so much attention that my heart might burst with love for him.

He told me he'd be back as normal and waved goodbye with a cigarette between his lips.

The day went on; I found ways to keep busy, as usual until lunch and with my hood up and head down bought a Sudoku puzzle book and a nice new pen to keep me entertained for the afternoon.

I had long abandoned the concept of time, I knew what a day was but I never knew the hour, though it must have been around four in the afternoon when I curled up and decided there would be no harm in taking a short cat nap before Gilbert got back and started making too much noise.

I thought I'd wake up peacefully not long before his return and offer to pitch some money in so we could get a cheap takeaway pizza for dinner. But that is when my life tore into two parts.

I dreamt of a beach that day, during my nap. It wasn't a good dream or a bad one, just a rather uninteresting one. My dreams had never been that exciting; I tried keeping a dream journal back in my first year of middle school but got bored after a week. In this particular dream I was trying to eat an ice cream but a dog kept trying to lick it. It was pretty boring, quiet, until the dog suddenly shouted,

"WAKE THE FUCK UP!"

Then I realised that I had woken up.

"Eh..?" I scrambled out from the warm cocoon of Gilbert's old blanket and through blurry eyes searched the room for him, finally pinpointing his location to the doorway, "Gil'?" My voice was hoarse and suddenly shaken as I noticed his appearance.

His teeth were bared, eyes lit like hot coals with anger and his stance one of someone ready to punch another guys lights out. He was mad.

And clenched in one balled fist was a newspaper.

"MATTHEW WILLIAMS!" His voice was roar. He knew my last name. This was over, "What the fuck is this about?!"

The crumpled newspaper was launched in my direction and hit me square in the chest, landing on my lat and unfurling to show...

No...

No, no, no!

That was me, my worst fear, my smiling face in a grainy photo on the very front page.

The headline blared at me in German, but I had a gut feeling that even if it was in the bluntest English; I would still find it incomprehensible. I couldn't read it, my eyes darted around too much, I felt nauseous, my breathing was too loud in my ears and my throat was dry in a way that I felt that I might puke at any second. And I didn't know the language.

"Gilbert..." I choked, my hand unconsciously moving to the thin paper to crumple it, "This isn't what it looks like! I..." I didn't know what to say, whatever that big black print said it had made him mad, no- furious, and there was no way for me to really explain myself.

"Do you know what this says?" His voice dropped to a cold calm, I looked at the floor, "Well?!" He interrogated me further before, if in the chance I wanted to answer, could say a word.

"N-No..." I wringed my hands, they were still warm from sleeping on and I could feel my hair start to settle into a bed-head mess. I had just got over my small stutter when talking to the intimidating Gilbert, but it was back with a vengeance, I could barely get the words out of my mouth. His dark, ominous, terrifying, raging figure was pushing them all down so any explanation could only swirl in the pit of my stomach.