FLOWERS

Balsam

"You see? These are the moments I wish you wouldn't have shot Marvin in the face. If Griggs was still alive, I could be taking a nap right now!" Alonzo complained from the front seat of a very expensive Prius.

Franklin scoughed. "You told me to shoot him! You literally paid me money for it!"

"Well... I don't know. You could have just taken the money and ran." Alonzo argued.

"And miss the chance to get paid for doing something I love. Yeah, no way." Franklin laughed as she turned back to her phone.

"I think you have a problem." Alonzo shook his head as he rounded another corner on the country road.

"You think" Franklin chuckled. "Wait, look at this meme, it's so you."

"I can't look at your phone, I'm driving."

"It'll take a second, it's just a sentence and a picture." Franklin pushed.

"There are rules to driving, Franklin. You just don't look at a phone. There all laws in place to prevent such distractions. Safety is key."

Franklin huffed. "You're a bitch." She sighed. "I'll just read the stupid meme." She cleared her throat. "When you're a badass inside but a teadybear on the outside, and then like, there's a picture of a teddy bear stuffed with human organs and... I think a unicorn? Which, yeah unicorns are badass, I guess. Just doesn't really fit the theme. Anyway, it would have been funnier if you'd just looked at it."

"I think I got the picture. I've seen enough real human organs that I might be desensitized to gore comedy."

Franklin turned to him. "Gore comedy?"

"Yeah, gore comedy."

"What the hell is gore comedy?" Franklin laughed.

"Well, I guess it's not technically a genre of comedy, but me and the performers used to run a little puppet show after each episode of The Carnival, but instead of puppets we used organs with googily eyes. We called it Spleen and The Lung."

Franklin couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"It wasn't super popular, but I liked it. Oh yeah, there was this one episode where Spleen and Lung played tug o war with some intestines. Basically the intestines rip and Spleen falls backwards and impales himself on a spike. We filled Spleen up with a bag of blood so when he got impaled blood exploded everywhere like some sort of gut bomb." Alonzo chuckled. "Then Lung runs over to check on him but trips on the intestine and falls on top of Spleen killing them both." He laughed harder and then after a minute, he sighed. "Damn... I miss that place."

"What place?"

"My pole. My tunnels. My wall."

"Your wall?"

"Yeah, there was this wall that I used to scream at for hours while completely naked while I sat on a spintery chair that stabbed wood flakes into my testicals. Man, I was so happy down there. I had never felt that right about something. Me and that labyrinth were made for each other."

"What was the thing about the wall?" Franklin said, eyes wide.

"And Zachery took it all away from me. ALL OF IT! Shit, the more I think about all of this, the more I realise how much I've changed." He hit the stearing wheel angrily, but not too rough as he was afraid to damage it. When he noticed his hesitation, it angered him. He slammed on the wheel again, this time a bit harder. This, in turn, caused the car to swerve ever so slightly. He slammed on it again, causing a twinge of pain to strike in the palm of his hand. He felt the shivers that he hadn't felt in so long, exciting him ever so slightly. He looked at Franklin with a smirk. "I miss this. I miss the rage. I miss the pain, ya know? I'm so normal now. I hate what I've become and... I see what you mean. I see it. I just don't know how to get it back."