12 Stripped (2/2)

The face still had that dangling smirk. It was the only thing he had left. He had been stripped of everything, only the smirk; as if taunting the killers – You can take everything, my clothes, my money, my life, but not the light! You cannot kill the light! He was the only dead person I'd ever seen with light in his eyes! I left them open.

I took off my own clothes, every piece, and covered him up – covered his happy face with my faded YMCA T-s.h.i.+rt, covered his still chest and stomach with my baggy trousers, then I worked my only boxer shorts up his legs and covered what was left of his manhood. Decency in death. It was the only last decent thing I could do for a brother; a brother who had not been my parents' son, but had been there ever since I could remember, as a parent, a friend, a mirror, a dictionary, clown . . . and general idiot.

I walked away, naked as in birth, out of the dark womb of this neighbourhood forever. I walked into the new light I could see beyond.

A different kind of light from Sniffs'. The isolated Light of madness. A different texture of madness from the common.

I had been stripped of my only family. My people say, ”People are the only clothes you have.” I had had only one piece of clothing all my life – Sniffs, and I had been stripped of it.

His corniest line wafted before me, in his thin, feminine

voice: Brother, we're not brothers, but look at us, thick as thieves! . . . Gerrit? Thieves!

Hhhh

He laughed like those rickety blue grinding machines, in coughing spurts. I should have laughed with him.

Now, I laughed, like him, louder than him, turning my open mouth up to the heavens and pouring it all out of my chest. For him.

My laughter grew louder, the further away I walked, into my new-found madness. Then I began to run.

And fly.

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