Bright Fires Burn Fastest

by Unknown

  She was broken but she had nowhere to turn. She couldn’t go home, the questions would crack her. Parents, friends and even the average person would look over her and wonder where she had gone so wrong.

  So here she would have to stay. Stripping until no one fancied her anymore and she could drift away.

  April had been given a chance at salvation and blown it, the Gods didn’t favour the ungrateful.

  God she missed him.

  *

  Dawn hinted it was coming by first being blue. Before the heat or even a hint of humanity stirred it was always as blue as a flat ocean overhead. Few were up at this time in LA, it wasn’t New York. Time began here at 9.00am and finished early, there were far too many distractions.

  For Mo though this was normal. Firstly he looked down on his beautiful wife sleeping, the sleep a mother should. It was the hardest job of all. Pulling on boardshorts he leaned over and kissed her brow lightly. She never woke, merely groaned a little and went deeper into the blankets covering her.

  Next he went through and looked through the open doors of his son and daughter’s bedrooms. He had few insistences on his children, Mo believed the world was there to be discovered for the sole adventurer willing to face it and not break under the ever mounting pressures of today.

  How could he expect any different? He had abandoned everything and come to America causing great shame on his family and all those that knew him. It had been his choice to make though, his father had allowed him that open mindedness since birth.

  His children would be no different.

  His daughter was more traditional, his son anything but. Mo though didn’t mind, he felt himself an American now so why not the boy? Rules he did impose were manners, particularly at the table. Respect for the elders and the gods and that they sleep with their doors open.

  This wasn’t some father on the hunt for corridor creepers it was this moment right now looking over them. He liked watching them sleep. Some young men and women grew up fast, there was little chance. Most though, despite claiming they did, didn’t really have responsibilities until their mid to late twenties. His children were not even 20, free to laugh, love and make mistakes without any real consequence. Life was hard work, it was meant to be but Mo did all he could to delay that inevitable thought from overtaking true principles in the lives of his children.

  He looked at them for one last second, let the memory etch and walked out towards the back door.

  Mo unfurled his prayer matt and sank to his knees as the sun began to rise in front of him and out over the never ending Pacific Ocean. He prayed for all he had lived and loved. He prayed for the future to stay as untroubled as it possibly could.

  Standing Mo rolled up his prayer mat and left it by the back door in case his son ever suddenly felt the inspiration to do what he did every morning.

  Mo bent again and prepared to be judged by his other god. He picked up his wetsuit and board and straddled his bicycle. Setting off down the sidewalk still before the day had begun for the City of Angels he thought of his family and his shop which his wife was opening up for them today. He was a happy man.

  Mo let his thoughts take him as he bicycled across the front of Hermosa Beach, letting his hand brush the foot of the great surfing statue. Up the coast he continued towards the power station where he had taken on the storm and vanquished it. Home of the biggest waves, the new break.

  Rounding the final bend he took in the smell of the salt thick on the air and the sight of the swell pounding the beach. The waves, if anything, were even bigger and certainly more frequent. In this light only the tops of them caught the sun but looked to be touching 10 metres of swell. Mo did not fear them though, he could fear nothing any more after taking on the ocean alone and beating it.

  Up ahead and along the path was his crew, his brothers in arms and sea.

  Stopping his bike no one said anything. Grebo stepped forward first. He stood in front of Mo looking down on him. Extending his arms he took Mo into an embrace. There they stood with the waves smashing the shore behind them and the world beginning to surface.

  All six of them; Mo, Grebo, Slack, Benny, Hait and Dom began to run zipping up their wetsuits as they did. Their feet made no noise across the sand and six faint splashes against the torrent of water was the only indication of the challenge they were about to take on. Six swimming out to meet their waves, to meet their cause, to meet their maker.

  The gods had smiled down on Mo. Six lucky souls would come closer to utopia than most ever would.

  *

  Something about this was familiar, far too fucking familiar.

  Lucas let a long exhale escape his lips. The sun beat down on him and the only difference was that underneath him was not grass, but sand. He half expected to see a peacock.

  What was the point in having a hotel if you never stayed in it? What was the point in a journey if you never even tried to complete it?

  Chattering filled the air, human and birds. It sounded busy, it sounded late in the day. Another dawn wasted, another day without April.

  Lucas sat up and let his eyes sag in shame. On the beach where he had slumped when the booze finally won, families enjoyed their picnics, couples strolled arm in arm, and individuals enjoyed their Saturday. All though looked at the slumped figure wearing clothes long since washed and a face long since shaven with utter disgust.

  He was a disgrace. He checked his pockets and his hangover was consigned to the worst ever. His wallet was gone, his phone and his passport. He had nothing, stripped in the night by those that took advantage. It was his entire fault, all his.

  Lucas stood and walked down to the sea. He took off all of his clothes bar his ripped jeans and paddled out into the freezing water. Repeatedly he dunked his head trying any tonic to make the pounding fade.

  Looking back over the beach he saw huge painted murals lining the boardwalk. This was Venice. This was where he would finally do it.

  He turned back to the ocean praying it would be quick, not that anyone owed him any favours whatsoever.

  Out he swam into the nothing but blue. The horizon was his only guide, the untouchable goal.

  After ten minutes he turned and Venice seemed to be getting smaller. Treading water he felt the dull ache all over his body, he was tiring. So he held his breath and sank. The freezing water surrounded him entirely, engulfing his form and sucking him down.

  Lucas opened his eyes until they burnt with the salt. Then he began inhaling heavily into open his mouth. The first taste was the worst. He wretched under water but the body needed air so it sucked in again.

  Water filled everything.

  He felt dizzy and repeatedly wretched.

  Blackness came on quickly, quicker than he thought it would. He had heard that drowning was a peaceful death, it didn’t feel like it.

  As his eyes closed he thought he felt a tug on his arm but it was too late. It was over for Lucas. He had failed.

  Chapter 5

  Mo counted the compressions out loud,

  “One, two, three”.

  His hands were interlocked over the sternum area, the chest deflating under his weight. His knees straddled the figure. He didn’t breathe into the mouth of the boy, this didn’t help.

  The crowd swelled around the bearded man atop of the younger figure. They had watched, screamed, photographed and pointed when he ran up from the sea break cradling the boy in his arms. Mo had abandoned his board once he saw the figure disappear underneath the biting cold ocean. If he hadn’t looked back across at the Santa Monica pier just then, well, he did.

  The crowd surged again.

  “Back off mother fuckers”, Mo shouted allowed. This was a boy under him, a boy like his. He had a life, a soul, and his own dreams and right now all was slipping.

  “Wait, I know him.”

  Mo looked up and a woman pushed through the crowd.

  “Are you a relative?” Mo asked, compressions becoming faster. The boy’s face was pallid white a
nd the lips were turning blue.

  “No, a fan.”

  “What?” Mo said.

  “He’s an artist, a famous one. They said he had tried to kill himself in New York, not here.”

  “Well maybe he tried again”, Mo said angrily enough to force the camera phones to back off a bit.

  So this guy below him was famous, famously fucking stupid. It was one thing to swim out with a board, quite another to take on the currents with only self-buoyancy.

  “One, two, three”, Mo said again and felt a movement under his hands. The chest was beginning to beat on its own, he could feel the faint pulse.

  Mo reached around and made him sit up as the pulse became stronger.

  Lucas began vomiting salted water as hands thumped his back. He doubled over in agony until it seemed he had nothing left inside him, not even spirit.

  Tears streamed down his face and he cried to no one, everyone and himself.

  He blinked open his eyes and looked into the face of the bearded man opposite him who he had felt grab his arm before he blacked out.

  His saviour.

  The face came close to him, “Can you walk?”

  Lucas coughed again, “I…I think so. Why?”

  “Look around”, Mo whispered, “These people want to tear you apart. Apparently you’re famous.”

  Lucas let himself be picked up as people began to cheer, or was it jeer?

  Mo dragged him across the sand, the crowd barely parting.

  “Lucas”, he heard being shouted.

  “Did you mean to do it?”

  Mo got to the boardwalk by Santa Monica and dragged Lucas into a waiting car being driven by Grebo. Grebo always waited there when they had one of their gang on an unfamiliar break.

  When they hit the back seat Mo swung to face Lucas, “Explain to me right now what the fuck you think you were doing or get out.”

  Lucas held his hands to his face and began from the beginning, the only real, right and good place to start. Words spewed out of him like the water had from his lungs.

  He began in London, he began with when he had done his first painting, right after he had met April.

  New York came next, all the while he cried bitterly, accusingly and angrily and Mo just listened, his hard brown eyes never moving. Never flinching.

  LA was last and only then did Mo let a curved smile cross his lips.

  “Yeah, this place can do that”, Mo said when Lucas stopped speaking.

  Lucas nodded, he needed a drink.

  “She still here?”

  Lucas looked out over the beaches as they sped by, “Yes”. Why else had he been rescued?

  “Well then, no time to waste. You owe me.”

  It was good to have told his story. The first person that knew it all bar April and even she hadn’t quite grasped what LA had done to him, even if she knew he was here. He reached out and embraced the man who had saved more than his life just by listening, the fastest dying art of all in this city, in any city.

  He let Mo cradle him.

  He was right, Lucas owed him and April was still here.

  He just knew.

  *

  April had two hours before her shift began. It had seemed such a good idea at the time. But lets face it, she was no better than a hooker without the dick actually inside her, it still brushed her legs when she moved.

  For her first few shifts she had been quite coy, picking up moves and strategies employed by all the other working girls.

  She had her routine.

  Immediately she would take her bra off when the gent was seated. If she didn’t and with assets like hers then all the men did was try and take it off for her.

  She would move with the music and inch by inch let her hands edge closer. When the music was ending she would face her back to the patron and give him one last long hard grind the length of this body.

  That got them to buy their second dance, it never failed.

  That had all been easy, it was Len that was the problem.

  After the first week he had asked to see her in his office. April kind of knew what was coming, he probably tried to fuck all of the new girls, he only pretended to be gay when he met them. The rest of the strippers had hissed when they found out.

  April didn’t mind, anyone that could endure Lucas could endure a pervert. What she couldn’t handle was the ultimatum she had been given.

  Fuck Len or be fired. Those weren’t his exact words but she got the picture when she had gone into his office that day.

  It wasn’t so much the ‘fucking’, it was the stereotype. He had power, she didn’t. He was a local, she wasn’t. Ultimately he had money, she definitely didn’t. It was also so typically fucking Hollywood, she may as well have put herself on YouPorn and be done with it.

  Starving foreigner comes to town. Pitiful stranger gets fucked by Len and probably half his mates in return for empty promises and a heroin addiction.

  Well fuck that, she wasn’t that girl, no matter how far down the wishing well the chips had fallen.

  So tonight she would walk out of there for good.

  April walked into the Redbury Hotel, now her local. She liked it here, discreet enough for no one to try and pick her up.

  She ordered her usual, a vodka soda with two half limes squeezed in and a dash of Angostura Bitters.

  It was when she took her first sip and the barman began speaking with a colleague that everything changed for April.

  “Literally, not once.”

  The barmaid laughed, “And how long has he been here?”

  “Five nights, but he hasn’t been back to the hotel since he checked in.”

  April almost dropped her drink.

  Only one person she had ever met would do something like that.

  “Excuse me”, April said, at which the barman turned.

  “Yes madam?”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Whose”, the barman said carefully aware he shouldn’t talk about other guests.

  “Don’t fuck around, the guy who hasn’t been back.”

  “Err…”

  “Well?” The eyes locked on the barman, he couldn’t escape.

  “His name is Luc….”

  That was all April heard. She got up and stormed out without even paying for her drink. What the fuck was he doing here?

  On the one hand it was the best news of her life, it was meant to be. On the other it was a speeding locomotive with the track fast running out. She loved him but he would never ever change, permanently in crisis. And right now April couldn’t handle crisis.

  She walked out into the centre of Hollywood. Only here in this place could something as utterly unrealistic as this ridiculous journey she called life actually be true. Then again, didn’t Hollywood believe in happy endings?

  *

  It felt like home. It felt like he was somewhere else, far away from where he stood atop of a ladder in Venice.

  He felt like Lucas.

  He got down from the ladder and stepped back across the road from the bottom of Rose Avenue. He had to keep walking back such was the size of the wall he was painting on the Venice boardwalk. The entire side of the skate shop where the original Lords of Dogtown came from was coming together.

  In paint splattered trousers with his shirt off and a tattoo that read ‘Hell-A’ freshly printed on his back right shoulder he lit a cigarette.

  This had been the deal with Mo.

  Having heard his story in the back of the car Mo, being him, had gotten to work. When Grebo dropped them off it was all prepped up ready for Lucas. Paints, buckets of it, rollers, graffiti cans a ladder and an overall. Most importantly, a blank canvas on the most hallowed stretch of art in America. Certainly the most hallowed spot for graffiti artists in the universe. It was Lucas’s.

  Mo had for a long time been on the Venice Beach committee not to mention owning the shop everyone within a half mile frequented. He was a well known figure, how many other Arabs kicked ass on a boar
d like he did. He was also always right it seemed but never arrogant or brash. He loved his family, he loved his surf, and he respected everyone’s views. He was Venice beach total. A lifer. People owed him a lot.

  In the back of the car and after his outburst and the shock of nearly dying Lucas had drifted in and out of sleep as the car sped away from the mob. Mo had heard enough, this man was lost, he needed company. He was slipping into LA like so many did. So he decided to do something about it.

  When Lucas had looked up at the blank wall he had only stared at Mo.

  “You’re the artist. Get painting. That’s the deal hombre. She will come, just you see.”

  So Lucas did.

  No bitterness, no questioning and no fuck you. He had stripped off to his jeans picked up a roller and begun. By the end of the first night the entire wall was covered in red and he celebrated with Mo over two cold beers. They spoke, and really spoke about life and love.

  When Mo arrived the next morning he couldn’t believe the transformation.

  “Man, you go to bed?” Mo shouted from the bottom of the ladder.

  “Nope”, was all he got in reply.

  Lucas sucked on his cigarette away from the noise and voices asking him what he was doing and whether he was who everyone thought he was. He had internalised all night and found some pretty vast gaping holes in his theories on life.

  He would always paint, he would always drink, and he would always love April. Fine.

  However, it was what he wanted from art that needed to change. Surely to make the grandest point of all people had to see his work. What better stage to produce the next masterpiece than in Venice, on a canvas big and broad enough to be seen for miles around.

  The bitterness towards those that blogged, tweeted and tagged was beginning to fade with each brush stroke. I mean in reality these new ways of communicating and supposedly killing art weren’t at all. So what if everyone wanted to know news and gossip? We have done it since the beginning of time, it’s just the medium that’s changed. From telegrams through newspapers, radio and television, now it was the internet. We as a race feed off news. It exposes one of our greatest loves, the need to know. Why else would we be top of the food chain? We are a social community based on improving against each other but that’s no bad thing. Its called evolution.