Bobbie Badapple's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Bobbie Badapple shook the can and heard nothing. Dead. Empty. He stood under the grey wall where his band's mural used to live. Last Tuesday the city painted over it. Three nights of work, big teeth and red eyes and The Rotting Corpses dripping like blood, all gone under one flat coat. He wanted the whole town to carry his mark. He wanted his sigil on every landmark in Scary Applesville. But he had one dead can and no money to buy more. He dropped the can. It rattled on the pavement. He had three others in his bag, all light, all nearly done. Each one lasted him minutes. He couldn't finish a single wall, let alone a town. "That the sound of a man giving up?" Bobbie turned. Spikey Popapple leaned against the fence, shirtless as always, wiry and loose. Bobbie knew him from the dead venues on the edge of town, the old punk who played to ghouls and swore originals were the only thing that worked. He didn't buy rounds and he didn't lie. "I'm out," Bobbie said. "All of them. Can't buy more." Spikey jerked his chin at a pale house down the way, one of the old flat-roofed ones with wide black windows. "The strange girl's in there. Charlotte. She's got something you want." Bobbie had heard the name. A musician nobody would sign. Too weird, the labels said. He walked up and knocked. The door opened on a small woman with wild dark hair, a cello behind her. "You're the one painting corpses on walls," Charlotte said. Not a question. "Was. I'm dry." She looked at him a moment. Then she went inside and came back with a spray can. It caught the light wrong. Color crawled along its surface, shifting, colors he had no name for. "It doesn't run out," she said. "I built songs that refuse to resolve. This refuses to empty. Same idea. Different tool." Bobbie took it. It was heavier than a full can. He pressed the cap. A ribbon of color hit the pale wall beside the door, bright, and kept coming, steady, no sputter. "Why give it to me?" he asked. "Because you won't stop," Charlotte said. "I like things that won't stop." She stepped back inside. "Don't bring it back." Bobbie walked to the grey wall with the can heavy in his hand. He raised it to the spot where his name used to drip. The color poured out and did not fade. His teeth, his red eyes, his letters bleeding down the concrete. He didn't slow. He didn't count. For the first time he had more paint than wall. The mural came back brighter than before. And now the town was too small.