Aidan San Francisco — 1986 Flashes in the Night

Aidan puffs on a lavender cigarette and watches colors bursting in the midnight sky. Fireworks are painting his vision as the birdsong has painted his silence.

Any other man would have seen a reflection of his face in the window, transparent over the night, color exploding behind it like visions, but Aidan sees only the trails of stars. Aidan cannot see he does not have a reflection, he cannot see behind his surface. He does not know he is beautiful, and if he did, he would not care. He has only just begun to care for the color in the dark, and the music in the night, and it has made him hate.

“There are two ways to make fireworks,’” Ryan says into Aidan’s unheeding ear, “hot incandescence and cold luminescence.” Ryan sighs, now that Neil no longer hears him and Jim is gone, he feels truly dead, a shadow in darkness.