Brian Lau

We’re Just Here For the Bad Guys | The May air deluged through his spectral skin, and we remained on the concrete sharing our meager dinner. The horizon billowed into a drab blue the longer we refused to face each other, and the sweat caked to us like dry ash. The lots emptied in a hum, and we chose to continue sitting there, as two lamenting bodies upon the small hill. We continued eating, watching as the engines trekked against the gravel road, lazily drifting off into the black periphery.

He wouldn’t look at me, as if being seen was already too much to bear. I didn’t want to get up, and neither did he, as we continued detachedly plucking at the fried skin of the chicken within the plastic. We just wanted to watch. This journey had me reaffirm what I wanted, to be a Phantom. To disengage. To relinquish my need to be seen. Eventually, we stayed to admire even the clouds settling into their ephemeral forms, becoming wisps of drifting white paint, and as I looked back at him, I could recognize only the Phantom, and no one else.

My stepmother sent me pictures of his corpse, telling me how he wanted to be burned. His eyes clasped, mouth ajar, my father’s dangly body in a suit far too large for his twig bones now.

When we burned incense at a temple, a wafting ash smell had arose that reminded me of the air that made me sick those months I was with him. In the following summer after the Phantom’s End, the air was tainted in that smell, the city became imperceptible, and I felt sick again. All I remember now is how that summer ended in an ash sky. brianvanlau.com