The asphalt six floors below calls out to me and begs to be embraced. The wind is its matchmaker, it ruffles my clothes and every time it blows I notice that the tips of my shoes stick out an extra centimeter from the rooftop railing.

"Good view from there?"

I looked back and saw a ghost. Wrong, my eyes deceive me. It is the neighbor. He's a tall, scrawny guy, skin so pale it borders on purple, and eyes sunken in hollow black circles. Misunderstandings aside, he looks like a more than adequate servant from beyond the grave.

During the time I've lived here, I've passed him more than once in the hallways. We always exchanged glances for several seconds, but without approaching each other, as if a safety glass divided our lives.

"I'm bored" I replied.

"Me too" he says and leans against the railing, close to my feet. He can push me. He wants to. I notice his urgency in the way his fingers drum and he analyzes the weakness in my legs. But instead he asks me: "Shall we jump together?"

I kept silent. I understood after looking straight into his eyes that he longed for someone to fall with. I need that too. I need it so badly that I lose my breath and my mouth goes dry. I'm thirsty to death.

I climb down from the railing. He flashes me a startlingly white smile, with a missing side tooth in his lower jaw. I find out later he lost it in a bar fight, after being accused of being a fag and coming across the border illegally. The irony of it all, is that it happened after I gave the guy a blowjob.

For Daniel and me, nothing is good enough. We are hopeless nonconformists. We are dissatisfied with everything life has given us and with life itself. It's like seeing the world through monochromatic lenses that are impossible to remove. The delicacies taste like dirt, the jokes are cringe-inducing, and the stories are throwaway.

Tiara, the woman who gave birth to me, dragged me to the psychologist during my childhood. The teachers mentioned to her that I speak little and am oblivious to everything. They were right, they still are. Tiara stopped taking me when I started with the fake smiles and laughing at my classmates' comments. Monkey see, monkey learn, monkey imitate. I'm sure there are several among you who also act, readers. Don't be embarrassed to admit it, we are among friends.

The psychologist insisted on continuing to treat me, he must have discovered something wrong with me, how I peed the bed when I was ten years old and how I set a kitten on fire. But Tiara being a single mother couldn't afford to spend any more time and money. With two jobs sucking the life and youth out of her, she preferred to stop hearing that her son is broken.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Daniel also acted to save himself hassle. He was lucky and only needed to be normal until he was fifteen. An easily irritated father, an unfaithful mother, a trusting lover, add a phone call from the son and a .38 Caliber pistol, and presto. You've got the perfect cocktail for a murder-suicide capable of headlining any newspaper.

I'm 16. Daniel is five years older than me. That age gap never hinders our quest for salvation, we are as equal as two peas in a pod. We yearn to be rid of that drudgery and apathy that buries and devours us to leave us as shells or walking stiffs. If there is no cure, we will at least accept death with the resignation of those who have tried everything.

We look for hope in art. Picasso, Hockney, or Pollock may have given us some color with their unique ways of interpreting the world, but they turned out to be as interesting as doodles hanging on magnets over a refrigerator door. We tried the alternative: Chris Mark, Michael Hussar, Vince Locke. We felt a natural magnetism toward the weird and the macabre. For a while Daniel had an obsession with the faces of Maya Kulenovic. He could stand for hours in front of the monitor, admiring them as if eager to add his face to the canvases.

The art kept us entertained for a couple of months. We decided to walk in the lower part of the city. We visited independent painters in humble sidewalk galleries, looking for a pearl to inspire us, but we only found pebbles, flat landscapes, imitations of styles of more talented people. Instead of artists, mercenaries capable of selling their battered canvases for small change or a mayonnaise sandwich. Fake.

It occurred to Daniel that we could paint our unique reality. But the vision we possess is too gray, even the demons lack charm under our inexperienced hands. I understood as I held the brush and parted the leaf with a black, erratic stroke, that it wasn't for me. Daniel said we'd have better luck painting houses, at least then we'd make money to keep the quest going a little longer...

It impresses me how Daniel always thinks the same as me.

When the sky is tinged with oranges and reds, we take the stereo to the banks of the Mississippi. We lie on the sand with the stereo in the middle. Daniel turns the volume all the way up and we let it rumble until we feel it in our bones. It's hard to appreciate music when it never roars hard and heavy enough to motivate you. We explored beyond rock and metal, Daniel downloaded online recordings of funeral chants from archaic religions, or compositions that sought to mimic cosmic and profane hymns in the name of the darkest fantasy. It was never enough.

"The only song capable of satisfying us will be the one that ends the Earth" I declared, looking at Daniel. I didn't need an answer, I knew by inertia that he agreed.

His eyes remain hidden under the tangle of brown hair. He half-opens his lips revealing a row whose perfection disturbs me, so out of place on such a sickly face. But the hole reminds me that he too is broken, like me.