tiger and loner

Then Smokey strolled out of the club, offering the two a wave over his shoulder, leaving Loner lying on the table and Tiger near the stairs, leaning against the wall. The Loner was still wearing his purple panther mask, as he always was, Tiger was barefaced, as he often was.

Tiger: “And then we were like, two.”
Tiger: “We dress way too similarly man. This shit is weirding me out.”

He was right, the same brown bomber jacket, the same jean and sneaker combination Loner wore a black t-shirt, Tiger wore a white one. They even had masks that looked the same, their only differences being in color.

The Loner slowly turned over on the table, flop. His mask stared through Tiger and he sat up, then nodded. He pulled his bomber jacket taught against himself from the corners.

Then he wrote on the wall with his red sharpie. “MAYBE WE’RE THE SAME.”

Tiger: “No way dude. You’re like, a straight up serial killer.”

The Loner stared blankly at Tiger then added to his last scribbling, “SO WHAT ARE YOU.”

Tiger: “L-Like, I only ever killed one person.”
That stare made Tiger uncomfortable.

The Loner lept from the table landing with a soft thud, he continued to scribble on the wall. “ONLY ONE.”

Tiger: “They wouldn’t hand over their-- er…”
Tiger didn’t want to talk about this.

The Loner added beneath his last line, “WHAT.”

Tiger frowned, and shook his head, “It was a wallet, dude…”

The Loner’s hand scribbled blindly at the wall, all the while he stared in dead silence. “ONLY ONE WALLET.”

Tiger: “A mistake, I mean. I freaked out because a crowd was gathering… fuck off dude!”
Tiger took a step back.

The Loner stared for a few moments longer, then took a step forward to advance. He was still brandishing that red sharpie too.

Tiger began to sweat, there’s a reason he didn’t like to be alone, but this was almost worse than being alone.

The Loner drew on the wall, ever silent and with alarming accuracy. “IT’S ALL THE SAME, REALLY.”

Tiger: “No way, dude! It’s-- That guy you killed earlier… did he really like, have to die? I mean… I was hoping we could just rough him up or something.”

The Loner started to write on the wall as Tiger spoke, nothing he said mattered. “YOU PROBABLY COULDN’T EVEN REMEMBER HOW MANY PEOPLE YOU’VE KILLED.” The end of the red sharpie was bent leftwards from the force applied.

Tiger was just only barely paying attention as Loner wrote on the wall, and continued speaking, “The blue dude with-- er…” He read the message and his eyes widened in a combination of barely registered shock, and rage.

Tiger: “FUCK YOU!”
Tiger took another step back, “They came back, alright…? T-They did! They got cloned!”

The Loner wrote on the space beneath his longest message, “THEY ALL GOT CLONED.”
Then he wrote beneath that, “THEY’RE ALL OKAY.”
And then beneath that, “EVERYTHING IS FINE.”

Nausea assailed Tiger’s senses like the result of an acid trip gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Tiger: “I-I need to go… man.”

The Loner capped his marker and bobbed his head, he tucked his hands into the pockets of his leather bomber jacket.

Tiger was almost trembling.
He stumbled backwards, then spun about and quickly ran down the stairs.