Once upon the time there was a little man with a big hat who lived on a hill in the desert. He lived all alone; he would make lentil soup and paint the door to his house in boysenberry to keep robbers away. His reasoning was that people would think he was crazy. He wasn’t made with the highest quality materials. A few ants short of a ruined picnic; wine, bread, niceties. He took care not to leave the property as it always seemed to rain, and the feeling of the drops on his skin was unsettling. He liked to catch the rain in clay jars and boil it, a pure little microcosm and thus the rain was alienated from the sky. “Pity me, little bubbles” he told them.

His name was Mr. Purple and he was traveling through the countryside. He remembered that once he was a hermit from a vague village full of vague people. He was old, broken, weathered, with a sour sense of humor. On his trail he looked through windows of houses and saw sills with little garden. He saw mossy wooden shacks with boards made from ancient but obscure trees, built buy drifters an untellable amount of time ago. He would look at the changing weather, the shifting sky, the dark and the light, how the sun would rise and fall, and he would laugh. He thought it was funny, how they did such things in such a course with such punctuality. The blue sky, with a big gaping mouth minutes from savoring the world. He would laugh at the sky.

In his dreams he jumped up into the gray clouds and made a home. In his dream his brain was hanging out of the top of a fractured skull, orbited by chickadees singing pop goes the weasel. A soft dream that made him wake feeling refreshed and happy, if only for a moment, before the thoughts of Mr. Redd, and what he had given him returned from the miasma in his psyche. He found some solace in the silhouettes on walls, friend to an afterthought of a candle, and the shadows which would often grace his feet. His shadow which would always stand silent and waiting for his next move, ever faithful, only victim to the changing light.

As the sun was going down, Mr. Purple would find a clearing and look off into the horizon, thinking why, and why.

-

Mr. Purple grafted the space between his pant-leg and his flesh with the aid of the mountain air and some oxidation. Eyes bouncing back and forth - reaming! The clouds played a respectful homage as they slowly wafted by, their soft gray and impossible greens were a schizophrenics' elephant. Mr. Purple pulls the cloth from the blood and winces slightly, noticing the clouds smiling at him. Mr. Redd would appear in his mind occasionally to inform him that he was caught between a great lie and a little truth.

-

In his dream, Mr. Purple was running from the unforeseeable. Hobbling; in wide circles around a little grubby hovel with his tail between his legs. Lightning striking the ground hundreds of miles away punctuated the time between the tips of his sandals hitting the ground and the pivot of his heels. He thought that he had long since lost his oppressors' shadow underneath the willow years ago; his intuition never failed him.

He stirred that morning as he usually did, attentive yet reposed, but his wits bade him take flight through the threshold of the cave where he was resting – little god-knows-what’s without faces bidding him farewell.
-

Mr. Purple etched "Liar" into a headstone leaning on a cliff. He set the crude visage of a headless chicken which he produced from his skull to perch the top. There were a few wind chimes nearby besetting petrified cacti. Mr. Purple pulled back a leather hatch leading down into a hole nearby and rested in the cavity inside.

-

The pounding heat turned the few hairs below the horizon into the fabled river of death, masses of pulsing, wriggling agate-skinned maggots. He'd make-believe once that he had flown off into the wastes, towards the black shores. He would fly there; high, up towards the sun, and commit the full tilt of a nosedive deep into the earth - trailing with stygian blood – killing Mr. Redd and himself. A bittersweet daydream, even if things never went quite as expected.

The sun was present that day, as was the rain; friends they were to soft glowing golden clouds. The dusk signaled Mr. Purple to put on his sandals – it was a night for a walk. He would go down into the city so that something might find him. He had not exercised in a long time, and he was malnourished. He opened his mouth and "fix by sigh why night" let loose: his usual incoherent jumble. He didn't mind the tongues, and it didn't really matter when no one else was around. So he'd walk a mile or two down to a dive muttering his gibberish, muttering his "alarm invention at what time I descry why try" and tilt his hand over his cane as if performing for the dirt it displaced. No, he didn't need to flatter the dirt, not Mr. Purple. Mr. Purple was pretty and he knew things!

Occasionally Mr. Purple would stop, and scowl into the trees. He knew they were out there: Mr. Redd’s shy and malefic shadows.

-

The spear tip of Mr. Purple's cane was thirsty, and the punk sating the end of it wasn't doing much as far as quenching went. Yet, steel tongue, slavering ruby filth, withdrew from the wound in the tenant's skull with a delicate twist, flourish, and charm. The man's shouting and whining – the contorted wobble of a recently marred mutt – chimed every now and again until his chest stopped moving. The steely fang leapt in again and again, perforating the vessel of flesh, forcefully liberating the soul. Everything else from then on was spectacle: little bits of flesh removing the need for anything as vulgar as a chalk outline, lazy strands of emancipated veins like the roots or branches of an old willow, a porous face and honed pupils entombed in perpetual disbelief. Mr. Purple was laughing like a macaque with each recoil. Barred teeth, his crooked, gnarled grin envied by piranha.

When it was all said and mutilated, he sat next to the corpse sensing the cold glare not of conscience, but discontent. He was still hungry, and he'd want to sate that before this twitch was all said and done. The twitch came and went; life came and went. He caught at the man's blood vacating the throat, spluttering, stupid. He held back a titter.

A face paled through the dusk with the chime of a girl's voice. "...alright? Let me help you…”