Jack enjoyed the nighttime city. Always had. There was an otherworldly quality to New York at night, a Jekyll to the daytime’s Hyde. The neon-glow permeated the dark sky, creating an indigo shroud that blanketed the towering skyscrapers. Despite the late hour, people still roamed the streets, the distant sound of car horns punctuating the night. The city that never sleeps.

A sixty year old Jack stepped out from the diner, a satisfied smile on his lips and the aftertaste of bitter coffee on his tongue. The eggs and sausage sat nicely in his belly. The cool night air nipped at Jack’s face, and he buttoned his coat, sliding the newspaper under his arm as he headed off towards nowhere in particular.

It was a night off, no jobs on the books. As such, he was restless at home. He liked to wander the streets. New York was in his blood, and he enjoyed spending time getting to know her. Ninety-four years and she still managed to show him new and unexpected delights. Many of which did not reveal themselves in the neon streets, but in the shadowy alleyways and courtyards. Turning down one such alley, Jack spotted a homeless man passed out beside a slimy dumpster. Pausing to observe the man a moment, he wandered over to lay the newspaper over the man, before continuing on his way.

It was quiet tonight, not many souls to be seen. Except…

He glanced around as he heard a rattling sound, followed by the telltale sound of a spray paint can. Problem was, so far as he could tell, there was no one in sight. He sniffed the air, a faint whiff of paint.

Strange.

Something dripped down onto his head, and in instinct, he reached up to wipe it away. As he removed his hand, he caught a glance of the black smear on his palm. Was that...paint? Jack craned his head back and looked up. His eyebrows rose in curiosity and surprise, and he took a few steps back to better see what he was looking at.

“Huh…” he said to himself. You didn’t see that every day...

KSSSST! KSSSSST! KSSSSSST! Eisen sprayed a blackhole into the brick wall in front of him with a can-full of black paint. The sounds of rushing cars, busy whispers and the faint hovering of a search chopper all faded behind the busy spray of his paint-can. He seethed under his facemask, one he wore to keep his identity anonymous, not satisfied until the whole image in front of him was bathed in black. What lay beneath the layer he worked on, was a half-portrait of a man and a half-portrait of a honey badger. The image concealed was signed with the watermark, ‘XIA’.

This body of art was the third canvas he’d seen around the city in the past month using the same watermark. The first two he passed by, he’d dismissed as ones he only thought were new, but this half-man, half-honey badger was identical to one on the side of an abandoned rowhouse in DC, one he had helped paint three years ago. That was the year he first met Xia, the year before she overdosed and lost her life. Now, two years later, some bastard had the nerve to start scripting in her name.

After sufficiently concealing the blatant plagiarism, Eisen took two quick glances, one down the alley headed toward a Silver Diner, and one headed into the neighborhood, and seeing no one, drew a black line connecting the now black hole and dragged it upward. The soles of his feet tensed, as his mutation activated subconsciously after years of use, and he stepped upward using the soles of his shoes as mobile footholds. Up. Up. Up. Up. He knew he had gotten high enough when the light shone over his shoulders; someone would see his logo here. He sprayed his signature, “II”, two powerful, parallel, black lines. This was his beacon, him marking his territory, a declaration of his desire for justice.

Was this going to bite him in the butt later on? Eisen didn’t care. He wanted this wannabe to seek him out, to show his or her bold face. If it were his own graffiti being copied, Eisen wouldn’t have been too bothered, but to pose as a dead artist? To blatantly copy one? Eisen didn’t believe in imitation as flattery. Copy and paste in the graffiti world was theft, and a theft he wasn’t going to stand for.

Eisen shook his paint can, still frustrated and uncomforted. KSSST! KSSSST! KSSSSST! He shook the can a little too strongly, and it slipped out of his fingers. It hurtled silently into the alleyway.

He shifted into fall mode, relaxing his soles and falling, then ran down the wall and dove for the falling can. His eyes widened, as he descended after the can just as it hurtled toward a man’s head.

Almost! He sprung two more steps and caught the can, then pumped all his energy into his soles and placed his other hand on his chest, spatially locking his all-black attire, black skinny-jeans, hoodie and all. He stopped just a couple yards above the man, suspended upside down.

Eisen almost breathed a sigh of relief, until he heard the man mutter.

>>”Huh…”

Eisen looked him square in the face, his eyes locking onto the man’s. If he screams, knock him out and run.

Jack held the young man’s stare, his expression neutral but for the raised eyebrows. He ignored the fire he glimpsed behind the kid’s stare, but made mental note of it. He’d seen that look before, hundreds of times, in the eyes of young men. Had given it himself more times than he could count. Willing. Desperate. Violent. Don’t fuck with me.

Probably it should seem absurd, a person dangling above him with nothing to hold onto but thin air. Okay, it was absurd, Jack conceded to himself, even by New York standards. Uncommon though. The silence lingered for a stretched out moment before he spoke.

“How’s it hanging?”

That was how the kids these days greeted each other, wasn’t it?

Jack’s gaze moved slowly, from the floating kid, to the spray can in his hand, to the black lines reaching up the wall. Two parallel lines, dominating the brickwork. He pursed his lips as he considered the kid’s graffiti. He’d never been much of a connoisseur of art. Even less so of graffiti and street art. Jack’s teenage exploits in vandalism had gone from a few rocks though windows before rapidly escalating to blowing up Nazi transports.

He pointed at the paintwork, looking back at the kid. “I don’t get it. What is it? Is that an eleven? Or a two? You know, like Roman numerals?”

Huh, so he didn’t scream? In fact, the man spoke to Eisen as if they were just two strangers waiting in line at the bus stop with time on their hands and not as if they had met each other upside down in a dark alley.

>>”How’s it hanging?”

Beads of sweat dripped down off Eisen’s forehead as he held himself suspended for a little while longer as he internalized the question. Then he unpaused his clothing and dropped himself to the ground so he could speak to the man on the same level. Eisen’s adrenalize rush from his rage-graffiti and sudden dive still left him in a stupor, as he tried to regain his composure.

“Uh… It’s hanging -pant- ok… I guess?” Eisen wasn’t really in the state of mind to address another conscious being right now. The sudden drop and the suspension in the air caught up with his stomach. All that he held in his belly lurched and he leaned against the wall to balance himself. He still had on his black mask, which helped Eisen to conceal the nausea that was sprayed all over his facial features.

>>“I don’t get it. What is it? Is that an eleven? Or a two? You know, like Roman numerals?”

The man seemed to show interest in Eisen’s graffiti-- though Eisen was a little embarrassed that this current piece wasn’t his normal style and the black circle on the wall wasn’t made to impress. He wanted to tell the man that he caught him at a wrong time. He could show him his other finished pieces, is he was still interested, but the Sphaghetti O’s he had for dinner made their way up and out his throat pipe.

“It’s a BLEEUUUUGH” Eisen quickly pulled off his mask. His partially digested O’s spewed out onto an old tire on the ground, and some even made it onto the old man’s shoes.

“I’m so sorry BLEGH, EGHH, EGHHHhhh” The rest of his microwave dinner emptied out. Eisen wiped his vomit tinged slobber from his mouth with his sleeve and clutched his sides. Great. Now I have to get more dinner.

In his queasiness, he almost forgot the man’s question. He grew red in embarrassment, not really knowing what to do next.

“It’s a pause symbol. Y’know like on a remote?” Eisen began to walk slowly past the man still clutching his sides.

“You don’t happen to know a good place to eat around here, do you?”