Hello people of ffnet! Rose here again. Don't worry, IWBL isn't on hiatus, I shall get back to working on the next chapter a.s.a.p. This was just a little something I writ tonight. When I say 'little', you'll notice how much smaller it is compared to my usual looong ramblings. I can't be arsed to start another 'epic' when I've got two on the go already so this is just gonna be my 'bit on the side, mini-fic'.

Disclaimer: Not mine. Well, the word processor I used was mine - but that's it!

He was gone.

He didn't know where. He didn't have a clue if he was alive, dead, healthy, sick, happy, scared. He just knew he was gone.

He was actually gone. The flat was free of his remarkable presence and it quickly began to mourn. You could tell this by the way every room seemed to refuse to give any warmth or feel of cosiness to anyone who entered it. Even Naboo's wind chimes refused to sing now that their muse had deserted them.

Howard sat back on his bed, head thudding back against the wall. In the clutches of his fist, which was bruised from the hours spent of being slammed against the poor bedroom door, was a crumpled piece of paper. He bit down on his lip. He'd read the words on the scrap enough times by now to feel each letter coursing into his fingers and through his veins to his heart. Each one like the miniature stab of a poisoned dagger.

Sighing heavily and having to bring both his hands up to massage his weary, weather beaten - or should that be insomnia beaten - mush, the paper finally fluttered freely from his hands to land softly on the mattress. Its creased and crunched up folds spread out to reveal the grey crayon written message in a child-like - yet not not childish - scrawl.

Deer howard,

Im sorrie. Im so sorrie.

I dunt reli no wot Im sorrie for. I no that ive been a bit of a bitch to u lately. And some times I meant 2 b 1. Other times I just fort it was funi. Wen it weren't. Okay, sum of it wos. Like that hole tromboner thing was pretie hilareosse. Hahaha. Cee. There I go agen. I am reli, reli sorrie.

Dunt even no wot makes me the way I am. But im not completely stupid, howard. Cee how im using full stops and commas? Look, a question mark! Bollo gave me a few English lessons. Well, 1, but I got bored and started drawing pikchars ov u and me wen we used to hav r own band. Bollo got pissed off - started frowing his own shit at me, the batty creese. But yeh. I do no SUM fings. Fings that you taught me.

Fings like: everyfing is my fault. Aint it howard? I wish I was as smart as u r. I no ive nevar sed it. Well, not late-lee any way. I didn't fink ur ego needed inflaten anymore. But - u've always been my hero howard. Even wen u hurt me, I culd not stop how I felt 4 u.

Kay, no where neer as kewl as Jagger or Gary. But uve been like…u no wen ur little and ur mum tells u storeys of princesses being saved by ther handsome nights? Thats who I fought u were wen I met u. My night in tweed armour.

And, after all these yeers, after all the stooped fings u've done and every horribal fing I've sed - ur still my night. My hero.

ANd I'm a horribal person for being so mean to u. U deserve better. Im just…wot u said I was. A shallow, stooped, Simple Ton. If I new how 2 b a good Ton 4 u then I would be 1 howard. But I don't.

So im going away. Wot u sed last night is rite. Ur always rite.

U WILL do better without me stealin ur spotlight - u must have been freezing in my shadow. Sorrie. Sorrie sorrie sorrie sorrie sorrie sorrie.

Most important fing I hav 2 say be four I go. Coz I can say it now - coz I'l never cee u agen.

I love you.

X

One kiss. Just one.

His runaway companion's voice echoed in his mind tank; "It was just a kiss…"

One kiss. It had changed Howard's perspectives of things forever. Every way he looked at his past, his adventures, his life with Vince, had all shifted and been shaken like a snow globe. It was as if his entire existence up until that point had been an intricate yet pointless black and white flicker film. Then it happened. Technicolor as vivid as anything from Dreamworks animation spilled into Howard's life - particularly the sparkling blue of a pair of adoring inhumanly large eyes. Everything had changed.

For a moment. Just a small, precious moment. Before it changed back.

Why was that, exactly?

Howard punched the side of his head for the zillionth time, hoping the silence the resentful voice in his cruel, nagging head. It wasn't his fault!

Ok it was his fault.

He'd had no choice! So he'd fallen madly in love with Vince in the space of five seconds of having the Camden prince's tongue in his mouth. Surely that type of hypnosis occurred to every young floozy who 'got lucky' with Vince Noir. Howard couldn't let himself become one of them. He couldn't be just another who Vince used, abused and tossed aside in the space of an hour and twenty minutes.

Why would Vince do that to you? You're his best friend.

And when had that ever stopped the sparkly tit from hurting him before? From smashing up his jazz records to leaving him to be molested by a transvestite nymphomaniac to laughing in his face at his pathetic failures. Howard stuck by every word he'd said to Vince in their last…final battle of bickering. He was better off without Vince. What had the little titbox ever actually done other than hold him back? Make him feel small and worthless?

How about saving your life?

…Shut up!

And maybe he wouldn't have to laugh at you for being so 'worthless' if you actually did something WORTH WHILE?

It…no. It weren't as if Howard didn't try. For years he'd struggled and worked his fingers to the bone for a chance of fame of stardom. It wasn't his fault everything resulted in failure.

That's because you try to achieve trivial, meaningless, heartless goals. You refuse to see the real treasure that lays in front of you and grab it with both hands and clutch it to your chest. You're a failure, Howard Moon. Not just in fame, strength and honour. But in life.

You have lived without merit. And so you have not lived at all.

Howard bolted upright, seeing for the first time the other figure stood at the end of the room in the space where a blindingly sparkly bed had once been set just yesterday. A long black cloak slithered from the scalp of the stranger's head to float above the ground where a pair of feet failed to be seen. Howard knew the flat had been feeling empty, but never before, not even on a trip to the sub-zero tundra, had he ever felt so cold before.

The being continued to hover, his entire body hidden beneath a thick, heavy, black fabric that Howard couldn't work out was leather or heavy smog.

"Who…who are you?" Howard's voice pitched with terror, making him sound and feel about ten years old.

The figure still failed to move. Yet its voice, though still in Howard's northerly tones, managed to boom out with enough volume to make the bedside lamp tremble in fear.

"I am The Arbiter."

Howard dared to press; "…Arbiter of what?"

He could swear he actually heard the lamp now whimper in fear that Howard had angered the being. Only the smoggy demon appeared to find this amusing. He laughed. Quietly. Deadly.

"The Arbiter of Life. And this, Howard Moon, is your Judgment Day."

And not too far away, in the next room in fact, a sleeping Bollo muttered something about having bad feelings.

In my defense - I was drunk when I writ this :P Reviews are good for hangovers I hear though....please?