Author: Neil Burlington

Detective Gallant holds me down while his partner hits me even harder than he hit his wife last night. I bleed from my nose, my lips, and pretty much everywhere a face can bleed when under merciless attack by cops. I’m squeaky clean and eighteen, but do they care?
“Where is it!”
My thin lips spread in a smile designed to send them into conniptions. It works.
“A thing like that,” I say with a hoarse voice, “is always in the last place you looked for it, detective.”
A thick, strong hand takes hold of my black T-shirt and drags my scrawny frame up from the concrete.
“You think you can just steal something like that – and what – there’s no consequence you little bastard?”

The chunk of the cruiser door comes next. They wedge me into the back. We drive. I count my blessings and realize my supply of numbers is far too generous for the task.
We reach the station in less than fifteen minutes. I am escorted in with the kind of hospitality you give a fly at a barbeque. An iron door stands open to greet me.

I fall forward from the loving push I receive – a kind of encouragement to reform, and tumble onto the floor of a cell.
I roll like a cat and fix the brave detective above me with a puzzled stare. “What’s my crime? Do you have any proof?”
Gallant, his squared-off grizzled jaw tight – his deep-set eyes like two coals – sneers. If he’s Philip Marlowe, I’m a two-dimensional creep the streets are better without.
Gallant turns, unwilling and unable to answer my question.
I mean, how can you prove that somebody up and stole a color from the universe? To the best of my recollection – and I might be fibbing here – there was no color purple in the world at all yesterday. There certainly isn’t any today.
I heave a sigh as I roll on my side and clamber up onto the bunk where I’ll be spending the night.
My cellmate in the small town county jail cell regards me with a predatory gaze.
“You want love?” I inquire. “Then make it!” I wipe blood from my lips, my chin, and the rest of me. I laugh, and my voice breaks.
My cellie – as thin as me, sporting blonde hair and dangerous eyes – regards me with disgust. He turns over on his rack and pulls a blanket over himself.
I can’t help it. I laugh again. I’ve done the impossible. I’ve done the unprovable.
Now, if I’d stolen the color red – that would be hell to pay. No stoplights? Forget about it. That’s death on wheels. A boy like me would never think of doing something like that. But, purple? Who will miss it? Maybe old people. But it’s not vital.
Okay, I admit it. I’m proud I did it. No, that’s not going far enough. I’ve done what no one has ever done.
Through a sheer act of will – of concentration, and dedication – I’d picked my target, and executed. This one small aspect of reality is now completely under my control. My possession.
If people remember the color – that’s their problem. And here’s the secret sauce. Here’s the real Diabolik. As the lights go down and the cold seeps in – I turn my hand to look. As the din fades low – I, and I alone you understand – can summon the color to my palm, and behold it.
The color is purple, friends.
From now on- it’s mine, all mine.