Brian’s POV

I hung up the phone and sat back in my chair. Mikey; Christ a fucking week ago I wouldn’t have given a dime for the suggestion that I would ever again have a normal conversation with the man who had been my best friend since I was 14. I had deliberately chased him away by outing him at the birthday party I had thrown for him. Mikey had romanticized me to the point that he had given up a perfectly good partner to be at my beck and call. The only way to get him back to the good doctor, and to get Deb off my fucking back, had been to remove even the most remote possibility that he would ever have me. The idea to cut me off had to be his decision. God knows it had taken the most extreme measures I had been able to contrive to achieve the desired effect but it had worked. Mikey had left the party completely disillusioned by me and once again on the arm of his doctor. Christ it had been hard to see him leave with that prick. The more I saw of Dr. David the more I agreed with Justin that there was something fucking weird about the guy.

Still, difficult or not, I had let him go; happy fucking birthday. Justin had stayed. He helped me clean up and then had lurked around the next day until Deb had sent him to work. She knew what I had done. She thanked me. It didn’t matter to her what cutting her son off from me had cost me, she only cared that he was free. I rubbed my hand over my face. Losing Michael from my life had been much harder than I had ever imagined it would be; it left hole inside me that nothing seemed to fill. I did discover that keeping Justin around helped more than anything else but even that wasn’t the same. Mikey was my friend, not a fuck and I needed that. Not that I had been about to admit it. No fucking way. I had gone through a lot of trouble to get that little whiney bastard out of my life.

Enter Justin. ‘Mister-going-to-fix-the-world’ and failing that, at least patch Brian Kinney back together. That goddamn little twink was an interfering bastard but he had done it. Whatever he had done worked and Mikey was talking to me again. He was talking to me and he was still with the lovely Doctor so maybe it was going to be ok. Mikey really couldn’t spend his whole life on the sidelines waiting for me to finish getting a blow job and maybe this time everyone was right, maybe he had been doing it far too long already. The biggest problem I had at the moment was that Justin seemed intent on applying for the job of friendly fuck and I had far too easily allowed him to assume that role in my life. He wasn’t always around, he didn’t always get fucked; but anytime I needed something or someone, he was there. It was as if he had his fucking radar tuned to me. I shook my head and settled down to get back to work. I could worry about Justin anytime, right now it was time to sell cherries; chocolate covered ones to be precise. The thought made me laugh; they really didn’t want to know my suggestions for how to sell a chocolate covered cherry.

Work went smoothly with no interruptions. I got the beginning of a campaign mapped out and the copy wasn’t even slightly suggestive. I realized I was hungry, Cynthia had been gone for nearly an hour and it had been probably thirty minutes since I had heard the last sounds of footsteps go past my door. I stretched and closed down the computer. I had accomplished what I had hoped today, and would be able to finish this up tomorrow. I swear to god I won’t write across the front of the whole deal “there’s nothing like popping one of our cherries, sink your teeth into one today” I wasn’t, I really wasn’t. I was however considering that I might grab some take out Thai and then head home to eat and change. I doubted I could get a real cherry at Babylon but maybe I could get a trick to fake it. Grinning at the thought, I packed up my stuff and headed for the garage.

Thinking about how peaceful this last week had seemed caused me to reflect on all that shit we had gone through with the dead bodies. Nothing else had come from that. I hadn’t heard that they had caught the sick bastard but he hadn’t killed anyone else either. There had been no more bodies that looked like Justin and I was starting to relax. I had the underwear and that lock of hair in my drawer at home to keep me from forgetting, but I was starting to believe that we had seen the end of it. After finding the underwear in my drawer, I had been half convinced that we were headed for some outrageous showdown. Instead, the culprit seemed to have faded quietly away and I suppose that it didn’t say much for my character that I didn’t really give a fuck where he had gone. I only wanted him to stay the fuck away from us.

I took the elevator to the garage but I still had quite a hike to my car. I had been late this morning and the only parking left had been in the rear of the garage. The shadows seemed to gather back there and Mikey had told me it was plain out creepy and demanded to know just how cheap the company was that they couldn’t spring for some decent light bulbs? The memory made me laugh. It was kinda dim in the entire garage, you could see ok but shadows seem to lurk at the edge of your vision. The thought made me frown. What the fuck was that about? I was not even slightly bent towards having fanciful flights of the imagination…fantasies …damn straight but not creepy-crawly-the-monster-is-going-to-get-you stuff. Still I quickened my step. I was the only one left and my steps suddenly seemed to echo loudly in the dark garage. Damn I was sure I had brought this on thinking about the bodies, I knew better than to dwell on shit like that. The jeep was just around the next corner but for some reason as I reached the end of the wall I suddenly found myself extremely reluctant to continue.

The shadow pressed in on me like a physical weight. I stopped and focused on trying to judge what I was feeling. I had never considered myself to have any type of clairvoyant ability, I actually believed all that stuff was just so much shit but there was no denying the chill that was crawling down my spine. There was only one name for it, dread. What the fuck? I took a step and stopped; even in the poor light it was clear that something had been spilled on the concrete floor. That was not very remarkable, people spilled stuff in there all the time, coffee or soda you could probably pretty much name it. Coffee had a distinct smell and that was not…it was only then that I realized I smelled something and that I had smelled it since I got off the elevator. It was not an overwhelming scent, very subtle one in fact but it was a smell I had been exposed to before and it was one that I would never forget. Someone was dead.

My heart started to pound against my ribs. Fuck, that’s what was wrong with me. It was why I had the creeps even though I had walked through this building hundreds of times before without ever noticing the dim lighting or the thick shadows. My subconscious had identified the odor before I even knew that I smelled it. Now everything seemed to be thrown starkly into black and white. I took another slow step forward. I thought about calling the police without trying to find the source of the smell. I could call them anonymously and report the smell. Let them check it out; let them have the fucking nightmares. My decision reached, I moved forward with more confidence. I didn’t have to be involved with this. Smelling was not seeing, hell even if I saw it I could report it or I could just leave and let someone else be the good fucking Samaritan and then I turned the corner.

“FUCK.” The sight that met my eyes froze me in my tracks. This absolutely could not be happening. Leave it to me to fucking conjure up a goddamn dead body. I couldn’t do anything but stare at the scene in front of me; the violence of it was almost mesmerizing. And there was the fact that once again I couldn’t see who exactly was dead. Only this time I did not have the comfort of knowing that my boy was safely tucked away at a diner, in fact I didn’t know where he was. The scene was similar to the first scene I had witnessed, but at the same time was so different they seemed to be bizarre reflections of each other. The first scene had been clean and methodical. This one…holy Christ… this one looked like the guy had been butchered right here in the garage, almost on top of my jeep.

The body was sitting, leaned against one of the tall tires. The shirt was Justin’s, or at the very least one exactly like one that I had seen him wear any number of times. Sheer white with capped sleeves; he was hot as hell in the thing. Now I stared at it numbly. I couldn’t name the dread that was growing in my gut as I moved slowly forward. I stopped when I reached the edge of the pool of blood. The body sat in the middle of it. Blood was everywhere. It had splattered all over my jeep as if the job of cutting the throat had been done right here. A backpack was spilled out near by. The drawing pads and books were Justin’s. I tried to remember if he had left it in the Jeep and I couldn’t. No, no I had dropped him off at school and I had a clear picture of him slinging it over one shoulder as he threw a grin at me over the other. The head had been nearly severed from the body. It hung by what seemed to be a sliver of skin, the face was away from me pressed against the chest; there was no way to see the features without touching him. The hair was caked and clogged with blood but the blond color of it was unmistakable. The cut was Justin’s and every other school-boy with a dress code, but every other school-boy didn’t share my fucking bed. I wanted to step forward. I ached to take that step to move the head, to prove to myself that this was not Justin. This could not be Sunshine. No fucking way. The same tennis shoes, the same jeans not his school uniform but the one he had adopted for the Diner, the one that got the tips.

There was no way this guy was alive and so there was no reason for me to touch the body. I needed to call the cops. I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the still body and I fumbled for the phone, in the end nearly dropping it in the blood before I had it securely in hand. I stood staring and trembling. My hand clutched the small item as if it were my last line to reality. I was convinced that it was Justin. It had to be; it was where this had been headed all along wasn’t it? The other bodies, the souvenirs they had all just been a prelude to this; the killer’s crowning moment. Who fucking hated me this much? My eyes moved from the body to my phone and back. I had to call, but could I do it? Could I call without knowing whether or not it was Justin sitting in the middle of that gore? I couldn’t and I knew it. As much as I didn’t want to step into the circle of blood, I had to know if that was Justin leaned so pathetically against my jeep. Because if someone had murdered him, I had to figure out how I was going to make them pay. I took a step forward and though I knew it had to be an illusion, a nasty trick of my mind, my shoe seemed to sink into the blood. There was a fucking lot of it. It seemed impossible that all of this blood had come from one small blond twink.

The phone in my hand suddenly rang and vibrated. I nearly dropped it again. Christ, who the fuck could that be? Impatiently I flipped the phone open as if whoever was on the other end should some way sense that this was not the time to fucking call me.

“Brian, where the fuck are you?” The voice in my ear made my head spin. I stared at the violence laid out before me and I could feel tears welling in my eyes. I blinked them back, no fucking way. Brian Kinney did not do fucking tears. I couldn’t talk. I clutched the phone to my ear and sank slowly to my knees.

“Justin?” I whispered beyond hope that I had heard correctly. There was a pause at the other end.

“Brian are you ok?” he asked and I couldn’t answer. Justin. If he was on the other end of this call then he could not be sitting in a pool of his blood in front of me in this goddamn garage. I was oblivious to the fact that blood was soaking the legs of my 300-dollar pants in that moment nothing mattered but that Justin was ok.

“Yeah,” I finally managed to answer him; I sounded odd like something was in my throat. Scalding tears still pressed behind my eyes and I scrubbed at them in annoyance. I cleared my throat and tried again, “Yeah, I’m fine what the fuck did you want?” I asked. He hesitated but then seemed to decide I was telling the truth.

“Where are you anyhow? I left three messages for you. Someone stole my goddamn backpack. My clothes for work were in it. I’m working in my damn uniform.” He sounded so much like a fucking princess that even kneeling there in a pool of blood he made me laugh. Now I knew where the clothes had come from and that it had grown more personal. Not personal enough for it to be Justin, not this time, but if someone had stolen his backpack from that stupid private school how hard would it have been for them to take him? I could tell he wanted me to bring him something to wear but I had the feeling it would be a while before I did anything for anybody. I told him to put his jacket on and play virgin for the clientele; they would love it and he would get rich.

“Yeah right Brian.” He told me in exasperation, “What the fuck ever.”  He hung up without further comment. I closed my phone and stood slowly. Much of my panic had abated. It was interesting how less threatening a dead body is when you realize you don’t know who it is. I surveyed the situation and shook my head. This was just fucking great, now not only did I have to call the cops and tell them I was babysitting yet another dead guy, this one propped against my car, but I was also covered in his fucking blood. This was shaping up to be one fucked up night. Shaking my head in resignation, I opened the phone again. I dialed 911.

~*~

I stared at Melanie over the table. It was pitted and scarred from years of cigarettes and abuse. She stared back at me. I should have asked for the fucking public defender. I told her so but she had just looked at me with that condescending stare she has mastered so fucking well and told me that I couldn’t get a public defender unless they charged me with something. I had returned her stare, tongue in cheek at that information. We both knew that the police were sure I was guilty of something they just hadn’t figured out what yet; too fucking bad. I wasn’t about to help the bastards.

“Three bodies Brian and you have been identified as being at the scene all three times.” She repeated quietly. “If you want to get out of here tonight you are going to have to give them something, what the fuck is going on?” she made her demand without heat. She was tired of trying to get me to talk, and sick of the very obvious fact that I didn’t give a damn.

“Nothing is going on.” I told her for the thousandth time just as I had told the fucking police before she got there, “Bad timing, bad Karma? Fuck if I know. I have an alibi. I didn’t kill any goddamn body and if I knew why some fucking psycho has decided to dump his bodies on me I would fucking tell you! Do you think I am enjoying this fucking shit?” I sat there in front of her still in my suit from work with blood caked on my shoes. Blood had dried on my pants and they were stiff with it. I knew my eyes were red rimmed and that I looked like hell. I smelled as bad as I looked; I knew it was true because I could smell myself. The tang of the blood in the air made me feel sick. Maybe some of what I was feeling crept into my expression because suddenly she backed down. She stared at me in silence for a long time.

“As much as it pains me to say this, Brian, I believe you; but no one investigating this is going to believe that it’s all just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” My eyes followed her gaze and unwillingly I found myself staring at the group of pictures that had been laid out in the center of the table by the last cop to talk to me, the detective in charge of solving the killings. Six pictures, three before and three after. It was disturbing to look at them and not just because they had all died so violently. The before pictures were just that; three photos of different guys. Three very dead young men, the most recent one was like the first in that he didn’t really resemble Justin at all. They didn’t even look like each other very much. The second guy, who looked the most like Justin had very dark hair and eyes. It was the pictures of the murder scenes that made everything seem so surreal. So different in life but so similar in death though it had been an illusion. Until I had seen these pictures, I thought that the illusion was my secret but looking at them I realized that it was no secret, with them laid side by side like that it was like seeing the same person killed three times over and now my only secret was Justin. The police knew what the killer wanted the bodies to represent someone. They didn’t know who. It made my stomach hurt and so I looked away. Christ I needed a smoke.

“Jesus Christ Brian, those pictures…” her voice dropped to a whisper, “they could be Justin.” Her voice raised again as her anger resurfaced, “What’s going on Brian? What the fuck have you done?” The anger in her voice was real, they all liked Justin hell they probably liked him better than they liked me, all of them but Michael anyhow. Michael’s persistent dislike of Justin had faded into tolerance but I doubted that real friendship would ever bloom there. It took every ounce of control I had to keep from grabbing the pictures and destroying them. I didn’t want to look at this; I didn’t want to think about what it might mean. I had moved him out. He was supposed to be safe now. I tried to ignore the pricking of my conscious as it reminded me that the weeks I had not touched Justin had been free from bodies. Now that he and I were fucking regularly, the threats had started up again. But why? It didn’t make sense. If I wasn’t fucking Justin then I was screwing someone else. I never stayed celibate, I didn’t believe in that bullshit. Why weren’t bodies of every shape, size and color being dumped in my lap? That’s how I fucked them. I just stuck it in whoever was the prettiest when my dick got hard. This maniac was focused on Justin and trying to figure out why was going to drive me crazy. Maybe it was his father after all. What else could it be? Some fucked up secret admirer? Was I desecrating Justin’s sacred flesh with my foul touch?

“I haven’t done a fucking thing.” I told Melanie. I stared at the wall over her shoulder as I attempted to gain some form of control over my emotions. I was exhausted and sick and heart sore; control wasn’t coming easily. The detective came in without knocking. We both turned to look at him. She was frustrated with me and with them; you could read it in her expression. I was way past frustrated. I was pissed. I hadn’t killed any fucking body. They had no reason to keep torturing me like this. I opened my mouth to tell them to fucking charge me with something or let me go when the man dropped another photo onto the table in front of me. I almost didn’t look at it. If another boy had been brutally murdered I really had no desire to see it. Against my will my eyes were drawn the Polaroid.

It took all of my will power not to react. The picture was of Justin. He was here in the police station. They must have taken this picture for just this purpose. I knew they would bring him in to talk to; the book bag had made that inevitable. I wondered what he had said to them. I remembered the paint can, the underwear and the hair dye. I could go to jail at any moment for obstructing an investigation. Justin didn’t know about the first two items but he knew enough that he might get them looking again and if they searched my apartment, I was fucked. The man moved the picture inline with the others, the before pictures.

“So is he next?” the officer sat down tiredly in the chair at the side of the table. Melanie and I sat with the length of it between us; no cozy lawyer client snuggles for us. I almost snorted at the thought, and was glad it hadn’t escaped. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to look at Justin in that line up. He wasn’t next; no one was going to fucking kill him.

“I haven’t killed anyone. So he can’t be next.” I replied as reasonably as I could. I reached over and moved Justin’s picture away from the others. Not now. Not next. Not ever. Not Justin. But today I had believed it had already happened. Maybe it had been only for a minute but without warning that minute suddenly returned in a moment of paralyzing total recall. It was as if I was standing there again, in the midst of the blood, the smell, and the heartsick belief that the psycho had killed him at last. I couldn’t seem to breathe

“Talk to me Mr. Kinney.” The detective’s voice called me back to myself. I took a deep shuddering breath and met his intent gaze almost gratefully. “Talk to me before another kid dies. Talk to me before you walk into another nightmare like the one you found today. Talk to me before the body doesn’t just look like someone you love but is that person.”

“I don’t do love.” My habitual comment spilled out before I could censor it but the man didn’t comment, just reached over and tugged on the Polaroid. I looked down and saw that I had crushed it with my hand. I didn’t even remember picking it up. I opened my hand and let him have it. He spread it out and we all stared at it. Justin looked ridiculously young standing in the middle of the police station and he looked scared, as scared as he had sounded that day on the phone when he had found the first body. A can of paint, soiled underwear…if I had told them could this all be over now? Was there some clue in those things that would have told the police who they were looking for? If I had not been so fucking stubborn would Justin be really safe now? I had no way to know and even now I couldn’t admit the cover up to the police, not because I was afraid of what they would do to me, but for fear of what they would do with Justin. They were grasping at straws and I had no doubt in my mind that they would take him apart piece by little gay boy piece. I didn’t want to lose Justin to a crazed killer, but I didn’t want him lost to the system either. I suppose someone would tell me that at least the system would leave him alive but I thought that might simply be a matter of perception.

“There is nothing for me to talk about.” I told the detective meeting his eyes levelly. The crumpled picture of Justin lay face up on the table between us and I could almost feel the boy’s trusting blue eyes fixed on me. I had done nothing to earn that trust. I damn sure didn’t fucking deserve it but it was there and for some reason I was remarkably reluctant to break it. “Most people dislike me, fuck, you dislike me. But I’m not bad enough to breed this kind of hatred in someone’s heart, at least I don’t think so. I’m a rude, obnoxious, son of a bitch; but it makes people lash out at me, not simmer to the point of murder. Until this started that’s what I would have told you.” Melanie was surprisingly silent as she watched me talk to the detective. I hoped she would stop me if I seemed to be about to say something I should keep to myself.

“Why do you say that the killer hates you, Mr. Kinney?” the dark eyes of the detective never left my face, “Most people would see the threat here as being directed at Mr. Taylor.”

“Justin is incidental.” I said in a moment of surprising honesty, “It’s pretty fucking clear that the message is to me. I wouldn’t mind figuring out what the fuck it is before someone else dies. I’m goddamn sick and tired of dead guys.”

“I happen to agree with you.” He told me, perhaps in a burst of his own honesty. That would be a fucking first; an honest cop, “And you better spend a lot of time thinking about this. He’s going to kill your boyfriend. He’s even given us a schedule.” Melanie gasped at that revelation but I was pretty sure I knew what he meant.

“He’s not my goddamn boyfriend.” I muttered, “I don’t do fucking boyfriends. It’s just fucking.” I didn’t meet the man’s eyes and Melanie snorted her obvious disdain for me and my opinions. She thought I was the most fucked up cynical bastard she had ever had the misfortune to meet and I was sure she was right. “I don't believe in love. I believe in fucking. It's honest, it's efficient. You get in and out with a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of bullshit. Anybody tells you anything else about me, doesn’t know a fucking thing about Brian Kinney.” My eyes were locked with his again but he didn’t give me the response I received most often in reaction to my bluntly stated opinion of fucking romance. He just looked thoughtful. He picked up the other pictures one at a time and arranged them in a neat pile.

“Perhaps you can figure out who it is you need to convince about that.” He suggested, “Someone thinks that kid means something to you. Someone thinks he’s going to hurt you or teach you a lesson by harming him. We can try to watch him, but there are no grounds to take him into protective custody, there has been no overt threat. There is only the oddly similar façade of the bodies. They were purposefully manipulated in such a way that they resembled each other but that is not a direct threat on your young man. I knew that they were supposed to represent someone and then when I walked downstairs tonight they were questioning a blond young man about his book bag. I knew that I had come face to face with him, the killer’s ultimate goal. Perhaps you don’t believe that you love him, but someone does and that belief is going to get him killed. It was yellow this time Mr. Kinney does that mean anything to you?” It was as if he and I were the only people on the planet and time was not passing. I stared at him blankly. I didn’t want to think about this. I didn’t want to think about any of it any more. I just wanted to go home. I just wanted to go to bed. He began to deal the “after” photos as if they were cards. He laid out the first one, the boy from the loft.

“Red.” He said quietly; and laid down the next one the boy with the badly dyed hair but with Justin’s face, “Orange.” He laid down the boy from today. “Yellow.” He glanced up and satisfied that I was paying attention, put Justin’s picture down neatly two spaces away from the others. “Tell me what you see.” He watched my face closely. I knew what he had identified and as fucking straight as he was, I gave him a few extra points for it. I ran my hand through my hair. I didn’t want to fucking do this. I didn’t want to keeping looking at Justin in this line up ever - real or not.

“Green,” I pointed to the first empty space in the line of pictures and then the next, “blue” I stopped. They could throw me under the fucking jail before I would name Justin a part of this fucking screwed up situation. The detective picked up Justin’s picture from where it lay in the sixth position and handed it back to me.

“Spirit, the spirit of gay pride” he said quietly, the asshole had done his homework. Silence hung thick between us, fuck now I was going to have nightmares about the goddamn color purple. “Perhaps you are being honest, Mr. Kinney, perhaps you do not love this boy” His fucking tone implied that he remained unconvinced, “But someone believes that you do, someone believes that you love him enough that killing him will be a better punishment or perhaps a better lesson than if he simply killed you himself. Go home Kinney. Take a shower. Get some sleep and think. And when you decide you are ready to talk to me,” he handed me his card; I turned it over in my fingers. “You call me and maybe, if we work together, we can catch this asshole before we are scraping another gay youth off the cement.”

“I can go?” I demanded as if that was the only thing I had heard him say.

“Fucking figures.” Melanie muttered and began gathering her things. “To thine own-selfish asshole self be true” clearly she meant me and my penchant for self preservation. It was accurate enough that I just turned a grim smile her way. I thought she might throw her folder at me but she stuck it into the briefcase instead as if she was cramming my head in there. I was briefly glad that I was not that folder.

“Yes, you are free to go.” I stood at his words but before I could head for the door he was on his feet and his hand on my arm. “One more thing, I have it on good authority from someone I trust that the gay community has its own set of rules and its own boundaries. I don’t want you to think you are excused from the law, Mr. Kinney but at this moment I am far more concerned with catching this creep than I am who you fuck. Remember that if you think of something that might help me.” I didn’t reply and he didn’t press, he just let me out.

~*~

I got into the elevator so tired and drained that it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other. Justin had been gone when I returned to the lobby of the precinct. They told me he had left with his mother. Fucking great. She would take him to Deb’s and Brian fucking Kinney would be alone in the dark tonight. It wasn’t like I needed him or anything but fuck…I sighed when the doors slid open and went to the door of my apartment. My hand was resting on the handle ready to slide the thing open when I suddenly had an image of Justin sprawled and butchered in the middle of my dining room table.

“Goddamn fucking shit!” I exclaimed and threw the damn door open. I was not going to become scared of my own shadow. I would not let him do that to me. I refused. I stepped into my apartment without touching the lights. It was thrown in deep shadow after being in the brightly lit hall but I found the blue tinge of the light from my bedroom somewhat soothing and so I walked to the bathroom in the bathe of blue light. It was odd how if I thought anything about those blue lights they brought to mind a picture of Justin’s porcelain skin tinged blue. I rarely thought about them at all I was so used to them, but they had somehow become inseparably linked to the young twink in my mind. That didn’t bother me as much as how just the thought of his fucking presence calmed me. I stripped and turned the shower up as hot as I could stand it. That suit was ruined but I couldn’t even find the energy to give a fuck as I got into the hot spray. I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing that boy leaning against my goddamn jeep or those fucking photo’s laid out with Justin as victim number six, would that bastard paint his sweet young cock purple before or after he killed him? Rage contorted my face. I would not let someone come into my life and do this to me. There had to be something I could do. I hit the tile wall with my fist and pain shot up my arm. I didn’t hit it again but I couldn’t get the picture of what I had seen today out of my mind. I couldn’t stop remembering how it had felt to believe, even for that brief moment, that Justin was dead.

I finally soaped and while I rinsed turned my face up into the spray of water. There were no tears mixed in the scalding liquid that ran down my face. It was all just shower spray. Brian Kinney doesn’t do fucking tears. I got out of the shower, dressed and headed for Babylon.

Oh you know that I soooo deserve a comment or ten  :P (please)