I flicked my lighter open and snapped it to flame. The fire shimmied at the waist but jumped to the newspaper as I brought the two together. I tossed the torch into the dumpster, then followed the Kid into his building.

The stairwell creaked as I went up. I let him settle in before taking the third flight. Wanted the Kid to relax. Plus, I needed to make a phone call.

I punched three digits into my cell.

"Fire," I said. "Gasket Alley, off of Siphon Street."

I hung up.

After a few minutes and a smoke, I skimmed on. His door had a fake doorknocker bolted in about eye-level. Shaped like a snake formed in a circle – mouth clamped around its own tail. No peep hole to put a thumb over. I knocked.

"Who's there?" he asked.

I knocked again. Louder. The floorboards inside creaked as bad as the steps. He tried to move slow, light-footed. Not because he was cautious about holding. He couldn't have a clue what would bring an Agent to his door. Nor what an Agent was. I didn’t give the Kid that much credit. No, he put caution into each step because he didn't expect anyone. And in a place like his, the smart ones didn't open the door at all if they weren't expecting to. The Kid didn't strike me as one of the smart ones.

I waited until I could hear him breathing on the other side of the hollow wood. Finally, the handle moved. Just a little at first. Not enough for the deadlatch to pop out from the frame. I waited some more. Then one more creak as he leaned forward. It opened. Barely. But enough that when I kicked it as hard as I could, the door didn't break the frame. It just smacked straight into his face and knocked him flat on his back, out cold.

After I tied the Kid to a chair with the chords from his blinds, I took my time looking around.

There was little to look at. The refrigerator held half a bottle of mustard and a few spoonfuls of relish. All of the cupboards were completely bare except for a few dead cockroaches. The only thing covering any of the peeling paint was a mirror bolted so hard that it must've come with the place. Only three pieces of furniture. An old writing desk that had one of those pull-down covers. A futon/couch covered in a white sheet. And a wooden chair with the Kid tied to it. The window that led to the fire escape was painted shut. All the windows were. The only light came from a few candles spread about the floor. No electricity in the poorest parts of the City –– even if the residents wanted to pay for it. Stacks of books lined the floorboards, probably read by candlelight. Seemed we had a rare hobby in common.

I stepped into the bathroom. Relieved myself. The shower didn’t have a curtain. Orange mold grew around the edge of the tub. The medicine cabinet overflowed with shaving razors, hydrogen peroxide, tooth brushes, mouthwash, hair gel, and rubbing alcohol. Apparently, the Kid had a stronger fix on his appearance than his belly. I pulled out the alcohol and set it by his feet. Then I pulled the sheet off the futon and spread it around underneath the chair as best I could to keep the mess in check.

An old, battery-operated cassette player sat on the floor in one corner. Beside it, a handful of tapes and a pile of large batteries. I stuck my tongue on a couple and found a few with a jolt. Someone had written "Edith Piaf" on one of the few tapes with a label. At least the Kid had some culture.

I put the tape on and turned it up loud enough for the neighbors to hear.

Then I knelt in front of him and waited. The music brought him around. He tasted blood dripping from his nose down into his mouth. His first sign something was wrong. Then he focused his eyes on me. That gave him the second.

"How you feeling Kid?" I asked with a smile.

He tried his hands. Then his feet. Once, a long ways back, I had a bodybuilder-type get free on me. He roughed up my face a bit and gave me the scar running along my right temple. After having to stomp his brains into the carpet, I made sure to overdo it on the bindings. Always a shame to lose somebody who can put the words down. No way this skinny blonde kid could get free, though. He knew it too.

"I'll call the cops mister," he said. "Just leave now and there won't be trouble."

"Nah," I said. "We both know you'll be up to your neck in it if you do. I haven't seen the cops do anything but patrol around in those squad cars for as long as I remember. And from what I hear, when they step out of those cars, nobody who's around wants to stay around."

The fear settled in behind his eyes when he looked at me.

"This can go two ways,” I said. “One, you give me the malgams you've got and we become fast friends. Or two," I pulled my gun from the holster under my arm and balanced the weight of it in my hand.

His eyes locked on the metal.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

"I'm the guy who wants your writing."

"Why are you...?"

He stopped talking when I put the barrel between his teeth.

"I hope we get to work together for longer than just tonight," I said. "But you need to understand a few things if that's to happen."

I nodded. He nodded.

"First, I don't like to be asked why. Don't do it again. Asking why in the real world is as useful as drawing pictures in the mud. Remember that. And second, you need to be writing whenever you get a chance to put pen to paper. Paragraphs. Sentences. All of it. The more the better. Don't worry about what's good or bad. I'll figure that out easy enough. Just write. I need your writing. So you need to write."

His face changed. The invisible crown he'd been wearing since he'd started the writing fell a little. The confidence slid and confusion took up the lost ground. The two feelings fought over whether to let his eyes find where he'd stashed his words in the room. His mind bounced between the gun in my hand and his calculation of their worth. To a man that kicked down the front door for them. To himself and what he felt like since putting those first sentences down. Then he fortified himself with the last bit of confidence he'd ever feel at the sight of me.

I loved the process. Every time, watching them fit this peculiar moment into that narrative they'd been stringing themselves through each day. Tugging on it like a leash until someone like me yanks hard enough to make them stumble. Then, it takes that one moment for the Idea to click, for their feet to get under them again and they start pulling along like it was all part of the plan.

"What do you want that for?" he asked.

"I find it. People like you write. People like me find people like you," I raised my gun and cocked a round into the chamber. "Good enough?"

He tried to suck a deep breath, but it caught in his throat half-way.

I knocked the barrel of my gun across his cheek. Not hard. Just enough to bruise later. And so he could see that I was still smiling after.

He settled his eyes on me again. The confidence hadn't gone completely, but it took a serious crack.

"What do I get for it?" he asked.

"One less bullet, Kid, that's what you get. So give. This isn't a conversation."

"Who are you?" he asked, "Why me?"

"You've forgotten already. Not a good sign for the direction that this is headed," I said and smacked him again. Hard enough to cut his eye this time. "What got you started, anyhow?" I asked.

"On the desk," he said, pointing with his chin.

Sure enough. Buried under a bunch of unopened bills, an old copy of Naked Lunch. Burroughs and the Cut-Up Method in the preface. The Kid had dog-eared the page. Probably didn't even read the whole thing.

"Where'd you get this?" I asked.

"Guy at a party."

"Where was the party?"

"The dogpatch."

I winced at the thought, rubbed my forehead.

"You didn't think it strange that somebody at a party gave you a book?" I asked.

"Sure. But I read," he motioned to the books lining the floorboards.

"Unusual hobby these days," I said. "I thought I was the only one. Hard enough to get your hands on books, but another thing entirely to read them."

"Not much else to do around here if you're not on the Powder."

"Good for you. You're not a Burner? One in a thousand," I said. "But only one in ten-thousand puts together a decent malgam. That's kind of a big deal, Kid. Which means, at least some of the Idea you've been telling yourself is partially true."

"Why do you keep calling me 'Kid'?" he asked.

I pushed the heavy length of a sigh at the floor to make a point, but let it slide once more.

"Because you're the Burroughs Kid. William S. Burroughs, right?" I said, and held up The Naked Lunch. "And you talk way too much."

The Kid's eyes dropped to the floor. "Just take it and go."

I smiled again. Wider this time because it held back the chuckle behind it.

"Such a short memory," I said and pushed the barrel of my gun hard into his knee.

He bit on his lower lip. The light behind his eyes went someplace he could hide from me, waiting for me to pull the trigger, and pushing out a few tears around the blood drying on his face. I just held up until he came back. The silence between us let through the distant sirens wailing off the close concrete walls of the next building outside his window, barely muffled through thin walls. My time with the Kid was running at full sprint.

When the light in his eyes returned, I stood there staring at him. My gun still pointed at his knee. But he had gotten himself fairly confident from whatever trek he'd taken - solid that I wouldn't shoot just yet.

"I'm going to ask again," I said. "Where are you keeping your writing?"

His mouth started to part. But before he could answer, I pulled the trigger.

The bullet took the front of his knee through the back. He wailed. Tried to look down at the wound but couldn't. He looked at me instead. Shock pulsed from the backs of his eyes. A lot of pain too. And probably quite a bit of seething hatred. He tossed his head around a bit to wrestle with the combination. That's when I noticed the music had stopped. I walked over and flipped the cassette.

"What was the guy's name who threw the party?" I asked, pacing slow while the blood from his bullet wound dropped in puddles to the white sheet underneath the chair. He watched me through the tears. Mostly to see if I was going to shoot him again. Instead, I grabbed the bottle of alcohol.

"I'll need to know which dogpatch he's in too," I said and poured a dash on his knee.

I wasn't sure if he could hear me over his own cries, so I let him get it out. Too bad for him, his neighbors feared the police as much as any ruckus in a nearby room. The music would at least give them an excuse to keep to their own out of fear they'd be next. Besides, I had no cause to make them suffer the full sound of his pain.

Between screams, he managed to yell, "You didn't let me answer!"

"You aren't paying attention," I said. "I told you that I was going to ask, not that I'd wait for an answer," He started to pass out from the pain, so I smacked his cheeks a little.

"Never been shot have you? " I continued. "Hurts like hell."

I smiled as his eyes re-focused on me. "Be glad that I put that bullet through you. Hurts worse when they get stuck. Burns like fire."

"I don't understand," he said. "Why is this happening?"

The words fell out of him. He squirmed like a bug in my hand and it only cost me a single bullet and barely a little time. The Kid didn't have time to put the pieces together properly with all the pain and the bullet and me. It became too much to be slotted easily into his narrative. I'd pulled the leash hard enough to yank him out of his set of Ideas.

"Stay focused, Kid. You wrote something. Thought you were hot stuff. Turns out you were a little bit right. Now, I'm here and I want to make sure we get this relationship off on the right foot," I pointed the gun at his other knee, "The next words out of your mouth better tell me where I can find the pages you wrote."

"Desk drawer. You could have found it if you'd just looked."

"But now we've had a nice little chat. And you understand how this’ll work next time and the time after that."

Papers had been stacked and folded and shoved into the desk drawer. All of them written in pencil. All of them full, front and back. I pulled one out and ran my Palm-Scanner over it. Then waited. After a few short seconds, the light at the base of my wrist turned blue. The Kid just watched.

"Now," I said, looking through the pages for any discernible writing, tossing aside the scraps, "the party-guy's name? And which dogpatch?"

He spilled like it was hurting to keep it in. Far south. Where the weeds start to grow again. Guy told everyone his name was Yeats. The Kid said he'd been too drunk to remember which house exactly. But I'd find it well enough. It always worked that way for me.

"Keep this going," I waved the pages at him, "because I'll be back for more."

His eyes widened. I walked around behind him and let him loose from the cord. He didn't move much. Just fell slack in the chair. His chest started to rise and fall faster. The anger built from the pain. His hands clenched the armrests tight enough to whiten his knuckles. The eruption approached. I stood a few feet from the door and waited for it. For the new Idea to settle into their vases. For his brain to shuffle the pieces.

Finally, as Edith Piaf hit a high note in "La Vie En Rose," he popped.

"I won't write another word," he blubbered. The tears flowed. Spittle dripped from his chin as he called me every name he could think of, growing louder with each, like revving an engine once you finally get the thing to turn over. It took a full two minutes of him yelling and me standing there with one hand on the door before he finally spent it all. The small apartment became quiet again. Except for Edith's singing.

After he let all the air out, I walked over to him slowly. I smiled down at him.

Then I shot the Kid in his other knee. One last little gift to keep the Ideas he had spilling.

He didn't put up much of a fight as I dragged him down the stairs and out into the street. Just a pile of meat after I'd taken all the spirit out of him. His head started to fall to one side or the other and I gave him a bit of a shake to fight off the shock that was setting in. I needed him awake and alive, and he'd need to do his part to make that happen. The fire I'd set in the dumpster would be my part.

Across the road, the firemen gathered their hoses and kept their heads low. The flames beating up out of the trash pile drew them like moths. The sleeves of their yellow coats tarnished with black grime and soot hung low over their hands to protect from the heat. Their fix was exactly like all the rest. Get too much or too close and you get singed.

"You'd better wake yourself and call out," I said as I tapped on The Kid's cheeks. "If you don't get those knees Proto-healed, you'll be dead. No good to anyone."

As I walked away, The Kid screamed for the firemen to help him. They'd get him to an aid station. He'd be fine in a few days' time. By then, I'd call on him again just to make sure it all stuck. And if he didn't have the pen to the page, I'd scorch him all over again.