Skyglass: Chapter 1

Rubble and Ripple

MOSS

There was something I liked about having a gun jabbed into my stomach–something sexual and thrilling about it, like a brief reminder that maybe I’d rather not die, not yet.

“Where’d she go?” the woman asked me, pressing her gun deeper into my stomach. I pressed toward it, almost hoping she’d shoot.

“Uh, who?” I asked, gritting my teeth as the cat pricked her claws into my shoulder.

“The woman–the one who just ran past you. Are your eyes broken, pisshead?”

“I guess.”

Her hand was out of my line of sight, but, somehow, I could feel it tighten on the gun.

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

“Fine,” I told her. “Shoot me.”

She laughed without humor. “I charge for assisted suicide,” she said, and dropped her weapon to her side as she walked away. “You should eat something,” she called over her shoulder, just before turning the corner. “You look like dried-up roadkill.”

I glared at her as she left. Roadkill, I thought. I’d heard worse. And to be honest? I wished I looked dead and withered for real, because maybe then people would leave me alone.

I plucked the cat off my shoulder. She hissed in protest. I lifted her up, checking between her legs, just to see. She was female, just as I’d thought.

“She didn’t mean you, did she?” I asked her, then snorted at the absurdity of the question and dropped her to the ground. I got another hiss for that. “Yeah, I thought not.”

That woman nearly killed me, I mused, but I felt nothing. I tilted my head toward the sky; the rain had finally ceased. I stepped out of the alley and continued my walk to the vus stop.

Behind me, I heard tiny, pattering splashes. I glanced over a shoulder–the cat was following me. I tried to smirk, but felt it come out as an unfortunate half-smile. I liked her, despite myself.

We halted together at the stop and stood there, side by side. As we waited, the rain started again. I cursed it until the main line pulled up, hanging from its webs, dripping green sparks and smelling of blood. “Bye,” I said to the cat as I stepped on.

“No animals, please,” the vus’ warm, androgynous voice said.

I stopped, gritting out, “Really?” I turned.

The cat had her paws planted on the vus’ bottom step.

I asked her again. “Really?”

I swore at her and stepped off the vus. Back into the rotting rain. I flooded my ears with Fallin, and began the long walk home with a red cat trotting at my side.

***

“AARGH.”

I woke to something furry dropping my p-com on my face. I scrambled out of bed and chased the creature from my room. She paused in the hallway and I eyed her, panting and leaning against the doorframe.

My head felt filmy, like someone had injected a rain cloud into my skull. I could still feel the feast I’d eaten in the graveyard the day before bulging my stomach. I hated having food in my belly. I wanted to throw up.

But I didn’t. The food had to stay. It was like swallowing a ball and chain–it kept my memories fresh and heavy. I didn’t ever want to forget.

I glowered at the cat one last time as she turned tail and trotted to the kitchen; I returned to my room and sat on the floor, beside my p-com. It had gone flying when I’d leapt after the cat.

I growled toward the kitchen. “Rot you.” The night before, she’d followed me all the way home and slipped inside before I could kick her out. Whatever. She’d probably leave once she realized I wasn’t gonna feed her.

I activated my com’s screen and stared at the time. Something was wrong. It was late. Later than it should’ve been. A moment passed, and then I realized–I’m late for band practice.

“Rotting piss,” I cursed and stood on shaky legs. Boots, boots. Where are my boots? I looked down at my feet. There. I almost laughed. I was still wearing them. Had I slept in them? Must’ve.

I left my apartment and got in the lift, told it to go down. It was halfway to the ground floor when I realized the cat was still in my apartment. I decided I didn’t care–unless she pissed on my bed. If she pissed on my bed, I’d chop her tail off.

When I got to the practice studio, it was silent. Creepy. I looked over my shoulder, at the Abyss–a network of underground catacombs layered unevenly beneath Raith, bisected by giant, stretching passages; sagging staircases; and ladders connecting the levels.

The studio was in the Abyss’ lower intestine, at the end of a long line of units that faced a narrow strip of walkway, and a yawning pit of dark airway beyond. The emptiness stretched across for maybe half a mile, crisscrossed above and below by nerve-racking bridges, and the scrap metal underbellies of out-jutting buildings. On the other side, I could just see the glimmer of tiny, open-air apartments and shop fronts hacked into the earth. For the most part, though, it was silent and dim down here. I couldn’t see or hear any cars–not many people came so deep into the Abyss, and those who did couldn’t afford a vehicle.

Where was everyone? Usually, if I arrived late, they’d be playing already–Skyglass’s heavy, eerie sound threatening to break down the door. The sense of absence was nice, though, and I decided I was okay that no one was around; lately, I’d been considering quitting the band. All I ever wanted from Skyglass was music, but everyone else–they wanted more. Shows, tours, recognition. Forward motion and progress. Pissrot, in other words.

And anyway, I felt a little sick. I didn’t feel like listening to music, let alone playing it. I felt wrong–more ruined than usual–because all I wanted right then was to jab my com on and rewatch the file, stay in it for hours and study the red bed. Maybe if I saw it just once more I’d find something new, an answer to all the emptiness. It was getting harder to pick myself up. The edge was getting thinner.

I reached into my pocket to find my com. I was just about to sit down and sync myself up when the door exploded open.

“HA!” roared Devin, Skyglass’s incredibly excitable and sometimes manic-depressive vocalist and my ex-best friend. He kept his emotive spikes in check with a constant supply of Peeps, which made him stable–relatively so, at least. A never-ending, Peep-induced sugar high wasn’t exactly the dictionary definition of stability. (And yes, those Peeps; for Devin, a well-rounded diet consisted of flocks and flocks of obsolete, chick-shaped marshmallows.)

Devin stepped across the threshold and stared at me knowingly. “I knew it! I felt your presence beyond the door.” He covered his eyes dramatically with a hand. “I felt it, like a thundercloud, or a great hulking slug of darkness and despair! And lo! You are here.”

I glanced at him, then behind him. All of Skyglass was there–my friends, you could call them. Maybe. “Why aren’t you playing?” I muttered.

“We were waiting for you–to tell you the news.” Devin grinned at me from beneath his top hat, a disconcerting shade of bioluminescent blue. He fidgeted with the nervous anticipation of a hungry flea. He’d changed the color of his tattoos, I noticed. Beneath his fishnet shirt, a mass of pink and lavender tree roots writhed up his chest.

I kept staring at the flicker-motion of his ink. I didn’t bother to ask what the news was, because he’d never had any patience–and Devin knew I wouldn’t ask, because he squirmed beneath my gaze for about ten seconds before bursting out, “We’re gonna play a show.”

“Oh,” I said, a strange sense of relief tugging at me like gravity. “Then I quit. I quit the band.”

Proceed to Chapter 1, page 4–>