Skyglass: Chapter 2

Kindling and Keel

MOSS

I stumbled in through my door, my new hat clutched in one hand, my broken headphones in the other.

Eviction. I wanted to vomit, or crawl into a corner and sleep forever. I hated change. I hated moving. I’d done it once in my life, and only because the thought of living in the same house as my parents’ suicide had been worse than leaving it.

Besides, it was nice having a place to sleep. I probably could’ve set up camp with my drums at Myriad, but–astonishingly enough–there was one thing I liked even better than my bed: a place to be alone. Myriad meant Marko, and his kindness was suffocating.

I sagged a little in relief when I saw the cat waiting for me on the counter. Just a cat. I’d been exhausted and confused that morning, and apparently delusional, too. That was all.

She landed softly on the grubby carpet. I kneeled down to greet her–and started coughing. Hot ash burrowed into my mouth, clawed at my eyes. When it cleared, there was, once again, a naked woman in my apartment.

I scrambled backwards out the front door until I hit the hallway’s far wall, cursing the whole way. The woman rose and followed me, then leaned against the doorframe. I buried my face in my hat, willing everything to go away, wishing I still had a working pair of phones, so I could take an aural anesthetic.

“I refilled your kitchen,” she said. “It was looking a little hungry. I’ve got butter and a nice loaf of rye, plus about a trillion other delectables: kale chips, root veggies ready for roasting, carob cake…”

I almost shuddered. Kale chips and carob. My two favorite foods. Or they used to be–my appetite had died with my parents. I almost glanced up, but managed to hold my ground, and said, “I don’t know who you are, but leave. Take your food. Take yourself. Take your rotting cat. And leave.”

“To answer your unstated question,” she said, ignoring everything I’d said to her, “I’m Phoenix–and I’m not going away. I like your place, nasty hole that it is.”

I grunted. “That’s nice. But it won’t be mine much longer.”

“Oh, that message on your door? That guy’s a pisshole, probably tastes like vinegar and gutter-grease. I’ve got an idea: you need money, food, and I need a place to set up my…operations. It just so happens that I’ve got currency yearning to be spent, so how about it? I pay for food, rent, and you just go on being reticent, and pretend there’s not an extra body sleeping beside you in bed.”

I kept my face hidden in the hat Marko had given me just hours ago. It smelled like Myriad. Or maybe it smelled like him. Whatever.

I laughed at the woman. The sound was short and strangled. “No.”

“Well, it was worth a try. I suppose you don’t have to share your bed, but I’ll be true: I’m very hard to resist.”

“I’m resisting you right now. Get out.”

“Uh, no. You’re far too convenient, sweetling.”

I was past the point of caring enough to ask what she meant. I lifted my head and I pulled on the hat for another layer of protection. Phoenix grinned at me as I did. She was very tall–though surely that was because she was standing and I was crumpled on the floor.

“You aren’t real,” I told her. “You were a cat. Then a woman. That’s impossible. Just…go away.”

“I’ll show you again,” she said, and I gagged, because soot clogged the air once more, churning in my throat. The little red cat slipped from the smoke and jumped onto my knees, kneading them to keep her balance. I almost laughed. Almost.

“I’m going to sleep,” I said, standing and reentering the apartment. The cat mewed in protest and scrambled after me as I headed for my bed. Today was obviously not a good day to be awake. “If I wake up tomorrow and my rent’s paid, yay. But you’d better be gone.”

I crawled under the covers and shut my eyes for yet another layer of protection and darkness.

***

“He’s in bed,” a female voice said from the hall.

Still here? Rotting cat. Woman, whatever, I groaned in my head. More sleep. I burrowed deeper under my blankets.

“So, Moss, who’s this lovely young lady staying in your apartment and why haven’t we been introduced?”

I thrashed out of paradise.

My eyes watered in the green light of day bludgeoning itself through my window, but Devin was even brighter in a neon pink jacket, tiny and vividly blue shorts, and striped tightlings. “What’re you doing here?” I demanded, sleep slipping up my words. I’d quit Skyglass for a reason–to escape him. To escape everyone.

“Band practice,” is all he said.

I fell back against my piteously flat pillow. I was furious, but hadn’t the energy to show it. “I quit. Remember?”

Before he could answer, Phoenix the cat-woman cut in. “Band practice?” she asked. “You guys have a band together? He can play an instrument? He’s barely capable of standing and pissing in the morning. Trust me, I’ve watched him try.”

Devin eyed me with his stare of frozen electricity, frowning for ten seconds before a brilliant grin erupted. “I like this one, Moss. You have my permission to keep her.”

“I’m glad you approve,” the woman said.

Devin beamed even brighter. “I’m glad I approve, too.”

“Why are you still here?” I asked her. I tried to sound reasonable, but probably failed. “And why can’t you stay a cat?”

They ignored me. Devin turned to her and said in an interlude of seriousness, “It’s been way long since his last girlfriend, you know.”

I rolled my eyes–of course it had. Why’d he have to sound so forlorn? He knew I hated romance–and not because I was terrible at being in love. It was more like I had no desire to be in love. Was that really such a problem?

“Aw,” the woman cooed. “No wonder he’s so weak–rejuvenation’s hard without sex to juice your batteries.”

I was silent while Devin nodded sagely to her vomit-inducing words of wisdom. I didn’t move. And then I yelled: “Get the ROT out. Both of you!”

To my barely interested surprise, they did. I could hear them pissing themselves giggling as the front door slammed shut.

A moment later, Phoenix poked her head into my room. “I paid your rent, by the way. For the next year. Also, your friend’s quite lickable. Don’t make him sad.” She stared at me a moment, then shut the door.

I felt like sleeping again, but this time it wasn’t what I needed. I got out of bed, found my p-com, and turned it on.

I couldn’t go to Myriad; I didn’t want to risk human interaction. So I synced my com with my head, perched on the edge of my bed, and drummed in VR for a few hours, hands and feet quietly thrashing the real world’s air and floor, but making a beautiful, virtual ruckus in my head.

Then, finally, I slept, wishing that my headphones weren’t broken, so I could drift off to the sound of Fallin, a balm in my skull.

***

The cat was back when I woke up, snoozing on one of my extra pillows. I stared at her through the sleep-haze still occupying my eyes, infinitesimally cheered to see that she wasn’t human at the moment.

I got up and moved on. I closed the bathroom door when I went in to piss, but otherwise ignored the fact that my apartment now housed an extra body. She was a cat most of the time, after all–I could deal with that because what else was I supposed to do? I had just enough energy to sit back and take it.

At least she’d paid my rent. And she had Devin’s approval–not that that meant anything. Years ago, his opinion would have meant something, but no longer. I didn’t care about people anymore, or cats, or people who turned into cats. I didn’t care about anything.

When I left the mirror and the bathroom, there was food on the table. I looked suspiciously at the cat, who now sat on the floor, her giant eyes focused on me. I poked the edibles. Cottage cheese, berries, greasy-looking scrambled eggs.

I lost interest and put on my boots. I held open the front door.

“You aren’t staying here alone,” I warned her.

She looked at me, looked at the door. She coughed once, and my emergency key, all spit-slathered, landed on the ground. She ate it once more, then looked at me slyly.

“Rot you,” I cursed before stalking off.

I didn’t want to go into the Gut, but I had no other choice. I was going to visit Sable. Not because I wanted to see her–she was an ex-bandmate, after all, and thus one of the last people I wanted to see, ever–but because she was my one and only hope.

When I reached the door of the haphazardly landed starship she and her girlfriend lived in, Sable stared at me for a full minute, spinning three of her knives worryingly. She was short, far shorter than I, but had this talent for making me uncomfortable, which always put me on uneven ground in her presence–that, and my never-ending jealously of her easy thinness. She hm-ed at me and stepped aside.

I kind of liked her place. There was a lot to distract myself with. Piss everywhere–underwear, bottles, guns. All the wall cabinets had clear bioplast fronts, revealing souvenirs (in other words, stolen memorabilia) Sable and Yunayuna had collected during their galactic wanderings.

Sable kicked me a clear space to sit. I was grateful for it. Even after all that sleep, I was still exhausted. All I’d had since my feast (most of which I’d lost to the bathroom floor) was coffee, water, and a slice of lemon.

Yunayuna came out through a corridor, sat beside me, and set a plate of food before my crossed legs. She was tall, large, and soft; her hair was a wavy mass of white silk. Today, her eyes were blue, but tomorrow, who knew? They were never the same color, but they always stayed sharp. She put a hand briefly on my shoulder. So brief I didn’t get uncomfortable. I–

I ate the food.

Just three apples slices and a piece of bland cheese made from the milk of the goats they tended in a patch of forest outside their ship. It was good that Yunayuna never tried overfeeding me. Because for whatever reason, I could never say no to anything she offered.

Sable sat across from me. She ate one of my apple slices and I almost felt defensive.

Quietly, Sable waited. She’d always been good at waiting. Probably came from all those years on the faraway piss-planet she’d once called home, waiting impatiently for her uncle to die so she could take her inheritance (the starship) and make her escape.

Eventually, my own impatience, and discomfort, grew unbearable. I placed my headphones between us.

“Fix them.”

This was the reason I’d forced myself to come out here. Sable was a mechanic of sorts, someone who could repair just about anything–and the only person I knew who could fix my headphones at a rate I might be able to afford.

“Not working?” she asked. She had an abrupt grin on her face.

The food in my stomach went sour. “You did something,” I croaked. Sable was also good at breaking things.

“Heh.” She grinned with her teeth now. “Hacked ’em. Zinn’s not the only one who likes to knit. I used to be a needle, too, you know.”

I slumped forward, so tired, so sick of everything. “Just…fix them. Please.”

“You withering away without your Fallin?”

“I’m dying,” I said.

“Then maybe you’ll consider my offer: stop this stupidity and rejoin Skyglass. Promise me that, and I’ll fix your phones for free.”

“Okay.” The word slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it. I started to say no, wait, that was a lie. But that would have been the real lie.

I missed music. I missed my drums. I missed my headphones. I missed having other instruments to jam with, even if I didn’t miss the people that accompanied them. Maybe I could deal with the nasty baggage that came along with being in a band–the shows, the whole interpersonal relationships thing–later. Or not at all, if I was lucky (which I never was).

At least I was used to dealing with practices. They were familiar, stable–unlike most everything else currently destroying my existence. I wanted structure, sameness. And Skyglass could offer me that–in some ways.

“If you repeat your offense, they’ll break again. Maybe permanently,” Sable warned me, after I’d worked through my inner turmoil.

I sighed. “Right.”

“So,” Sable said as she linked my headphones to her com and began fiddling. “What else? What stupidly inane and inconsequential thing is pissing on you these days, Moss?”

I tried to keep my mouth shut, but again, her talent for making awkward silences wore me out.

“I don’t know,” I told her. Then, “I think I’m doing something wrong.” I’m failing at life, I added silently.

“Try everything,” Sable said.

“True,” I mumbled. (Rot it, why’d I have to sound so weak?)

The left corner of her mouth lifted. She leaned her head against Yunayuna’s round shoulder, still unraveling the hack-mess she’d made of my headphones. “Least you ate something,” Sable said. She lifted an eyebrow at me, then tossed my headphones over.

Staring at the phones, limply cradled in my hands, I realized I had something caught in my throat. Not food. “I have to go,” I said quickly, before something stupid or overly emotional left my mouth.

I thanked Yunayuna for the food and ducked out fast. I shoved on my headphones and blasted Fallin all the way home and into bed.

That night, I slept with the cat flopped across my chest.

***

In the morning, I had a message from Devin: our show was that night. “Great,” I muttered, then cursed softly as I read the rest of it. We were playing the Elektrodagger, easily Raith’s most dangerous drinkup. Four years ago, just after my parents’ suicides, I’d gone there every night to get drunk and hope that I’d be the next victim of its unnervingly high customer mortality rate.

I threw my p-com under the bed and went back to sleep. With any luck, I’d sleep right through the show.

Proceed to Chapter 2, page 4–>