Skyglass: Chapter 5

The next day, I couldn’t find my p-com, which meant a wretched, music-less commute of screaming children and whiny adults, followed by an awful day at work, and a rotten commute back. When I reached the apartment and punched in the code, I braced myself for a probably fruitless search, already resigned to the fact that it’d be days until I found my com again. But when I opened the door to my room, I found Phoenix, crouched on the floor with my personal communicator balanced on her knee.

“Where the rot did you find that?” I croaked.

“Oh, this?” She tossed and caught it. “I picked your pocket this morning. All your talking last night just made me hungrier–so I figured this wee little guy might have some answers.” Her gold-and-wine gaze locked on mine.

Dread settled heavily on my neck. I didn’t understand how someone with fire in her veins could make me feel so cold. Terrified.

“What did you find?” My voice was shaky and rough.

“This,” she said, jabbing at my com. The soul-paint on my walls shifted, projected a suicide. The red bed. My dead parents.

Phoenix stared at their bodies, head tilted at a jaunty, curious angle. “Why?” she asked without turning.

How dare she. This was private. This was mine.

When I spoke, the words were like acid churning up my throat. “So I never forget,” I hissed. “Give it back.”

“If you need your p-com to remind you of this, maybe it’s something you don’t need. Maybe your mind’s giving you a hint. They’re dead, you can’t bring them back–”

“SHUT UP.” I was walking closer; I was walking, though I had no memory of moving my feet. I tried hard not to look at my defining moment, but it was all around me. I was only supposed to see this once a year, because there was a fine line between forgetting and familiarity. Know it too well and the pain will stop. I wanted to hurt.

I shut my eyes. “Give it to me.” Voice like the snow.

“Give you what?”

I almost choked on my tongue. I couldn’t believe she was playing this game. I said nothing. I refused to look at her, but I held out my hand, palm-up, toward the sound of her voice.

“Fine, fine, sweetling.”

I hated her.

“Just a minute,” she went on.

My hand shook as I waited.

“Okay, done,” she said. “All better.”

Weight like a tiny home in my hand. I opened my eyes. The walls around us were blank. Words blinked on the com-screen:

 

PARENTS.vr – DELETED

 

I stared at the words, head reeling, air cut from my lungs. I shoved my com into my pocket and left.

I fled through the city, and at some point, started stumbling, started running. I ran from the terrible creature probably still sitting on my bedroom floor–from the ragged, seeping hole she’d bludgeoned through my stability. I ran through the gray slush of the city, snow-murk muting the lights, blurring corners, lines, definition, and then collided with a door. I stumbled back and hit the corridor’s wall, slid down it.

Where was I? Through half-lidded eyes, I noted shadows and nothing else.

Then warm orange light from an opening door. Ginger hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. The smell of cookies. He was wearing an apron. I almost laughed. How domestic.

“Oh, gods. Moss? Are you–what–?” Marko didn’t finish his words–he just gathered me up (I didn’t struggle) and brought me inside.

He paused just beyond the threshold. After a moment, he moved across the room and lowered me onto his bed. I sat there, cross-legged and hunched. I stared in the direction of my boots, but everything was still blurred; all I saw was darkness.

“Uh…” Marko said eloquently. He’d backed off an arm’s length, but he seemed nervous, unsure of what to do with himself. He approached after a few seconds of wavering. “You…” he started. “Are you… What… Do you want a cookie?” he finally asked.

My shoulders twitched, too weak to shrug. He brought me a cookie, anyway, swaddled in a scrap of linen. When I didn’t take it, he balanced it on my knee. It smelled good–really rotting good. Its warmth soaked through to my leg. I shivered.

I felt sick, I felt euphoric, I felt delirious. I didn’t want a cookie; I didn’t want anything. I wanted emptiness–just a skull with no brain, reaction without the consequence of thought. I wanted instinct. I wanted something to hold.

“What’s wrong?” Marko asked, crouching before me.

“Nothing,” I said, voice strong. I looked at him.

The blurriness was gone. His eyes were two halves of a cleaved garnet. I grabbed him by the apron and hauled him to his feet. The cookie fell and broke between our feet.

I brought our mouths together.

It had been a long time since I’d kissed anyone, but at least Marko was good at it. At first he was just still and shocked, but then–somehow–he knew to put his hands in all the places I liked: cheek, jaw, lower spine. He tasted like carob, grease, salt. I pulled back.

He sagged against me–dazed, wary. I wasn’t sure what that meant. I didn’t think on it. This was just a test. For myself. How far could I go? What was I capable of? That was all that mattered.

“Open your mouth more,” I said hoarsely. I wouldn’t eat, but I’d taste. I wanted flavor so bad. My hands clenched at my sides, my tongue found his tongue.

When we stopped again, both of his hands had come to rest on my ribcage.

“Okay,” he said. The word came out shaky, like he was answering a question I hadn’t asked. He started to ask Can I? but I didn’t let him finish, took his mouth again instead.

I let him wrap an arm hard around me, let his other slide up along my spine. His hand found the back of my skull and his fingers twined soft into my hair, terrible and gentle. Then my legs hit the bed and I shuddered–too much, this was too much.

Marko loosened his grip the moment I squirmed. He backed off a step or two and stared at me. I looked away, but not quick enough to see how big his pupils had gotten–huge, almost enough to eclipse out the red.

He was thinking too hard; I could tell even from the corner of my eye. I could see his sad smile as he reached up and touched my green hat, the one he’d given me–my hood had fallen back, rot it. I wanted to reach up and tug it over my head, but I worried our hands might brush.

He tried to say something again. Gave up. I twitched a little, because the heat of his unsteady palms at my waist had warmed through to my skin.

“You’re so skinny,” he finally mumbled, like he didn’t know what else to say.

“I’m not,” I told him, and started to move away.

“Please,” he said. His grip wasn’t tight enough to stop me, though.

“No,” I told him, and he let me slip from his hands.

“I have to go.” I had to; I needed my own air, I needed to not see his face. I was trying to keep a grip on my instinct before cognition and regret could overwhelm me, but it was a struggle. Everything was coming back too fast.

I paused at the door and turned back. I knew I should just go home and pretend none of this had happened. But I couldn’t. I had questions. I couldn’t not ask them.

Marko hadn’t moved. His back was still facing me.

“Marko,” I said.

He didn’t turn, but he said, “Yeah?” voice quiet and laden, but still warm and nice like it always was.

“What do you think of me?”

He laughed, and finally faced me. “I think you’re too rotting good at kissing,” he said. “You’re too pissing thin, and you drum like hel.” He gave me a cheeky grin.

I met his eyes, and asked, “You don’t love me? Because people have been saying that.”

He snorted as he crossed the room and found a bottle of something in a cabinet. “Nah. What good would you be for me?” he teased, and took a drink. Amber drink slipped down his chin.

Relief. I could breathe better. “Good,” I said. “That’s good.” But it wasn’t–I wasn’t. I could breathe, yeah, but my Phoenix-induced anger and panic were coming back; my com was still raw and bleeding, lonely for the file that had been its heart.

I seethed through my teeth and settled my headphones over my ears. I readjusted my hood and left, shutting the door on Marko and the smell of warm sugar. I went outside his building, into the slushy rain. At an all-nighter, I bought a bundle of smokeless, black sticks that chilled your insides when you hit them with the dampness of your tongue. I paused against the wall outside, and put one in my mouth and breathed in white resin. I sucked up winter-in-a-stick.

I chewed the end of the smokeless, flammed my fingers against the bone of my right hip. Cold burrowed into my flesh as I dropped my smokeless from my mouth and clamped it in my hand. Don’t think, I told myself. Don’t think.

Proceed to Chapter 5, page 4–>