Skyglass: Chapter 6

Rive and Rouse

MOSS

On Monday morning, I unlocked the door to Myriad. It was dark and silent inside; Mark hadn’t arrived yet, but there were signs that he’d been here, maybe after getting off the train the night before. On the front counter, I found a half-eaten apple and a bag full of discs, his messy handwriting scrawled on the brown paper:

Stock, please. : )

So I stocked them. At ten, I opened the front door, to let in the nonexistent customers. I waited the whole duration of my six-hour shift, and no one came. Not even Marko. At three, I locked the front door and stuck some really terrible rust-metal band on the exear. It was piss–a waste of sonic space–but right then, I wanted bad music in my cochleae, and nothing else.

Why hadn’t Marko shown? Maybe he’d had a late night, maybe he was sleeping. I fiddled with my com, wondering if I should message him. After a moment’s consideration, I decided against it. Faceless words felt too cold.

I shut off the shop’s exear and locked the back entrance, then left for Marko’s.

I stood outside his door for almost fifteen minutes. I had no idea what to say. Our last moment together had ended in a kiss and an abrupt departure. What if he’d stayed home because he didn’t want to see me? What if he hated me?

I snorted at myself. All this paranoia was going to rot me. Still, the sickness in my gut remained. I’d spent the last four years removing myself from the presence of other human beings as best as I could, but I hated upsetting them; I hated when they shut themselves away from me. (When they acted like I did.)

I clenched my right hand into a fist and pounded it twice, slow and heavy, against Marko’s door. It took a minute, but he opened the door.

He looked like the train had fucked him in the face. The dark half-moons beneath his eyes were deeper than before. No shirt–just boxers, one sock on, the other under his kitchen table. His hair was sleep-matted on one side, and the red of his eyes had threaded out into the whites.

He looked ruined.

“Oh,” he said after a moment of staring at me, glassy-eyed and dejected. “Hi.”

“Can I come in?” I asked, but stepped inside before he could tell me yes–and I knew it would be a yes. He was too rotting nice. “What happened to you? You weren’t at work.”

He backed away from me, and found a counter to sag against. His shoulders lifted and dropped. “Couldn’t sleep on the ride back,” he said. “So I drank. Too much. Sorry I didn’t call in.”

“You aren’t drunk.”

He started to smile, and stopped. “No. Not anymore. Maybe I should be.”

I wanted to ask why, but couldn’t get the word out of my mouth. Instead, I said, “You found some good piss on your trip. But no one came in to buy it. No one came in at all.”

The smile came back now, but it was dead and crooked, hanging off his jaw like a snapped branch. “You know the whole thing–the trip–it was just an excuse. A reason to…leave.” He muttered the last word.

I swallowed. So I’d been right. “Why?” I finally managed to shove the word out. “It’s my fault. I know. I’m sorry. I screwed things up, I shouldn’t have–”

“It’s not your fault, Moss,” he sighed. “It was never your fault.” He straightened, staring aimlessly off somewhere. I knew that look: desperation without direction. Hopelessness. Misery.

He crossed the room; his steps were steady, but heavy. When he reached the bed, he crawled onto it like it was the hardest thing he’d ever done and sat on its edge with his legs crossed. The line of his gaze was hooked to the floor.

“I had to go, leave, before I did something stupid. Because it’s not possible,” he said, blankets bunching up in his fists. “I know it’s not, because I know you.” His eyes flicked to my boots, then back to the floor. “Rot it. You should go. Before I say something stupid. Please. I’m just really…messed up right now.” He swallowed, and mumbled, “Don’t go.”

He was contradicting himself, but it didn’t matter–I couldn’t move. The bones in my legs had turned into stakes; they’d driven themselves through my feet and boots into the floor. Leaving wasn’t an option.

“I shouldn’t say this,” he went on, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t, because it’s not fair to you, but I think maybe, probably, it’ll be even worse if I keep everything back and…and…”

Mark shuddered, gripping his feet, leaning forward a little. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Moss.” He tipped forward until his face was hidden, and then he spoke again.

“I love you.” He hitched in a breath, just long enough for my skull to fill with ice, and crack and crack and crack–and then he continued.

“I love you, but I don’t mean to, and I’ve tried to stop so many times because I know that’s not what you want, from me or anyone, but–” He stopped talking again, this time for good, and shifted back slightly. His brows were drawn down tightly. He wouldn’t look at me–hadn’t during any of it–and I was glad for that.

I was ice, I was mist, I was frost. So, so cold–why had I ever thought he could make me warm?

They’d been right. Every rotting one of them. I should have listened–why hadn’t I listened? If I had, I wouldn’t be here–I would have left Myriad, found a new job, gone to a new city far from Marko. I couldn’t handle his intensity, his heat, his openness, his reaching. It wasn’t for me. It made me sick, weak, and afraid.

I wanted to shut down, I wanted to be away. Gone.

I said nothing as I turned from him. I opened his door, stepped across the threshold, and climbed out of the Abyss.

PHOENIX

I shut my eyes and swallowed down the smell of the satellite’s heart (paint, dead fire), and the scent of Zinn across from me: green green green with a hint of musky spice. I didn’t like being back here, but at least the elf made it smell better. Also, Moss had been gone at work all day, leaving me with no one to torment–so I’d said an emphatic NO to boredom, and dragged Zinn out to the crash site so he could do some of his fancy needlework.

But he refused to work until I meditated. Ugh.

I squirmed a little, unbearably restless. I didn’t want to meditate in this nasty metal scrap-trap; I wanted to open my eyes, and shove the elf on his back, smelling and tasting him all over as I fucked him into my sisters’ ashes. Or, if that wasn’t an option, I wanted to finish working on my newest Blowup for Skyglass–though it was coming along sweetly, it hadn’t reached its pinnacle, and I was stretched thin with need for that gigagasmic climax. But I wanted revenge more than any of that, more than anything–so I kept the lids of my eyes shut tight, and kept pretending.

“Loosen up,” Zinn murmured. The current of his breath tickled my nose–a draft of bitter tea, forest dirt, and delicious saliva. “Squeeze them much harder and you’ll turn your eyes to pulp.”

“How would you know?” I asked, trying to relax. “Aren’t you meditating with me? Aren’t your eyes closed?”

“Mm. No.” He laughed. “I already know how to meditate–or at least, I’m further along the journey to mind-body balance than you are. But even if my eyes were shut, I’d be able to tell. The heat of your tension is blistering my face.”

“That’s just my blood. And my displeasure for this game of yours.”

“Of course.” I could hear his smirk. “Now relax. I’m going to see what I can find on this ship, while you try to quell that scorching heart of yours.”

I flopped back against the cold floor, so I wouldn’t have to worry about musculature or bones distracting my meditation attempt. I listened to Zinn’s retreating steps, wondering if he was taking advantage of my shut eyes and my sprawl to check out my very lickable body parts; it’s what I would have done had our positions been reversed.

At some point, I fell asleep and didn’t wake until he sat beside me again.

“Try harder,” he murmured.

I growled at him with my eyes shut. “Isn’t sleeping the same as inner harmony?”

“Just breathe.”

“Did you find anything?”

He laughed his usual, lazy, musical laugh. “Just breathe.”

So I breathed. I breathed, and with each exhale, I imagined myself spitting out fire. But only imagined–no fire fluttered furiously from my throat. My fire-self was still dead as ever.

Two more breaths passed until I couldn’t wait any longer. “So?” I opened my eyes.

Zinn stared back at me. “Your father cleared the ship pretty thoroughly,” he sighed. “But my needlework found a few things while I was searching.”

I shoved myself up. “What?”

“Something about the moon–it’s nothing current, though. A doctor with half his body regrown. He lost the original to deep freezer burn… Your fault, am I right?”

I nodded once, a toothless smile pulling at my mouth, prickly as hoarfrost creaking in the sun. When I’d escaped my father’s satellite, I’d blown a hole through its wall to toss myself out into the cold vacuum. Father number two had only half-survived its icy bite.

“He went by the name Swain when he was in lunar space,” Zinn continued. “Spent a year in some camp infected with burst-rot. Healing people, I guess.”

Or maybe he just likes exploding bodies, I thought. “Anything else? Something more current?”

Zinn was silent for a moment. “Last sign of him I can find is at a drinkup here in Raith, a couple months ago. A hoary old place under the fringes of the Gut. Shall I keep an eye on it?”

A couple months ago. That wasn’t so far back. He could still be here. There was still reason for my blood to boil in circles and pirouettes; my hunt had slowed, but it hadn’t stopped.

“Yesss,” I hissed. “What a silly question, sweetling. Of course you shall.”

He eyed me, and said slowly, “Of course. And you’ll continue meditating every day. Night and morning. I’ll be sure to check your progress–wait.”

A flare of copper and verdigris lit up his face, reflecting the flashing lights of the other, unembedded com as it jingled in his palm (I’d let him borrow it for the day). He flicked the screen, and choked.

“It’s a message. A text. From Devin.”

“So?” I said. I didn’t understand what had Zinn so flustered–though I found Devin amusing and shiny, I certainly wasn’t going to get myself all stormy and troubled over him. But I relished the rare delicacy of Zinn’s distress nonetheless.

The bassist shook his head. “You don’t understand–Devin never texts. It’s too quiet for him.” He glanced at his com again, then back at me, face somehow even more worry-riddled than before.

“Moss is with him,” he said. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but it sounds bad. Devin wants you there now.”

Something creaked in my belly, slow and ominous. It was heavy, and scary, and dripped heaving gobs of flame retardant. It made me shudder and scramble to my feet. I didn’t know what this feeling was, didn’t want to know, but sitting on the floor all antsy and ickful was worse than doing nothing–so I left the satellite.

I went to find Moss.

Proceed to Chapter 6, page 4–>