Page 74 of Fragile Facade
“Menace is getting the antidote. Trust me, Ghost.”
I can’t.
Why isn’t he reassuring Krypt instead of me? I don’t want to know the answer or what my face is revealing, so I bury it against the floor of the helicopter and keep my hands in Riot’s hair as Krypt adjusts the blanket over his naked and broken body.
“Wait.” I shove the blanket aside, wiping away a bit of blood on Riot’s back. He winces in his slumber, and my rage reignites. “They fucking burned his Vile House tattoo!”
Krypt is the one to grab my shoulder this time. “Look at what he fucking did, Ghost. He caused a riot while he was being tortured. You think he needs the tat to prove he’s Vile? He’s fucking Riot.”
Exhaling, I look back towards the city he managed to fuck over. He didn‘t get his name for nothing, and I smile, shaking my head at how smug he’s gonna be about it.
Fucking asshole outdoes me even as he’s dying.
When we get back to Moros, I don’t take a full breath until we meet The Harpy at the asylum and she administers the antidote. I lose my shit when he bubbles from the mouth and has a seizure that won’t stop, and I lash out at everyone who fucking touches him while he’s dying. Death is my thing, and he can’t beat me there!
I hold two blades to The Harpy’s neck, making sure she stays right where she is until the antidote works and he’s in the clear.
“Why is he seizing?” I snarl at her.
“It’s how it works.”
“He’s not fucking breathing.” I press the tip against her carotid.
“Give him a minute.”
“If his heart stops, yours will, too.”
The Harpy doesn’t look away from me.
Not until his heart starts and he breathes again.
And when he is in the clear, no longer dying from the poison he unintentionally ingested, I stare at his busted body while ignoring everything I feel.
I don’t move a muscle until Medic and Psych are working on Killian, and I don’t step aside until they tell me his damages are severe but not life-threatening. I listen to them plan his treatment, talk about dental surgery, and confirm that he’s going to pull through before I even blink. When I know Krypt is fine with Remi in his grasp, I sneak out of Riot’s room, leave the asylum, and don’t come back.
Because feeling my feelings isn’t something I’m good at, and I’m not too narcissistic to know that. Music is my expression, and I never do it while anyone can see me. I shower, change, and grab my violin from my room, leaving Vile House. Time to be alone so I don’t go to The Harpy’s cabin and murder her for inadvertently putting his life at risk. I need to stop trying so hard to hold my pieces together. To let myself break in the safety of solitude. For once, I don’t want to be the star of this broken show.
* * *
It'sthe second to last day of the music festival, and both the cemetery and Death Row are crowded with tourists and musicians. Creeping through the shadows of buildings, I pause to listen unseen, searching for a sound that reflects how I feel. The musicians are skilled, and the choirs are beautiful, but nothing hits me where it should. The melancholy mood is matched with upbeat voices that are too light for the way I’m feeling.
Because there is a new well of darkness inside me, and I’m not sure where it came from. It’s different from the playful way I felt dark before. I’m not craving a chase that leads me to Death’s door because I’m not sure I want to slam it in her face anymore. I’m craving pain, the emotional kind. The sort of anguish that’s cleansing because it hurts so ferociously. An exorcism of my jagged bits and a rearranging of my jigsaw pieces. I need to become a new mirage, a different illusion that reflects the unwanted changes in me.
I need musical expression and a new foundation.
I need to hide while expressing myself.
Behind the Ambient Raven, I put on my Vile House mask, concealing my face in the safest cover I have. With my hood up and my hands bare, I pick up my violin and make my way down the dead centre of Death Row, drawing attention to the mystery of who I am and what I’m doing. Riot had his dental surgery last night, but I haven’t been to see him. I don’t knowhowto go see him. What would I say? What would I do? I don’t know, so I’m going to let the instrument find my words for me.
I haven’t been back to Vile House or the asylum in two days. I’ve been staying with Lockan, warning him about what I overheard about a rat in his crew, working through the prospects of who it could be. But all that was just a distraction, a way for me to avoid my own head and evade my emotions. It’s time to face my reality.
Groups of musicians perform along the road, shops and sponsors show off their products, and Moros citizens mingle with tourists to listen and take it all in. We’re a musical town, but the kind of music we create has become the soundtrack of how we live. Morose, melancholy, dark, and deceptive, a community of people who speak better with notes than we do with words. As I walk through them, the locals fist their hands over their hearts, respecting my mask, but the tourists stop to admire me because of how the locals are reacting. To them, I’m someone with power, but they don’t understand why or how yet.
I’m about to show them.
In the centre of Death Row, right in the middle of the closed street, I sit on a wooden chair, bowing my head to my violin and closing my eyes behind my mask. From that new well of darkness within me, I pull forth the true reasoning for it, letting it infiltrate my mind and weave through my limbs until I’m born of it. One with it. A new man hiding behind the same mask.
The fog shrouds me in more comfort and the ravens and crows perch on lamp posts and power lines for a front-row seat to my misery. Misery because of change; change I don’t want to accept but can no longer fight. I always thought it’d be my own life that flashed before my eyes, but it was his. A fear I’ve never felt and a sense of surrender I almost succumbed to.
