Page 37 of Fragile Facade
HUNG REVELATIONS
GHOST
“The fuck are you doing here?”Selena whispers when I join her on the roof of Misfit Hall. “I can handle it.”
“I know.” Which bothers me because I don’t want her challenging my skills. I settle down beside her, the moon starting to peek out now that the clouds are clearing. “But I’m still a Misfit, so I gotta go in there and act like one. Just wanted to make sure you were good first.”
“I’m fine,” she says. “Actually feel like…”
I grin behind my mask. “Like what? Like you fit somewhere?”
“Yeah. That.”
Same way I felt when I joined. I loved my dad and siblings, but home never felt like home. As soon as I became a member of Vile House, I got that family feeling, even if it wasn’t in a healthy way. And now, if I were to say I have dreams, they’re all coming true. Not only is my sister becoming a member of Vile House, but my brother lives there, too. We’re together, at least the three of us who remain, living with the family I made for myself.
“What’s up with you lately?” Selena asks. “You’re… off.”
“I’m always off. You worry about you, and I’ll worry about me and Remi.”
Selena huffs. “Oh, I’ll worry about Remi, too. That idiot went and attached himself to the creepiest guy I’ve ever met. Keegan doesn’t even know how to smile.”
“Yeah, but Krypt knows how to protect Remi, so take him as he is.” I laugh. “His creep level has its advantages.”
“Gay?” she whispers at me. “Remi? You ever see that coming?”
I shrug. “Why not?”
“He never gave any indication,” she says.
“Being fucked by a madman sounds slightly tempting.” I grin at her and pull my mask off.
“Yeah? Which madman are you getting fucked by? His brother?” Does she know Killian is Riot?
I grind my teeth together and press my mask to her chest. “Hold this for me. I have a part to play.” I walk across the shingles. “And the day his brother gets in my pants is the day I kill him.”
* * *
After castingmy vote and getting a cocky grin from Lock, I leave Misfit Hall as Soren and walk through Moros well after midnight. Soon enough, I won’t have to pretend to be in the gang because Lock will know my true identity. He probably already does, but fuck, it’ll still be an ego boost to rip my mask off and prove it to him. I’ve been repressed in The Misfits for far too long, and I’ve earned my moment of victory. I don’t get them often enough.
The streets are mostly empty, but the cemetery is full of nightcrawlers. Sadie and her Death For Life cult are gathered around their family crypt, doing whatever crazy shit they do to one another. I’d never stoop so low as to willingly die just to come back and protect the living. Fuck that. I protect the living while being aliving ghost, and my brother and sister both have me to thank for their current level of safety.
Turning my back on the cemetery, I head down Death Row and see the damaged section. The Ambient Raven has a new front window, but the second one and the door both still need to be replaced. Across the street, I get nostalgic as I look at the place Krypt and I found that nurse dealer who sold Remi the suicide pill. What a deranged night that was—it ended with him eating his own dick and hanging from the front porch of Misfit Hall. I grin to myself, loving memory lane when it portrays me as the wicked hero.
Out the far end of the street, I see the house Willow Olenna kept from her cousin—the guy Riot killed in the bargain hall. I wonder who came to collect her payment. I wonder what it was. I wonder a lot of things, which makes my mind busy, and since it isn’t a safe place, I find myself agitated and unhinged. I don’t want to go back to Vile House to sleep. I’m craving something different, something darker and more volatile.
I’m craving a brush with death just to settle me down. There’s no one here to push me over the edge this time, so instead of heading to Vile House, I head to The Ambient Raven and lock the temporary door behind me. A soft recording lulls the empty shop to sleep, my dad’s piano, Remi’s cello, Selena’s guitar and… I swallow when I hear my violin. The music breaks me enough to get sentimental. I bet if I looked through all Remi’s recordings, I’d find one with all of our instruments together—five siblings and their father, playing a brutal, melancholy theme because we’ve always been comfortable in our anguish together. Until three out of six of us died and we stopped making music.
I take a violin off a stand, inspecting it without touching the bow. If I play, does it mean I’m giving in to something? The only place I’ve created music in the past year is in my bedroom at Vile House in the dead of night, afraid to let my notes meet the light of day. This violin is shiny and new, and while I think I deserve new things, I’m afraid of them, too. This instrument has probably never been played. What if the type of music I force it to create taints it? What if my music befouls the shop Remi loves? What if I’m not glued together well enough to prevent my sinister disease from seeping out, bleeding myself through music into his sacred space? Because I respect this shop…
I miss it here. I miss being in love with music with my brother. I miss family time that isn’t dire, and I miss memories I’ve refused to remember. Being here brings them all back, so I grab the bow and slide down behind the front counter, my back to the wooden cupboards and my ass on the floor, shrouded in shadows.
Closing my eyes, I bring the instrument into position, but I don’t play it. I listen to the recording coming from the speakers around the shop, picking out the notes and the instruments and matching them to a memory of the day we played this piece together. It was after our brother died, and none of us knew how to talk about it, so we played. We played while Mom listened, but now that I think back on it, I don’t think she listened well. She was distracted. Angry at us for ignoring her in favour of the music. But I remember the way my dad’s eyes watered, how Selena kept her face blank but bled her emotions into her guitar, and how Remi stared at the ground the entire time he played his deeply unsettling sounds. I don’t remember what I did or how I looked.
I don’t even remember how I felt. Broken, I guess, but I don’t know if I was broken for myself or for the loss of a sibling. I know I’m selfish, so I was probably more concerned with how it affected me, but as I listen to the recording of my violin, I hear the depth of the emotions I tried so hard to tamp down and hide away.
I’m so lost in the music surrounding me that I don’t notice when I’m no longer alone. I haven’t touched the bow to the strings, and before I can, a thick, heavy rope loops around my neck. The violin clatters to the floor so my fingers can wedge behind the rope, but it’s pulled taut, unremorseful of my current pain.
“Riot!” I shout, knowing it’s him. “Fuck off. Not right now.” Every wound on my body sings out in pain.
