Overture

Eddie Gallows sat at the desk at his bedroom. It was so late that the night had already started bleeding out into the following morning. His Zune had been stuck at the tail end of a long-overdue update for some time now, so he wrote in his composition book without music. There was ghostly silence in his childhood bedroom – a quiet that could never be entirely quiet.

It was a cold night outside. It wasn’t much warmer inside the house.

 

Regina was just coming out of the bath when she heard Tenzin weeping in her bedroom. Hard, grieving sobs. Without even stopping to knock, she opened the door and saw her daughter’s mournful face as she sat on the edge of her bed and cried.

Tenzin held a breath when she heard Regina come in. She looked up and forced a trembling smile, despite the tears streaking her face.

 

Following the careful, guarded metronome of his own breathing, Eddie read over the last stanza he’d written.

There is a bird in the woods

His wings are broken and his voice is raw

still, he sings

for he does not know silence.

He read these lines over and over, mimicking contemplation where there there was really nothing more than exhaustion and faint panic.

 

“It’s...It’s snowing in Denver tonight,” Tenzin managed. “A storm. Must be, uh – pretty, right?”

Regina tried to feign normalcy. “Is Scotty staying warm?”

Tenzin didn’t answer. Her grin broadened, turning frantic, bordering on a scream. In one hand she held her cell phone in a tight, trembling fist.

Regina thought about the way the drowning held onto life preservers. She considered what her own grip might look like if something like that was offered to her.

 

In the back of his mind he couldn’t help but remind himself how he was seventeen now. In a matter of months he’d be graduating. At least Edgar had the strange, reluctant gift of already getting his acceptance letter into the Library Science undergrad program at the Shreveport University. His guidance counselor assured him that the Academy’s program was respected enough that a bachelor’s all but guaranteed acceptance into the MLS Program at Louisiana State.

Eddie was truly lucky for the opportunity to be fast-tracked into a career he was, at the best of times, indifferent towards.

He sighed through his teeth and picked up his pen to continue writing.

He remembers traces of a time Before,

When the world was warm and soft and new,

and Spring would sing him to sleep every night.

 

Katy quietly closed her bedroom door, where the only light came from the soft flow of her oil diffuser. Edgar was still where she’d left him, curled up in a tight, sad lump in the covers. He shifted slightly and met her gaze, his huge eyes foggy and barely open.

In a different setting the sight would make her laugh. The guy just could not handle his weed. Edgar had to have already known that was the case. So there was nothing funny about him being tricked into taking edibles by the scummiest line cook at the Den.

 

The way Eddie wrote about the bird suddenly seemed incorrect. In his sleep-deprived state, he determined it was because he was referring to a bird like how some spoke about boats or cars. Calling a bird him was assigning unnecessary details to something with no inherent need for them.

Hearing the way he spoke, Eddie scoffed under his breath. At this point it'd be better if he just went to bed. There were about eight years between tonight and taking the reigns as Archivist of the Shreveport Academy. For the sake of efficiency, Eddie hoped to spend as much of the next decade asleep as he could. 

 

“I ruined your party,” Edgar murmured as Katy pulled back the covers on the other side of the bed.

“Nah,” she said. “Fucking Justin killed the vibe. It’s whatever, though. Jess was just about to break out the Cards Against Humanity, and that’s usually my cue to leave a room.”

Edgar still seemed sad. He had that self-flagellating look on his face again. Despite that, he gently shifted closer in bed to bury his face against Katy’s shoulder. She wrapped an arm around him. With him even closer, she leaned down and whispered lovingly into his ear.

 

The screen of his Zune flashed. The update was done. Eddie fumbled to put on his headphones and play the first album he could find, just to fill the aching void.

There was a bouncy, energetic bitterness to some of the best Talking Heads songs. Eddie never felt comfortable saying that so directly, especially knowing he listened to the Best Of albums more than any other. Still, it was good. It felt safe.

But obviously that could never last for too long at a time.

 

“I stole his stupid Puma beanie and shoved it in Wilford’s litter box,” she grinned, fighting back laughter to keep her words soft. “Right in a fresh shit. Plausible deniability, baby.”

Edgar snorted into her shirt. Through the mess of his curls Katy could see his wide, surprised grin. He settled his head back against her and snickered sleepily.

 

Eddie scowled and scribbled into the margins of the page he was on with his pen. He remembered the last time he did that and ended up making one of those shapes and accidentally sparked a small flicker of flame that quickly began eating through the lined paper that birthed it. When it happened he just stared in shock before quickly patting the fire out. 

For days afterwards there was a knot of shame in his stomach. If something like that ever happened with a professor watching  – or, even worse, his mother – what would happen?  Would they finally find some admiration for Eddie’s untapped potential? Or would this be yet another failure? Despite never being taught Metaphysical Semiotics, he couldn't take the risk of being seen as exceptional or already behind. 

He couldn't take more attention of any kind. They wanted to shelve him in the library to gather dust, and at this point Eddie was fine with that level of rejection. At least then he had the best chance of being allowed to survive. 

Eddie closed his poetry book and hid it back under the papers and folders of his desk drawer. Still trying to sooth himself in the baseline thumping through his earbuds, he decided it would be best to call it a night. He crawled into bed and arranged the covers to make a seal that was uncomfortable, but the best way to warm up as quickly as possible.

He stared up at the ceiling. He shifted his head on the pillow and turned his face to the side. He moved his bed a couple of years back in a way his mother deemed odd, but not offensive enough to step in and keep from happening. 

It was to give him the best possible angle to look at the bay window on nights like these. He might've said that if she asked for his reasoning. But she didn't ask. And that was probably for the best. 

When he slept that night he dreamt of a small and rabid creature bursting out of his back like a malformed deity. It gripped him by the shoulders and shouted in his face. The creature said a lot of things that, even while still in the dream, Eddie knew were too painful to remember.

So when his alarm went off the next morning, he decided he that wouldn’t.

 

Scott came to in what felt like the living equivalent of starting in the middle of a sentence. He was standing on the edge of some massively tall building. There were no signs that this was any place meant to be open to the public. Snow flocked across the concrete rooftop and the cold wind stung his cheeks.

He looked at his clothes for indicators of what he was doing here. Signs of a uniform could point to him having charmed his way into work for the night. Maybe rubber gloves and an apron, or even just a borrowed staff name tag, He found he was still in his suit. So it wasn't likely he was here for work.

Peering closer to the edge and he recognized this to be a fancy hotel he was perched atop like a gargoyle. With a soft, dismayed sigh, Scott reluctantly searched his pockets for a room key given by some lust-frenzied thrall of his.

Still nothing. Despite the lack of answers, he breathed a sigh of relief. Though this was the longer of his fugue states, it at least kept him within walking distance of his motel. Silver linings, he supposed.

Scott rubbed his cheeks with his hands, trying to get some blood flowing. He shifted some fresh now with the tip of his shoe and cracked a smile.

“It’s kind of nice out,” he spoke under his breath. “Don’t you think, Eddie?”

He said it mostly as habit. It had been what felt like months since Eddie reached out to him. And yet, from a place deep in him that knew no language but always understood, Scott suddenly got a response.

Go back inside, Lark. Please. Just go to bed.

He didn’t understand. But it didn't matter. His ghost was still there. Even distant. Even, potentially, a delusion of a rapidly deteriorating psyche.

But once again, the thought of that wasn't important. Scott nodded politely and did what was asked of him.