The Necrophiliac | The Empty World Sequence

Part 1 - Chapter 5

Amadeo hadn't slept at all in over three days.  Every time he started to fall asleep the dream started and he did everything he could to wake up.  Despite his efforts he had watched himself bite the ear from the stiff body and take his clothes off to lie against it.  Amadeo was completely out of his mind.

He was afraid to sleep.  He was afraid to give in.  So he wouldn't see anyone.  Matt, who would have hated being alive in the years before all communications were carried on a single cable, years in which you couldn't see the person you were calling, had called every day.  He signed slowly incase the transmission was jumpy.  He was really worried.

Amadeo told him he was not feeling well.  He didn't want to have to say he was retiring.  Others called too.  Roadrunner said it was her turn to worry now.  She was doing much better.  It was no thanks to Amadeo.  She had called him desperately to come stop her from taking anything and feeling the first influence of his dream he had told her he just couldn't go.  He realized what he had done soon enough and called Kim to go stop her.  It was Kim who helped René through it all.  René said she had Amadeo to thank for giving Kim to her.

And his young namesake had turned out to be a real friend.  He didn't move on after he got the attention that he wanted.  He was ready to take Amadeo's place as the Queen, but he wouldn't do it unless Amadeo told him to.  And he would make a good Queen.  He had both Rubio and Wisteria in his court.

If he could just go back...but he couldn't.

Amadeo paced about his room.  His rats were making quit a racket in their gilded cage.  His two white rats were running around, one in a wheel and the other as if it was looking for something.  Only Amadeo and perhaps they could tell each other apart.  Lestat was the one looking for something and Lu Lu was running within the wheel.  He put some food in their cage.

Amadeo went down to his playroom in an effort to keep from sleeping.  The room was clean.  He turned the small monitor and its accompanying machines on.  He listened to the music before turning to see the video promo.  Another terrible pop song.  You would think with all the young Fay around  that pop music would be dance oriented or strange and beautiful.  The Fay were just the counter culture though, the alternative lifestyle.  Chart music was happy feel-good triviality, good old rock and roll after it went through the wash by accident.

And then he heard it.  He'd missed the flash of the title but he knew it anyway.  He had heard this song several times before played by his girl in L.A.  It was called "Such Joy" and Amadeo knew it well because he had written a short story with the same name.  She had always called it a terrible pop song.  Amadeo didn't see the connection to current pop music.  It was something the Rose Petal Fay would go mad for.  He stared at the promo.  There she was on the stage at The Palace Shade, a place he knew well after so many yearly visits.  It was a mysterious building belonging to a mysterious family of the name Shade.  She had a most unusual dress on, the neckline scooped down, like something on a lady in a 19th century portrait, puffy short sleeves, the high waistline, the flare of the dress from its gathers just under her breasts to the rather high hemline.  It was made of black velvet.  Her reddish-brown hair was swept back with combs and hung in ringlets down her back.  And her white face with the blackberry colored lipstick and the black eye-liner made her look very much like a Rose Petal Faerie.

And Amadeo could not believe it.  The Fay were looked down on by authority, by the public.  They were freaks.  Even groups the Fay listened to didn't speak t Fay or dress t Fay.  It was like she was saving them all, a person with enormous money and talent who could stand to make more just by making the music and not dressing Fay was on a network channel dressing t Fay.  Amadeo wondered if they were more tolerant of the Fay on the West Coast.