Ashes of the Phoenix - The Fade - ILLUSTRATED

09 - SHARPLY CONTRASTING

"No, those pills made me feel sick... and then 'room n° 7'... I was scared... I'm sorry..." she explained, confused.

"You're fucking sorry! You're pregnant, you asshole! But don't believe that I'll let you keep the baby! Tomorrow I'll take you to the hospital!"

"Fine!" She squirmed, "I'd rather kill it than let it have you as a father!"

Those words made his blood rush to his brain. "So you don't want it? Tell me you don't want it!!"

"No!" She shouted, "Let me go, you're hurting me!" But he didn't let her go.

"Tell me why you don't want it!" He ordered.

"Because I hate you!" Finally she gave in.

The man let her go.

As he left, he added, "Tomorrow morning, be ready at eight o'clock" and slammed the door leaving her alone.

After that morning, the two didn't speak to each other anymore. The others in the studios knew what had happened but avoided talking about it. The beginning of the tour was the only topic of conversation.

Nef was still furious; Fade's words had pissed him off: first she had caused that mess and then she told him that rather than having him for a father, she preferred getting rid of the baby. That drove him crazy.

The bass player hit the wrong note again.

"Fuck you Nef!" Joanna said, "Do you or don't you want us to finish this song!?"

"Cigarette break!" Was the musician's response as he lowered his bass on its stand and went out of the recording studio. The other members unhappily looked at each other; Jess made a conclusive drum roll before laying down the drumsticks and going out with the others.

Fade was skating in the studios parking lot to relax a bit, she was still recovering from the strange sensation that the abortion caused her. She didn't regret what she had done; after all, how could a person who had no consideration whatsoever for her own life, bring another life into the world?

Other thoughts crept into her brain; she wondered why she had ended up there. She had allowed strangers to invade her life, to know her weaknesses; above all, she had done so with the only man in the whole studios who shouldn't have known. Anyhow, why had the pills dragged her into that pit of nausea and hallucinations? Perhaps for what had happened to her in Room No. 7?

She found a cat squatting under a car. Fade loved cats; she found that their behaviour was very similar to her way of being. As a child, she had had a cat that had become her only childhood friend. When she cried in the solitude of her room, the animal comforted her with a sharp, long meow, interrupting her sobbing. It then curled to her side, giving her a good amount of purrs to cheer her up. When the cat died, she convinced herself that she had no valid reason to live. She was only thirteen.

The girl squatted, summoning the cat's attention, she hoped it was friendly and would let her take it in her arms; some purrs, perhaps, would improve her mood.

Following an initial mistrust, the animal, a female, let her pick her up, she seemed to be domestic and began to rub herself on her while she scratched her head.

"Fade!" Nef called her from behind. The redhead turned without answering, she got defensive as the man approached with his hands in his pocket and a cigarette dangling from his lips.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing special..."

"I need to talk to you."

"I have nothing to say to you."

"Don't piss me off again!"

"What do you want then?" She shouted.

"In two days we're leaving, how are we going to fix this situation?"

"Do you want me to leave? Now you don't need me anymore so you want me to get lost? All right!"

"Don't be foolish!"

"Then speak clearly!"

"First of all stop playing with that stupid animal!" Nef struck the beast that fell roughly to the ground. The animal ran away, terrified.

"No!" She yelled.

The sound of her thin fingers on his cheek echoed in the parking lot. For a moment the two looked at each other motionlessly. Fade huffed, just like a cat, and ran away.

He just kept staring at her as she ran away. The slap had made his cigarette fall, ruining his break.

He put a hand to his face.

"Ouch," was the only thing he said.

That night the words quickly filled the pages of her diary.

06/28/2001
I no longer have a voice
I've learned to scream only through words
But I can't free my soul
Life returns to crush me
And my head is full of shit again
Sensations, thoughts that I've never spit out
While I grew, counting only on myself.
I'll implode
And nobody will know why.

On the morning of their departure, the bass player looked around. He wasn't surprised that Fade was nowhere to be seen, but he was totally disturbed when he noticed that the fussy kid was also missing. The rest of the band mentioned that lately the kid was less present. He didn't have time to ask further questions; he got into the car that took him far from those thoughts.

The girl came out of her room late. She went to find Jag, seeing that he was the only one left that she knew within the studios. She found the boy sitting on his mezzanine bed staring into space and humming to himself.

"Jag!" She brought him back to Earth "Are you okay?"

The boy woke up from his daze. "Yes. I'm fine."

"Are you upset about the band leaving? Don't worry they'll be back in a few months," she minimized, but he didn't answer her.

Fade tried to understand his feelings. It had to be hard to invest all that money just to be close to his dream band and then, by contract, he was stuck staying far away for such a long period. She tried but she couldn't quite understand how he was feeling at that moment.

"What are you going to do in these months?" She asked, hoping for some suggestions. "And you, Fade, what will you do?" He replied, swinging his back slightly back and forth.

"I don't know! I could keep on staying here but I'd rather leave. I would like to befree to roam around during the night like I used to! But I can't. I'm filed, I don't have my knife, the voices attack me, my head bursts and he..." she stopped.

"He'll be back," he continued, reversing their roles. "It's up to you if you want to stay here and wait for him."

Fade left the room more perplexed than before. She was too confused to notice that Jag behaved in a completely frantic manner.

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Author's corner
Sorry if this chapter may offend you, someway. It's just fiction and my characters are just fragile, dummy, humans.