Ashes Of The Phoenix

Jag was sitting in the opposite corner, with a sketchbook on his knees and earphones at his ears. As soon as he noticed her movements he took off his earphones and stared at her.

“How the fuck did you get in?” She asked in a whisper, barely moving her parched mouth.

“You seemed strange, so I followed you. You barged in here without even closing the door. What happened?”

Fade jumped at that statement: she would never forget to close the door, but, actually, she couldn't remember much of last night.

“A bit of a headache” she replied.

“Headache? To me it seemed like a real migraine,” he retorted with a more mature tone than his age would indicate.

“It’s none of your business, now go away...” but she couldn’t even finish the sentence because the crisis had been so strong she fell back to sleep.

Jag put his headphones back on and continued to scribble on his sketch pad.

At lunch time the girl woke up, roused by the loud noises the kid was making while he opened the cans on the kitchen counter next to the bed. She sat up with uncoordinated movements, but all she could do was sit with her arms resting on her knees. She stared at the roller-blades that were still on her feet. “Didn’t I tell you to leave?” She asked with her head leaning toward the floor.

“I still haven’t repaid you” was the child's response.

“Then, as payment, I want you to get lost,” she replied dryly.

“Don’t be silly,” he chuckled, finally managing to open a can of soup “I always reward those who help me.” That said he poured the soup in a dish, put it in a microwave oven and pressed the start button.

“What the hell is that?” She asked tilting her head.

“Multi-coloured soup, it’s good! It’s the only food with vegetables that I eat, actually...”

“I didn’t mean that” she interrupted him “What is that thing doing in my house?”

“Oh, while you were sleeping I took the opportunity to bring a little comfort to your home! With this you can warm your food, I also bought an electric stove, an oven, some light bulbs and, of course, I made sure to fix the electrical system and connect it to the to a network, then...”

“Are you crazy?” She shouted jumping up as if she was suddenly reinvigorated “That way they’ll catch me immediately! And how do you think I’ll manage to pay the bill?”

“The bill? You don’t have to pay for it, I took care of it” he calmly replied. The girl was about to argue, but she was interrupted by the sound of the alarm indicating that the microwave oven had ended its cycle. Jag opened the door, took out the steaming dish and placed it on a straw place mat he had specially bought for the occasion.

“Here you go,” he said inviting her to sit on the stool next to his. Fade remained silent, lured by the idea of eating something hot, she sat down, picked up the spoon and ate the soup, while the child beside her, munched on pretzels, one after the other.

After the meal, she started talking again with a less dismissive tone than usual “Well, I guess now you repaid me, I wish you luck in your search, no matter what it is!” And she remained silent, as if she expected the story wouldn’t end there. Strangely, however, the kid slid off the stool with a little jump and started toward the door. “Then goodbye ...”

He slipped the safety bolt aside and walked out, closing the door behind him.

The silence following his last gesture left a bitter-sweet taste in her mouth: the satisfaction of having regained her independence but also dissatisfaction, as if she lacked the answers to figure out what had really happened.

At that moment, her gaze fell on the kitchen counter, on which, next to the half-empty box of pretzels, the child had left his sketchbook. She pulled it towards her and lifted the cover to reveal a first subject.

The design was sketched and rough, but solid in structure and with a slight touch of contrast in the parts where the author had found it interesting to bring out the volumes. It represented a singer curled up during a concert. The face and hands, more refined than the rest of the body, seemed to unleash the pure energy of the music that was channelled into his body, barely outlined, and stretched out to radiate all around him.

She continued to browse through the album. In the following pages she found various studies of musicians, detailed with dark and light contrasts of hands in various positions and musical instruments, mostly modern. She stared at a drawing of a pianist: the sheet was shaded because of strong chiaroscuro, probably made with a soft pencil, which recreated the shiny black effect of the instrument. On some points, the rubber erasures simulated reflections. The man’s face was engrossed in a serene and melancholy expression, as if he were playing music of past memories.

It was hard for her to believe that such a young boy was able to draw so accurately.

Fade flipped through a few more pages, until the last subject, drawn, this time, with a blood red pencil. It depicted the profile of a naked girl kneeling on the ground. The line formed by her body reminded the slow death of a swan as it collapsed. Her hands were intertwined, resting inbetween her knees and the long hair hanging in front of her face showed only a glimpse of her eye, full of anger and despair as she stared towards those who perceived her. On her left leg, a long scar broke the tenderness of her features.

She felt as if someone had just scraped her soul with a rusty spoon. She stared at the drawing, overlooking, for the first time, the abyss of her own thoughts. A knock on the door brought her back to reality.

“Fade it’s me! Open up, I forgot something!” Said Jag from the other side.

She was caught by a flash of anger and rushed like a fury to the door, opening it wide. He didn’t have time to say anything for she grabbed him by the collar, lifted him up and slammed him against the wall of the lobby.

“You’ve seen my sketchbook, right?” he said chokingly because of the thrust on the wall.

“What the fuck are you doing, spying on me? What do you want from me? Who are you?” She asked, keeping the handle of her knife, still stuck in the lining of the belt, and clenched in her other hand.

“No, let me explain...” the boy hissed, his voice becoming more and more broken.

“I...” she stared at him blankly, while she grasped the knife that she was about to unleash.

His wheeze, caused by her fist on his larynx, sobered her up. She released her grip, leaving him to fall on the ground.

She returned to her apartment and came out shortly after, holding his sketchbook. Having secured the door with the lock, she approached the kid and threw the album at his feet. “I don’t want to see you ever again” were her last words before slipping down the hall and leave the building.

She wandered for a long time through the streets of the city, she wanted to run, but she no longer had the burning desire to escape; she felt drained and, for the first time ever, she realized she had to face an issue she kept avoiding for a long time.

She entered a semi-hidden alley of the city when the sun was setting and stopped in a small open space which was the loading and unloading area of some warehouses abandoned years earlier. The dirt around her, the gloomy silence interrupted only by the traffic of the main road and the light that gave everything an orange-pink hue, made the place look almost surreal.

Fade thoughtfully stared at a particular point of that place for a few minutes.

“What is this place?” Asked a familiar voice from behind her. The girl gasped at the unexpected question, and turned around. Jag was sitting with his legs dangling on the small protruding sill of a bricked off window.

“How the hell do you manage to follow me around?” She asked, without any more resentment against him.

“I have magic powers” he joked with an open smile.

She replaced her usual sullen expression with a half-smile, “Yeah sure...” then she returned serious.

“Here,” she continued after a moment's hesitation “Is where it happened.”

She approached the point that she was staring at. “This is a place abandoned by everyone, where even criminals have to give up their business, because at night it turns into an arena for desperate people. The concrete of this road has absorbed the blood of many and, that night, there was me and the boy who challenged me.”

“He continued to irritate me,” she went on with effort “he was a brat but he had a sharp tongue, he said things that made me lose my mind...”

“What kind of things?”

“He insulted my parents, but he didn’t go on for long: I broke his nose with a kick...”

“Ouch...” said the boy, imagining the pain that can be inferred by giving a kick with rollerblades.

“But it wasn’t enough for me, I wanted him dead. I pulled my knife and I attacked while he was lying on the ground whimpering for his broken nose. He started to beg me, telling me that he didn’t want to die, that I'd won and that he wanted to go home... I don’t know what came over me but suddenly the anger was gone. I didn’t feel sorry for him, I was just disgusted. I stood still, so he took the opportunity to grab a hidden knife, stick it in my leg, push me backwards and then jump on me in turn. I instinctively raised my arms and I stabbed him in the stomach.”

She hesitated a moment, as if afraid to tell the rest of the story.

“I still remember his expression, his eyes staring at me as they slowly closed, the words dying in his throat and the blood coming out of his mouth and dripping and staining me for what I had done...

He died like that, when I no longer wanted to kill him.” She confessed softly. “I had to roll him off of me and escape, despite my leg sodden with blood and the pain that almost made me faint.”

“How did you save yourself?” Asked the boy quivering.

“I have a friend, or should I say a saviour,” she murmured to herself, “whom I met the first time I came to live here. He’s a Doctor and, although it may seem absurd, he took me under his wing without asking too many questions. That night I managed to reach his house and he gave me stitches. Then...” she concluded “There was a violent storm that wiped away the traces of blood and the police found that to be an excellent deterrent to continue the investigation: these roads have long been at the mercy of poor devils and the law doesn’t visit them willingly...” she implied.

Before Jag had a chance to ask any other questions, Fade declared: “Now let's go, this place won’t be very safe in a short while.”

The child nodded, he jumped down from his spot as improvised spectator and walked toward the alley from which she had come. She followed him sadly, brushing off her leg, and turned back to look at that place for the last time. She pointed an imaginary handgun formed by the index and the thumb of her hand.

“Bang,” she said quietly mimicking a shot toward something unknown and then left, as if she had closed the chapter of a book for which, for some time, she was searching for a convincing end.

The dark allure

The next morning Fade woke up again because of the noise that Jag was making in the kitchen. The microwave signalled the end of the heating cycle with a noisy sound.

The girl sat dazed on the mattress and looked at the opposite side of the room, a number of rags rolled into the shape of a mattress brought to mind the night before, when she had prepared a bed for her new and very weird acquaintance.

The boy presented a plate with a steaming waffle covered with a sticky sauce, which she eyed suspiciously, but she didn’t hesitate to eat it.

After an endless amount of time, which the girl needed to finish her hairdo, the two were on the street and began to quarrel about a question left open the day before: the brat insisted that it was impossible not to know the group of which he was a huge fan, because they were world-famous; the girl, for her part, retorted that she didn’t give a damn about a stupid band. The argument went on until they entered the place where they were directed: a music CD shop. He rushed inside, leaving her, dumbfounded, at the door; she didn't even know why she was there, but the excitement that the little boy put into everything he did managed, somehow, to cloak the mess that was getting tangled in her head. She skated inside, finding herself surrounded by shelves full of CDs with many different graphics.

She observed the illustrations of a few covers for a while, and then she reached the child who was standing in a corner, wearing some headphones that were too big for his head. He seemed mesmerized by the music and he sang the song he was hearing, while holding a CD case. When she approached him, he took off his headphones and said, “Here! Listen to this!”

“Are you kidding? I’ll ruin my hairdo!”

“Then look!” He said, handing her the album that he was holding tight. Fade half-heartedly took the case and glanced at the cover. It was a picture of a group of four people in front a totally black background. “Dull” she thought, and began to consider the members of the group: two boys with a girl between them, modelling in a cool pose; behind them loomed a curly-haired boy of considerable height, his stature would probably have been overwhelming in person.

The two in the front stared at the camera with diametrically opposed expressions: the first, with an extremely 'Emo' hairstyle, had a thoughtful look that seemed to communicate what his whole life was a continuous torture; the other displayed a grin which seemed to tease you because he had achieved success and all you could do was envy him. The latter, especially, stood out for his dress code. A half unbuttoned dark shirt showed a jumble of ornaments around his neck. Finally there was the girl, smooth black hair, deep shiny eyes as dark as the night. She stood in the centre of the page with her arms crossed. Her eyes observed you from head to toe, as though you were a nullity and she dangled a cigarette from her mouth. The smoke, clearly added with a miserable editing intervention, rose up to form the band name. “Momuht” Fade read.

“They don’t look that special to me”, she said, handing the case back to the boy who greedily grabbed it, holding it tight, as to protect it. “You don’t understand...” he started walking towards the exit “They need me...” She pretended not to hear the last sentence and followed him to the counter.

“I’ll buy this” the boy exclaimed, standing on his toes, handing the album to the clerk, paying and leaving the store contemplating his new purchase.

Jag was walking on clouds, admiring the album from all angles; he immediately tore the cellophane and glanced at the inner cover to see if there were other images; a joyful laugh confirmed the positive outcome. When he opened the lyrics booklet, the child began to gleefully comment on all the photos in it, describing the person and the role they had in the band, bringing the booklet up to Fade's face, who uninterestedly glanced at it; she didn't like those fanatic motions and poses, they were pretty annoying to her. She had never liked those who behaved like “fucking fanatics”, and - to that band - it seemed that the term was perfectly fitting.

Once they arrived close to their 'secret hiding place' the girl suddenly stopped, then she caught the boy by the collar and pulled him back. “What’s the matter?” asked Jag, quite annoyed by the interruption of his daydream. She frowned and motioned for him to follow her to an alley, and then they started spying from around the corner. A police car and a fire truck were stationed in front of the building in which the girl lived; several policemen investigated by stopping passers-by. A fireman came out and spoke to an agent. “Yes, the house is inhabited: the electric cable that was reported to us was illegally redirected to this condemned building.” At those words, Fade felt the impulse to choke her improvised companion, but she controlled herself, “Do you see what you did?” she said, whispering, despite the desire to yell at him “I told you not to install those stupid electric appliances! Now they found me out!”

He didn’t answer but seemed visibly disturbed. After a moment of hesitation he suggested, “Then come away with me, I'll give you a new home in the place where I'm going.”

The girl looked at him, she was almost sending him to hell, but something made her hesitate. She remembered too well how much sacrifice it had been to find that room, how hard it was to find a place among thousands of homeless people and build a life from scratch. The thought of having to start it all over again in a city with an already high population density — with the tangible risk of getting in trouble and having no home to come back to; to search for all the items that were part of her daily life, to arrange the spaces around her, to ration the supplies, and then, to suddenly find herself without all the things that represented the world drove her crazy. Her mind was about to collapse, but she was startled by the noise from the firefighters that carried out boxes in which they had packed all of her stuff.

She couldn't stand it, she couldn't believe she had to accept his offer, but she realized that, by the present time, whatever she had built for herself was gone. “Let's get out of here,” she said, turning away in her skates.

The next few minutes they walked in total silence. Jag followed the girl with his head bent, holding the cover of his new CD, but his mood was definitely different from when he had bought it. She broke the ice by asking:

“So where's this place you're headed? The one on the map, I guess...” The boy stopped suddenly “Yes. We can leave at once!” He exclaimed, heartened.

“What are you talking about?” But she couldn’t finish her sentence because a car with dark windows stopped beside them. The driver came out and spoke to the boy obsequiously, while he opened the door for them: “Have a seat, sir.”

Jag jumped in excitedly as if he had never experienced such a similar experience before, but the girl was reluctant to get into the car.

“Have a seat, miss” the driver said, bending lightly.

“Come on Fade, hop in!” The childish voice from inside the car prompted her “We have a plane to catch!”

“A plane? Are you crazy? I don’t even have any documents! How do you think...?”

“It's a private plane, silly! Get in!”

That last sentence shocked her so much that she got into the car without realizing it. The door closed carefully behind her.

“Who the hell are you, the son of a prince?” She asked.

“Yes, the son of the Devil!”

“Get over it,” she hushed him, annoyed, while leaning her face on her hand and looking out, from the window, the constant flow of all things.

The car stopped at a small out-of-the-way airport on the outskirts of the city. The girl began to show the first doubts about her sudden departure: “I have nothing with me; I don’t even have an identity...”

“We’ll fly with a private airline, for now you don’t need an identity. When we get there, we'll see what we can do”, in saying so, he waited for the door to open and then got out of the car. Fade sat in the car, confused, but when her door opened, she followed him.

As they climbed the ladder to the small airplane, he couldn’t help but ask, “How do you manage to go everywhere on those skates?”

“They're rollerblades,” she said, “and I've been wearing them almost forever...” she answered, thinking that it was more than enough of an explanation.

Inside the passenger compartment, the boy amusedly watched the girl who was having a lot of trouble settling in her seat. Despite the fact that the plane had far fewer passenger seats than a normal flight, Fade banged into everything; furthermore, she clumsily hit the flight attendants who tried to help her to her seat with her hairdo.

Once the funny demonstration was over and the two unfortunate and stunned stewards had been dismissed, she snorted: “Was it necessary for them to ruin my hair?” She complained. “It’s not really suitable for sitting in an airplane; you can fix it once we land...” was his answer.

The rest of the journey proceeded in total silence.

The girl looked out of the window and reflected on a strange similarity: despite a lifetime of escaping, the world around her had continued to go round while she was still standing in the same spot. Being there, in that precise moment, on that plane, forced her to wonder if she could have considered it a first true step towards some undetermined direction.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the boy. “Is it the first time that you travel by plane?”

The girl answered without even turning. “Yes”

“Are you scared?”

This time she turned towards him in surprise: “Why should I be scared?”

“Well I don’t know, many people are afraid of traveling by plane: they fear a disaster. Not having an escape route makes them restless and they begin to say things like they prefer to travel attached to the ground...”

“I'm not concerned,” she said dryly as she turned back to the window.

“Rather, what are you going to do once we get there?” She asked, to break the silence.

“I'm going to find the Momuhts! I want to be part of their band!”

“What a terrible idea!” The girl continued, without giving him too much importance.

“No it’s not! They’ll welcome me! My arrival will change their lives!”

The ascending tone of his voice caught the girl’s attention: the child seemed to be obsessed by that band.

“You've never seemed like a normal guy to me. Now I have a solid proof of that”, she concluded in disapproval.

Jag leaned back in his seat with an evil grin on his face. He had great projects in his mind for his addition to the band and he had every intention of using any means to gain the favour of the group’s leader. He dozed off indulging in his childish dreams, fantasizing on the wonderful prospects for his future.

A new beginning

The next morning, Fade woke up in the comfortable bed of the private two room apartment they had rented. She stretched out and slipped out of the thick duvet, and sat in awe on the mattress; for her it had always been a struggle to get out of the warm bed of her shelter to face the cold mornings; waking up and finding herself in a warm and comfortable environment brought back memories she had lost many years earlier.

She slipped on the skates she had left at the foot of her bed and skated to the window. She was wearing flannel pyjamas, prepared by the owners of the apartment.

The noisy traffic beyond the glass didn’t seem different from that of the place she had left the previous night; she could hardly believe that just a few hours earlier she had been in a different geographical area.

Already feeling as though she was in a small cage, she decided to go out. She washed and dressed quickly and in the bathroom she found some cans of hair wax, probably placed there on Jag's order. Quite a while later, the door handle lowered and Fade found herself in a hallway covered with grey carpets and adorned by gold-framed paintings. She couldn’t wait to leave that place, and she moved towards the only door beyond hers, in the hallway.

Once she passed that threshold, she found herself in a large hall in which, from behind a circular desk placed in the middle of the room, a receptionist welcomed her. “Good morning. I have a message for you from the young Master.”

She approached her and took the note she handed her. The message was clearly from Jag: in addition to having an awful handwriting, it was all decorated with childish designs and incomprehensible writings, and it had oil stains all over it, as if he had written it while he was eating potato chips.