Jane Fade Merrick

ASHES OF THE PHOENIX

The Fade

Title | Ashes of the Phoenix - The Fade

Author | Jane Fade Merrick

Translated by | Maria Calabretta

English revised by | Nanci Ferro

Publisher | Tektime

(cc By Nc Nd 3.0) Jane Fade Merrick 2017

ashesofthephoenixbook.wordpress.com

www.facebook.com/janefademerrick

The illustration of Nef and Fade arguing is by Debora Ferretti - facebook.com/DebsIllustrazioni

The city traffic, although hectic, to her eyes was just a succession of blurry spots that moved counter-current in slow motion. Her figure, slender and elusive, was comparable to a twig in the wind that, swinging among a thousand others, ended up getting lost in the eyes of those who watched her. She skated quickly through the streets on her shabby rollerblades, in constant flight from reality, aligning her motions to an unceasing search for suspension.

Everyone knew her but no one knew who she was; she lived a hand-to-mouth existence, she had no family and who knows what had happened for her to end up being a victim of a metropolitan area that mercilessly swallows up the people who don’t follow its pace.

There was no way to approach her; she was too hard to follow. She left only a blurred trail when passing by. For that reason she was named 'The Fade'.

Fade in

Like every morning Fade was in a foul mood. While she skated through the streets of her neighbourhood, she tried to think solely about what she would eat for lunch and, above all, how to get her hands on it.

From the first day she had appeared on those streets, she presented herself as a shabby light-skinned girl with worn clothes - who looked as though she had never been kissed by the sun - with long red hair tied in a weird hairstyle.

As though she wanted to recreate a disturbing mythological monster, she regularly consumed cans of hair wax to create a long red arch extending forward from her forehead and two smaller arches protruding from her nape.

To almost everyone she looked really ridiculous with that strange and cumbersome 'thingamajig' on her head, but they also found it useful because it could be seen from a distance, giving them the possibility to switch direction in order to avoid meeting her.

Fade stopped at a small market store and gazed inside the front door. The place was not that great: it was small, dark and full of stuff piled on top of the other without any logical sense.

“It’s perfect,” she thought, and immediately disappeared inside.

“It's so tight that I can barely turn around” she thought while searching for a hidden corner in order to grab some cans of food. As soon as she found it, she began to view the goods with a vague air.

“Tuna fish in oil, green olives, shrimp, anchovies... It’s not exactly the best but I’ll settle for it...”.

Once she was sure that no suspicious floorwalker was around, she grabbed a can of tuna fish and hid it in a pocket of her ragged trousers, the huge black shirt she was wearing did the rest, falling flaringly on her legs to cover any suspicious bulge. Finally, as an experienced street performer, sliding backwards on her rollerblades, she randomly picked up another can and quickly put it in her other pocket, ending her sleek trick by skating up to the cash register, where she would pretended to complain that there was nothing to her liking in the shop.

The precision of her plan, however, was marred by a small detail, so small as not to be seen. Before she finished her turnaround, the girl bumped against something behind her, tumbling to the ground and dropping a bunch of cans and other goods on the floor. The disastrous tumble brought her face to face with the cause of her fall, a stunned child of about ten, who stared at her with wide-open eyes.

At first she felt the instinct to attack him, but once she took a good look at him, she retraced her steps: something about the child was disturbing and fascinating at the same time.

First of all he had pink hair - “Which is rather odd for a child,” she thought - cut in a straight bob and furthermore, he was also dressed in a rather bizarre way. He was wearing a sort of miniature lab coat which fell widely over a pair of baggy camouflage pants, and finally, on his head he wore a pair of round goggles with red lenses.

“Is he a cosplayer?” she wondered, trying to remember in which time of year the Comics Exhibition took place in the city and also trying to remember what day, month and year they were in.

The infinity of the moment was interrupted by the shouts of the salesman, for her shirt had risen above her pant pockets, and he clearly saw the can shaped bulges beneath the fabric of her pants, and realized they were stolen goods.

Fade clumsily stood up among the general confusion and the relentless gaze of the child, slipping between the scattered products, ran like hell and disappeared among the streets of the neighbourhood.

When she was sure she was out of danger, she stopped to catch her breath hitting her shoulder on the wall of an alley.

“Damned that stupid brat!”

She looked around again suspiciously and then moved quickly away, again aligning her movements to the orchestra of her thoughts.

The indelible signs of the past

Before returning to the shelter which she had chosen as her home, Fade always took two or three laps of the block to make sure that no one saw her sneak into her 'secret entrance', which she then made with astonishing speed.

The secret entrance was nothing more than a rickety door of a dilapidated abandoned building. Once inside, the girl went through a long dimly lit corridor which opened onto a foyer in which four doors appeared. The only door equipped with a big lock nestled crookedly on the handle, was the entrance of the one room apartment she used as her shelter.

Once inside, she made sure to properly close the door by moving a safety bolt. The room was lit only by the lights coming in from the street lamps, but she didn’t care much because she was used to moving around in the dark.

With a push of her skates she approached the area turned into a bedroom, with nothing but a mattress thrown on the ground covered with crumpled sheets, and collapsed exhaustedly onto the bed. For a few minutes she stared at the void in front of her, with the usual intent to think only of strictly necessary things, with the purpose of suppressing the swirl of voices that overlapped in the slums of her mind. She decided that it was time to eat.

She pulled the cans out of her pockets, stood up and walked over to what must have been a pretty kitchenette, set them on the shelf and opened a drawer in search of a can opener. Despite the poverty of the means at her disposal, she was accustomed to respect certain basic standards of behaviour. After placing on the counter a piece of cloth — stolen from some unknown store —, she put a plate and cutlery on it, then sat on a high stool and ate. She did it slowly, even though the meal was poor and unappetizing.

Usually she got her water by filling some bottles from a fountain a few steps away from home and drank from a glass made out of an empty jar of marmalade. When she finished her meal, she put the dirty dishes in a supermarket basket, along with an empty bottle and prepared to go down to the fountain to wash them and stock up on fresh water.

She was about to leave when she heard two knocks on the door. For a moment she froze; since she lived there no one had ever found her. Holding her breath she put the dishes down quietly and instinctively put her hand behind her back, grabbing the only companion that she allowed to be part of her life. Under her shirt, in a lining attached to a shoulder strap, she hid a sharp kitchen knife, a weapon she had decided to use for her defence.

Another couple of knocks echoed in the eerie silence of the room.

“Who is it?” She asked, trying to keep her voice as steady as she could.

“It’s me,” said a child’s voice beyond the door.

“'Me' is not an answer! Go away!”

“I brought you something to eat,” he insisted.

“No one asked you for it! Go away or...” Fade’s voice faded at the end of sentence.

“It’s late, it’s dark outside and I’m lost,” he whimpered.

“It’s your problem!” She replied lowering her weapon, already exhausted by that silly conversation.

For a long moment there was nothing but silence, which was interrupted by retreating footsteps.

The girl stood still, waiting, ready to pick up any noise that came from outside, and after several minutes she became convinced that the boy had left. She returned to the ritual he had interrupted and grabbed the basket with the dirty dishes, and then she slid the safety bolt, slowly opened the door and checked that there was no one in the foyer.

She glanced around and jumped when she saw the sudden flash of two reflecting circles in a corner of the foyer. For a second she thought it was a cat, but the two circles were too large to belong to a domestic feline. She took a better look and saw the boy she bumped into at the market, sitting in a corner with his head between his knees: the reflection came from the goggles he was wearing. Beside him he had two big overflowing shopping bags.

“You’re still here!” She snapped.

The child suddenly raised his head and she recoiled when she saw that his round black eyes also reflected, like those of a cat.

The two studied each other. His face looked like he had just woken up from a deep sleep. She looked at him with a mixture of distrust and fear, and her hand was ready to pull out the knife. “Just to frighten him,” she thought.

The boy stood up, rubbing his eye. “Hello” was the only word that came out of his mouth, and then he stood waiting for an answer.

“What are you still doing here?” She asked, after a careful scrutiny.

The brat then picked up the bags at his feet. “The food, remember? I brought you something to eat!”

“I’ve already eaten, now shove off! I’ll walk you out” she answered, regretting that last sentence as soon it came out.

“Never be too kind,” she chided herself making her way out of the hallway.

From the foyer to the front door, the girl could not help but think about that strange situation. Once they reached the main door she turned to the child and, with a nonchalant tone she asked: “How much stuff did you buy at that market?”

“The bare minimum for dinner! In this bag...” raising the heavy bag he held in his right hand, the boy explained “... there are all the foods at the base of the food pyramid, and in this other...” he made the same gesture with his left hand “...drinks and juices!”

“All that stuff would last me for weeks,” she snorted indignantly.

“I also got something for you, you can keep it!” The brat continued undeterred.

After that chatter the girl blurted out: “I don’t want anything from you! May I ask why you followed me here?”

“I’m lost,” he continued, looking at her with those bemused eyes that Fade couldn’t stand the sight of “...and when I met you I knew right away that we were alike.” He pointed his finger to her wacky hairdo. “That’s why I followed you.” He concluded.

She gave a sigh of resignation, unsure whether to kick him out or investigate further. Watching him better, that pink bob, those red goggles on his head and that lab coat aroused the desire to learn more about him rather than to get rid of him. “Show me what you’ve got there!” she concluded, trying not to look like a quitter and, gloomily, she returned to the door of her shelter.

“... and don’t touch anything” was the last in a series of recommendations she made to the kid before opening the door to her one room apartment. The boy walked quietly into the room, taking the shopping bags with him. He looked quietly around; his look didn’t reveal any of his impressions on the miserable furniture. He simply put his bags on the ground and waited silently for instructions. The girl came up skating on her rollerblades. “So, what do you have there?”

He sat on the ground between the two bags, and with an excitement he had never shown until then, he began to bring out the products and describe them in detail, setting them all around him:

“Chinese noodles, artichokes in oil, butter, cereal, milk, chocolate snacks, soda, peanuts, potato chips, hamburger buns, pear and apricot juices, hot dogs...”

The girl had already lost the sense of all that was happening and was no longer listening to the long list of products he had bought. She got a tremendous headache, too overwhelmed by that absurd situation and still trying to find out what was wrong with that weird kid.

“And here’s the best!” cried the boy, standing up and showing her a large bottle full of a dark liquid “Carbonated drink with caramel and food colouring!” Having said that he proceeded to open it, but as soon as he unscrewed the cap, the bottle, evidently shaken for all that time, began to pour out the contents, spraying all around the room.

Fade’s thoughts came to a halt. Wet from head to toe with that sticky liquid and seeing the motionless child who was still holding the despicable bottle in his hand without doing absolutely anything about it, she screamed with a shrill voice to stir him. He winced, as if he had awakened from a spell, but by then the bottle had lost all its contents.

The girl grabbed the kid by the collar, also drenched in the drink, and threw him out of the door, cursing the disaster he had caused. He remained motionless, still holding the empty bottle in his arms while he heard, from behind the door, the girl insulting him, the sound of furniture being dragged and things falling down.

Suddenly the door flew open. Fade angrily handed him a basket of empty bottles and ordered: “Go get some water from the fountain below! Immediately!!” The child didn’t answer, he grabbed the basket and with soggy shoes he started down the dark hallway.

Meanwhile the girl roughly rinsed her hair using the water of some bottles she stored in the bathroom. She hated washing her hair, first because she had to do it with cold water - frozen, in the winter - and secondly because she had to redo her elaborate hairstyle, which was quite challenging, especially while hosting a choir of damned souls inside the head.

A short time later she heard a shy knock at the door. With her hair wrapped in a towel she went to open it, however, first she made sure it was him. The child entered the room tiredly carrying the basket with the bottles full of water. She seized one giving him instructions: “First take that sponge and wash all the furniture that you have smeared with the damn drink, and when you’re finished take that rag and wash the floor. I’m going to the bathroom to get changed, and don’t try any tricks, if you run away I’ll catch you!”

Having said that, she closed the door behind her leaving the brat alone, who slowly set to work.

Sitting on a rickety cabinet, the girl slowly passed a wet sponge over her fair skin. The contact with the water made her shiver; it had been a long time since the day in which, for the last time, she had had the pleasure to wash with hot water, but she cheered herself up: at least now she knew and appreciated the value of things that she had taken for granted before she had lost them.

For the umpteenth time she went over in her mind the principles on which her existence was based: “I shall steal only the essential to survive, I’ll never despise or waste anything; I’ll reuse things as long as possible...”

Repeating those rules distracted her, allowing her to suffer less from the cold. She now passed the sponge over a long scar on her left leg. As if it was a kind of eerie path, Fade slowed her motions as she followed it; the girl followed the long trail passing over the cross marks of the stitches which had now healed, and in doing so she counted silently: “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven...”. Seven stitches were needed to heal the gash she had been inflicted. “Don’t harm other people’s lives” was the last point of her list, while the cold rivulets dripped from her legs to die in the shower tray.

Once she put the dirty clothes to soak in a bucket, Fade left the bathroom wearing tattered pyjamas and the rollerblades at her feet, to find that everything was clean. That unexpected order made her reflect on the fact that she hadn’t even allowed the child to dry up; she took a better look and noticed that his clothes didn’t look wet, or dirty.

“But how...?”

“It’s a synthetic cloth: it doesn’t get wet nor does it stain” he anticipated her.

She was puzzled, but realizing that it had been quite a while since she had stopped following fashion, she had no arguments to rebut.

“Where are your parents?” She asked finally.

“In a distant Country” said the boy vaguely. After a moment of silence, he resumed: “I need to go somewhere, can you help me do it?”

“As long as you get out of here,” she replied disdainfully.

“Alright, now let’s eat something.”

She didn’t like that tone at all, for she found it quite bossy and demanding, but she merely grabbed a couple of packages of food and sat on the bed, which, fortunately, was spared from the earlier flooding.

The child sat on the ground and opened a packet of paprika flavoured crisps.

“He has weird tastes” she thought.

After having eaten a couple of chips, he asked, “What’s your name?”

She hesitated a moment: she was no longer used to confiding in someone, more so with such an unsettling person.

“I no longer have a name in this city. People simply call me Fade.” She answered.

“Then you can call me Jag” said the child, in no way intrigued by the phrase he had just heard.

Another endless silence stretched between the two.

Following the hearty - and high in carbohydrates - meal, Fade stood up and walked to the door; she pulled back the bolt and, with an elegant and sarcastic wave of the hand, she invited him to leave. “You don’t mind sleeping in the lobby, do you? Surely there is no place for you in here!”

“I don’t mind” said the boy standing up and approaching her. “But first,” he paused for a moment, “May I use the bathroom to wash my hands?”

“I don’t mind” she said with a toneless voice “But don't use more than half a bottle of water!” she recommended.

A few minutes later Jag came back, and, without saying a word, he walked through the door and closed it behind him; the girl slid the lock in place and listened to the boy’s movements in the hall, and as soon as everything was silent, she went to lie down on the bed.

After a night of restless sleep, Fade got up at sunrise, quickly put her rollerblades on and went to check if the child was still there or if he had gone away. While she slid the security bolt open, she couldn’t fully understand which of the two possibilities she would have preferred.

She opened the door very carefully, looked around and saw the boy in a corner, curled up like a cat because it had been cold the previous night. She felt no pity at the sight: too many times she had slept in those conditions, and she had seen hundreds of people acting in the same manner. “Come on, get ready!” She ordered, waking him up.

The day didn’t start well for the girl: in her haste to escort Jag to wherever he wanted to go - and finally get rid of him - she didn’t have the time to style her hair in her usual hairdo, so she went around wearing a hat which was big enough to cover all her hair and a pair of sunglasses to avoid being recognized; a pretty futile attempt, for she continued to wear her threadbare purple and black rollerblades.

She absent-mindedly followed the brat who walked before her carrying a big map with both hands. The child kept on speaking to himself reading the names of the streets and raising his nose in the air, looking for a match with the plates attached to the walls of the streets.

This went on for a bit and, suddenly, Jag stopped with the open map still in his hands. So abruptly that she almost bumped into him.

“What's the matter? Are we there?” She asked.

He didn’t answer; he just stood still in the middle of the street. Then he finally admitted: “I'm lost...”

Fade, stunned at first, burst out in a fit of rage: “What do you mean you’re lost? We’ve been walking around the city for hours and you realize only now that... Give me that!” She ordered, snatching the map out of his hand to understand where they were. Following a moment of confusion, she understood: “You idiot! This is the map of another city! How will you be able to find your way around with this?!”

“How is that possible?” He asked with the blank stare of a person who doesn’t understand what is happening.

“You tell me! It’s also the map of the city of another State!”

“That's why you speak with that strange accent” he replied tersely, without giving the slightest importance to the huge mistake he had made.

At that further demonstration of total detachment from their problem, she crinkled the map with a single move of her hands and threw it on his chest. “I'm done with you! I'm leaving!” She finished, moving quickly back in the direction from which they had come.

“Wait!” He shouted before she was too far to hear him. She stopped, although she knew she was making a mistake, and stood still without looking back.

Encouraged, the child ran to catch up with her, with the crumpled map under his arm.

“You were kind to me,” he said “Let me repay you.”

He dropped the map on the ground and took out of his back pocket a ridiculous - in Fade’s opinion - portfolio with manga illustrations on it. To her great astonishment, it was full of large bills.

Jag took one and handed it to one. “Here, this is for you.”

“This is a joke, isn’t it?” It was all she managed to say, without the slightest hint of willing to take the note.

“Of course not!” He continued, “I think it’s the least I can do to thank you for what you did...”

Fade stared at the bill. Of course, that would have been enough to get her by for a while without worrying and risking her neck or prison in order to grab a meagre meal, but inside her something was stopping her: decisions she had taken, mental chains blocking her actions, oaths, prohibitions and obligations that bombed her brain every day reminding her why she was in that situation.

“Goodbye,” she said, walking away from that awkward position. This time the boy didn’t stop her, he just looked at her going away, while he soundlessly lowered the hand holding the bill. He stood there, with his usual neutral expression; then he snorted into an excessively disturbing smile. “Hm! She’s incorruptible.”

Fade ran through the streets in a sweat, as if trying to escape the storm of thoughts that echoed in her head. She ran to escape from it, because sliding on the asphalt allowed her to return in tune with her more neutral thoughts. But it didn’t work; she reached her home with difficulty and jumped on the bed holding her head, now hostage of a flood of screams, loud noises and rushes of images that crazily overlapped in a space too narrow to contain them. Crumpled like a tin can she let out an agonizing cry of pain, and then collapsed on the mattress of her miserable shelter.

The next morning she awoke completely groggy. She seemed to have slept for a long time without actually realizing how long; she laid a while on the mattress, then she tiredly turned her head towards the room.

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.

After a long while in which she tried to decipher the contents of the message, she realized that he was giving her an appointment. 'I’ll meet you at 11 am at the lions' square. Jag'.

“And how the hell am I supposed to know where that is!” She blurted, thinking out loud, and then she realized she had raised her voice a little too much.

She was thoughtful for a few minutes. She had no idea of what time it was, so she looked around in search of answers and on one wall she saw a set of clocks set on the different times of the world's capitals, until she found the clock showing their time. It was only 08:30 am.

“If I can help you,” the receptionist interrupted the silence “The young Master has ordered a taxi for you.”

Those words annoyed her: she didn’t need a baby sitter, nor did she want to feel indebted towards someone.

“No, thanks, I’ll get around by myself,” she replied, “I just need a map of the city.”

A few minutes later the girl was outside in the crazy traffic, holding a large map on which were indicated only the starting point and the point of arrival of her trip. She tried to memorize some of the main streets but gave up shortly afterwards, the place was so full of people walking back and forth that it was almost impossible for her to skate. She had always been accustomed to a much wider living space, because the people in her neighbourhood made sure to stay far away from her when she was around. In that city, however, she was nobody, a perfect stranger: “and not even particularly outstanding” she thought, crossing a group of punks seated on some secluded steps. Her thoughts were giving her a headache, so she decided to walk through secondary roads. There, the streets were definitely less trafficked and she could move faster.

The search for the place she needed to reach was very unnerving but at least she didn’t have time to think about the life she had left. At times, it even seemed to her to be walking along familiar roads, she stopped every now and then to look at the overflowing windows of some Arabian shop with the temptation to go in and steel something, because she was starving. She cursed Jag for letting her to get used to eating early in the morning.

She stood still in front of a store remembering those days, and then she shook herself, deciding not to think about them, focusing her attention on the items in front of her.

On a side shelf, lying between multi-coloured diaries, one with a black cover and shiny Gothic accentuated designs stood out. The girl couldn’t help but feel a connection between her and that object in that exact situation. Then she skated away.

Over two hours later, she found herself in a large square full of pigeons. She hated pigeons; she couldn’t stand the sight of them since she had seen a group of them fighting over a fried chicken thigh on the ground. She also hated fried chicken, which is why that disgusting association of 'fried cannibalism' aroused her disgust for birds.

Suddenly she heard Jag calling her from afar, his voice was accompanied by the noise of flapping wings from a large group of birds. Turning around, she saw the boy sitting on the back of a large lion's statue; his waving had scared all the birds around him. She reluctantly skated toward him, banging her skates noisily to get rid of the wretched animals that blocked her road, but they just flew a few yards further and continued to peck the ground; others flew around her head making her feel under the attack of an enemy fleet.

When she reached the boy she was quite bemused. He cheerfully drew bread crumbs from a paper bag and threw them to the birds; he even had a pigeon on his head. Fade solemnly decided that from that day onward she wouldn’t even touch him again.

The boy threw the crumbs far away and all the birds disappeared, as if they had been tied with invisible threads to the paper bag and had been dragged away with it, then he slid off the metal body of the statue and enthusiastically reached her.

“I guess you didn’t take the taxi,” he said, looking at the wrinkled map in the girl's hands.

“I prefer managing on my own,” she replied proudly.

“Come on, I'll bring you to a special place!” He said running off and raising a column of pigeons with his feet, which dropped back to the ground, creating a sort of grey 'wave'.

Shortly later, they found themselves in a narrow pub with wood panelled walls. Behind the counter, a hearty man was about to cut some meat for a sandwich.

“This is the best kebab in the city. Come on, let’s eat, I'm starving!” He said as he approached the man. She followed him, uncertain as to trust him or not, but her stomach left her without a doubt: she was also starving.

“Ibrahim!” The boy called. The man turned suspiciously but then he glowed at the sight of the pink bob.

“Jag, you're back! Is it me or have you shrunk?” He kidded him.

“You're the one who got fatter, you nut head!” The child replied with a hint of animosity in his eyes; the man noticed his look and tried to calm him. “Sorry, sorry, I was just kidding! I’ll make you a nice sandwich!”

“Alright,” he cut him short, still visibly angry, but then his mood changed. “This is Fade!”

“Good morning Miss,” Ibrahim countered, with his back turned as he cut some more meat. “Good morning,” she echoed, weakly.

“Ibrahim, I'm going to wash my hands, I’ll have the usual” the boy ordered, heading toward a dark door, through which he disappeared.

After minutes of endless silence, the man turned around holding a stuffed sandwich in his hand. “What do you want?” He asked seriously.

“What do you mean?” She replied suspiciously.

“What do you want in your sandwich? You can add any of the ingredients I have here,” he said, pointing with a movement of his eyes to some bowls sunk into the counter, full of weird slops. She looked at them disgustedly. “That's all!” And she grabbed the huge sandwich he offered her.

The man took a lit cigarette, abandoned on a corner of the counter, and dropped a long line of ash.

“You must be careful, Miss. Jag isn’t what he seems to be”, he said, and then he took a big puff reducing the cigarette to the filter alone.

“What does that mean?” She asked, remembering her own suspects. The owner approached her, leaning against the counter, as if to tell her a secret. Fade also approached him, but not too close, to listen. The man, before starting to speak, exhaled a puff of smoke onto the girl’s face, and she began to cough violently; one of the many things she hated was cigarette smoke.

She kept coughing, her eyes and lungs burning, the sandwich fell on the floor as the heavy coughs made her head burst. Although it seemed absurd to the eyes of the owner, she dropped unconsciously onto the sticky floor.

“Miss!” The terrified man shouted, slipping out from behind the counter to help her, but it was too late: Jag was coming out of the bathroom at that moment.

“Ibrahim!” The little boy roared fiercely, “What the hell did you do?” He asked, kneeling next to the girl and holding her head.

“Nothing, I was giving her a sandwich and she fainted!” He babbled in confusion.

“Go get a glass of water!” he ordered as he tried to make her com to.

The man got up and went behind the counter bumping into everything and clumsily filling a glass.

“No, no, no, no! You can't leave me right now...” Jag murmured as he waited.

“Here's the water!” The man exclaimed, reaching them, and poured it all on Fade’s face under the boy’s petrified gaze. The girl woke up screaming.

“Ibrahim!!” he yelled at him angrily. “She was supposed to drink it!”

“Sorry, Jag! Sorry!” He excused himself, in total panic.

“Oh, leave him alone!” She interrupted him, bothered by the noise.

“How do you feel?”

“Very clean,” she said sarcastically.

For the rest of the time the man didn’t speak, while the two of them ate at their table. Fade was still upset and wished she would shut off her petulant companion who kept talking like a crazy machine, then she tried to focus on the taste of the sandwich, which actually wasn't bad at all.

The two went out, she said goodbye to Ibrahim, who shyly returned her greeting. She was a little surprised to see such a big man obey so humbly to the orders of a small little boy. Jag, on the other hand, went out without looking back.

“What do you think of the city?” He asked, once they had walked a while.

“Nothing special...” she said uncertainly. “What do you want to do now?”

“I've already spoken to the Momuht's manager, tomorrow morning I’ll meet with the band.”

“How the hell did you manage to convince them so easily?”

“Simple: I'll be a co-financier of all their future projects. Tomorrow we'll discuss the fees; you're coming, too!”

“I don’t understand anything about these things, no...”

“I only need someone to act as a secretary,” Jag explained. “A child alone isn’t very credible.”

“Even less so if you're joined by a lunatic on skates!” she stated.

“Ha Ha! You don’t know the bands tastes! Let's go, you have to learn all about them” he concluded. “There’s an internet point nearby!”

Connected to the network, the two took a glance on the band's most hidden — so to speak — secrets. The child gloried at each link to their private life, trying to explain their whole story to the girl who, of course, didn’t understand anything about it.

Jag decided to enter the official website: a specifically made video footage, with pictures taken from their concerts, invaded the entire screen.

“Look!” He grinned with satisfaction “Now I'm gonna show you the guitarist’s page!” And clicked on the link with the mouse.

A single page opened, with a collage of objects scattered on a table seen from the top. In the lower right hand corner there was a Polaroid photo of the 'emo' boy showing half of his face, moreover, covered by a hand, allowing to see just an unbelievably blue eye through the space between his fingers.

“This must be the greatest representation of intrigue and mystery of the moment,” she thought. In the rest of the page were displayed scattered objects that were supposed to represent the young man’s personality.

Note books scribbled with compositions and notes, a lighter, an empty cup of coffee with a stubbed out cigarette in it, a catalogue of musical instruments, a half open flick-knife. The same table was engraved, probably with the latter, with incomprehensible signs.

The girl didn’t listen to the explanations, for she was intent on finding new details on the screen. Her attention was interrupted when the kid decided to pass to a new page. He clicked on the singer's page: the black-haired girl with the stern look.

Same scenario as the first: on the bottom, the Polaroid photo of a girl sitting at a Japanese noodle stand. The Japanese curtains, which dropped from the roof of the stand, concealed her identity, while leading to believe that it was indeed her sitting there. Again, scattered items which represented her identity: a little doll with a big blond head was hanging by a cord to a smartphone of the last generation which displayed on its screen the progress of an audio track, a mini xylophone with drumsticks and a stuffed animal in the shape of a cat, was all that Fade managed to see before the kid changed the page again.

The two searched the percussionist's page: immediately apparent were the two drumsticks crossed on the table. The boy's Polaroid depicted him while playing basketball, as he was about to toss the ball into the basket in a spectacular jump. Among the other things, an MP3 with headphones, a sports band, and a CD of Beethoven's Omnia Opera, a detail which puzzled the girl, given the type of band.

The last page the child opened was that of the bass player, as well as the leader of the band. On his table was only an ashtray overflowing with cigarettes butts, a glass with the last sips of whiskey, some bags with spare strings for the bass and a piece of knotted rope. His Polaroid photo showed just his hand, his middle finger raised, wearing a ring on which was engraved '666'.

“If we're lucky tomorrow you can see them live!” He said. “I don’t really care!” The girl replied. “But, if I have to act as your secretary, why don’t you start telling me the names of these dummies.”

He smiled at her with an intuitive look and explained the details of their meeting.

The next morning Fade was extremely tired; Jag had made her visit the city almost all night long, and had never stopped talking about 'his band'. She followed him reluctantly, while he, on the other hand, walked with a quick and triumphant pace to the entrance of the Momuht’s studio.

The group manager invited them to sit at the round table in satin glass of the meeting room to wait for the band to arrive.

After an endless wait, the four members came in through the door. The kid was so entranced he remained gazing at them with his mouth agape and a blithe smile, which made her doubt that he was even breathing.

They entered in sequence: “Nef, the bass player” Fade mentally recalled, “Ted, the guitarist, Joanna called 'Sushi', the singer and Jess, the bean-pole drummer” closed the group.

The first came in triumphantly, showing off the boisterous ornaments on his neck, his thumbs sunk into the pockets of tight jeans tucked in inlaid cowboy boots. The second followed him with a curved posture, his hair was so flat over his face that he seemed to have been licked by a cow; he wore torn jeans and a T-shirt. The girl was wearing thigh high boots, a short skirt, and a shaded t-shirt in glittering colours; she followed them with her gaze stuck to her smartphone, quickly writing texts. The last of the group, a young man with a deep gaze, followed them with the expression of someone who at that moment would have preferred being on another planet; all of his stature was clothed in branded high fashion garments. The four sat at the table followed by their manager who immediately began the conversation: “Well, I guess you already know the names of the members, so I’ll leave the presentations to you.”

“I’m Jag and this is Fade!” The boy began, recovering. Sushi’s quick fingers stopped for a moment in hearing those names, then they rapidly started again. “I'm going to finance all of your future projects: albums, concerts, music videos, everything! I have unlimited funds, so don’t be afraid to dare.”

After a considerate look at their manager, the bass player, Nef, replied: “And what do you want in return?”

“I want to be part of the band!” the boy replied in such a firm tone that he no longer sounded like so. All the glances were now on him.

“And what instrument can you play?” asked the very tall Jess.

“It's not in my interest to play, I just want to see you at work, witness the creation of new pieces, follow the rehearsals, stay here, in short.”

A moment of endless silence followed those words.

“Well,” Nef concluded. “The band will evaluate your offer, and we’ll let you know.” Said that, all the members got up and left the room.

Before closing the door behind him, Nef turned towards the two of them and said “Jag, right? Come with me, I have to discuss some things with you. We'll leave your secretary here to bargain with the manager.”

At those words Fade jumped, but she had been prepared for that possibility, she knew what to do. The boy immediately stood up and ran to his idol like a trained puppy. The door closed behind them.

The girl brought her attention to the manager who waited silently; she stood up on her skates and reached her handing her a large file of papers that Jag had told her to deliver without commenting. The woman took them and began to examine them closely.

Meanwhile Jag followed Nef through the long hallways of the studios, speeding up from time to time so as not to be left behind. The other three members had vanished.

After going down a flight of steps they came to a small white door. The musician took a hold of the ornaments of his chain, he singled out a key from them, with which he opened the lock and entered.

Jag found himself in a sort of privé with soft lights, purple walls, and a large, white corner sofa with a coffee table in the same colour.

The musician walked behind a large counter: “What will you have? Wine, liquor, a cocktail?”

“I don’t drink things like that” the child sat with his hands resting on his knees. “Of course, you're just a brat” he said, pouring himself a whiskey.

“Don’t underestimate me” was the answer as the ice dropped into the glass.

The man sat on the opposite side of the couch, stirring his whiskey in a circular motion. “So you really are who I think you are?”

“Yes, I saw your ad on the internet and I came here in person to bring you what you asked for.”

“And that girl would be...?” The man investigated, trying to reveal as little as possible.

“She's the virgin you seek for your sect's 'party'.”

He choked on a sip of whiskey; that kid didn’t beat around the bush, so he decided to go straight to the point. “The ritual will take place within a month and I can’t afford to make mistakes. You were the only one who understood my encrypted message, and I still don’t know how you did it and how you reached me, but when you said the two code names in front of everyone I had to verify that it hadn’t been just a coincidence.”

“No coincidence,” the child insisted. “As to how I traced you, I have a widespread network of information, I can reach anyone.”

The man drank the whiskey in a gulp spitting an ice cube into the glass. “Well, then,” he concluded. “You can stay.”

“Your offer is really tempting,” the manager summarized as she lifted her eyes from the sheets. “We'll draw up a contract right away.”

Fade nodded, though totally unaware of what all those columns of numbers on the sheets meant. Shortly afterwards, Jag reached her triumphantly, “Fade! We can go visit the studios! Let’s go!” She barely had the time to pick up her coat that she was literally dragged away by the euphoric boy.

The two followed Nef, who proudly walked through the corridors of the studios, while explaining that he had them built on purpose. In the most intense periods — especially when they had to record a new album — he required all of the band members to be present 24 hours a day; therefore, he had set up rooms where everyone could sleep: returning to their own homes was almost forbidden, if not for entirely exceptional reasons. At that time, they were just recording their new album.

The man gave them a quick tour of the rehearsal room, the recording and mixing rooms, the little private cinema, the game room and the kitchen, and then the coffee room and bar-winery corner. They then climbed to the next floor using the elevator and crossed a long hallway on which many doors opened: the first had been smeared with spray cans, the second decorated with a lucky charm 'neko' cat hanging on it, the third was full of scratches, like the walls of a mental institution, and the last, carved in low-relief, depicted a great Mesopotamian demon. On all the doors hung on a 'Do not disturb' tag.

“This is my room...” Said Nef pulling out a magnetic card from the back pocket of his jeans and passing it into a scanner at the side of the door which opened with a dull noise.

The room stood out in front of the startled eyes of the two guests, one excited for a dream come true, the other because of what she saw inside. The place had a disturbing atmosphere; it was cloudy, with a curtain of smoke that hardly allowed to see the objects in the shade. When he turned the light on, everything became more distinct: between cactus plants, ethnic statues, plane models, full and empty bottles and cans left all over the place, hanging pendants, plasma lamps and a bear skin on the wall, the attention was drawn to overturned crosses, demoniac prints, tarots cards, tapestries with mythological figures, and on the unmade bed a bass and an ashtray full of cigarette butts. Above all there was an unbearable stench.

Fade moved aside, disgusted, leaving Jag alone in contemplation. The boy rushed inside and Nef approached the girl. Like a lady’s man, he leaned a hand on the wall and asked, “So, do you like Momuht?”

“Quite enough,” she replied, lying, shocked by his attitude.

“You look tall with those skates, how old are you?” the musician continued.

“It's none of your business” she replied, looking elsewhere.

“Hey! Don’t act like that; we need to get to know each other since you’ll live here!”

At those words she turned angrily. “What’s this story about? Jag is the one who wants to stay here, what do I have to do it? Jag!”

She cut off the conversation with the bass player and faced the real culprit of her problem; she reached the doorstep and called the child several times under the man's amused look. “Get out of this stinky room!” she shouted but he wasn’t listening to her, ecstatic in front of a witches Sabbath stamp on the wall.

“Jag!”

She wanted to go and grab him from the ear, but the stench was too nauseating and she just screamed from the door, so loud that the other members came out of their respective rooms to see what was happening and when their eyes fell on Nef at the same time in search of answers, he just shrugged and said: “The contract is signed!”

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