Track 37

Kaia

“Rei-chan! Come, come. Sit with me.” Kaia was seated on a high chair with one leg folded over the other. There was a flowery tea cup with French vanilla steaming in front of her and on the counter beside her. Rei-chan had just walked into the storage room with a box of old CDs when Kaia had called out to her.

“Huh?” said Rei. “R-right now? B-but what about the store?”

Kaia smiled her most innocent smile. “It’s okay, it’s okay, no one will come by this early. Come before you’re French vanilla gets cold.”

“French Va-” Rei gawked and then clamped her mouth shut, trying to suppress her clear bafflement.

Kaia watched Rei, enjoying her everlasting nervousness as she scrambled over and situated herself upon the stool. Every so often Rei glanced back down the hallway towards the shop as if she were scared to get caught for a crime that didn’t exist. Kaia couldn’t help but smile. Rei-chan was so adorable, and so easy to please—even easier to read.

“So,” Kaia began, sipping her warm drink, “what’s on your mind today?”

“Huh? Oh. . . Um,” she gazed down the hall again.

“Are you worried everyone’s mad at you? For becoming a sell-soul?” Kaia stirred her spoon playfully with one finger. She was almost 100% certain she’d hit the nail on Rei’s concerns again today.

“Actually…” until Rei said this. “I was kind of thinking about something Axel said…”

Kaia set down her vanilla, leaned back and looked carefully at Rei. This was the first time she couldn’t guess what Rei was about to say. It intrigued her.

“Well I guess I was also thinking about that too, but it was more like in the back of my head… Not anymore but… well anyway-” Kaia watched as Rei’s scarf floated upward to semi-shield her embarrassment, she held it in place. “Um, it was when he was fighting with Sunal and the mean one and he almost mocked them when they said they were his friends. That bothered me a bit. ”

“Oh.” Kaia sighed. “That.”

“Um. What does … ‘that’ mean?”

“Sorry to say it, but that might be my fault.” Kaia scrunched up her face in a pout.

“I don’t understand. How could- why would-”

“Well, you may have noticed by now, but I have a bad habit of manipulating people. Over the years of concerned motherhood, I learned that sheltering your child isn’t the greatest practise to develop, so instead of keeping him on a leash, I may have…mmm… influenced a lot of people in his life to watch over him in my place. I also allowed some of them to report- or rather, to let me know how he was doing… health-wise. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Rei-chan. I can’t help it if it’s in my nature.” Kaia brushed away Rei’s dismay and played with her spoon. “But, because I’ve been doing this over the years, I think he developed trust issues.

“Axel probably doesn’t see Sunal and Sheria as his friends. He probably thinks they’re only claiming to be his friends because they wanted to use his power in the beginning, and they stuck around because they thought he needed protecting. Something like that anyway. Knowing him, he probably thinks being trained by Sunal is their way of telling him he’s not strong enough to do things on his own. I think thanks to me, he has a very cynical view on people showing pity towards him. Though, I don’t think pity is necessarily a bad thing. Isn’t it just another word for sympathy? One heart reaching out for another’s soul? That kind of thing?” Kaia picked up her teacup once more and sipped the last of it.

Two months later, basked by a distant nightlight, Kaia set down her teacup upon the same counter. Only, this time, there was no one there to share it with. She sat in the darkness of a restless night, missing Rei-chan’s company while drinking sugarless tea.

Axel was on another one of his little quests to save the world. She was content in her decision to let him live his life free rein, but the worrying aspect was enough to kill a person. When she thought about it rationally, yes, Kaia was glad Rei-chan had gone with her son to watch over him and whatnot, but now it felt like she was sending out an extra offspring—the daughter she never had. Kaia’s concerns may as well have doubled.

She sighed and slid off her high chair. Beneath their TV, was a cabinet hidden in the back of an unused cabinet, and from it, she pulled an old album with all the pictures Axel forbade her from showing people. She set the booklet on the counter and turned on the microwave light. Then she took her time flipping through and reminiscing.

Her fingers stalled along a baby picture of Axel cradled in her arms. There was another of him peeking up from the sofa during his crawling-stages. One of Axel peeking out a cupboard, spilling some cereal across the floor. Oh she had to show Rei-chan this one; he had on the very headphones that were his soul item today, only, they were far too big for his head and they didn’t belong to him yet.

The next page had some of his hospital days. There were many long days in the hospital before Axel became a sell-soul, Kaia almost didn’t want to remember. There were so many tests and extended stays, at one point her home felt more foreign than his room there.

One of the pictures were burned off at a corner. She had to wonder; was this because of the fire? Or did Axel-

A yawn pulled her away and she flipped the page.

First day of school – aww, look how nervous he was. Kaia remembered having to pull him out of school thanks to the bullying. A frown reached her face. This wasn’t helping.

Oh, Kaia almost forgot, there was that one album with all the adorable pictures that Axel took from her. She hopped down from the chair, driven by a spur of mischief and snuck into Axel’s room. The album could be in one of four of Axel’s main hiding places. First Kaia checked an old guitar case in his closet, where he’d often keep her Christmas or Birthday presents.

Nope. Not there. Under his bed was the cliché spot—unused this time. Behind his computer maybe? Kaia peeked on her tippy-toes behind the monitor. She accidentally brushed against the keyboard and the display glowed to life by her tummy.

There it was. She reached behind the desk and pulled up a thick album. Then she shielded her eyes from the bright screen, painting the entire room. She always has to tell him to turn off his computer, but he kept putting it on sleep-mode. Maybe she could get Zedge to talk to him about tha-

Clunk.

The album fell out of Kaia’s arms as the images on the screen registered. “No…” she shook her head. Her hands and jaw both trembled as she covered her mouth. In a moment, Kaia rushed out of the room and dug her phone out of her bed.

She dialed Axel’s number, but her thumbs froze above the talk button. It was dangerous to call him. If it was the wrong moment, she might distract him, his mind must have been unstable enough, she couldn’t feed him with another concern and worse still, she knew he wouldn’t listen to her. There was no way he’d listen.

Kaia erased the number and called Rei. It was a gamble to call her too; she knew this but- but just in case. She had to try. Rei would listen at least. She’d relay the message.

Please answer. Please answer.

“Um…h-hello?” Rei answered. Her voice brought only a flicker of relief.

“Rei! Rei-chan. You need to bring him back! Don’t let him fight. Please!” Kaia knew she wasn’t making much sense, but she couldn’t control the panic. There were so many dots connecting, so many little comments and actions that all of a sudden made sense.

“Sorry? Can you say that again?” Rei’s voice came with static. Could she not hear her?

Kaia covered her face and tried to stay calm.

“Rei-chan, please listen to me. You have to stop Axel. Please. Please stop him. Don’t let him fight anyone there-” At some point during her pleading the line was cut off, and a dial tone played. Kaia suppressed her anguish, shut off the call and redialed. It didn’t connect so she called Axel.

Why? Why was this happening now?

She clutched the phone with the same alien strength she had when she was pregnant—the frightened strength of a mother coursed within her. Every ring, strangled by her grasp, felt like an eternity. Every stretched second between was a new dark scenario ripping through her mind. The line ringed and ringed and riiinged until finally: “hell-”

“Axel! Please come home. Please. I know what you’re trying to do. I understand why, I do, but please stop! This is a battle you can’t win. Don’t do this! Just come home. I’m begging you, Axel. Pl-”

“I don’t know who you are lady, but I’m going to have to ask you to stay off this line, you’re messing with my connection.”

The voice that answered wasn’t her son. It was the sound of a young boy or girl with a cocky tone.

“In fact, don’t call any one of them again, or things will get much, much worse on this end. Lol.”

With that, the call shut off and a dial tone beeped on an endless loop. Kaia was left listening to its torturous dissonance while slouched on the floor, staring at the undeniable profile picture of the chief of police and none other than Axel’s father.

♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♫ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♫ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩

Axel

I dashed towards that stupid man without a word.

From this angle, he wouldn’t have seen my approach. His goons weren’t around him either. There was nothing stopping me from driving my sword through his gut, so I went straight for the kill.

It was by some sixth sense that he noticed me when he did. His muscles swivelled, his rapier danced around my slice and he brushed me to the side like a matador. There was a moment when he scanned my presence; up then down. His glare could carve ice. Mine would bring his demise.

I must have looked psychotic. I wondered if he could see it in my eyes; how much I despised him, how much I wanted him dead. I wonder if he even recognized me, but then, how could he?

I sprinted forth again, but this time a boomerang on its chain reeled in front of me, thrown by one of his henchmen. I didn’t let it stop me.

“HUAAAH!” I shouted and ripped my blade through its electric chain, never losing sight of my target. The chains’ broken ends parted on either side of me, fizzing out its electricity as I snaked narrowly through its rift. He didn’t seem the slightest bit shocked, or concerned. He barely even took on a fighting stance, as if to announce how little he regarded me as a real opponent. This infuriated me.

I drilled my blade straight for his heart, but his second minion jumped in wielding a baton that he extended into a long spear. “Stand down!” said the officer. He swatted away my sword and tried to strike me down with a twirl and slash from the side. I stepped back, but a spear had range I was unaccustomed to. The cord to my headphones sailed out in front of me. His spear’s tip just barely missed it, until the man clicked a button on his staff and from both sides of his blade, two extra blades snapped out of their hidden sockets like a double-sided pocket knife. One of the blades hooked into my wires and he twisted his wrist to disarm me.

The moment he’d hooked my cord, I angled the hilt of my sword away from his weapon and grabbed the other side of the wire with my free hand. For a small moment we were stuck playing tug-o-war with my taut iron cord that would never tear by the likes of this stranger and his extendable baton. I crossed my arms, further tangling his weapon, and tugged it downwards to the side. In the next second, I stepped on the polearm hoping to snap it in two.

It didn’t snap, but the weapon flew out of his hand and skidded far across the floor. I made no hesitation to slash the back of his leg before I sprinted back towards my old man. My focus and impatience deafened me to the cry of the other one.

This time when I went for the killing blow, he took the initiative and brushed my sword to the side with a powerful lunging swipe. He slid his foot into my ankle, folded his rapier into a backhanded hold and crushed my wrist against it. My sword fell out of my grasp. Simultaneously, with his free hand, he grabbed the back of my head and pushed me, face-first, into the ground. My headphone pressed painfully down on my ear.

“Ack!” His knee took the place of crushing my wrist and he leaned closer to my headphones, flicking one muff off my ear with his rapier. I felt the scratch more than heard it and he went on to force-feed me an audio of his voice I could’ve done without. I couldn’t fight back. The tiniest movement sent a sharp pain shooting up my arm.

“Tell me,” his voice was quiet, but powerful, “are you the one who’s been desecrating our facilities?”

“AXEL!!!” shouted Rei from afar. I felt him pull away from me with her call, but his hold didn’t get any less painful.

“Oh?” he answered slowly. “Axel… huh . . . That name certainly answers a number of questions, like why your eyes burn with such hatred. Or why you’ve blown your cover, just to charge madly at me.”

I didn’t have a view of them, but Zedge’s voice was the next to pop up, “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to release that boy… before this place turns into the next Hungry Games, rigged by yours truly of course.” A holographic light glowed from above. It had the same hue as the targeting circles used against us. In an instant, all the sell-soul’s previously doing their own thing, froze and turned their gaze towards the douchebag above me.

It wasn’t just the sell-souls that were fighting us, but every single person from all those extra cages Zedge unlocked.

“Have it your way,” said Zedge.

Soon, the sell-souls from every corner of the room were charging towards him. The garbage human on top of me released my arm, but backed away before I could cut him.

In my crouch, and in my rage, I grabbed my wrist and analyzed his movements. He pointed his rapier to the ceiling and the tip of his rapier budded a red laser. Using its beam, he carved out a smooth drawing of an uneven box on the floor which separated the two of us from the rest of the people in the room, including his own henchmen. Guided by the red streaks, projectile hover-disks broke from the ceiling and formed a conjoining barrier matching up with the lines he drew. The disks themselves sent out a discharge of red electricity that sprawled out midair.

“You’re my son, aren’t you?”

The fury I felt was heavy on my chest. Every breath I took was oddly a challenge, and there was a hint of disbelief that stalled my words, but in the end, I straightened, and I answered him.

“How could I be your son, if you were never a father to me?”

Beyond the force field, I heard the gang and their sounds of shock.

“Axel…wh-what?”

“No way…”

“Axel, I swear to gawd if you don’t cut this out-”

By the sounds of it, all of them had broken from their hiding spot, but any urge I felt to listen to their needs was gone the moment I begun this battle. The chief of police also had no desire to give them his attention. Our eyes were locked.

He clicked a button on his rapier’s hilt-guard and pinned its tip straight into the ground before him. His palms layered on top of the pommel and he raised his chin to look down on me. “I’m no longer in a position where I can make further exceptions for you. Stop these foolish games, release your captives and leave.”

I gawked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Exceptions? What exceptions do you think you’ve made for me?”

“More than you’d-”

“And why the hell,” I interrupted him, “do you think… I’d ever listen to orders from you?”

He shifted his head but kept his gaze as if considering something.

“I’ll give you one more chance. Go home before things get worse for you.”

…Why did everyone keep saying that? ‘Before things get worse for me’. I levelled my sword. Things were worse for me from the beginning. I started this entire lifelong race with a handicap that caused me only hell and hardships. “Nothing, in this world, could’ve made things any worse for me than you already did.”

“…I see conversation is wasted on you. I shouldn’t have expected anything less from someone who sold his soul to plastic playthings.

I’ll kill him. I left the thought in the dust; it propelled me forward and left my mind in a voided state as I sprinted in for the kill. He took up his rapier and prepared for my approach. I threw a fury of jabs, quicker than I’d ever done in any skirmish. The failure of a father kept one hand behind his back as he dealt with my every blow, flicking every swipe to the side, back-stepping from every thrust, pivoting from every lunge, while maintaining a rigid posture. I remained on the offense the entire time. Anything happening outside the battle didn’t register.

I knew deep down that he was trying to exhaust me, but I didn’t care, I kept pressing. I spun and launched off my right foot, hurtling my sword over my body and slamming it down as I landed on my left. He pointed his weapon downwards and slid my blade off with minimal effort.

I’ll kill him.

I dropped down to a low stretch and pushed a quick back-handed slash that shot a wave of sound his way. Though the slash spread outwards, wobbling the distant air on either side of his weapon, it did not distance him as I thought it would. My arm swung too far wide, and the first break in my barrage presented itself. He took the opportunity; his hilt reached his chin, the tip angled down to me, and he lunged forward.

I dismantled my sword as fast as I could and chucked the speaker-form from one hand to the next. Then I blasted an explosion of sound his way. Before his rapier could skewer me, he was pushed backwards. The needle’s end pulled away, but not before he swivelled his wrist and wrapped my headphone cord in a tangle around his blade.

He blasted backwards, and my headphones were hauled forward off my ears. He skidded on his boots, a gloved hand grazing the ground, but never did he lose his balance, in a similar way as Sunal never did. My headphones clattered to the ground joined by the ordinary mp3 player it was attached to.

The weight of silence hit me hard. I felt, on instant, the trampling sensation that replaced a steady heartbeat. I took a forced deep breath, walked forward, bent down, and picked up my soul-item with a grip I couldn’t stop from shaking.

“I’m not here to kill you,” he offered. “You’ll only kill yourself if you continue this farce.”

I placed the headphones over my head and reeled the sword back up into my grasp. “How decent of you,” I answered. “You don’t want to kill me, but you want to exploit the powers of sell-souls like me. You’d abandon one family just to tear apart countless others.” I was breathing hard now. The pinch in my chest wasn’t just a pinch anymore.

“You judge me based only by what you’d like to see. You don’t know what people of your caliber are capable of. You are only a child, how could you know? People who sell their humanity for power; who see themselves as a higher breed than the rest; those evicted individuals are truly dangerous. Their powers, if not conditioned—if not controlled— will only ever be used for crime.”

I started walking in a long detour around him. He mirrored the action, but anything was better than standing still, enveloped in the usual pain, even walking in circles. “You may have kept me as a child in your head since the day you left until today, but I am not some ignorant kid. I’ve seen, firsthand, what it means to be inhumane. I’ve seen people with power, take full advantage of their position…” I pointed my blade his way. “I’ve experienced the kind of mark a true monster can leave on one’s soul. Or in my case, a heart.”

He flinched. I just barely saw the shift in nerves change the deadpan look in his eyes. Finally. Finally, I captured his real attention.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied.

“Don’t I?” I stopped marching and faced him. “Aren’t you the one who doesn’t want to acknowledge it? Aren’t you the one who ran away from what you’ve done to me?!”

“You misunderstand.”

“THIS!!!” I smacked my hand hard against my broken heart “You did this to me. You cursed me with this, ruined my life with this! You gave my mom this burden—just dumped it on her. Then you left her to suffer through it alone. Can you even begin to imagine how hard it was for her? To raise me all on her own?” I couldn’t hide the pain in my voice, not even from myself. I couldn’t keep it from cracking either, but I used all that was in me to keep my tears from spilling. “You just-… you just left us…. Why would you leave us?”

I searched for answers in his eyes, but he closed them off from me.

“I left because I realized this city was more sickly than you. There were people in this nation in need of saving, and in need of correcting, far more than just you. I stayed away for Kaia’s sake. We had different views on what it meant to become a sell-soul. She wanted the power to save your life. I knew that choice would only ruin you. In my line of work, I had seen the full extent and criminal nature of what that power could do; what it always did. And I didn’t want that for my son. Your mother went behind my back and gave you the power anyway.”

I heard his every consonant, his every vowel, but the words themselves were hollow. They held no value. I just waited through it, trying to string my emotions back together while he went on.

“There were a number of disagreements in our marriage that I don’t expect you to understand, but that was the final blow. Despite what you may think, our separation was a mutual assent. Furthermore…” there was a change in his glare, a spark of sorts.

“If I truly abandoned you two after I left, you would never have made it out of the hospital. You’d have been captured and experimented on at the age of five. I am the one who prevented the police from ever reaching you. I kept them away.”

These words kindled the memory of the shop catching on fire. I was young when it happened, but the memory was kept perfectly intact. The thugs that threw flaming bottles through our windows, the dazzle of glittery shards and ribbony light that arced into the room and stole any oxygen it touched. The guitars and percussion, the sheet music and mics, the CDs and vinyls alike, all flooded in flames; my mom held the home phone in one hand and me in her other, having just dialed 119 for the second time, but no one came. We stood outside, in the night, watching our house succumb to the inferno with no hope on its way. Eventually, there was a firetruck; there were helping neighbors, and rain, but no officers, nor ambulance, no investigation or governmental compensation. My mother had to handle it on her own.

The father’s voice rang back to comprehension, “-you mentioned how hard it’s been for her to raise you, but by coming here it doesn’t look like you’re making it any easier on her. I thought it best to allow Kaia to raise you in her own light. Though, I suppose I thought she’d do a better job than this.”

He reignited my rage as quickly as a snap.

“YOU HAVE NO RIGHT!” I charged forward.

“AXEL!”

Before I could close the distance, Rei’s scarf had wrapped around my elbow and kept me in place. I looked down on the restraining fabric and then back at her. She was terrified; even more so than Keita had been. Her eyes pleaded with me to stop.

Behind her, I noticed the one break in the force field where the red electricity had vanished and a lone hover plate was disabled on the floor.

“No more, Axel. Please.” She begged. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t speak. I never thought it possible, but she made me waver. Stop, let- let go- but the thought died away before I could tell her. She made me want to obey her.

But- but he had no right to those words. He had no right to judge how I lived. He needed to pay… I looked into her eyes and hesitated on my every impulse to make him pay. Her eyes alone shifted my emotions from an explosion to a flare—from triple forte to mezzo. I didn’t want to be the cause of that expression—

It was in that moment of hesitation that a small chip streaked into view between us. It seemed to float in the moment before touching Rei’s scarf. The next instant, a new field of electricity burst between us like a flower of lightning that bloomed in a guitar-sized orb. The current ran through her fabric into the two of us.

“AARGH!”

“HUAAAAHH!”

We both cried out in unanimous pain, except she snapped her scarf away from me quicker than she could separate it from around her neck. I ended up on my knees, feeling the jolt of a thousand gongs vibrating through my arm. The shock shook my limb enough to disarm me. I gripped the arm tightly in an attempt to cease the shaking, but it only made the rest of me tremble.

Meanwhile, Rei had fallen flat on the floor. She lost all control of her body as it convulsed under the current. “R-Rei?” I called out to her as a question. The sight of her falling had confused me. That… couldn’t have happened, right?

Behind her, the SSRF founder was up again and clearly the one to have thrown the projectile. Sunal grabbed her from behind.

“REI!” No. No, she was okay, she had to be. Fighting off the buzz in my arm I reached out for her. Then I felt the footsteps tapping fast from behind. They were too close. In a whoosh of a moment, I collected my sword by the cord, spun around and narrowly redirected a stab to my shoulder.

“And what right do you have?” he asked.

I flipped the hold of my weapon, rolled out of the way and backtracked away from Rei. He sliced another red guideline across the ground, beckoning forth a new blockade that severed our arena in half and prevented anyone from interfering. I blocked his assaults back-handedly as I stumbled away, but tried my best to keep my eyes on Rei the whole while.

“How are you any different from any other radical?”

“REI!” I cried. Behind him, she was still unmoving on the ground.

The dumpsite and his garbage words carried on, “Where do you get the gall to commit the crimes you do?”

It was the first time since the beginning of our fight where my stupid old man kept on the offensive. There was only a long flurry of near misses on my part. You’d think with such a thin weapon his slashes would be fragile, but they scraped forcefully against my sword whenever I blocked; I couldn’t stay beneath them, I had to stay on the move.

His lecture continued with every blow. “How many laws do you think you’ve broken to come here? Trespassing, breaking and entering, assault, child endangerment, vandalism, speeding, assisting in jailbreak; you’ve become just as much of a criminal as I predicted from the start. Everything I anticipated would happen after you fulfilled that vile contract.”

“Ack!”

Sssrt. His rapier tore against my arm. Sssrt. Another slash caught me in the side. Sssrt, Sssrt, Sssrt.

Yet still I searched passed our battle for Rei. Zedge and Sheria had reached her.

“Do you not see it? How your sell-soul abilities have turned you into a degenerate? Do you think yourself above the law just because you have supernatural powers? Or perhaps is it because of your disorder?”

That knocked my focus back into play. I charged a massive surge of energy into one vertical overhead sweep and a ceiling high streak of sound followed. He blocked and was swept momentarily off his feet. His officer’s cap flew far into the air and a number of small cuts tore through his uniform.

“QUIT SPEAKING AS IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT! YOU CAUSED IT! I already know it was you!” I yelled over the capacity my throat could handle.

A single strand was loose from his tightly combed-back hair. He stroked a hand through to fix it, but halted his palm over his ear. He felt my wrath of sound; I made sure of it. His eyes were filled with scorn because of it.

This time when I responded, it was with a calm that didn’t belong, “I’ve seen the health documents… I’ve held them…” I recalled crushing the papers in my hand when I found them in my mother’s dresser.

“Your condition is your own,” he stated.

“NINETY-SIX PERCENT!” I yelled. “That document. said… it was. Ninety. Six. Percent. More likely. for someone with Cor’Senza Melodium Syndrome to cause Mortem-Modum, or other heart defects, in their child. These documents were dated more than a year before I was born. More than enough time for you to know the stakes. To know what having a child would mean. On top of that…”

I looked to his cuts. “It was enough time for your own condition to kill you off. So then you tell me, how else could someone with CSM-Syndrome survive past their life sentence without selling their soul?” One of his cuts began to bloom with the same holographic design as the ones folding over the cut on my face.

“You criticize and accuse and judge and rob every sell-soul of freedom just for being what they are, but you were so afraid of death that you chose to become one yourself. You’re so pathetic, it hurts. You’re such a coward, I can’t stand it. You didn’t want me to become a criminal, but you didn’t put in the work; you never even tried to be a parent, yet you have the nerve to blame me? To blame my mom? How can I not hate you for everything you’ve done?”

I looked to my hilt and the lifeline that connected to it.

When he answered, he straightened, and power filled his voice. “I told you before, I left because this city had a greater cry for help than you.” Outside the window, in my peripheral, I saw a hint of the sky shimmer a bleak shade of mauve. “My presence here, in these shoes, in my position, it serves the future. You are but a remnant of the past trying to guilt-trip an already-officer to turn his back on his city just to parent a lost cause. I resolved to attack the sell-soul issue at it’s core. Unlike you, I have the integrity and willpower to accomplish my goals without breaking the law. You’ve thrown around your accusations and pinned your hatred on an ideal you lack the listening tools to understand...”

He was right about one thing; I didn’t understand; I didn’t have the will to listen on either. My music took a turn for the emotional, and I was swept away.

I recalled every kid in kindergarten who ever looked at me funny. I remembered all the teachers who’d complain about my headphones, all the ones who asked me to take them off. The times I actually tried to. I remembered all the people who spoke ‘behind my back’ right in front of me. I remembered being bullied; having my lifeline ripped off my head by other classmates; kicked into a puddle; I remember almost dying several times just because they weren’t on me; being pulled from school because no one, anywhere, ever understood my abnormality. No one even tried to.

How I’d never learn how to drive, or experience a roller coaster. Any sign that unpermitted the ‘faint of heart’. Concerts I couldn’t properly enjoy. The haunting days I’d come home and catch my mother stressing out over my past medical bills. How entering certain places with headphones drew stares; talking to certain people with headphones induced anger. The people who made jokes, gave me labels, judged me, assumed my heart couldn’t take it…

I really couldn’t take it. My hand latched on to my chest.

“You’ve ruined me,” the words shook my body as they came out, “…from the start. You destroyed everything I was meant to be and left my mom with your mistake.” This time tears pooled over, I couldn’t stop them. “You made me into nothing.”

“SHUT UP!”

Breathing hard, I sought out the voice to my left, “SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!”

“Are you crazy?” said Zedge.

In a hazy view, I saw Zedge trying to hold Rei back from the electric wall in front of her. She was thrashing around desperately enough that Sheria had to step in and restrain her other arm. Rei lurched forward, screaming with her eyes closed and her clothes disheveled, “YOU’RE NOT NOTHING TO ME! YOU’RE NOT A MISTAKE TO ME! STOP SAYING THAT! STOP INSULTING THE PERSON I’VE COME TO LOVE!” she fell to her knees.

My eyes widened.

“All you’ve proven to me by coming here today is that you’ve grown further into childhood. You’re a naïve criminal who drags acquaintances into their messes and blames others for their problems. Your condition is simply that; it’s yours to bear. You were given a power that defies your heart failure and still you cling to the notion that I’ve ruined your life? I haven’t even been in your life. Your choices and shortcomings are what caused your own misery. And frankly, I have more important things to deal with than the aftermath of you!”

He crumpled the distance between us.

I almost didn’t notice.

My head was swarmed by Rei’s words; they shook my core and opened a locked gate or two somewhere along the way. I couldn’t explain it. Even though I heard the words of my faulty father—listened to them even—they didn’t affect me. Rei’s were stronger.

In my hand, my hilt evolved. I closed my eyes and felt the blade pulse.

Though I couldn’t see, I heard so much more. The placement of every person, item, and animal in that room, all of it was mapped out in my head like the complex chart of a music mixer; the bass structure, the beat, the tempo, the electric waves, and independent genres clashed together in a cacophonous roar. They overlapped, intertwined, merged and fed into one another. I held only one aspect, one part of the symphony that played out all around, and my thumb strummed against it.

His rhythm drew up near my measure and I heard more of his approach than my eyes would have seen. It was like a pitch black world, painted in scarcity by a galactic framework of images like drifting constellations. They transcended all other senses and I reacted like it was natural. I blocked a straight stab from a part like a viola rushing at 2/8 time. The starry white outline of his rapier zinged off the flat of my weapon like rippling sound waves. I pushed the blade end upwards and bounced his arrangement up and out of key. Again, I did this in a different movement. I countered and countered and countered, not opening my eyes even once.

Mini-stars blasted outward by my every strike.

On my hilt, there were enough strings for a ukulele with the complete feel of an electric guitar. My thumb naturally knew which strings to dodge and which to play; I knew what combination created a rebound effect, what rift slowed his tempo. I pushed out my pinky and it stretched against a tremolo bar that was never there before. His entire sketch undulated against the wonky pulse it produced.

He was momentarily paralyzed—snared like a snare drum for three or four bars. He spun and tried to nail a staccato kick. I backed out of the rhythm taking a rest of my own and-

Zz-Zzt-ZzZzZzZzZz

Every constellation exploded in waves I could not anticipate, all shaken from a disruption sourced at my heart. “Ah!” I opened my eyes with a strain and clutched my chest, doubling over. I was having an attack. And at a time like this.

I backed away.

In my other hand was a form of my sword I hadn’t seen before with strings that dipped into the hilt guard and streamed out into static frets embedded into the new red blade. Its tip was slanted like the head of an electric guitar. Behind my body was a glass wall I hadn’t sensed. In front, my father was rushing at me with wounds of his own and the raging intent to kill.

My heel hit the glass. His weapon darted towards my neck, but instead of dodging, I winced unexpectedly, but didn’t let it stop me. I flowed in the direction my body jerked and transitioned this into an attack. His needle point narrowly missed my head as I drove my sword into his shoulder.

“NNOOOO!” Rei shrieked from afar.

A rattling sound had told me the father had struck something else. Blood oozed from his wound along my blade and sparks flew at the side of my face. The way he reacted, you wouldn’t have thought I stabbed him, he just shut an eye and looked like he was about to retaliate before I flicked the guitar tremolo bar hanging off my weapon. My blade let out a slow kind of resonance that stunned him and caused him to cough out in pain. Though he still retaliated.

He ripped his rapier from the side of my head. I mirrored his movement before I knew what he was doing. A destruction of technology, plastic, and metal was shredded off my left ear at the same time lifeblood was yanked out of his wound. The sound buzz dwindled from my blade, but an after effect paralyzed him, I could feel it disrupting his blood flow as he began to fall to my left over a cluster of headphone bits.

Exhaustion hit hard.

The music I hardly noticed before tripped out of whack in fragments that seemed to lose speed.

A tremendously heavy, draining thump banged inside my chest and seemed to tear me from reality. My sword dissolved into light before falling out of my hand as a disconnected mp3. The loose, empty red cord flung outward and wobbled on empty air. It was when I saw this foreign sight that I knew; I wasn’t okay.

This situation was one I didn’t know how to get out of and the world outside my music was too ominously quiet for me to think.

The other half of my headphones caught in my hair until I was forced forward by an unnatural agony. I slowly closed in on myself. My elbow pinched into my gut. My hand shook in front of me as if trying to reach something that wasn’t there. Tiny clicks were escaping my mouth as if my throat was trying to cough out some poisonous air but couldn’t. I couldn’t breathe in either.

The remaining earmuff slid from my head and clattered off to the side. On the ground, the rim swirled from red to purple to blue to black.

I fell to my knees and caught sight of Rei dashing to reach me before colour was stolen from my vision and the blurring corners spread to everything in between.

Am I… losing my soul? Or is this...

-is this just. . . the part where . . .

#TaintedTracks