Ashes Of The Phoenix

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 the door. The kid was so entranced he watched them with his mouth open and a blithe smile, and she doubted 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; his high stature was clothed with high fashion brand 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 with such a firm tone that he seemed older. All the glances were now on him.

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

“None, I don’t want to come on stage, I just want to watch you create new pieces, follow the trials, live here, in conclusion.”

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, quickening his pace from time to time so as to not be left behind. The other three members had disappeared into their rooms.

After going down a flight of steps they came to a small white door. The musician grabbed the ornaments on his chain, he found a key isolated between them with which he opened the lock and entered.

Jag found himself in a sort of privet 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 kid,” 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 were in search of for your sect’s celebration.”

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 walking proudly through the corridors, bragging about him being the one who created everything they were admiring. He gave them a quick tour of the rehearsal room, the recording and mixing rooms, the 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 for her 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!”

Negative thoughts

After an unavoidable initial confusion, the lives of the accidental cohabitants found a fair balance. Jag spent his days following the band like a shadow, except for when the group showed itself in public; he had been severely forbidden to appear in public with the group members. The same recommendation had been made to Fade, who, however, didn’t need them to repeat it twice; she didn’t like staying there anyway, and every time she could she disappeared from their sight. For this purpose, she had chosen one of the most isolated rooms of the huge complex where the band lived, in the basement, near a secondary exit, sheltered from the lenses of the photographers who worked for girls’ magazines. This also allowed her to avoid Ned’s approaches, which grew increasingly insistent and unwanted, and to take off whenever she wanted, without having to account to anyone.

The girl decided to spend that evening out, in the cold. Skating on the wide streets of the city allowed her not to think of the absurd situation she was experiencing. Often she compared her old existence with the new one, but she forced herself to think of other things in order to draw the necessary sums. She accelerated, focusing on the obstacles in the street and timing herself to avoid them, blending into the wake of the objects that faded behind her.

Although she now had everything she needed, she didn’t give up the habit of stealing things; she did it for necessity, so that she could still be her own mistress and stay independent. She took things with the indifference of a shadow that stretches out on the asphalt in the evening, and then ran away with the casualness of someone who is late for dinner.

Having no more need to steal, she grabbed whatever she found without thinking over it too much; her only limit was to snatch small objects which were easy to handle.

In a small supermarket she had seen the same diary of the first day she had arrived there and had taken it without a real reason. Once she got back home, she found a series of black pages to be filled. “The perfect secret diary for an emo” she had thought, throwing the diary on the bedside table near the bed.

A few nights later, the girl wandered through the streets with an idea in her head, a fixed thought that seemed to her to be incessant and unhealthy. She slid into a dark alley and found herself in a neighbourhood she had never seen before.

The dimly lit streets and the poorly cleaned place put her in check, she saw a store open 24/7 and slipped inside.