Ashes Of The Phoenix

“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'.