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Sometimes, when everything gets to be too much to bear, Melanie goes out for a walk.
Of course, "unbearable" is pretty much the baseline of her life right now, so she’s been taking a lot of walks lately. Increasingly often, those walks are at night. And through bad parts of town. Melanie doesn't seek them out intentionally. She just zones out for a bit, listening to the rhythm of her sneakers hitting the pavement, thump-thump-thump, and when she regains awareness, she's somewhere that looks grimy and sketchy, with strangers either giving her the side-eye or determinedly ignoring her as she passes. It’s practically a routine, at this point.
It feels like it should make her nervous. That kind of thing would have made her feel nervous, before...everything. It doesn’t make her feel nervous anymore. Now, it almost makes her feel...excited? No. Anticipatory. Like some part of her is waiting to see if something interesting happens.
Melanie isn't looking for a fight. She's not. She's not stupid. She's not a kid shoving some other kid to the ground because they called her a dyke, or a teenager breaking her fingers on some guy's jaw because he thought no meant convince me. She doesn't do that kind of stuff anymore. No matter how much she wants to. But she's a woman of a certain age walking alone in a big city at night, and if a fight decides to look for her, well, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. One less scumbag in the world, right?
...Melanie doesn't know why she just thought that. She's never killed a person. Hell, she's never even really hurt a person, sore feelings and stupid adolescent scuffles aside. Meat monsters that burst apart into gore like video game enemies when she stabs them don't count. Neither do smug shitbag CEOs who refuse to drink their poison, and taunt her about it afterwards. Melanie wouldn't kill a real person. Probably. Not unless she had to. Not unless they were trying to kill her first. Not unless they finally, finally gave her an excuse-
Melanie wrenches her thoughts back before they can slide too far down that spiral. Not an actual spiral. This isn't a Helen kind of problem. Even before she learned about the Fourteen, Melanie could tell the difference. She could look at Jon, with his eerie unblinking eyes, or Daisy, with her smell of blood and animal musk, and feel something in her mind say we are not the same. You are not the same as me.
No. The thorn lodged in Melanie's mind doesn't twist and shimmer and fray into stained glass around the edges. It doesn’t stare with devouring-deep pupils, or pace with restless clicking claws, or fade into wisps of cold fog. It pulses like a drumbeat and tastes like iron. It makes her want to cut things.
Thump, thump, thump. Melanie walks.
Anger has always been the hardest emotion to escape, for Melanie. Anything else - sadness, fear, worry, embarrassment - she can find a way to distract, to redirect, to turn it into something productive. Anger, though. Anger sticks to her. Fuses to her skin like hot tar, melting them together so they can't be separated. Pulls her down like quicksand and soaks into her pores. It taints everything around her, sours anything peaceful or pleasant she touches, until there’s nothing left but hate, hate, hate. It can take her days to dig herself back out, when she gets like this.
And the worst part is, some horrible, puerile part of her mind is almost inclined to find it fun. Chewing over a grievance until she's wrung every last drop of interest out of it. Coming back to the same old injustices again and again, hashing them out in her mind for the hundredth time as though she expects to find something new. Like the morbid pleasure of obsessively picking a scab, or the disgusted satisfaction of popping a pimple.
Sometimes it’s not even her own anger that catches her. She was a terrible internet drama hound when she was a kid. She would spend hours scrolling through stories of online cults, or crazy forum wars, or other people's bad relationship anecdotes, gleefully wallowing in vicarious outrage. It had felt cathartic, at the time. Getting mad on someone else’s behalf, rather than sitting and stewing in her own petty problems. Melanie knows better now. It’s been years since she let herself indulge that particular vice.
She also knows that sometimes there's nothing to do but hold on tight to her patience and wait for her anger to run out of steam. She can recognize when something isn’t going to let her go until she's worn herself out. Until she’s gnawed it to dust. Until she no longer has the energy to give a shit.
At least, that's how it used to work. Melanie doesn't tire out so easily these days. And she has a lot to be angry about.
(She used to fantasize about winning arguments. Finding that perfect combination of words to put someone in their place, humiliate them, make them regret whatever inane fucking thing they said to her. Nowadays, the things she finds herself fantasizing about are...worse.)
Thump, thump, thump. Melanie is standing outside a bar. The interior is dimly-lit in a way that could generously be called "atmospheric," and ungenerously be called "dark enough to keep people from noticing how greasy everything is until they’re too drunk to care." Through the front window, she can barely make out a small stage. A handful of musicians appear to be setting up instruments.
Melanie used to like live music, before...before. Not really for its own sake; she likes music as much as the next person, but she's not a serious buff, or anything. She’s not a hardcore fan of any particular band or genre. It was mostly just something fun to do with friends.
Melanie doesn't know if she has friends anymore. Co-prisoners doesn't really have the same ring to it. She’d made a bit of an effort, at first, sitting through a few awkward drinking sessions with the other archival assistants, trying to find a bit of common ground with people she’d have no reason on Earth to talk to, under any other circumstances. That’s all fallen to the wayside, of course. Everyone has their own problems these days.
Thump, thump, thump. Melanie goes inside.
The place is about as creepy on the inside as Melanie expected. It smells like fried food and old cigarettes. Drinking doesn’t even do much for Melanie, honestly, aside from making her more likely to bite somebody’s head off for no good reason. She orders a beer anyway, and sits down at the somewhat sticky bar, and tries to convey through expression and posture that she isn’t looking for company. It seems to work. Melanie’s resting bitch face is pretty potent.
For lack of anything better to do, Melanie watches the band setting up. One of the musicians - the one currently fiddling with a microphone - catches her eye. He's short, and rail-thin, and wearing a suit that Melanie can only describe as sleazy. That is a sleazy suit. Not the kind of sleazy a normal person would wear. Unrealistically sleazy, almost like a costume, ill-fitting and stained and tattered, like it was sewn together out of scraps of thin brown leather. Is it some kind of gimmick? What kind of gimmick would require someone to wear a suit that looks like it was fished out of a dumpster in a war zone? Some kind of post apocalyptic thing, maybe? Who knows.
As Melanie watches, the unrealistically sleazy-looking man starts doing a sound check. Testing, testing, testing. One, two, three. He says it almost sardonically, with a wry smirk, like he doesn’t care one way or the other if the mic works. Like it doesn’t matter. Melanie supposes it doesn’t. He’s not exactly playing for a packed house. Melanie wonders what they’re paying him. If they’re paying him. Dressed like that, Melanie wouldn’t be surprised if he just wandered in off the street.
Melanie continues to watch. The man, apparently deciding he’s done playing around with the microphone, takes a flask out of his pocket and sips. Can’t even be bothered to buy an actual drink, huh. Classy.
At that moment, they make eye contact across the room. The man pauses. Then he raises the flask at Melanie, like a toast. Melanie feels a flicker of recognition. She has never seen this man before in her life.
Thump, thump, thump. The anticipatory feeling is back. Why?
Melanie looks away. She feels herself fidgeting. Melanie has always fidgeted. She’s started doing it differently than she used to, since- since. She’s lost a lot of her usual little habits. The chewing the side of her index finger. The slight flutter of her hands when she's anxious or thinking hard. Nowadays, she thinks in rhythms. The snap of fingers. The tap of her toes. The drum-drum-drumming of her fingertips against the grimy countertop.
Thump, thump, thump. Melanie isn’t surprised when the sleazy-suit man sits next to her and smiles at her with crooked teeth.
"Always nice to see a fan," he says, apropos of nothing. His tone is casual. It sets Melanie’s teeth on edge.
"You have fans?" It comes out of Melanie’s mouth before she can stop it; the kind of unthinkingly bitchy comment that always gets her in trouble. This is why she shouldn’t drink in public.
He just laughs. "I do alright."
Melanie takes a deep breath and decides that she is going to be a normal person about this. She’s not a total bloody basket case. She is completely capable of making small talk with a vaguely creepy stranger in a bar without flipping her lid. "What kind of music do you play?"
He laughs again, like she’s making a joke. "You've heard it."
Melanie deliberately unclenches her jaw. "...no. I haven't."
He leans in closer, like he's sharing a secret. He smells like iron. "You're hearing it right now."
A flash of white hot rage snaps through Melanie. What’s this guy's problem? "I've never heard your music."
He leans back. He's still smiling. Melanie wants to punch his teeth down his throat. "Right. My mistake."
He taps his fingertips on the countertop. It's the exact same beat her toes are tapping against the side of the bar. The silence doesn't seem to bother him. It doesn't feel like silence. Melanie just now realizes there's no radio playing.
"You play music?" he says, after a moment. He says it like it's a given that the answer is yes.
Melanie shrugs. Her shoulders are tense. "Bit of piano, when I was a kid." Her mum's short-lived attempt to get some culture into her. It didn't work, obviously.
He just shakes his head. Laughs a rusty nail laugh. "Nah. That ain't you. You ever sing?"
Melanie hates singing where other people can hear her. She doesn't even like doing it as part of a group. The closest she'll get is mouthing along with lyrics at concerts. "No. No, I don't."
"Hm. Maybe you should start." Before she can ask what the hell he means by that, he stands. Nods at her, like he got something out of this conversation. Like they've come to some kind of agreement. "Enjoy the show."
He oozes back to the stage without a backward glance. Melanie realizes there's a knife clenched in her fist. She doesn't know where she got it from. She doesn't know how long she's been holding it.
She doesn’t put it down.
Thump, thump, thump. For the first time, Melanie starts to notice the strangely-dressed people scattered across the room, mixed in with the more usual assortment of bar patrons. A man in pajamas. A woman in a dress that looks more suited to a cocktail party than a dive bar. A girl in a hospital gown, of all things. Melanie wonders, in a disinterested sort of way, what that’s about. Is this some kind of dress up event? Like a Rocky Horror kind of thing? If so, it must be too obscure for her to have ever heard of it. Maybe it's some niche music scene thing. Nobody else seems to think there's anything strange about it.
And then the music starts, and Melanie no longer cares.
The music is incredible. The music is transcendent, like nothing she's ever experienced, not even that one time she tried magic mushrooms with Andy, and spent the whole day thinking everything she saw and heard was the most beautiful thing in the world. This is different. This isn't her brain chemicals playing tricks on her. This is music that speaks to her soul.
Melanie is out of her seat before she realizes what she’s doing. Her feet hit the floor to the crack of a snare drum. She adjusts her grip on the knife, and a guitar chord blooms in response. She’s crossing the room, weaving through a crowd of stock-still, wide-eyed, gape-mouthed watchers, and it feels like a dance; every step a harmony, every molecule vibrating in perfect synchrony, every movement both call and response. There is more music in the air than there are instruments on the stage, and suddenly Melanie realizes she can see it, can feel the way it pours out of every living body in the room like colorful twists of smoke. Pulses are quickening. Lungs are gasping. Pores are pouring out sweat. Melanie can hear them all, like the breathless build before a bass drop.
The beat pulls Melanie’s feet to the edge of the stage. She sees the man in the brown suit, his hands busy on his keyboard, a frantic blur of motion. He jerks his head at her, welcoming, and she joins him without hesitation. The microphone is there on its stand, with no one using it. Like it was waiting for her. Melanie, who has never sung where a person could hear her - who wouldn't even do karaoke, no matter how drunk she was, no matter how much her friends pestered her - grabs it.
When Melanie screams, the world screams with her.
All around the room, ears burst into blood. Melanie feels a bottomless wellspring of something overflow and flood out, pour through her and into every ear in the room, filling them up and running over. The building tension snaps in a glorious outpouring of sound; a thunder of drums, a clashing of cymbals, an exultant shriek of strings. All at once they realize they are free. They fall on each other in raptures of savagery so unrestrained they scream with the joy of it, and everything is wonderful and perfect and right.
As Melanie watches, the world bends itself to the song. Everything turns sharper and heavier and made for hurting. Every piece of blunt cutlery a dagger. Every bottle a bludgeon. Where the environment does not provide, they claw at each other with their hands, pummel each other with their fists, bite into flesh until teeth scrape against bone. Every note feeds the frenzy, which feeds back into them in return, driving the music to greater and greater heights of perfection, faster and harder and louder with every passing moment. Melanie wishes it would never end.
Melanie glances back at the man. He’s smiling at her, an I-told-you-so smirk, taunt and congratulation both. Without a second thought, Melanie lunges for him. Puts her knife right through his cheek. His teeth clench around it, gripping the blade, and he pulls it from her hand with a jerk of his head. He lifts one hand from his keys to grab the knife and yank it out of his bleeding face. Then he flips it around and offers it back to her handle-first, all while he laughs, and laughs, and laughs. This time, Melanie is laughing too. It is funny. It's the best joke she's ever heard.
Melanie sings all night.
-
Melanie wakes up to the sound of flies and a smell like raw steak. The light is dim, but she still squints, like she’s got a hangover. Morning or evening? She doesn’t know. Where is she? She doesn’t know that, either.
With slow, careful movements, Melanie looks around. She’s sitting on the filthy ground, in the juncture between a brick wall and a cluster of overflowing bins. The rubbish is buzzing with activity, but it’s not the only thing the flies want. Nearly every inch of Melanie is caked with something brown and flaky and itchy, and the flies seem to like the taste of it. Her skin prickles where they land on her.
Melanie waves the flies off. Her clothes feel stiff when she moves. She feels like she ought to be in pain, somehow, but every motion is limber and fluid, like she’s just finished a round of light yoga. Even the habitual tension in her shoulders is gone. So is the soreness in her jaw, from her bad habit of clenching her teeth. She just woke up in an alley in god-knows-where, covered in god-knows-what, but she feels like she just got back from a day at the spa.
Even Melanie’s phone is sticky with filth, when she takes it out of her pocket to check the time. The battery is dead. She puts it back in her pocket.
When Melanie goes to stand up, she becomes aware of something soft sitting on her lap, folded into a neat square. She picks it up and unfolds it. It’s a pristine black t-shirt. The logo reads "Grifter's Bone."
For lack of any better option, Melanie pulls it on, covering her own ruined shirt. Hopefully that will be enough to let her get back to her flat without getting pulled over by the cops, she thinks vaguely. The shirt fits perfectly.
It’s a long walk home.