Chapter Text
When Joel, putting away boxes in the basement, heard the unearthly screeching, his immediate thought was that Crow and Tom decided to modify their body parts again. But when he reached the living room, the two were sitting quietly (to his surprise) on the floor, reading some of Crow’s old comic books. The screeching was louder here than in the basement, undulating wails piercing the quiet of their new home.
“Hey guys? Do you hear that?”
“Hear what, Joel?” Crow said, beak buried in Batman and Robin Adventures: SubZero.
“That sound…it sounds like a cat’s stuck in the chimney, only we don’t have a chimney-”
“We don’t have a chimney?” Tom asked. “We have a fireplace.”
“That’s for decoration only. It doesn’t work.”
“How’s Santy Claus going to get in to give us our Christmas presents without a chimney?” Crow wailed. His sobbing added a non-harmonic counterpoint to the muffled shrieks that Joel now identified as coming from upstairs.
“Crow, remember that weird Mexican Santa movie? He has a key to get into rich Mexican mansions, I’m sure he has a key to get into lower middle class suburban colonials in need of some maintenance, too,” Tom said sensibly.
“Oh.” Crow shut up instantly and went back to reading.
“Tom, do you know what’s makin’ that noise?” Joel asked tentatively.
“Of course.”
“Mind telling me?”
“Mike’s singing in the shower.” Tom was nonchalant.
“That’s singing?”
“He thinks it is. Crow, Cambot and I have a different opinion.”
“Does he do that…singing…a lot?”
“Pretty much every shower. He likes to take long showers, too. Usually he gets through the first side of Moving Pictures before he comes out,” Tom explained. A sound not unlike a porkerina with a nasal blockage drifted down the stairs. “And now he’s doing the guitar solo in ‘YYZ’.”
“But I’ve heard Mike sing before, at Christmas. He has a pretty good voice, better'n mine. You and he sounded great together singing 'A Patrick Swayze Christmas’. What happened?”
“He’s doing Butt Rock. And in Butt Rock, it’s all about the falsetto.” Tom nodded his torso knowledgeably.
“And the spandex pants,” threw in Crow.
Joel had started upstairs to ask Mike to stop, and paused on the second step. Mike in spandex pants? filtered slowly through his brain. Then he realized if he barged in on Mike in the shower, he might see him naked. Naked and singing his heart out like an off-brand Geddy Lee. He wasn’t as disturbed by that image as he should rightly have been.
Joel turned back around. “I’ll be in the basement.” He had some earplugs down there by the power tools.