A Neon Darkness

by Lauren Shippen

  “You haven’t moved in at all,” someone pants from the doorway, and I look to see Marley carrying a stack of boxes in his tree-trunk arms. “Last I checked, I was the one doing all the moving.”

  While still taking the time to tease Marley for his “woe is me” attitude, the rest of us start to settle in. I’m not about to go and get all sweaty lugging boxes up the stairs, and I don’t have any possessions to contribute to the loft anyway, so I make myself busy by stacking Blaze’s stuff in the corner, ready to be moved into a room if he comes back. I’d never say it to the others, but it doesn’t sound like his return is all that likely, and it’s definitely not happening that soon.

  * * *

  Alex wakes up sweaty and gasping, like he always does. He automatically pats himself down, checking for scorched clothes, for bits of flame. All his hands find is his damp, un-singed T-shirt.

  For a brief moment, Alex wonders if maybe he’s finally fixed. Maybe they did it. All that pain—that blinding pain he wasn’t sure would ever stop—was worth it.

  The wondering is interrupted by the realization that Alex doesn’t have any idea where he is. It’s dark; he seems to be lying on the ground. There’s a vaguely familiar smell—dust and metal and mold. Did he light up somewhere? How long has it been since—since—

  The last thing he remembers is meeting the strange, tall man in an alley and then … burning. Pain, so much pain. But there’s hardly any pain at this moment—a dull smoldering in his torso, but he’s used to that by now. He’s dealt with far worse.

  Alex needs to go home.

  * * *

  Life settles. Marley pops in and out in the way he always has, though we all see more of him than before now that he lives closer to his classes. Neon continues to work at the bike shop, to which she very happily commutes on a nice Kawasaki triple, a bike she mentioned she’d always wanted and that I managed to procure for her after some sleuthing on the Internet with a public library computer. Indah has quit Bar Lubitsch at all of our requests and with a little extra coercion from me. Though we try not to talk about the Tall Man—about how close he came to finding out about all of us, about how he seemed to know about Alex but not where he is now, hardly a positive sign—his presence looms over every conversation until I steer us toward happier things. But we all agreed that Indah’s staying employed at the place he had tracked her down to was a bad idea.

  So now she’s working at a strange, dark downtown dive where, as she describes it, the patrons don’t tip nearly as well and the floor is always sticky with beer. But she also isn’t paying rent and is finally, finally happily settled into a committed relationship with Neon, which I feel partly—and proudly—responsible for.

  The first few days in the loft, we all shuffled bedrooms, trying to figure out exactly how we fit into this space. It felt strange for any one of us to claim Blaze’s room as our own—like doing so would be admitting defeat—so we moved his things from my careful stack in the living room back into his bedroom, where they wait for him, gathering dust.

  Neon and Indah naturally shared a room, having spent the majority of their time at one another’s apartments, and I finally ask Neon about it one day while we’re hauling unpaid-for groceries up the metal steps of the former warehouse where the loft is situated.

  “What do you mean, what am I going to do about it?” she huffs, a few steps above me, carrying far more bags than me, my weak and flabby arms unable to lift as much as hers.

  “I mean,” I pant, “you guys seem happy. And now you live together … why not just make it official?”

  Neon doesn’t seem to have an answer for that, just continues to trudge up the stairs, a thoughtful look on her face. She’s seemed happy about the move, even though it involved moving in with someone whom she doesn’t seem to want to commit to, but Indah still has the moments of reluctance she had on the first day. She never seemed to be close to her roommates or care all that much for her old apartment, so I have to assume her dissatisfaction is about what everything is always about: Neon.

  I want Indah to be happy—want them both to be happy, even if there’s a little river of jealousy that runs through me every time Neon pays more attention to Indah than me—and I think this is the fastest way to accomplish that. They’ll be together and they’ll smile more and I will have done something correct and good for once. So I focus all my want on Neon’s committing to Indah, try to want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life, and, as is often the case, I eventually get my way.

  As I cook us Denver omelets one morning at Indah’s request, I look out over the butcher’s block kitchen island and into the wide expanse of the living room, where the two of them are playfully arguing about where to put one of Indah’s paintings. Until we moved in together, I didn’t even know that Indah painted. In the two weeks we’ve occupied the same space, I’ve learned to associate the smell of turpentine with her. I’ve learned that the tattoos on her arm are ones of her own design and that she has several more that she’ll never show me.

  Neon is beaming with the big, gentle smile she reserves just for Indah, trying to convince her to place the painting—a beautiful green and blue seascape covering an enormous canvas stretched over a crude wooden frame—in a position of prominence in the living room. I see Indah blush as she laughs, and Neon kisses the spot where the pink creeping up her neck meets the pink blooming on her cheeks.

  The smell of burning onions jolts me back to the task at hand. I take the pan off the heat and scrape at the burnt bits of vegetable, my stomach turning. It’s not a bad smell—savory and sharp and a little mouth-watering—but there’s still a roiling in my gut.

  I look back up at Neon and Indah, their easy smiles and light laughter, and I want so badly for them to turn their focus toward me, for them to smile at me, laugh with me. They’re too far away for that want to do anything at all, so I just stand there, stewing in the fumes of overcooked onions, tears stinging at my eyes. I don’t know if they’ve lingered from chopping up the onions or if they’re fresh from the jealousy battling contentment inside me, but I blink them away all the same.

  * * *

  “Fuck, finally,” a voice hisses out in the hall as I hear the front door slam shut.

  I was asleep a moment ago, I’m sure of it. Something woke me, some distant rattling. Someone fiddling with the lock of the front door.

  The room I chose as my own—Twiggy’s former room, I think—is nearest to the loft’s entrance. Like my selection at the house in the Hills, this room is the darkest and most secluded. It has the added benefit of having the quickest escape route. I’m content here, with the Unusuals—happy even, maybe—but there’s still a lizard-brain part of me that is always expecting to have to run away at the drop of a hat.

  In this particular moment, however, I wish Marley had this room. Or, at the least, that Marley, with his big, burly body, was sharing it with me. I used to be unable to feel fear—always understanding that danger was something that could be tamed, just like everything else in the world—but the Tall Man set my sense of reality askew.

  The hushed voice that just entered the loft didn’t sound like Marley—I know the way he enters the apartment when he’s coming home from a late night at the library and he’s almost completely silent. Neon and Indah are asleep in their bed; I saw them go in together, heard their light giggles through the thin door as they settled in for the night, so whoever just closed our front door is not one of us.

  I get out of bed as silently as possible, looking for anything in the room that might work as a traditional weapon if my typical, nonviolent methods fail. But I’m still in the habit of having as few possessions as humanly possible, so the room is as empty as every room I’ve had since leaving Nebraska. I guess I’ll just have to hope whoever is out there is like the majority of people in the world and that I’ll be able to politely ask them to leave and receive no pushback.

  As I shuffle toward my bedroom door, I hear a thud and another muffled swear, and
I nearly stop breathing completely. It’s probably just one of Blaze’s old roommates. My influence has probably worn off and they’ve broken back in to get something or try to reclaim the place. That’s what I keep telling myself as I inch closer and closer to the door.

  I turn the knob slowly, pulling the door open and peering into the hallway. It’s dark—whoever it is hasn’t turned on the lights, which doesn’t make sense if it’s one of the old occupants. Surely they’d know where the lights are if they lived here.

  As I step gingerly into the hallway, I notice some of Neon’s motorcycle tools scattered by the front door. I pick one of them up and tiptoe toward the living room, where the thud came from only moments ago.

  There’s definitely someone there—I hear shifting and shuffling, maybe even someone muttering to themselves. The sounds of a person moving around are starting to get drowned out by my rapidly beating heart, so loud I’m certain the intruder is going to hear it and come running.

  As I turn the corner into the living room, my traitorous, deafening heart leaps to my throat. There’s a shadow, skinny and compact, moving through the kitchen. They don’t seem to have seen me yet, focused on whatever mission they have.

  Their back to me, they open the fridge, illuminating their face. It’s a man, about my age, I think, sallow cheeked and pale. I’ve never seen him before. His face disappears as he goes digging into the fridge. I stand stock-still, holding my breath, wondering what in the hell his aim could be. Is he robbing us for our produce? A few beats of my thunderous heart pass and his head remains in the refrigerator, his shoulders relaxing slightly as he hangs on the fridge door.

  This is my moment. I can catch him by surprise, sneak up behind him, maybe even use the refrigerator door to incapacitate him in some sort of action-movie maneuver that I’m sure I couldn’t actually pull off if I stopped to think about it for more than a second.

  My feet padding silently across the floor, I move quickly and with more certainty than I feel. I’m three feet away from him, can see his shoulders pressing out of his thin T-shirt like twin blades, his skeletal body made even sharper by the glow of the fridge, and I’m lifting the wrench, preparing to bring it down on his head, when suddenly, he turns, and several things happen at once.

  His eyes are wide, frightened, and red, but I only get a quick glimpse at them before the refrigerator door closes behind him and we’re plunged into darkness. I’ve stumbled back in surprise, now out of reach of him but also too far to bring the wrench down on his head. As my spine collides with the island behind me, I hear him shout in shock as his back hits the fridge he just closed. And then, everything is light again and the man in front of me is very suddenly, and very completely, on fire.

  The blaze is towering and terrible, and the roar of the flames threatens to drown out all other sounds until I hear a horrible screaming coming from inside the fire. And then I’m shouting, in confusion and fear, and there’s more thudding and clattering and then a rush of footsteps and suddenly Neon, Indah, and Marley are behind me.

  “What the fu—”

  “Oh my god—”

  “Is that—”

  “Yes, I think it is!”

  “Well, help him!”

  “How?”

  Everyone is shouting over each other, over the fire that’s raging in front of us, that’s making my face break out in sweat but that doesn’t seem to be catching. I desperately want to run around the island and join my friends, hide behind the steadfast bulk of Marley, the warm comfort of Indah, the steel spine of Neon, but my feet are stuck to the ground in fear. The volume and pitch of the voices behind me rise and rise, then there’s a surge of fire to match, and then a flash of bright blue light, and then no light at all.

  * * *

  Alex looks down at the unconscious boy splayed out on the couch in front of him and wonders if he had a fourth roommate that he’s forgotten about.

  Seeing his three most reliable friends in his apartment—along with that fresh-faced, terrified stranger—was about as much of a shock as his entire body lighting on fire was. He was almost grateful for the searing pain of Neon’s electricity when it came, if for no other reason than to give him a moment of blissful unconsciousness.

  “Is he gonna be okay?” Alex croaks, his throat feeling like a dried-out tinderbox.

  “He’ll be fine,” Neon says, her face soft as she gazes down at the passed-out boy. “This isn’t the first time he’s gotten the Neon special.”

  “Who is he?” Alex asks.

  “The more important question is if you’re going to be okay,” Indah says gently.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” Alex shrugs one shoulder. “It’s not exactly my first time getting the Neon special either.”

  “Sorry about that.” Neon winces, settling on the arm of the couch. “It was the only thing I could think of to do with you on fire like that. Short-circuit you, short-circuit your ability. I didn’t mean to get this one caught in the crosshairs though.” She jerks her head toward the prone stranger.

  “Robert’ll be fine,” Marley says. Alex has a name finally: Robert. As to who—or what—Robert is, that remains to be seen. Alex doesn’t know when Neon found the time to take in another stray, but if they’re all living together, Alex has to assume this Robert is an Unusual. And, based on the concerned but simultaneously fearful looks on his three friends’ faces, Alex assumes that Robert is as dangerous as him.

  * * *

  “And you don’t have any idea where you were?”

  There’s a soft surface beneath me and quiet voices murmuring above me.

  “Somewhere in the desert, I think. It was hot. And I got a glimpse when they brought me in … it was empty. And so quiet.”

  My eyes flicker open slowly, the lids tacky and stiff. Every single muscle in my body is sore and tense, like my limbs have been filled with lead. I’m lying on our couch, my blurry eyes picking up three sets of familiar legs—Neon’s arms leaned on her dark knees, the fuzzy flannel legs of Indah’s pajamas standing in front of the coffee table, Marley’s pale legs stretched out from the chair to my right—and a fourth person, a young Asian man curled in a blanket on the armchair on my left.

  “And they just let you go?” Neon asks, not noticing that I’m beginning to rouse, her eyes completely focused on the young man. I want her to pay attention to me, to ask if I’m all right, turn her worried gaze toward me, but she feels distant and unreachable and every inch of my body screams in protest at the thought of moving.

  “I guess so.” I see a skinny shoulder shrug from underneath the blanket. “I woke up a few hours ago in some flophouse a coupla miles from here.” His speech—a raspy but melodic voice—becomes slurred, and he bursts into a fit of coughing.

  “Here,” Indah says, taking a few surefooted steps toward the armchair, “drink some more water.”

  “Thanks, Indah,” he coughs before taking the glass from Indah’s outstretched hand and gulping the entire thing down.

  A tense silence settles over the group and I use the opportunity to moan in pain, drawing everyone’s attention away from the newcomer and back to me.

  “There he is,” Marley says, his soft, light voice a balm to the ringing still reverberating in my ears.

  “What the hell happened?” I groan, trying my best to get my stiff muscles to push myself up to a sitting position. I feel the strong hand of Marley grab my arm and pull me up, and I come face-to-face with the intruder who was completely on fire what feels like mere minutes ago.

  “Hey, man,” he rasps. “I’m Alex.”

  “Robert,” I say automatically before correcting myself. “Damien. I’m Damien.”

  “Gotcha,” he says, and nods like something is clicking into place. “You can call me Blaze.”

  “Right,” I say, like I’m totally okay with the fact that this guy has barged in without so much as a by-your-leave and gotten all my friends to coo after him like he’s just returned from war.

  And then the penny drops, e
mbarrassingly late. I forgot why we were here, in this space, this dirty and defunct old factory that’s been converted to a wannabe-artsy-hip loft. It’s all because of him: because of Blaze. Or, at least, that’s how I framed it. That’s what I told them, the excuse I gave to get them all in the same place, to live with me, look after me, devote more and more time to me. And now here he is, and I’m wishing I just made them want to move into the house in the Hills.

  For the first time, I have a real chance to actually look at him, in light not caused by an enormous fire in front of my eyes. Like I thought, he seems to be around my age, but there’s a weariness to him. He looks gaunt—not in the way that Marley does, not like he’s been carved out of marble, but like something has been drained from him. The sharpness in Marley’s cheekbones is intentional, by design; in Alex’s, there’s a feeling of absence, like he’s been starved. He’s unnaturally pale, with dark circles under his eyes, sagging on his face, giving him an almost melted look. His hair is dark and greasy, and I can see his skinny fingers poking out from underneath the blanket, skeletal and long.

  “So you’re the guy that kicked my skeezy roommates out?” he rasps, his eyebrows lifting slightly in a challenge.

  “Uh, yeah,” I say. “Guess these guys caught you up?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  He nods and I wait for him to say more—for him to flinch or fawn. But he simply purses his lips, his eyes narrowing slightly in my direction. I want to know what he’s thinking, if he’s scared of me, angry that we’ve moved into his space; if he feels bad about nearly burning me alive or if he’s wishing he finished the job.

  “Someone wanna catch me up?” I ask, exasperated.

  “Blaze got kidnapped,” Neon tells me. “He only just escaped.”

  “Technically he didn’t escape,” Marley says, correcting her. “They just let him go.”