Sing

Chapter One

Marcher was a year older than me when we met. I was 11. He had kind, tired, hazel eyes, short bone-white hair, pale skin, small teeth, and an almost permanent crooked smile. He was taller than me, and he pointed it out nearly constantly, but it always made me laugh. We lived together in the Mansion; a large blue house with two floors and a large garden behind it, nestled in a corner of the Forest close to the Beach. The Forest covers a moderate portion of the highest outer part of the Mindscape, and spreads from the Mansion halfway to Neon City. As for the Mansion itself, think of the house from Casper, only blue and hardwood with a lot more windows. There was so much light in that house when the sun was shining, and we would all go out and enjoy ourselves whenever we had the chance. Marcher and I would blow bubbles, or play tag, and sometimes we would just walk and not say a word to each other. Most of the time, though, we stayed inside the Mansion. After a while, though, the grey skies didn’t go away, and we all stayed inside.

By we all, I mean a couple of other Emotions. There was Paranoia, or Poison, as they wanted to be known, Ghoul, who was Sanity, Happiness, who changed their name to Alien, and Compassion, who wished to be known as Zombie. All of us got along well together, and we all enjoyed each other’s company. We had plenty of food, considering we lived in a place fueled by imagination, but in case you were wondering, the kitchen was huge. I mean HUGE. We had a walk-in fridge, freezer, and pantry stocked with never expiring food that was always fresh and ready to be cooked. I don’t mean all we had was canned goods, I mean the food could be something like leafy lettuce or carrots and it would never spoil in the fridge. Does that make sense? Anyways, as I was saying, we didn’t leave the Mansion for a long, long time, and it was around the second month after it started raining non-stop that Depression showed up.

Originally, Anxiety was on Depression’s side, but when the beatings were taken out on him rather than us, he switched sides. Depression, or Vampire as we called him, was an angry alcoholic. He was everything I feared the Host would become, and he was ruthless. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve been strangled, stabbed, kicked in the ribs, or had something made of glass broken over my head or thrown at me. Anxiety and I weren’t friends, but it was a little too late for me to notice that the more Anxiety was around, the more the Host suffered, and the more Marcher would disappear. It started as a few days, then a few weeks, then it was a month, and that became years. It was in the beginning of the third year that I told Anxiety we were going to look for him. Anxiety agreed, and we set off in a Microbus.

The drive to Neon City is long, and there’s always the constant threat of being attacked by Vampire as we go along. Anxiety is quiet and doesn’t say much, but he’s better than not having anyone at all. We’re not friends, and to be honest, I don’t know why I offered to help him hide from Vampire, but I did, and now here we are. Anxiety is like a monochromatic moving picture; he has no color to his skin, and everything about him is awash in greys and black. His eyes are black as pitch, and they’re easy to drown in, yet they’re empty, bottomless pits. His skin is pale and greenish grey, almost as though he were sick. There are dark rings around his eyes, giving him a ghoulish appearance. His lips are even grey. He’s thin, somewhere between healthy and emaciated. He’s wearing a black denim jacket over a black and pale grey striped turtleneck, a pair of torn up black skinny jeans (the tears were not intentional) and beat up black converse. The only thing not black or grey about him is his blood. He’s bleeding from his left knee, not profusely, but it looks painful.

I look away from him and instead turn my attention to the landscape passing us by. No, I’m not driving, Anxiety is driving, and I’m just here to give him directions. I think about Marcher as I stare out my window, remembering the many times we would drive to Neon City before it became Neon City. How much fun we’d have watching the parades, the candy we’d collect from it, and the amazing smells coming from almost everywhere. Everything was old fashioned in Metropolis, like an old town the Host would visit every now and then, a place where time seemed to have missed it, but slowly was creeping in. After the Host turned thirteen, we stopped visiting because of Depression, and because everything had become overrun by corruption and classism. Metropolis had been divided into two classes: Vibrant and Basic. If you were Basic, that meant you didn’t have a spark of creativity. There was nothing special about you. If you were Vibrant though, you were loud and proud, but not in a boastful or prideful manner, most of the time. Vibrant meant that you had a lot of creativity, and you did everything you could to show it. Most Vibrants would dye their hair, or get sleeves of tattoos, or maybe just wear clothing that others, mainly Basics, found to be outlandish or flamboyant.

Whatever the case, it didn’t matter, because soon after the classes were created, a corporation came in called F.E.A.R., which was just a fancy way of saying Fight Everything Against Reason. Many bought into the lie that Reason was the one behind FEAR, but by that time, they had all been brainwashed. Instead, Vampire ran FEAR with an iron fist, and demanded that the population be controlled through use of drugs marketed as supplements. I remember back in the early days of FEAR, being told that I had to take them as well. Marcher was off somewhere else when this would happen, and I would be forced to take the pills. No matter what I tried to do, nothing helped, and eventually, I was well on my way to becoming like them. Marcher often asked what was wrong with me when we got home, and I would tell him nothing of the aggressive hands holding me down, forcing my mouth open and shut again, making sure that I had swallowed the small, blue and white capsule.

He knew nothing of what happened, but he knew something had changed. He would tell me that my eyes weren’t as bright, that I looked smaller, that something was wrong, and he wanted to know what it was. He would ask me repeatedly to tell him, but truth be told, I didn’t even know what was wrong, so I couldn’t give him an honest answer. It was the last time we went to Metropolis, now Neon City, that I finally broke down and told him about what happened as we drove there. I told him about the pills, about the people who forced them into my mouth, how they wanted me to conform because in their eyes, I was different, and a threat, but not in the way Marcher was. He pulled over on the side of the road, held me close, and let me spill everything. I cried so much I thought my eyes would pop out of my head, but Marcher… He cried with me. He was a little angry and frustrated, but he took it in stride, and we continued on our way after he reassured me that it would all be okay.

It was the last parade we saw, and it was almost a depressing sight. Marcher’s favorite part, the marching band, sounded tired and almost mechanical, as though they had nothing left and were only doing this out of habit. The marching band uniforms were white and silver, everything about the parade was white and silver, for that matter. I hated it, and I could tell that Marcher was deeply upset by it. Something had happened here, and we needed to leave before it got us too. No one dared touch Marcher because he was an Emotion, and Emotions were like the equivalent of a mob boss or royalty: it was understood that no one touched them. Marcher stayed by my side the whole time, not leaving me alone for a minute, which made me feel better, and for once everyone stayed away from me.

I guess I forgot to mention why I’m so different. See, every Emotion has a Tattoo and a Talent. A Talent is like a superpower, and the Tattoo is connected, or resembles, that superpower. For example, Marcher had a Tattoo of a sunflower on the back of his neck, and his Talent was radiating light. I had no Tattoo, or Talent, for that matter, but my eyes would glow on occasion, which scared people. Everyone thought I was like them, but flawed somehow, so they decided that by shoving their pills down my throat I would change and ‘get better’.

Anyways, I’m brought out of my reminiscing by Anxiety who has pulled over on the side of the road. I look over at him, about to ask why we’ve stopped, but he beats me to it.

“You’re driving, unless we want to camp here for the night” he says softly, in a voice like distant thunder. I forgot that he smokes cigarettes.

Again, I’m about to ask why, but I’m answered by the sound of rain pounding on the roof of the microbus, as though it desperately wanted to get in.

“Yeah, we’re camping here for the night or until the storm passes,” I reply, to which he nods his head once before removing his seat belt and crawling into the back of the bus.

I follow him, and we both sit across from each other on opposite benches on either side of the small table between them. For a while, we say nothing, just listening to the rain.

“What do you think will happen when we reach Neon?” I ask, breaking the silence.

He shrugs and says nothing.

“Have you ever been there?” I ask, wondering what he has and hasn’t seen in the mindscape.

“Once. Depression took me there to see what was going on, and despite everything he showed me, I knew it was all an illusion. These people were all walking around in their lives, doing the things they would normally do, but everything was all muted in a way. Almost every Vibrant in that city is dead, institutionalized, in prison, or muted like everyone else.” he replied, looking at me with his dead eyes.

I say nothing and he continues.

“He also brought me there to see Marcher,” he confesses quietly. I look at him intently, shocked at this new information. “I don’t want to tell you what I saw.”

I nod my head slowly and watch as he looks out the window. He seems to be fighting tears, but I don’t make a remark about it.

“May I touch you?” I ask softly, reaching my hand across the table.

He freezes in place, and the thought runs through my mind that maybe I asked something a bit sensitive, but after a second or two, he looks back at me with an unreadable expression. I withdraw my hand, but before I can completely remove it from the table, one of his cold hands reaches towards me, and I slowly reach for it. His skin is impossibly cold, and when I look up from his hands, my jaw all but drops at the sight before me: Anxiety has changed. His once grey skin, now pitch black, except for our hands. I look at where my hand rests over his, staring in wonder at the flesh of my own skin covering the pale grey of his. The black branches of veins and arteries seem to fade naturally back into flesh as his wrist becomes his hand.

“Hideous, right?” he asks as he withdraws his hand.

“No.” I reply, and his head snaps back up to look at me. He’s no longer black as an endless void, he looks human now. “You’re not hideous, just very dark.”

We say nothing after that, but my mind is abuzz with thoughts of why Anxiety is the way he is. I wouldn’t put it past Vampire to call someone hideous or disgusting because of something like what Anxiety has, but I know that he needs someone to tell him that there’s nothing wrong with him.

“Are you hungry?” I ask.

“Kind of.” he replies after a moment and a sigh.

“Does ramen sound good?” I offer.

“Yeah.” he says.

I nod once, get up, and wander over to our bags and begin searching for bowls, chopsticks, hot water, and ramen. Five minutes later, I have two piping hot bowls of chicken ramen. I walk slowly back to the table and hand one of the bowls to Anxiety, and then take my seat across from him. We eat in silence, oddly disturbed by the rain outside, but it’s not tense. After we finish eating, I put the bowls and chopsticks into a shopping bag and set them next to our other bags. I make my way back to the table and once again we sit in silence.

“Have you ever thought of changing your name?” I ask him, wondering if he’s thought of doing so before.

“Sometimes I do, but I can’t pick one that I like or that I feel suits me.” he replies as he stares out the window. “What about you? How did you end up with Marky?”

I pause and think about my answer.

“The Host is the one who named me, and I guess they’re the reason why you can’t find one that sticks. Everyone has a name or nickname given to them consciously or subconsciously by the Host, and I think that there’s a reason why you haven’t gotten yours yet. Even Vampire has one, so I’m sure you have one too.” I reply, watching his reaction.

He laughs, but it’s short and empty, and the smile he gives me is just as vacant.

“I doubt the Host wants anything to do with me, or Depression.” he says quietly.

“Don’t say that! I know the Host is struggling right now, and that Vampire is the main problem, but They didn’t forget or want nothing to do with you. They just need some time. Maybe we’ll find your name on our adventure, as cliché as it sounds”, I reply.

“Why are you so optimistic?”, he asks, with an almost irritated tone in his voice.

“Because I have to be”, I reply without thinking.

“You have to be?”, he states more than asks. “Why?”

“Because that’s what my purpose is; to be optimistic and see the best side of things. Marcher told me to try and see the best in any situation, regardless of circumstances”, I reply after a moment of thought.

We say nothing for a while, and just sit in silence watching the rain pour down around us. It gets dark quite quickly, and Anxiety suggests that we get some sleep. I agree, and we make ourselves as comfortable as we can, and before I know it, I’m out like a light.