Chapter 12 – REX
Chapter
Twelve
REX
The mirror is my worst fucking enemy.
Always has been, but tonight it's particularly vindictive, reflecting back something that makes my brain short-circuit like touching a live wire.
The fluorescent bulb overhead flickers—I should replace it, have been meaning to for weeks—casting everything in that special shade of institutional despair that makes even healthy people look half-dead.
I'm not healthy people.
My hands shake as I reach for the mask straps, fingers fumbling with the buckles I can usually work blind. The leather's stuck to my skin in places where sweat and something else—pus, probably, fuck—has created a seal that pulls when I try to remove it.
Just rip it off, you coward.
I rip it off.
The white noise hits immediately, a high-pitched whine that starts in my ears and spreads inward until my entire skull feels like it's vibrating.
My vision fractures—not blurring, but fragmenting, like someone took a hammer to a mirror and left the pieces hanging in the frame.
I can see myself in sections. The left side of my face that's still recognizably human, the right side that my brain still refuses to process as part of me.
It's a defense mechanism. Has to be. Because if I actually saw what I look like—really saw it, absorbed it, accepted it as real—I think I'd put my father's old service pistol in my mouth and finally do what I've been too chickenshit to do for ten years.
The infection has spread.
Even though my eyes keep sliding away from it, unable to focus anywhere near the scars, I can see red streaks spidering out from where Bells's blade caught me, angry lines that trace along what used to be my cheek before the fire melted it into abstract expressionism.
The fever makes everything feel like I'm watching myself from outside my body. Like this is happening to someone else, some other poor bastard who made the mistake of surviving when he should have burned.
I grab the antiseptic from the medicine cabinet, the industrial strength shit I buy in bulk from a medical supply place that doesn't ask questions. The bottle's almost empty. Add it to the list of things I need to do but won't because I'm too busy destroying my life one move at a time.
The first touch of antiseptic to infected skin makes me bite down on my lip so hard I taste copper.
Don't scream. Don't you fucking scream.
I don't scream.
Instead, I bite harder, feel my teeth sink into flesh that gives way too easily, feel blood well up and spill down my chin.
The pain in my lip is clean, sharp, understandable.
Not like the infection, which burns and throbs and pulses with my heartbeat, reminding me that I'm still alive, still trapped in this ruined meat suit.
The ointment comes next—the special compound I have to order from overseas, the only thing that keeps the constant sores from the mask from getting worse.
It's thick, greasy, smells like death's asshole.
I slather it on with shaking fingers, and the pain that shoots through my face makes my vision go white at the edges.
My hands grip the sink so hard my knuckles crack. The porcelain is cool under my palms, grounding, the only thing keeping me from collapsing to the bathroom floor and curling into a ball like the pathetic waste of space I am.
Hospital. You should go to a hospital.
The thought floats through the fever haze, logical and sensible and completely fucking pointless because I'd rather die than let some doctor see what's under this mask.
Rather die than endure the strained look in their eyes that says this is the worst thing I've seen all week, but I'm professional enough not to show it.
Death seems like a reasonable alternative at this point.
Preferable, even.
The mask goes back on.
It hurts worse than taking it off. The fresh ointment makes the lining slide against raw flesh, the pressure against the infection making my eyes water.
But I buckle it on anyway because I sleep in this fucking thing.
Have slept in some version of it every night since the accident.
The prosthetic one, the one designed for comfort, which is a joke.
The reflection stares back at me, human again, mask firmly in place, blood on my chin from where I bit through my lip, sweat beading on the exposed parts of my face.
I look like shit. Feel worse. But I'm upright, and that's going to have to be enough because Vespyr has a session today and I'll be damned if I let a little thing like sepsis stop me from finishing what I started.
Nash wouldn't want this.
The words echo in my feverish skull almost as if there's a tiny angel perched on my shoulder, whispering in my ear to go to the fucking hospital and live another day. The voice is right. Nash wouldn't want this.
Nash is dead.
What Nash wants is fucking irrelevant.
Foxhole Studios looks like it's underwater.
That's the fever talking, I know that, but it doesn't make the psychedelic murals on the walls stop melting and reforming, doesn't make the floor stop tilting at angles that physics shouldn't allow.
I grip the door frame harder than necessary, taking a moment to orient myself before stepping inside.
The air conditioning hits me like a slap, making me realize I'm sweating through my shirt. When did that start? Great. Phoenix is going to be up my ass about that the moment he sees me.
"Rex?"
Here it comes.
Phoenix's voice comes from somewhere to my left, and I turn to face him, movements slower than they should be. He's standing by his drum kit, concern written all over his stupidly open face. "Jesus, man, are you okay?"
"I'm fine," I say, and my voice sounds like I gargled gravel.
"Your lip is bleeding."
Is it? I reach up, fingers coming away red. "Walked into a door."
"Bullshit. Did you get in another fight?"
"Leave it alone, Phoenix."
"Rex—"
"I said leave it the fuck alone." The words come out sharper than I intended, laced with enough venom that Phoenix actually steps back. Good. He should step back. Let me self-destruct in peace.
Rafael appears from the booth, dark eyes taking in my state. "You look like shit. You're—"
"Ready to work." I cut him off, moving toward my guitar. One foot in front of the other. Don't sway. Don't show weakness. Weakness is blood in the water and I'm surrounded on all sides by sharks who smell it no matter how hard I try to hide it.
The guitar strap settles over my shoulder, grounding me.
I can do this. I've performed half-dead before.
This is just another day of pushing through because the alternative is admitting I'm human.
It's easier to treat myself like an unfeeling monster because that's what I look like, and it's so much fucking worse if I'm human.
Bells walks in right on cue, and the universe laughs at my misery.
She looks annoyingly healthy. White hair artfully messy, honeyed eyes bright and alert behind her tinted aviators, an iced coffee drink that looks like unicorn shit with whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles in her hand.
"Morning, sunshine," Rafael calls to her, because he's apparently decided they're friends now. Great. Fantastic. Another complication I don't need.
"Morning." She shoots me a look that I can't quite read through the fever haze. Suspicion? Curiosity? Concern? Fuck if I know. Fuck if I care.
We run through the first two songs without incident, which should have been my first warning that the universe was just winding up for a bigger hit. Bells sounds good—better than good, which means the infection is having its way with my brain. Fucking itself clear through my logic centers.
Then we get to "Ashes."
Nash's song. Nash's favorite song, the one I know he wrote about the accident, about guilt and survival and wishing you'd died in someone's place. The one I can barely get through on my best days, and today is not my best day.
Bells starts singing, and something's wrong.
The arrangement.
She's changed the fucking arrangement.
"Stop." My voice cuts through the music like a gunshot. "What the fuck are you doing?"
She stops, eyebrow raised in challenge. "What do you mean?"
"The bridge. You changed it."
"I improved it. The original phrasing was awkward.
This flows better." She says it so casually, like she didn't just desecrate something sacred.
And she might not know it's sacred, but she does know she's pushing my buttons.
This is deliberate. She's testing me. Seeing how far she can go before I truly snap.
And I can't do a fucking thing about it.
Not because I'm not a vicious son of a bitch, but because she's a fucking girl. Because some fundamental wiring in my brain that survived the fire, survived Nash's death, survived everything, won't let me raise a hand to a woman no matter how enraged I am.
I see the satisfaction light her eyes the moment she realizes it. She's been pushing and pushing, waiting for me to react the way I would with any male singer who pulled this shit—with violence, with intimidation, with the kind of rage that clears rooms.
But I can't.
And she knows it.
My knuckles go white where I'm gripping the edge of the mixing board, the only thing keeping me from either collapsing or doing something I'll regret. The infection throbs. The fever makes the room tilt. And Bells stands there, waiting, daring me to prove her theory right.
Phoenix and Rafael have gone completely still, barely breathing, clearly expecting me to explode. To finally cross that line I've been dancing around for days. They don't understand why I don't. Can't understand, because they don't know what I know.
"Change it back," I say through gritted teeth.
"No."
"Change. It. Back."
"Make me."
The challenge hangs between us, and we both know I won't. Can't. Whatever combination of fucked-up wiring and ingrained conditioning is keeping my violence leashed, it's stronger than my rage. Stronger than my need to put her in her place.
And she's counting on it.
"You know what?" I push away from the mixing board, movements jerky and uncoordinated. "Sing it however the fuck you want. I need air."
The walk to the exit feels like miles. The floor keeps trying to trip me, the walls closing in, my vision graying at the edges.
I make it outside, barely, shoulder clipping the doorframe because my depth perception is more shot than usual.
The alley behind Foxhole Studios stinks like piss and rotting garbage, which would make me puke if I'd been able to eat a damn thing this morning.
I lean against the brick wall, letting it take my weight because my legs are shaking.
The infection's spreading, the fever's getting worse, and I'm doing exactly nothing about it because death seems like a reasonable solution to the problem of existence.
"Rex?"
Fuck.
Bells's voice cuts through the white noise in my head. Of course she followed me out. Of course she can't just leave well enough alone.
"Leave me the fuck alone," I mutter, not turning to face her.
"What's your problem?" She moves closer, and I can hear the aggression in her voice, the challenge. "You're being even more of a dick than usual today."
"You're my problem," I grit out. "You think you can just—" The words cut off as my vision does that fragmenting thing again, the world breaking into pieces that don't quite fit together.
"Shit." Her voice changes, loses the sharp edge. "You okay?"
The genuine concern in her tone makes something twist in my chest. I don't want her concern.
Don't want her to see me like this—weak, failing, barely holding it together.
The mask is supposed to hide this. I'm supposed to be invulnerable behind it, untouchable, the devil in the shadows that everyone fears.
"You don't know your place," I bite out, putting as much venom into the words as I can muster. "You think you can just—"
I try to push past her, to get back inside where I can pretend this conversation never happened. My shoulder clips her, then hits the doorframe because my depth perception is definitely completely fucked, and suddenly I'm stumbling, catching myself on the door handle.
"Rex—"
"Don't." I yank the door open, using it as leverage to pull myself upright. "Just fucking don't."
Inside, Phoenix is hovering like he's been waiting for me to collapse this entire time. Rafael's got that assessing look again, the one that says he's figuring out exactly how bad this is and whether it's worth intervening.
"We're done for today," I announce, because I can't do this anymore. Can't pretend I'm fine when every breath feels like inhaling broken glass.
"You look like you're going to pass out," Phoenix says warily. He knows something's up. Knows I never quit.
"I'm. Fine." I enunciate each word carefully on my way out to the parking lot, because if I don't, they'll blur together into nonsense. When I reach my car, I almost end up on the asphalt. Somehow, I manage to wrench the door open and fall inside.
The steering wheel is cool under my forehead.
The mask digs into my face. The infection throbs.
The fever burns. The passenger window is fogging up from my breath.
Or maybe that's just my vision going. Hard to tell anymore.
Everything's distorted, reality bending at the edges like a Salvador Dali painting.
Is this what Nash felt like at the end?
This disconnection from the physical world. This sense of floating away from yourself. This quiet acceptance that it's over and there's nothing left to fight for.
Did he think of me?
Did he want me there?
Did he die scared and alone, wishing someone would come, or did he welcome the darkness like an old friend?
I'll never know. That's the worst part. Not knowing if he suffered. Not knowing if he called for me. Not knowing if he forgave me for all the times I pushed him away, all the times I was too wrapped up in my own pain to see his.
My phone buzzes again. The vibration travels through the seat, through my body, but I can't make my hand move to answer it. Can't make any part of me respond to external stimuli. I'm locked inside my own head, prisoner to a body that's given up the fight.
I'm just tired.
So fucking tired.