69-Zach
Streetlights cast stringy shadows across the pavement.
A car drives by; beams sweeping across the van like a spotlight. It feels like I’m watching my life from the outside, blurred and unreachable. I press my forehead to the cold window, fogging the glass with my exhale.
Somnium’s logo shines across my laptop, and I think about what Judas said.
You’re allowed to vanish and come back.
My fingers fly across the keyboard, typing whatever comes to mind. I write about their aesthetic and lore. The symbolism behind the names and the masks. How their music feels like a ritual that teeters the line between performance and transcendence.
I blink hard, rubbing my lids.
Letters dance as my vision swims. My throat tightens; but I plug in a microphone and drag out the feelings too deep to simply type.
Even though it’s barely a skeleton, I save the document and slam the laptop shut, knowing I can flesh it out and organize on the plane.
I shove it into its case, nearly forgetting the charger before doubling back and yanking it from the plug.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Neil asks.
He holds out the envelope like it’s fragile. My last advance until further notice. I caught a red-eye to LA from the Somnium show, slept maybe an hour, then spent the entire day packing up my apartment before coming here. Livewire Productions, my final stop.
“I have to be,” I say.
I’m standing in the middle of a life I don’t recognize anymore. I’ve been trying to stitch meaning into footage I feel detached from. My eyes burn from exhaustion and crying and whatever this new beginning is supposed to feel like.
Endymion came to me as an echo the night before saying, “You already know what you must do. Follow your heart, even if it is broken. For a broken clock is right twice a day.”
Staying is easier, but ease never healed me.
It’s time to stop running from my trauma and grief.
I slide the envelope into my bag and hand him a flash drive filled with files I’ve spent the last week obsessively combing through.
Raw footage, contracts, release forms, and the approved cut is all there.
Plus, the real trailer that’ll premiere before Somnium’s final show in a few weeks.
Neil reaches across the desk for the skinny silver stick, and a small, barbed ache blooms in my chest. I grab the box from the chair, filled with an empty coffee mug that hasn’t been washed in months, a few stray SD cards, and a crumpled hoodie I forgot I left here.
My fingers brush the cardboard, rough like sandpaper as I scoop it up.
Remnants of the version of myself who survived on scraps.
“Thank you for everything,” I say with a sniffle, extending my free hand to Neil.
“Damn it, kid.” Eyes going glassy, he stands, rounds his desk, and pulls me into a hug that smells like coffee and old leather. “If you start crying,” he mutters into my hair, “then I’m going to start crying, and I can’t have that.”
I giggle, small and fractured, then step back.
“Listen,” I say, wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand, “if the company or the lawyers or record assholes get on you about anything, I have backups. Everything.”
He waves me off. “Don’t worry about the schematics. I saw what you sent earlier. There’s nothing they’ll need from these last few weeks besides the final performance. Cooper can handle it.”
California isn’t home anymore. This is the last time I’m going to see Neil for the foreseeable future. I came out here to be close to Nicole. Now I feel her ghost in every corner of this city.
I need to honor her request and take care of Steve, because he is the closest thing I have to home right now. Time is precarious and the future uncertain. But I want to love as loudly as I can, even if I’m muted with heartbreak.
Even if the person I want to run to is the one I have to walk away from.
“Zach, wherever you go, whatever you do, you always have a place here. And don’t ever stop filming the cracks in people’s stories, the parts that matter. It’s a gift.”
“Thanks, Neil.”
That means more than he knows.
“Now,” he asks, looking me up and down, “are you really okay?”
I take a breath as my heart thuds steady for the first time all day. “I will be.”
Box in hand, I turn toward the hallway and begin my last walk through the building. The fluorescents hum, a familiar drone I’ve tuned out for years. Today it’s louder, like the building knows I’m leaving.
As I walk, coworkers wave; warm gestures that hit harder than I expect.
A nod from the editing bay, thumbs up from sound mixing, and a soft wave from Karen, the receptionist who always saves me the good pens.
The weight of the moments I’ve spent here cling to my clothes like burrs.
My footsteps clack against the linoleum, each one like the final notes of a song.
The flimsy box grows heavier, though nothing inside has changed.
I’ve changed, like a butterfly trapped in its cocoon far longer than needed, doubting the strength of its wings.
I push through the glass doors and step out to the parking lot. Distant rain moistens the smog. The early-evening sun warms me as it kisses my skin. Bright golden hour paints the black pavement in streaks of auburn that remind me of Nicole.
Stuffing the box into the backseat of my car, the cardboard scrapes against the stained roof’s upholstery.
It’s like something inside me is being packed away, too.
I slide into the driver’s seat and close the door.
The silence is immediate. Deafening. Inhaling deeply, I rest my forehead against the steering wheel.
This is it.
The hum vibrates through my bones as I start the engine. Pulling out of the lot is like peeling off a layer of sunburnt skin; painful but freeing. Miles of freeway stretch ahead, a ribbon of concrete leading east. Steady beneath me, the tires bustle a rhythm I can finally breathe along to.
The sun dips in my rearview mirror, bleeding out in infinite baths of pink, red, and purple.
I twirl my necklace and square my shoulders, feeling the weight of California settle behind me like a closing door.
My fingers grip the steering wheel, the leather warm.
I reach for the radio and flick it on. A familiar guitar riff swells, followed by a synth line I know by heart.
Then, a voice I could pick out of thousands.
Of all the stations and artists, it’s them.
As the chorus hits I turn the volume up to full blast and sing. I sing like someone who’s been trapped beneath a thin layer of ice for years, finally breaking the surface.
Blubbering, I weep with stupid, overwhelming joy. Even if everything else is falling apart, the music is still here. The part of him that belongs to everyone, including me, is still alive.
I don’t know what comes next, or if I’ll ever see Kit again. What I do today will either save me or break me.
But that has always been my superpower. Choice.
Choosing myself, even when it terrifies me.