Chapter 10
CARBON
JESSE
Ascensionism by Sleep Token
Iopen the medicine cabinet and reach past the toothpaste and the mouthwash to the prescription bottle tucked in the back corner. I shake out a capsule into my palm and stare at it, this tiny thing that holds the line between who I am and who I’d become without it.
I cup water in my hand from the faucet and wash it down, then close the cabinet.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror, searching for someone I recognize. Some days, the face staring back feels like a stranger wearing my skin, a collection of features I can name but can’t quite claim as my own.
I crank the faucet to cold and cup the water in my hands, bringing it to my face where it hits sharp enough to steal my breath. I do it again, and again, until the shock settles into something steadier, until my fingers stop buzzing and my chest loosens enough to breathe without counting.
I grip the edge of the sink, water dripping from my jaw, and let my reflection come back into focus.
I wonder if Joey will come tonight. And I hate myself for it, because wanting her in that room means wanting to lie to her face for another night.
I drag a towel across my face, kill the light, and head for the kitchen.
I find the house quiet save for the tap of keys as Mom sits at the island, laptop open, reading glasses perched on her nose, a mug of tea going cold beside a stack of notes. She’s deep in whatever she’s writing; her posture has that focused hunch she gets when she’s chasing a sentence.
She glances up when I round the corner. “Heading out?”
“Dylan’s got some studio time tonight.” I let the lie slide out easy—too easy. “Wants me to lay down some guitar tracks for a project he’s producing.”
“Have you eaten? I can make you something.”
“Mom.” I stop at the pantry. “Last time you made me something, the smoke alarm was so loud I thought the neighbors were going to file a noise complaint.”
“That was one time.”
“It was an omelet. It shouldn’t have involved the fire extinguisher.”
She pulls her glasses off and points them at me. “I will have you know that was a perfectly good frittata.”
“It was carbon.”
“It was caramelized.”
I grab a protein bar from the shelf. “This is safer for everyone.”
“You and your father are food snobs,” she says with a smile, turning back to her laptop. “I write bestselling books. I don’t need to cook.”
“And we’re all grateful you’ve made peace with that.”
She narrows her eyes, fighting the smile pulling at her mouth. “Get out of my kitchen,” she teases, and I laugh.
But then the humor fades from her face into something softer as she studies me, the kind of attention that makes my throat tighten.
“You look tired.”
“I’m good.” I’m always good, until I’m not.
She holds my gaze a beat longer than comfortable. Mom has a way of looking at me like she’s checking the weather behind my eyes, reading conditions I haven’t reported yet. She never pushes, never pries, she watches, and she waits, and she trusts me to come to her when I need to.
And that trust makes the lie worse.
“Don’t stay out too late,” she says, turning back to her screen.
“I won’t.”
I bend to kiss the top of her head as I pass. She smells like chai and vanilla, grounding and familiar. Her hand comes up to squeeze my arm, a quiet I love you that doesn’t need words.
I shove the guilt into the same compartment where I keep everything else I can’t afford to feel before a show.
I roll my shoulders and shake out my arms, letting the tension drain from my wrists down through my fingertips. I flex my hands open and closed, loosening the joints, then wrap them around the neck of my guitar and feel the strap pull taut across my shoulder.
I glance over at Stella. Bass slung low, chin lifted. I let my mouth curve into a grin and she raises her fist. I knock my knuckles against hers.
We move through the corridor toward the stage where the crowd’s energy bleeds through the concrete and steel walls, a living pulse I can feel in my chest.
When the stage lights drop to black, everything fades to expectant murmurs.
I step into the darkness and find my mark as the guitar settles against my body. Luke’s atmospheric piano melody drifts through the venue first, haunting notes that seem to emanate from the walls themselves rather than any visible source.
I’ve been doing this for weeks now, and every time I step onto this stage something clicks into place. It stops being about me. It becomes about the music. Only the music.
As soon as I step forward and play the first chords, the crowd disappears. I don’t look at them. I never do.
My focus narrows to the fretboard beneath my fingers, the way the low E string buzzes against the pickup when I dig in hard enough, the growl of the distortion pedal when I stomp it on the downbeat.
When I nail the high note on the pre-chorus, Luke catches it in real time, layering a harmonic beneath my voice that doubles it into something haunted and full.
The monitors feed everything back to me in perfect clarity.
Stella’s bass threads beneath my guitar, Tommy driving the kick drum into my spine, Luke weaving those eerie synth pads between his vocal layers until the whole room feels like it’s breathing.
This is home, the place where the scattered pieces of me coalesce into something consecrated. Behind the mask, I’m the music, unfiltered and immediate.
The music carries me forward, one song folding seamlessly into the next. When the guitar solo hits, I disappear into it, fingers moving on instinct, finding notes I don’t consciously reach for. The melody rises, swelling and bright, until it feels like it lifts me clean off my feet.
I cup my hand around the mic to pull the sound inward, darkening it, like I’m singing into someone’s ear instead of across a room full of strangers. I drive the pressure up from my core instead of my throat because I learned the hard way what happens when I shred my cords two songs into a set.
I open my eyes, and that’s when I see her.
The jolt hits me like a missed step on a staircase, sudden and full-body. Every carefully compartmentalized thing I shoved down in the driveway comes flooding back in a single breath.
She stands in the crowd as if the room was built around her, claiming every inch of space without moving at all, and when the lights catch her face the rest of the venue drains of color, noise, until only the shape of her remains.
A reckless hunger shifts inside me, subtle but undeniable, like the instant before lightning strikes, when the air turns sharp and every nerve lights up. The mask stops feeling like armor and starts feeling like permission.
I move to the edge of the stage, pulled like gravity.
The lyrics spill out as I wrote them, but her presence rewrites their meaning—what started as distant poetry becomes a confession, alive and aching.
Not because the words are new, but because she’s finally here to listen.
Every line about loving someone untouchable, every verse about longing from a distance, it’s always been for her.
In the quiet of your breathing,
I find my altar,
Every heartbeat is a hymn
I’ve memorized,
But these hands were built for reaching through the darkness,
Not for holding onto light that isn’t mine.
Her eyes close, her head tilting back as her hair falls over one shoulder. She moves with the rhythm, her hips and shoulders surrendering to the music as it sinks into her. When she opens her eyes, they’re already locked on mine.
I sing the chorus directly to her, my voice cracking on the high notes, not from technique, but from the worship lodged deep in my chest. Behind the mask, I’m offering her everything I’ve never had the courage to give. The music becomes our communion, the sacrament we should have shared years ago.
The bridge approaches, and I make a decision on the fly.
Instead of the full-band explosion we planned, I strip it down.
I tilt my head toward Stella in a slight shift of posture that tells her everything she needs to know.
The rest of the band follows, and the venue falls into silence, save for my guitar and the words that pour out like a confession.
If I shed this skin of shadow, would you witness
The devotion carved in bone beneath the flesh
Or would you see just another broken vessel
Learning how to drown in shallow reverence?
The full band crashes in for the final chorus, and I let everything go.
Years of wanting her, months of hiding, weeks of pretending this secret doesn’t bleed me dry, everything pours into these last few minutes like ink spilling from an open bottle.
My voice cracks and soars, my fingers tracing patterns on the fretboard that feel like a prayer, and in these suspended moments, the distance between us dissolves into something raw, undeniable.
Her brow pulls tight, recognition sparking in her eyes. She tilts her head, tracking every shift, every breath, and something settles low in my chest with quiet certainty.
She sees me.
The song ends in a cascade of feedback and cymbal crashes, and the crowd erupts, but I barely hear them because all I can see is Joey and all I can feel is the wreckage of what I’ve done.
My chest tightens and the room tilts as I struggle to breathe through the mask, unable to think past the roar of blood in my ears.
I unplug my guitar with shaking hands and head straight for the side exit without looking back at the band, without acknowledging the crowd still screaming for an encore.
I push through the backstage door into the narrow corridor with the guitar still strapped across my back, and the loading dock exit glows ahead like salvation.
Every coherent thought has escaped me except for getting the fuck out of here, making the noise stop, and loosening the tightness in my chest.
The SUV waits in the alley with the engine running, and I slide into the backseat and slam the door behind me.
“Go,” I tell the driver, my voice hoarse. “Just go.”