65-Zach
A knock at the front rattles my throbbing brain.
I woke up hungover. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m still drunk.
“Come in,” I say, though it’s one of his buses.
I wipe my cheeks quickly, hoping the puffy redness isn’t obvious. Today’s my last interview with Judas. With everything that’s happened, I’m terrified of how people will interpret the footage, the entire damn documentary.
Judas opens the door and climbs the skinny metal steps. He’s not the man who held me as I fell apart, who explored every exposed inch of me, inside and out. This is the persona that keeps him safe, an indestructible wall between Kit and me.
“Hi,” he says from the far end of the skinny aisle, lingering next to the driver’s seat as if contemplating whether or not to bail. With a couple slow strides, he’s before me, and the world narrows to the space between us.
“Hi,” I parrot, clearing my throat. I reach for the voice-distorting microphone on the tiny square table, lifting it in offer. “May I?”
Judas dips his dimpled chin with a small, controlled nod. I clip the mic to his cloak, fingers steady even though my pulse isn’t. He’s still as stone, watching me as he sees more than I want him to. I’m careful not to touch him. If I do, I’ll break whatever fragile boundary we’re pretending exists.
He’s close enough that I smell his woodsy musk, like cinnamon-laced tobacco steeped in honey tea.
It clings to the paint on his skin, mixing with the iron tang of whatever Alyssa used to set the red across his jaw.
His chest rises, the movement shifting the fabric just enough for me to glimpse skin.
Red pigment doesn’t hide the goosebumps crawling up his neck.
We’re suspended, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Do you mind saying a couple words?” I ask, adjusting audio levels on my laptop.
My mouth tastes like metal; a sour burn from last night’s vodka drying the back of my throat.
“I’m sorry.” His accent filters through the speakers, crisp and resonant, too steady for how wrecked he looks.
The admission hits me like a blow. My ribs feel like they’re being battered to splinters. I want to crawl into his arms. He doesn’t know about last night; how badly I messed up.
“That’s good,” I say, my voice coming out thin.
“Zach, please—”
“The camera’s on.” My shoulders droop, deflating like a popped tire. He looks down, jaw tight. “We have contracts to fulfill,” I remind him gently, centering the frame.
I gesture to the booth. He slides in, stiff and uncomfortable, fidgeting with the rings on his painted fingers. Metal clicks softly against the tabletop to a nervous rhythm.
“Okay.” He nods once, straightening in the skinny space. “I’m ready.”
I tuck my forearms against my ribs so that my hoodie sleeves don’t ride up, and I slide in across from him.
My knees bump his under the table. It wobbles, barely big enough for one person, let alone two.
The camera’s little red recording light blinks between us like a warning, but I don’t have a choice.
“Judas, you talk about the people you want to reach.” I clear my throat, adjusting my mic pack so it doesn’t dig into my hip. “But what about the people who want to reach you? Does that responsibility ever weigh on you? Change how you write, or continually show up concert after concert?”
His fingers, tapping a restless tempo against the tabletop, freeze mid-beat. He exhales through his nose, slow and controlled, dragging a hand across his jaw. The gesture smears the paint.
“Most people don’t simply listen to Somnium.” Judas’s jaw works, a muscle ticking at the edge. “They build their lives around the experience they’ve created, desperate for something to hold onto.”
Worming in the booth, his broad shoulders brush the vinyl-lined wall beside him.
Our knees bump again, but he doesn’t retreat, letting the touch hum between us.
It buzzes loud enough to make my headache pulse.
I swallow hard, forcing myself to breathe, focus, and pretend I’m not sinking into the single point of contact.
“People see what they need to. Always have. Always will. I can’t control that.” He drags his thumb along the edge of the table, scraping at a chipped bit of laminate. “I can only control what I give. And even then, it’s no longer mine once it’s out there. But when they reach for me—”
His leg starts bouncing a rapid, nervous staccato. It vibrates up my knee, heating the space between us with its friction.
“It’s not really me they’re reaching for.
It’s the idea; their singular interpretation.
I’m just a bloke who writes songs in the dark then hopes that they land somewhere soft.
” Judas glances toward the narrow window, blackout curtain drawn.
“So yeah, it changes how I show up in the sense that it’s the very reason that I do. ”
His profile is all square jaw; the mask clinging to the contours of his high cheeks. It was meant to render him untouchable, unknowable—a creature carved from mythos and shadow. But up close, it doesn’t look invincible.
It looks dilapidated.
Narrow slitted netting, once razor-precise, has frayed; stretched enough that the faintest glint of skin pokes through the sockets. Tiny fissures spiderweb across the shiny crimson glaze, cracking like dried clay.
The getup, once terrifying, larger than life, seems reduced now, like an abridged manuscript that’s been stripped of its shiny, poetic prose.
His hood, usually a perfect drape, sits askew, one side slipped back to reveal a patch of snowy-blond hair at his temple, flattened from sweat. The dark cloak wrapped around him seems heavier, the chain link accessories dulled and tarnished, no longer gleaming with that stage-born menace.
Less armor, more burden.
He leans back, but barely; the booth doesn’t give him much room. His long fingers tap against the tabletop, a live wire of nervous energy he can’t disguise. When he finally looks at me, the persona slips, and Kit appears beneath Judas like a double exposure.
I’ve never seen him this unguarded—not offstage or unmasked.
“Does it weigh on me?” Judas reaches for the edge of his cloak, smoothing the fabric between his fingers as if grounding himself in the texture. “Of course it does. But if I think about it too much, I’d never step on a stage again.”
My breath stutters, traitorous, because I still want the version of him I can’t have. The man underneath.
“Speaking of touring and writing,” I continue, forcing myself back into interviewer mode, even as my pulse skitters, “how does this take a toll on you? You write, compose, do background vocals, layering, guitar, piano, and most of the songwriting. What does that process from song to tour look like?”
“It’s a lot of labor, both creatively and physically. There’s certainly a moment of hesitation between album creation, completion, and release. I doubt. But at the end of the day, I assure myself that sharing these thoughts, these pieces of my mind, my emotions, is worth it.”
“When you’re onstage,” I say, leaning forward, elbows braced on the edge of the table, “you’re this myth.
But here—” I gesture between us. His knee keeps brushing mine because there’s nowhere else for it to go.
“You’re just Judas. Does talking like this ever feel like peeling back too many layers?
Like you’re giving away something people aren’t meant to see? ”
His throat works around a swallow, the nervous energy spiking.
“I always thought I spoke enough through my lyrics,” he says quietly. “Speaking like this, openly, plainly, it’s different. Less poetic. More vulnerable. It terrifies me.”
“Why?”
I gather my sleeves in my sweaty palms. He catches the movement, quick and instinctive, before he forces his gaze back to the window.
“Because it humanizes me. But through this journey I’ve realized that, under Judas, I’m still human,” he says, the words scraping on the way out as if it cost him something vital.
“A very wise person once asked me why I felt people who found solace in my lyrics wouldn’t want to hear more of what I have to say. ”
“And?” A mess of emotions dig through me, tunneling themselves into an ever-expanding maze.
“I suppose it wasn’t that I believed they were disinterested. It’s that I fear they’d give my words more authority than they deserve. I don’t want people forming their opinions based on mine. I don’t want that kind of power.”
His knee knocks mine again, and neither of us moves away.
“I don’t think that kind of power is in your control,” I say, catching the faint tremble in his hands.
Judas shifts again, straightening his spine. “I’m beginning to realize that.”
I open my mouth to ask another question; something about the next album, or the tour, but the words dissolve.
The booth shrinks, the space between us dense with everything we can’t say.
He reaches up, thumb brushing a flake of red paint from his cheek.
For a split second I think he might reach for me.
He doesn’t.
Whatever this was, or could have been, ends here. It has to. This is goodbye. Not spoken or formal. But it settles into my bones like a subzero wind chill.
This is my rock bottom. I can’t keep living like this. Kit revived parts of me I thought were dead, but it’s up to me to keep them alive. I’m at a crossroads, left with two choices.
Wallow. Or grow.
Alone.