Shows Over

Hot Mic, truly Hot Mic, lay at Eagles chrome talons, trembling. She’d lost her mind to a monster she never knew, but was all she ever thought about, and Charles would have no place in this tragedy.

But there was no traffic, no piston sparks or flying metal shards, no sound but the breeze. Whistling, through the still pipes and scattered paper, wind blowing away the frayed tatters so that perhaps the may one day heal.

“...Hell? The hell…” Eagle was motionless, oxidized flakes fell as several beaks downturned towards the girl, whose calloused, quaking hands gripped at the shard of bone. “How many people you got in here?...” Charles hit the floor like a sack of flesh as all of Cozy's extensions burrowed down into the deep, “Who’s keeping the damn lights on!?”.

Before he could begin to catch his breath, the blazing voice of a rambunctious and unkempt rogue, with a heart of gold and temper like dynamite, broke his haze and forced his attention up. “Charles!” Hot Mic knelt up, staring daggers into the man like a war general, “ For the love of God man, just stop trying!”

“Finally-” Furmo’s arms shook beneath, and he collapsed to the floor as a torrent of wind and whistles flowed around him, “Some clear instructions”.

The world whipped though a flurry not of man made alloy, but the winds and clouds of nature. A true storm that no bird burdened by the weight of metal could possibly soar through. And when it all faded around them, Cozy McCrea, now more human than machine, lay kneeling with Charles, beneath the girl. Scarred and barely upright, but upright none the less, in the bloodied and smoking scene of the Orenda slaughter.

Just ahead, a truck littered with plush and human viscera alike sat, its plate obscured by thick crimson blood.

“Don’t you dare girl…” Cozy wheezed out, voice ground with rust and tar. Hot Mic turned away, and stepped a convulsing sandaled foot over one body after another. Closer she approached, till a thin sharp tube pierced through her tendon, spraying more fresh blood onto the plate. “Dont, you dare! You disgusting little hick, you-!” Cozy's wide eye was obscured by melting blackened slag as his shell oozed off, only catching the girl's jittery smile before turning back away again. Hot Mic bent down to the license plate, holding out an ash stained palm across the blood of those she loved.

“No no no! Charles stop her, she’s damn crazy she’s-!” Cozy thrashed like a trapped animal beneath the pig iron, but it all fell on deaf ears. Charles was doing as he was told, he was a proxy, he knelt while others did the work. Red and black and internal human colors of all kinds spilled from the hood of the truck, soaking the animals that hung from it and Hot Mics hair alike. But the blood of her family had always flowed through her, and in one motion she wiped it away clean.

“Virginia Phnx 6913, now I know you.”

The whistling in the breeze passed away, Hot Mic took the wheel, and Cozy McCrea was now only just a man. The Truck dissolved into rusted dust on the last breaths of wind, reflecting sun in the strange, cloudy grey skies of Shrinktown.

White static formed around Charle’s vision, faint whispers off in the back of his mind, a dark voice beginning to take form. He watched as the parasite was dragged off by tendrils of fur and flesh beneath the pavement, clawing and biting for any kind of purchase in a world he no longer had any power over. “What are you going to do with him?” Charles spoke up to the girl, who strolled back towards the fairy light adorned trailer way in the sun bleached distance.

She turned back, nodding to Charles as he began to awake, “I think we’re going to sleep in just a bit longer, you have a good morning Mr.Furmo.” and white haze took him home. 

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“A delicious Mint Peanut candy, our sponsor for today's programming. We thank you for joining the night shift with us, and wish you all a wonderful day.” Charles immediately reached for his glasses, wiping the sleep sand from his eyes and slipping them into place. The memories of his dreams would crawl back in increments, as all dreams eventually did. Pieces particularly came together as he was informed of his employers passing from a stroke in the middle of the night. Dead before he hit the ground, as if his mind had been swept off somewhere else.

But some things he would never know. However long Hot Mic kept Cozy in those fleeting moments, surely they must be awake now, physically, hundreds of miles away from each other and himself. Just a nightmare, that was his punishment, but somehow Charles suspected McCrea was still there now, at the Orenda, trapped in many ways, suffering greatly. But what did he really know in the end? After all, Charles Furmo was just a man.

The End