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christinescupofcoffee · 2 months ago

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dead man walking

Chapter Two: turn a blind eye

Krista waited for Alex there at the kitchen table with a cup of freshly brewed iced coffee in hand. She knew that she wouldn't be drinking coffee or having any sort of sugar for the next nine months, and even then she would have to stay away from it all. She couldn't help but think of Joey all the while. He would have made things better for himself and for her as well. He would have turned things around: she saw that side to him like no one else did before. The side that assured her that he was willing.

She gazed up at the lilies on the table before her and their narrow pointed petals, kissed with a light pink right in the middle there. Even from right across the table, she could smell them. Those flowers needed to be protected at all costs, much like how the glimmer of essence within her needed to be protected as well as Alex.

She hoped that he would be back soon enough, but she also hoped that he would take his sweet time with it all.

A slight wave of nausea swept over her but it was too late in the day for that, and Krista realized that a little bit of moving around would perhaps help her out with the feeling. She sauntered into the next room with one hand on the lower part of her belly and she swore that it had become ever so slightly rounder than she remembered. She shook her bright blonde head about to rid of the feeling within her, but they persisted regardless of what she did. She wanted to tell someone that she didn't feel good but no one else stayed with her in there in the house for the time being.

Krista rounded the short main support wall there to her right: to her left stood the small but cozy couch as well as a small window which peered out to the front yard and in turn the street: to think that that was to be a family room at one point. She kept on going until she reached the door to the hallway, which led back to her bedroom and the cozy main bathroom.

She spotted Joey's urn perched upon the shelf in the room, of which she took back to the kitchen table, and she set the urn down next to the vase. She returned to her seat there at the table and she gazed on at both. The late afternoon sun shone upon those white petals and the rim of silver on the top of the lid. The sole sound came from the wall clock in the next room.

She leaned back in the chair with her hands flat on the table in front of her: her engagement ring shone under the rays of autumnal daylight through the window before her. This big translucent gem nestled in between two black stones, now had to be put to bed along with Joey in the urn before her. Or perhaps she could save it for her child when they were born and took on a life all of their own. She adjusted it on her finger when she caught the sound of a knock on the front door, which in turn caught her off guard.

Krista scrambled back to her feet and hurried back into the next room, and she opened the door.

She was an older woman of middle stature, of which she stood below Krista's shoulders, complete with a full head of dark hair which carried a copper sheen within the afternoon sun and a face of milky smooth skin. Her pitch dark lenses indicated total blindness but she was as sharp as the emergency blade tucked inside of the tip of her walking cane: Krista had always wondered why she had a blade inside of the cane because she never saw her brandish it or use it against someone else for any reason whatsoever. Indeed, Joey had wondered about this himself right before things went downhill for him; she shivered and adjusted the edges of her knit white shawl.

“Mrs. Jones!” Krista declared.

“'Ello, Krista—Miss Belladonna, I should say,” Mrs. Jones greeted her with that thick distinctive New Zealander accent.

“I was wondering when you'd come back,” Krista confessed as she set a hand on her shoulder and guided her into the house. Mrs. Jones tapped her cane on the hardwood floor before her.

“Krista—” She stopped in her tracks and sniffled the air. “A man's cologne. Was there someone else here?”

“Um—yes. A boy named Alex. Well, he's not a boy anymore—he's twenty five years old as of this past September.”

“He's a boy to me, mind,” Mrs. Jones promised her as she led her to the kitchen table where she took the same exact spot as Alex prior to then, to the right of her. She cleared her throat and leaned her cane against the edge of the table. She then bowed her head a bit so Krista could see those tired, quiet eyes from right behind the pitch dark lenses. Without a word spoken from those lips, she lifted her head a bit and even though she had lacked that sight for years on end, it still felt as though she could see right through those walls of the house.

“I should tell you, Krista, that Peter will want to know how you're finding your money to pay the rent,” she started.

“I'll figure something out,” Krista vowed, though she knew in her heart that she had no quick fix to her money. Joey had what he had left in the bank following his dismissal and they had lived on that plus the small dues she was making from her act as a model. She knew that she would figure out something but what that something remained beyond her grasp for the time being.

Mrs. Jones turned her attention to her: the afternoon sunlight shone into the window just enough to cast a glow on those blinded eyes behind those dark lenses.

“You're pregnant,” she noted, to which Krista gasped.

“How did you know?”

“You sound a lot more—stressed than normal. Like something else has cropped up and now you're having to worry more about something other than the death of your fiance.”

Even though Krista knew she couldn't see her, she still stared into those lenses as if she had just been probed.

“When'd you find out?” Mrs. Jones asked her.

“Just a couple of days ago,” she replied in a small voice, and she bowed her head towards the surface of the table.

“So you must have conceived right before the poor boy took the lethal injection.” The wound was still raw for her, but Krista knew she had to keep on a brave face in the eyes of a blind woman.

“Yeah, Joey and I—we talked about it, but we never really settled on it much before now.” Her eyes wandered over to the urn right next to them. His remains, safely locked away, and yet his spirit stayed with her at an all too much rate. Mrs. Jones sniffled the air again.

“Flowers,” she noted.

“Lilies,” Krista corrected her. “Joey's former band mates—” She cleared her throat. “—brought them over here just today as a moment of peace.”

Mrs. Jones raised her hand and reached out for the flowers. With a restrained touch of care, her hand caressed over the smooth white petals, and she nodded her head in response to the feeling.

“Such an act of kindness,” she remarked as she moved her hand back from the vase and rubbed her fingers together, “and it makes me have hope for America as well.” She sniffled again. “There's his cologne again. What'd you say the boy's name was?”

“Alex,” Krista told her.

“Alex—” Another sniffle. “Very soft and soapy, as if he had just climbed out of the shower. A signature aroma of musicians for some peculiar reason.”

“He's a guitar player.”

“Ah! There's something sweet, too. Sweet with a slight bite to it.”

“He had a glass of root beer when he was sitting here next to me.”

“Right here?” Mrs. Jones raised her eyebrows and gestured down to the chair.

“Right where you're sitting, yeah.”

She moved her hips a bit in the seat.

“Nice in the bum,” she noted in a low voice. “A little too nice, I should say.”

The warmth hit Krista's face like a hard slap.

“A very soft, very gentle boy,” Mrs. Jones continued, to which she raised her head but she didn't look right at Krista, rather into the kitchen itself. “Keep him around, dear.”

“He's supposed to be back like—any second with his things,” Krista explained. “He was staying at a crappy hotel near here and I told him I didn't like the idea of him staying the night there.”

“So you offered him to stay with you for the night?” Mrs. Jones raised her eyebrows.

“For the time being. If—that's okay. He's fallen on hard times a bit, too. Left his old band about a year ago and broke up with his girlfriend recently to top it all off, too.”

“Love does rather strange things to a person,” she remarked in a low voice and with her eyebrows knitted together. “Some descend, some ascend, some act with such brass and power. I'll have to meet him straight away, deary. I can't really do it now, though.”

“Why not?” Krista frowned at that.

“My driver is awaiting me—and I have affairs to tend to in the meantime.” Mrs. Jones stood to her feet again and Krista walked right next to her all the way back to the front door. Though the cane did enough of a job for her, Krista still wanted to see her off in one piece.

Though autumn had fully enveloped upstate New York, the afternoon sun provided them a rich blanket of warmth all the way back to the sidewalk, where she spotted the low faded pale green car parked at the opposite end of the curb, and Krista wondered how exactly Mrs. Jones found the house when she was parked so far down the street.

“Are you gonna be alright?” she asked her.

“Of course, dear. When you lose one of your senses, the others make up for what lacks behind. Just pray that your child is born with them all intact.” Without another word and a tap on the sidewalk, Mrs. Jones walked on up the sidewalk back to the car. Krista watched her until she reached the passenger door and groped around for the handle. She climbed into the seat and then Krista doubled back to the house, and she wondered why Mrs. Jones even showed up there in the first place.

Perhaps it was to check on her in Joey's wake, albeit the same reason Alex visited her in the first place. But it was such a peculiar blind spot that she didn't bother to ask her of it at any given point. Before she could close the door, she recognized Alex's big voice from the sidewalk. She wheeled around and there he came towards her with a black canvas guitar case on his back and a courier bag slung down next to his hip. He had a look on his face as if he had just seen a ghost.

“What's going on?” she asked him.

“I just saw this guy on the sidewalk over here and he said he's your landlord,” he told her.

Krista stopped right in her tracks. If Peter had already showed up to the house, and yet he hadn't come inside at any given time when Mrs. Jones was there, and yet therein answered her question. She peered down the block to find that Mrs. Jones had already gone. One thing remained for certain and that was to keep the debt collectors at bay for the next nine months: once the baby was born, all bets were off after that.

“He's huge!” Alex continued with a look of awe riddled upon his face. “He was bigger than me!”

“Yeah, he really is...” Krista halfheartedly replied, and she set a single hand on her hip. The tingling in her stomach came from the nerves that time around and she seriously had no idea as to how to break it to Peter that the contract between them would have to change up if Alex and a newborn were to live with her. No way she would leave the house with a new life in the world, not without the risk of having that life out in the gutter.

#fanfic #fanfiction #dead man walking #krista belladonna #joey belladonna #alex skolnick #anthrax #writers on tumblr #writeblr #writing #my writing #writers community #writers of tumblr #chapter 2 #text #Spotify

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christinescupofcoffee · 2 months ago

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a completed work — the original now it’s dark trilogy (now it’s dark, who cares wins, and be all end all)

started — September 2019 | completed: January 2020 | genre — science fiction, noir, cyberpunk posing as fanfiction | pov — 1st person perspective | status — third draft | currently — completed! | themes — poverty, death, mind control, manipulation, mad science, family dysfunction, the rise of ai/terminator-bladerunner type stuff, ecoterrorism

blurb | Joey hasn't always had it easy. Fresh off the boat from his singing duties in Anthrax, he finds a battered young woman in a storm drain. After taking her to shelter, he runs into a gentleman named Lars Ulrich, whom, as he finds out knows a thing or two about the woman in question. Thus ensues two fellows' journey through hell and back again.

excerpt | "Kill me now," is what I say as I stare out the window. The rain is my one true friend now. It's been a while since I've been able to make a good friend on top of this--I'm sure everyone knows about it, the whole thing where if someone, and by someone I mean myself, wasn't en route to a college or a university, or working a job already, they were kind of left out in the cold. Sure, there have been plenty of acquaintances, but as far as someone I could sit with and feel myself to be true with them, it's been a while. The whole twisted thing about everything that happened was that it happened so quick. It was four years ago Scott and Frank told me I could hold the microphone in my hand. Four years ago, and last year we may as well have hiked up to the North Pole and stood up a big black flag with the word "NOT!" emblazoned on it, beholding the fact we had conquered the world in the wake of Cliff's ashes. We rose up like the phoenix, and I was the man on fire.

There is absolutely nothing like standing out in the rain with all of your things taken out from the studio, slung over your shoulder, and your old band mates were the ones throwing you out there into the darkness while the gutters overflow over your head. There isn't a feeling like it.

And if anyone believes that I had had enough, know for a fact I was asked to leave. I had vowed to rid of the problem, to replace all of the booze with black coffee. I mean, Jesus, I like to have fun with this sort of thing. What's the point of doing it if I'm not going to have a little fun with it all every now and then? And it's not like I was drinking a ton so to speak--at least I wasn't doing those drug loaded pirate raids the four of them would do with Skid Row and Ratt. But I specifically recall telling Scott, verbatim, after he threatened to leave if I did nothing, that I would not have a sip of alcohol as long as I was a member of the band. And yet, for whatever reason, that promise did not suffice or click with any of them.

I think the sound of my phone ringing this morning and waking me up will haunt me for as long as I live. I still hear Charlie's voice on the other end, telling me it was official. They had made the decision behind closed doors and I had been thrown out on my ass as of that morning, but he never elaborated why.

The next thing I remember was asking him why and the sound of the other end hanging up.

note: this is the one. This is the fic I come back to quite often, mainly because it was such a watershed moment for me. It made me realize that I have the weirdest ability to tell a story from a guy’s point of view (which in turn made me realize that my concept of gender is way more permeable and fluid than I had realized before). It was the last thing I wrote before the pandemic hit. I made inktober art for it, which Joey himself noticed on instagram and then talked about it on Jamey Jasta’s podcast on my birthday.

When I go back and read it, it’s astounding how important it is for me, personally and as a writer. It’s arguably my magnum opus.

And you’re not misreading that, either, I literally wrote the whole three books in four months.

#fanfic #fanfiction #now it’s dark #anthrax #joey belladonna #lars ulrich #science fiction #scifi #noir #cyberpunk #steampunk #mine #writers of tumblr #my writing #writing #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writers community

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christinescupofcoffee · 2 months ago

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dead man walking

it was three years ago when I wrote this fic. time to bring it out into the open 🔥

Chapter One: the needle and the damage done

It had been two weeks since he had collapsed from the dirty needle, and she still reeled from the news of it. Those words had crept over her like the icy cold fingers of death herself right across her skin. The man of her dreams and the one whom she believed to be the one for her, gone forever, all by the swipe of something that she didn't understand. What made no sense to her was the fact that she did everything she could to keep him away from the black rain.

Krista had met Joey in Kansas City when they came through on their tour for that bright and sunny yellow album with the red spiral on the cover: she had run into him during breakfast there in the hotel lobby. One thing led to another, and the next thing she knew, the man had given her his phone number to back home in upstate New York. All the date nights and the days she sneaked out of the house or after a display of fashion over the course of two years, and it all had come down to that moment where he took her by the hand and then slid down on one knee before her. He showed her the ring and she was overwhelmed with love for him.

A brand new cute little house near the shores of the lake, taken care of by a New Zealander who only went by Mrs. Jones and a mysterious man from New York City.

Everything seemed to fall in place for the two of them, until he got the tearful phone call from Charlie.

He was out. Gone. They had made the unanimous decision to rid of him, and they had their eyes set on either Mark of Death Angel or John of Armored Saint, and they had their eyes on those two men for some time at that point of the phone ringing, but Krista took him by the hand and she held him close to her.

They were to do more than merely pitch a tent. A house. A roost and a place to call their own after such a time of turmoil.

She knew it would be far more difficult given a fashion model could only do so much for herself, and on top of that, she had a wedding to plan out for them. Guests to invite. A dress to try on. So much to do with the clock over their heads and yet every day, when she woke up, she gave Joey a kiss to reassure of him of their future together.

They were bound to be husband and wife, like something she had sworn to be real and right out of the movies: she wanted to have it all planned out, all the way down to what cufflings he would wear on that big day. Because of the sudden cut to their income, they had to push back the wedding to the following summer, but Krista assured him that things would look up at that point. A lot could in fact happen within a year, as they so realized.

Even while she nestled down next to him, right by his side every single night, she still kept her eye on those brown eyes, once sparkling and bright with life and love, now as cold as the earth which comprised the shores of Lake Ontario. His thin body seemed far thinner than she had remembered, the same body she had fallen in love with over and over again when they lay down together.

Every caress of his skin and he seemed less present each and every time. His sun kissed skin dried out and turned as cold as ice some nights, even when he cuddled underneath the blankets to keep warm. That first winter right after the news was the hardest. Each lake effect blizzard seemed worse than the last: the house seemed colder and colder every single night the snows fell over them.

But Krista kept her head up. She knew that love would keep them together. She knew that there was no way she could glue his broken heart together unless he found the courage within him, and thus she kept her patience with him. Before either of them knew it, the snows melted away and the first colorful blooms of springtime emerged from the cold earth.

On the summer nights before the wedding, she stroked his back and his shoulder when he lay on his side and shivered from the feeling within him.

His brown eyes washed out with the red of blood and his body barely stood up on his own two feet. His coarse dark hair wilted and withered despite the blooms all around them and within the yard, and the nourishing warmth of the daylight. She still kissed him and touched him, however.

She was going to love him no matter what happened to either of them.

She was going to love him all over no matter what happened. Her vow rang true against all odds, until the odds finally caught up with his emeciated body and his flagging energy. He withered with the impending autumn and the transformation of colors out in the yard and around the shores of the lake.

All summer long, she advised him to sit out on the porch within the sunshine, at least to feel some genuine warmth because if her body couldn't do it, then the caress of the sun held the power for him. He did and he coughed and choked on the otherwise humid air from the lake, as if he had been cut and dried out like a thin strip of meat.

The last thing she heard from him before she called up the medics was the sound of his own voice.

“Krista! Krista, I'm dying!”

His lips as blue as the sky overhead and his skin as cold as the depths of the lake.

The medics came within a bright flash and a glimpse. She pressed her lips to his own before they swept him away to his fate.

She may as well have been caked in his own blood. The blood of the love of her life. The blood of the Iroquois nation on her hands. Anthrax needed to know about it and perhaps they could have the fear of god themself put into their hearts.

At that point, they had released their first album with John, the royally violet tinged Sound of White Noise, back in the middle of May. How appropriately named, she figured, given the sheer amount of impenetrable white noise that surrounded their ears as if to bestow them oblivion to what had happened to their former brother.

One night. One night was all it took for everything to shut down.

When the head nurse called her, she told Krista that the cause was obstruction of the lungs as well of the kidneys. What brought it all on was unknown at the moment. But nothing could keep the tears at bay for her.

The tears and the intense wave of emotion deep within her. He was so close to her not long before then. She swore she had seen a glimmer of life within those tired eyes the night before. A glimmer of life and rapture, the Joey she had fallen in love with a few years before.

The money she had put up for the wedding returned to her and in turn, she gave it to the mortuary for his cremation. The beautiful royal blue urn filled with his ashes, and with a lid which sealed shut. Though she wished she could scatter him over the shores of the lake and he would nourish the earth with his love, she needed his spirit around for when the time came.

One afternoon, two weeks following the cremation ceremony, Krista was met with a bouquet of pearly pink and white lilies on her front step, courtesy of Frankie. Next to the flowers came a hand written note in black ink:

Krista—

The five of us are stunned, shocked, and beyond words for the loss. I am, especially. I hope you can forgive us: we didn't want to be that hard on him, and now we wish we never were.

I should probably also tell you that Charlie was wiping away tears when he first called Joey and told him he was out. Charlie and I especially didn't want him to leave, and I can tell you right now that Scott regretted it almost immediately, even before Joey passed, but we're in business. We had to get serious, and we had to make a decision. If it's any comfort to you at all, new presses of White Noise will be dedicated in his memory.

We love you to the moon and back, and we hope to see you soon,

Frank, Charlie, Scott, Dan, and John

She nodded her head and smiled at that.

No way she could hold it against them, especially after all of that. She took a whiff of the lilies and closed her eyes to better take in the aroma.

“Krista?” A big voice behind her caught her attention. She turned her attention to the sidewalk behind her: there stood a tall slender boy wrapped in all black, his jet black hair pinned back over the crown of his head to stay out of his handsome face and his deep set steely eyes. If she had no idea about him, she swore he was a vampire who walked amongst the daylight. He struck her as familiar, but she never knew where she had seen him before.

He showed her a little smile and those deep eyes sparkled with life.

“Alex?” he said as he pressed a hand to his chest. “Alex Skolnick?”

She gasped.

“Ohhhh, the kid from—” She paused for a second. “Testament, is it?”

“Yes'm!”

“I thought you looked familiar,” she greeted him as she descended the steps: even though she was rather tall herself, he stood before her akin to a radio tower. “How are you?”

“Eh,” he shrugged his shoulders and ran a hand over the right side of his forehead, “today's been better than most, I'd say. How are you, though?”

“I just got some flowers from Frank—Frank Bello,” she said as she showed him the bouquet.

“Ooh, yes, lovely! That was sweet of him, too.”

“You want to come inside for something to drink?” she offered him. “You look rather road weary.”

“I came up here just to see how you were doing because I just got news of it myself,” he explained, “I was down in the city yesterday when I caught wind of it. And so—yes, I'd love to!”

Krista led him into the little house there on the side of the street, surrounded by tall oak trees which were in the process of shedding their lush orange leaves. As she held the door for him and then walked into the house after him, a strange sensation crept up inside of her. It had been there for some time at that point, and a feeling which she knew and remained in the dark about, and a feeling she had no idea she would feel before. She set the flowers down on the coffee table and she thought about a brand new ceramic vase just for them as she made her way into the kitchen.

Alex took his seat at the kitchen table and his long narrow legs spread out before him. Just like how Joey used to sit there: he ran his fingers through his black hair, as black as Joey's ringlets. For a young man, he seemed so serious, especially when she poured him a glass of root beer straight out of the fridge. She set it down before him and he glanced up at her with bit of a grimace on his face.

“Are you okay?” she asked him as she took her seat next to him. “You look like something is—upsetting you. Like, you're distracted by something.”

Alex paused, and he held his glass of root beer close to his chest. Even with the jet black hair, she could see it over the right of his brow: the glimmer of gray upon his head which appeared more prominent than the last time she had seen him live with Testament. The last time she had seen him, he also had more pep in his step. He had traveled there to upstate New York for a reason, and not because he wanted to see her. He nibbled on his bottom lip and he flexed those lanky fingers on the glass' side.

“Well, it's two things,” he began in a low voice, “the first thing is I left Testament.”

“Really?” She was stunned, and he slowly nodded, albeit with a frown on his face.

“It was my doing, though,” he explained. “I had been wanting to leave for about a year so I finally did last Halloween. I just want to do something other than metal, you know? There's a lot I like and there's a lot I feel like I can do with my fingers and the strings of a guitar. So—I left.”

“Oh, absolutely. And, what's the other thing?”

“My girlfriend and I broke up. About a week ago.”

“Aww, I'm so sorry,” she declared as she set a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah, and she was the first person I told about my decision to leave.” He shook his head and closed his eyes. “The first person I told about it and—she didn't even stick around long enough to back me up.” He took a sip of his root beer with a pensive look on his face. “I was in a jazz band called The Urge, but they broke up recently. Where I go from here is—anyone's guess.”

His arrival there at the house felt like a godsend of sorts: a woman who had just lost her groom to be and the love of her life crossed paths with a young man who had found himself in a realm of turmoil. Love from the outside could not save either of them, and she knew this to be true when she glanced down at her body. He turned his attention to her and frowned.

“You okay?” he asked her. Krista pursed her lips at the question. She had no one else to tell it to, but here she was given this gift of another boy.

“Don't tell Mrs. Jones, please,” she whispered to him.

“Of course I won't,” he assured her with a shake of his head.

“Mrs. Jones, by the way, is my caretaker—the owner of this house is a man named Peter.”

“Peter?”

“Peter Steele. He lives down in New York City. If he finds out about this, too, he'll get all over my ass about it. I have to find a way to tell him about it at some point, so don't worry about me.”

“What is it?” he kindly asked her. She shifted her weight and glanced down at the waist band of her denim jeans, still snug against her waist.

“I'm pregnant,” she confessed.

“Seriously?” Alex raised his dark eyebrows and gaped at her, to which she nodded. “When'd you find out?”

“Two days ago,” she continued, “I was feeling a little—sick to my stomach when I woke up that morning, and I just—had the feeling within me.”

“So Joey went two weeks ago...” His voice trailed off, and she nodded her head.

“Yup. I took a test two days ago and it came up positive.”

Alex shrugged his narrow shoulders and took another sip from his glass. “Well, at least you have—something—to remember him by,” he pointed out.

“Oh, absolutely. And I know that Joey would've wanted me to do something for us, even before we got the phone call. We had talked about it—you know, raising children, but nothing had ever stuck in place, though.” She squinted her eyes at him. “How 'bout you? Have you ever thought of having kids yourself?”

“I have somewhat,” he confessed, “like it crossed my mind a little bit when I turned eighteen and again when I was in a relationship, but—I don't really see myself in that position. Never really have, either. I'd rather expand my mind and my playing abilities than build a house. Raising kids is hard, too, like even I can tell you that. Lot of money and patience—you know, things I don't have readily at my disposal. I knew when I left Testament that my income was going to be at zero for a while, completely screwing my chances of procreating, too. Not that I had much of a chance to begin with. Jazz is in a weird spot right now, and has been for some time now.”

“Do whatever your heart tells you,” she advised him. “Play to your heart's desire.”

“Just some sick—la di da di da di da.” He rolled his eyes up into his head and she giggled at him for it.

“Well, what kind of music do you want to play?” she asked him.

“I don't really know. I just want to find myself and be as good as I possibly can be.” She chuckled at that.

“That should be everyone's goal,” she stated.

“Right? I don't want to limit myself—and I know that sort of thing can make it seem like I'm stepping on people's toes, too. When I told Eric I was leaving, he was like 'what? No! You can't go!' and I was like, 'it's my decision, dude. Take it or leave it.'” He took another sip and then his expression turned serious. “I'm a little afraid to ask if it was hard on Joey. I mean, I know it was but I never really knew the full extent of it, though.”

“You have no idea,” Krista said, and the tears welled up again. “I tried to help him. I tried to get him to clean himself up and—he just—” She closed her eyes and bowed her head, and Alex reached out for a comforting touch on her part.

“Clean himself up?”

She raised her head with tears brimmed in her eyes.

“He wasn't hooked to anything when I came into the picture about four years ago,” she assured him. “So I don’t know how he got a hold of it. I don’t know, Alex. I just don’t know.” He knitted his eyebrows together and then he turned to the window before them, to the view of the street and the trees and shrubs right across the way.

“Speaking of weird spots, metal is in such a—strange spot right now,” he noted. And he turned his attention back to her. “Yeah, says the guy who bailed from a metal band.”

She chuckled at that.

“You ought to go to Seattle,” she advised him. “I'm sure the people there will welcome you.”

“Nah—I like New York. My parents both hail from Sheep's Head—down in Brooklyn.” He took another sip of root beer and that time, he closed his eyes. A stray tendril of hair dangled down over his left temple; she eyed the prominent tip of his nose as well as the delicate skin underneath his chin and the rather full shape of his Adam's apple.

“You're a very beautiful boy,” she confessed with a shake of her head. “A very beautiful Libra boy. Joey was a Libra, too.” He set down the glass before him and turned to her again.

“His birthday's two weeks after me,” he noted. “Right? I was born on September twenty ninth and he was born—” He hesitated.

“October thirteenth,” she filled in.

“Gotcha—so, yeah, two weeks apart! I turned twenty five.”

“He had just turned thirty three before he went.”

“God...” He shook his head at that. “It almost feels like losing your big brother. This older entity who just stood over you and you had no choice but to look up to him.”

He downed the rest of his drink and then he ran his fingers through his hair.

“I should probably get going,” he told her in a soft voice, “it's going to be dark soon and I don't really like being in a wide open space like upstate when it's nightfall. It's what I get for growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area where the fog comes in and just settles over everything and makes it all spooky.”

Krista chuckled again and she set a hand on his shoulder. “Well, thank you, Alex. This was very kind of you to come here.”

He ran his tongue over his bottom lip.

“When I heard the news, I just—” He shrugged his shoulders. “I wanted to do something. Just knowing how close Testament is to Anthrax and everything. Things are up in the air for me—and how, that's an understatement—so it just makes sense. I want to find a kindred spirit, if you will.”

She showed him a little smile and cocked her head to the side. “Where you are staying tonight?” she asked him.

“Just a little hotel not too far from here—I walked here so it's—” He gestured behind him. “—within walking distance.”

“You should stay here,” she told him. “I don't really like the idea of you staying in a crappy hotel, especially after everything you've been through lately.”

He flashed her a thoughtful look, but he never said anything.

“Besides I'm—” She set her hands on her stomach.

“Just barely,” Alex said with a little crooked smile.

“But it's my instinct talking, though,” Krista insisted with a serious look on her face. “I'm serious, Alex. I don't want you staying in a place that's less than comforting.”

He paused again, and he gazed down at the rim of his glass. “I'll get my things and I'll be right back,” he told her.

“I'll be here when you get back, too,” she told him.

“I have a feeling you and I will be grinding this axe a long time,” he admitted to her, and she rested her hand on her stomach again, which once more, barely showed any sign that was with child. “'Scuse me—you and—the one to be—will grind the axe for a long time.”

“I'm sure you will, too,” she assured him with a wink.

#fanfic #fanfiction #testament #testament band #alex skolnick #anthrax #krista belladonna #joey belladonna #writing #writers on tumblr #writeblr #chapter 1 #text #dead man walking

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