SWAN 11 - Hallo Spaceboy-

Why am I doing this? Where am I? What time is it? Will that class be in English?

Song Without A Name
Act 11
In the never-ending, intermissionless play of
Lady Yate-xel

Johnny was completely right. There was no ‘sleep well’ in the choir room, and Edgar was now damn sure of it.

What he wasn’t so sure of was why. Johnny more than likely had strange nightmares, or heard things all night that would keep him from a restful sleep, given his tendency to mimic his past self’s sleep issues. Edgar would have slept just fine here, given the circumstances, if only the room (and probably the bean bag) didn’t belong to Johnny. Something about knowing that Johnny was just outside the door, or that this place was home to all of Johnny’s habits and rituals, woke Edgar up nearly every hour, no matter how he yelled at himself that this was as normal as any other poorly planned sleepover.

Just in a school.

With the reincarnation of a madman.

Yeah, totally normal, no problems here.

He tried to pick out exactly what woke him up at around 5:30, after his fourth premature waking. He wasn’t worried that Johnny would kill him - he was sure this Johnny was safe from those tendencies. He wasn’t concerned that Johnny would be found by someone as he was sleeping out in the classroom part of the room; Johnny was a veteran at hiding from the people who ran the school. He wasn’t even worried that Johnny had set him up to be bludgeoned repeatedly as he had apparently done to Jimmy at one point in time.

He really didn’t want to think that it could just be that he was so happy to get the chance to sleep there that he was, in fact, not sleeping there. It was always good, he thought, to go over and over the reasons he was happy, too, just to make sure they were still valid and not in any way creepy. They weren’t creepy. Edgar was glad to be given such great chances at this “making Johnny happy” thing; chances to make sure his life didn’t suck. That was it, and that was all.

He rolled over and looked at the room. It looked strange in the almost light. It was the light that only exists from that time of the morning when you know the sun is going to rise soon, and you stare at it, and wait for it for so long that you forget to notice when the sun finally does rise. That kind of light was too new for the school. Normal people didn’t see it in such a light. Most people woke up just after that light was passed, when everything on Earth looked as though it had been made just moments earlier – they didn’t see it at school.

Normal people also didn’t go traipsing around it after midnight either, but he’d overlook that.

He discovered after staring into the light as it became a sunrise that he’d been muttering ‘Not creepy’ to himself for some time. He shook his head and pressed his forehead into the beanbag. This was stupid. This whole thing was stupid. What the hell was he even doing here? What did it matter to him what Johnny did? Why did Devi like the salads from the cafeteria? Where did Tenna live? Where were his glasses...?

Johnny woke him up two hours later, just before the first bell.

****

Wake up.

Yawn.

Blink for a few minutes.

Make random howling noise.

Morning ritual complete.

There were a few trace spikes of light poking their way into the room when Devi cast a glance at her window. It had been boarded up years ago, and for the sake of appearances she preferred to leave the boards up. Bright morning sun only served to remind her that she was still going to a school that she didn’t really have to be in, anyway. They would stop pretending soon, thankfully. Their collective rough math had worked to make this the last year. Edgar had joined them two years ago, and had been surprised when he was told that he'd done so much school dutifully on his own. Devi had laughed at him when he decided to stick around for those remaining years.

She stared at the dust particles floating through the shreds of light, before stretching and swinging her legs over the side of the mattress. It wasn’t much of a mattress, really, but it was better than sleeping on chairs or an old beanbag at the school. Nothing in her place was much of an anything, but it was all there. A table that she Johnny and Jimmy had dragged out of someone’s trash pile sat in the middle of the large room she had adopted as her main living space. The table had been missing a leg, but with a large rock, a few stray nails, and a decently straight branch from a tree, it had been repaired enough to stand. Later, when they discovered that the table wouldn’t support weight, the branch was abandoned, and Devi used a pile of phonebooks collected from paper recycling bins as the new leg. There were nice attractive rock slam marks on the corner of the table top now, however.

Everything in the apartment that could conceivably be visible from the outside was kept as gray and moderately haunted looking as possible. If Devi was going to keep her home in the haunted apartment building, she had better ensure it kept right on being seen as haunted. A howl or two when she was feeling bored, and the occasional use of an old turn table from Johnny’s office had kept anyone curious about the home away for a few years now, and she hoped it would stay that way.

There was a sudden rumbling from upstairs as Devi began to get ready. The rumbling continued across Devi’s ceiling, seemingly traveled down the wall and stopped in front of her door where it was replaced with a slam and the other reason that no one set foot near her building -

“Mornin’ Devi!”

Tenna.

Sure, it could have been the thundering sounds that kept people away. Devi, however, was positive it was just this girl’s personality that repelled the rest of the community from this place. They could smell her crazy.

“Hi, Tenna.” Still not totally awake. Still totally not ready for humans yet. Though maybe Tenna didn’t count as human, as Devi hadn’t kicked her out once in all the mornings she’d burst in. Tenna generally walked around like she owned the place, or at least co-inhabited, and of course this morning was no exception. She poked at the old sheets draped over the windows, asked loud random annoying questions, and was generally a pain.

She was also the only person Devi would tolerate on a day to day basis. Even Johnny had stopped being this welcome.

“Hey, do you remember that one time?” Tenna spoke presumably to Devi, but was too busy smashing the sheet covering the window into the glass with her forehead to bother facing Devi’s direction. Devi ignored the window, and Tenna’s forehead, and worked on changing her shirt.

“Which time would this be?”

“When we almost got a lot of noodles.”

Devi stopped mid-tank top to attempt to process that before pulling the shirt the rest of the way over her head to focus properly. “What?”

“We almost had a lot of noodles that time, but Nny didn’t want to trade him for noodles, so we had to keep him.”

Devi had almost forgotten that Tenna had been the one to initially drag Edgar back into the clutches of the group, but that her motivation had been food. Since then, he’d been around every day, often staying nights with Johnny in the school, with Johnny tailing him around on the weekends. Even the summer adventures they had traditionally spent as three, were now more frequently lived as four or five, depending on if Tenna showed up.

“Yeah, I remember,” Devi said, now occupied by thoughts of how Edgar had wormed his way into and changed what had always been. “Why?”

Tenna finally released her dominance over the helpless sheet, and blinked up at Devi. “Just checking. Sometimes, I don’t think everyone remembers that he wasn’t there all the time. Did you notice?” Devi nodded, and Tenna continued much like she had intended to keep talking whether Devi noticed or not. “Nny sometimes says things to him that are sort of strange, or asks him if he remembers things that he wasn’t there for. I wanted to check. To make sure I wasn’t the only one who remembered that he came. That it was later.”

Devi started working on pulling her hair up into something that would hide that she hadn’t bothered to brush it out this morning and threw a long sleeved shirt over the tank. It had started getting colder lately. There were days that Devi wondered if Tenna ever had deep thoughts at all, and then days like this when their thoughts were so in tune it sort of scared her.

*****

“Hey, there he is again. I wonder if he’s ready yet...”

“Again? Would you please leave that alone? You’ve agreed to better ideas than this stuff. I mean, you could jus-”

“I don’t see you actively protesting.”

“Somehow I can’t imagine being affected. Just a feeling.”

“Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

“Quit staring out the window, I’m turning the pause off.”

*****

As she approached the school, and the choir room, Devi heard everyone before she saw them. The group had taken a liking to pretending they were going to make music lately, and they were rather active this morning. A year or so ago, Johnny had decided (for the whole group, apparently) that maybe they should change.

“I think it’s time we get noticed,” he’d said.

Oddly enough, they had all already had some attraction to, and experience with, music of some type. Johnny already liked singing with Devi, and Devi also enjoyed slamming things, making drums fairly therapeutic for her. Edgar had his fascination with pianos and keyboards, and Jimmy had apparently managed to steal and play with a guitar for a few years. They sounded completely foul at first, and for a while Devi refused to participate, letting Tenna stand with them and play the kazoo in their general directions instead. But when given people with as little to do as this group, things had no trouble progressing rapidly, and Devi eventually gave in to the crazy little game.

She had shrugged it off then, and wasn’t really taking it that seriously now. It wasn’t like it was going to last.

She gave the stubborn choir room door a shove, some general effort, and finally managed to get inside. They’d stopped the music in the few moments it’d taken Devi to fight with the door, so she was greeted to bits of laughter rather than attempted music as she threw her coat on a chair.

She casually walked over to the others, and sat down. Johnny, Edgar and Jimmy were sitting in a small circle of chairs, with no indication that they’d just been playing anything. Johnny acknowledged her with a nod, but was still too mid-laugh to say anything. Devi assumed whatever had been so funny was better left between the three of them, as normally Johnny would jump at the chance to include her, and just waited for it to die out. It was more than likely something else yet again at Jimmy’s expense, and so wouldn’t be anything new and exciting anyhow.

Laughing finally over with, Johnny asked about Tenna, and where she’d gotten to.

“Oh, she’s around,” Devi shrugged. “I’m not worried about her. She’s a big girl - she can take care of herself.”

Obligatory caring over with, Johnny shrugged and turned to Jimmy, who looked a little too happy for the previous laughter to have been at his expense. Johnny leaned forward on the chair as he spoke, a tendency of his that seemed to have developed recently.

“Okay, okay, one more time. Play it one more time,” he said, pointing at something beside Jimmy, traces of the earlier laugh still in his voice. Jimmy grinned and pressed several buttons on a cassette player that Devi hadn’t noticed when she walked in. It clicked and made a general fuss before he pressed one more button and something Devi recognized as what they’d played over the summer filled the room. The quality was awful, and they hadn’t had microphones or anything that would pretend to mask how completely clueless they were about making real music, but that didn’t seem to matter – Johnny, Edgar and Jimmy were all staring at the radio, as though waiting for something really amazing to happen.

The more Devi heard, the more she thought she remembered this particular session. She had been unwilling to practice with them until a little while after this song, but had sat through several ‘recording sessions’. The one in question here had been on a Saturday in July, and Johnny and Edgar had been late for whatever reason. Devi had bitched at them about it, but they’d both seemed reluctant to give an answer regarding where they'd been. Jimmy had been silent throughout, but the look on his face had spoken volumes. They’d gotten it seemingly resolved, and got through a whole two and a half songs, when Jimmy couldn’t take it anymore. Yes, this was that time when...

“YOU SUCK, EDGAR!” came blasting out of the radio, well above the volume of the music.

Yes. That. At the time of recording, the completely un-threatening exclamation had resulted in issues and stupid accusations flying everywhere and Johnny again telling Jimmy to “either play or fuck off.” Today, all three appeared to be convulsing as they doubled over on their chairs laughing maniacally at the outburst. Even Jimmy, who had at first defended the outburst violently, was now taking great pleasure in the failed threatening insult.

Seeing that her friends were going to be of minimal entertainment this morning, Devi retreated to Johnny’s office/bedroom. She flopped into one of the old chairs, and sat idly picking at its exposed stuffing. She thought it was rather weird how well those three got along. They really shouldn’t. At all. She held a substantial piece of the cottony filling in her hands, and tore at it absently as she thought about her companions.

Jimmy (she tore off a piece) was hyper active, clueless, a false ‘misunderstood,’ and oddly obsessed with Johnny’s existence. Still pimply, no matter what cures he stole from the Minit-Mart, and still as completely annoying as anyone could conceivably be. Or, that spot might be Tenna’s claim...

But she was a good sort of annoying, really, she-

Devi shrugged and let her mental dissection of her other friends continue.

Johnny (tore off another cotton clump) was secretive, manipulative, and often a bit of a hypocrite. He got angry and violent at little things, yet at other times was quiet, reserved and prone to assuming no one was going to understand what he was pondering anyway, so he shouldn’t bother sharing it. It seemed to be that Edgar had a unique talent for bringing Johnny out of whatever fucked up shell he was in, though Devi herself had done a little of that herself over time.

And then Edgar-

“Are you alright in here?”

Edgar’s voice interrupted her impending analysis of his character, and she tore the cotton in half in surprise. He raised an eyebrow at her, and collapsed into the beanbag he’d adopted the day he’d arrived. He’d long ago left random personal articles around it -seemingly slept there when he spent the night in the school.

“I’m fine.” Devi had absolutely no intention of being talkative company.

“You look distracted today.” Edgar didn’t seem to get the whole ‘I’m not in the mood for this’ routine.

“It’s fine.”

“I saw Tenna this morning. She said something about what nice noodles I’d have made. I’m sort of disturbed that she still talks about that. Has she been okay lately?” Still trying.

“She’s fine.”

Edgar sighed and reclined deeper into the beanbag. Devi watched him stare intently at the ceiling. He seemed to be trying to get her to prod him for information or an ‘Oh, Edgar, whatever could be wrong?’ No way. She threw the cotton on the floor.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like Edgar. Really, they got along quite well, and he often came to talk to her about some crazy thing he felt he had to do regarding Johnny. Something about making him happy and past lives and changing books and a whole other slew of things that sounded like one of those crazy Japanese shows that were all over the place anymore. Still, all the crazy shit aside, he wasn’t a bad guy, and Devi generally got along fairly well with him. She liked him, even.

Edgar stretched his arms towards the ceiling, took a deep breath, then let out a sigh, shifting once again into the beanbag.

Devi rolled her eyes. This was a classic case of Edgar trying to look relaxed before he talks about something ‘important.’ Or else something that made him nervous. Generally, there was one topic, and one topic only, that conveniently fit both of those categories quite well.

“I wanted to ask you something about Nny, actually, if you had a minute…”

Johnny.

Of course it was Johnny. Was there ever anything on this guy’s mind BUT Johnny? Devi had half a mind to think that Edgar really just had crazy gay fantasies rather than this fate of the world-ish business he liked to pretend that he dealt with.

“It’s fine,” Devi replied finally. Edgar relaxed a little.

“I wanted to know if, back before I knew him, if he’d been close to anyone.” Devi raised an eyebrow, and Edgar elaborated. “Just, if he’d had anyone that he deemed ‘special.’ Something like that.”

Oh, let me tell you his favorite flowers and you can get some of those and some heart-shaped chocolate while you’re at it.

“Someone... ‘special’?” Devi put an unintentional disgusted sort of tone on the word.

Edgar became a little defensive and seemed to be trying to make sure Devi’s thoughts were as far from impure as possible. Didn’t matter to Devi – she had no doubts that Edgar and Jimmy had some sort of twisted homoerotic rivalry going on, and Edgar trying to cancel out his random obsessing wasn’t going to change it.

“I thought about it the other day – I wondered if he had developed the same relationships the old Nny did. Or, maybe ‘started the same relationships’ is a better way to put it.”

Devi stood up, and wandered to the side of the room to try to find something to occupy herself with while she listened to Edgar embarrass himself. Some random objects that Johnny had tossed on a shelf in the back of the room served the purpose quite well.

“And why are you asking me this?” Devi asked, idly petting a blue rabbit’s foot she’d found tucked behind some old records. “Why not talk to him? You guys are close enough for that sort of ‘bonding’ I think...” Tried not to snicker, and stood facing the wall.

“I thought maybe he had... well, you. I thought he might have...yeah.”

Devi grinned, looking back over her shoulder at Edgar. “Me?” She half laughed the word out. “You think Nny would have gone after me?”

“He did once, so I just thought-“

“No. Just no. We’re ‘best friends’ if you could even call it that. Just... no.”

Edgar sighed. “Well, what about-“

“What about what? You? Jimmy?” Devi caught the end of her finger on the chain attached to the rabbit’s foot, and spun it there. “Edgar, seriously. We’re friends, you’re great, and on rare occasions when I don’t feel like murdering all of humanity, we’ve had nice little talks, but, Jesus, talk to him about this kind of shit, okay?”

Edgar looked completely at a loss for words, and opened his mouth several times. As expected, no words happened.

At lunch, Tenna got Devi a salad.

*****

“I see him with that other kid all the time. I think they spend the night with each other.”

“You’re starting to sound creepy.”

“That’s sort of in the job description.”

“You just sound like a stalker... Why is he still such an issue to you? Aren’t you just going to collect him after-“

“That other kid is theirs.”

“Oh. I guess he couldn’t tag along then, huh?”

“Not really. I think this also means they’ve got an advantage, but I’m really... This is going to hurt them...”

“Do you think they know about the keys?”

“...”

“Um...?”

“Fuck.”

*****

Devi returned from lunch to find Johnny sitting in his office, and Edgar and Jimmy out in the main room trying to sort out some little thing on a piece of paper, although it was just as likely that they were playing tic-tac-toe. Tenna followed Devi to the door of the choir room, but was completely distracted by whatever Edgar and Jimmy were bickering over, and wandered off in their direction, presumably to see what kind of damage she could cause. She brought the little skeleton squeak toy she’d made in her sewing class two years ago, and proceeded to use it for full scale annoyance. She swore one day she’d have them molded in plastic. One glorious day.

Uninterested in watching Tenna get eaten alive by the other two in the choir room, Devi went to sit with Johnny, who didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular. She thought she’d see if he’d been quizzed yet today.

“So,” she started.

“So,” he echoed.

Devi assumed her usual spot on the office chair and rubbed her thumb on an apple that had come with her lunch. She still hadn’t started eating it. It didn’t matter if she was focused on it. It wasn’t like she and Johnny ever had conversations while really looking at each other, so she didn’t see anything wrong with focusing her attention on the apple, and Johnny made no sort of protest.

“Have you talked to Edgar today?” she said, scratching at a dull spot on the apple.

Johnny shrugged. Devi really couldn’t see him, but she knew it was there. “Yeah, why?” he answered. “Something weird again?”

“Isn’t it always weird with him? He was asking about you today – about who you were interested in.” Still rubbing the apple. Maybe she’d eat it at some point.

Maybe.

“’Interested in’? What the fuck...?”

Tossed the apple from one hand to another.

“He was talking about the other you, again. If we weren’t obviously invisible to everyone here, I’d be taking all of what he says for complete insanity. I mean,” she put the apple down, “he’s always telling me how much you were like ‘old Nny’ one day or another, and something about a book, and... God, Nny, I almost wish I was in on your little game. At least I’d know what-“

“It’s not a game.”

“Oh come on. How long have you been telling us about your holes and empty places and how-“

“It’s not a game.”

Devi dug her thumbnail into the apple. “Nny, I’m not going to argue with you about this. Go talk to him or something. Go fill in all those little holes of yours, then kindly come back to Earth and visit the rest of us.” She paused to rake a gash in the apple. “And tell him you’re interested in HIM, for fuck’s sake.”

She left the office, not really sure why she had decided to make a big deal out of something that hadn’t mattered for years, nor why she was suddenly not buying any of it. When Edgar first showed up, she had hoped she’d get in on the gig too. Johnny said he remembered her – maybe she’d remember him too. It would be fun.

But she didn’t. And she was beginning to think she never would and this was all an elaborate scheme to ... something. She wasn’t even sure, and she really didn’t care. Walking directly over what did, in fact, prove to be a large tic-tac-toe game, she threw the apple to the floor, flung the door open and headed home.

The outcries of ‘What the fuck?’ and ‘Shit, where’d my x go?!’ were ceased with an abrupt slam of the door behind her.

****

Johnny sat alone in the office, unsure of whether to rage around breaking things, or write unpleasant things about Devi until he felt better.

She didn’t understand. All those years of being his closest companion, of being the person who had the nearest shred of understanding about him, and she suddenly leaves it all. He returned to the same conclusion he always did when he was furious with her: That she was bat shit crazy too, and just needed someone to make her look saner. Tenna fit that just fine and he must do it even better.

“And tell him you’re interested in HIM, for fuck’s sake.”

What the fuck. Where would she get crackhead ideas like that?

The more he thought about it, the more he knew exactly where she got crackhead ideas like that, but thought it best to continue pretending he’d done nothing to deserve it. Still, it was a stupid accusation, there was no conceivable way that he –

“Nny, what the hell just happened?”

Johnny turned to find Edgar’s head poked in the doorway. “What?”

“What happened to Devi? She just stormed out.” Still not all the way inside.

Johnny stared at the floor for a while, and watched patterns before he looked back up at Edgar. “What did you tell her today?”

Edgar had moved to enter the room, but when Johnny spoke, he slid behind the door a bit more, perhaps using it as a shield. “I ... I asked her a bit about you, but-“

“What did you tell her?”

All the way in this time. Closed the door behind him, and leaned against it. Sounds of Jimmy and Tenna trying to piece together the lost tic-tac-toe pieces faded out.

“I was just trying to see how different things were from other people’s perspectives. I thought, if you had taken an interest in her at any point, it’d be a connection... Was she upset about that?”

Johnny had climbed on his desk, and sat there, knees drawn up to his chin. “She doesn’t believe me anymore. She thinks it’s a game. It’s not a game. There’s something going on and she knows it.”

Edgar looked uncomfortable, like he forgot his line. “I don’t know...,” was all he could manage.

“I’m tired of this shit, Edgar. Something has to change. Something has to happen and I don’t know what it is.” He brushed some stray long pieces of hair from his face, and rested his head in his hand. “We’re close, but we're only as close as we were two years ago, and we don’t know where we’re going or what we’re trying to find. I’ve got... fucking... keys. KEYS. And I can say my name all I want and they’ll still do the same goddamn thing and ...”

“Nny, I-“

“And...”

“Nny-“

“GODDAMMIT.”

Silence.

For a long time.

In a space like this should have been something like crying, or a lovely musical montage, or something else that happened in movies. Johnny’s life only ever involved B-movies if it involved movies at all. He wanted to be doing something, even in a B-movie. Something. Anything. Performing some task that made him feel like he was going to get somewhere with memories, or Heaven and Hell, or figuring out life with Edgar and Devi and Jimmy in it.

Noticed.

He’d told them to get noticed. Was that really going to change things? Would that really help? The book would still list his name every time he set foot in Edgar’s door, and the keys would still pull towards Pepito’s house no matter how many people knew Johnny and his friends existed.

Edgar was still standing there. For a flash of a moment, Johnny felt like he had a line here. There was something he was supposed to say. Something he’d said twice before.

“Why...?” he started.

“Why what?”

“Wh... why are people... so...”

Edgar looked terrified. “Nny... no, stop. Don’t-“

“‘Unpleasant?’”

And there it hit him. Edgar should definitely be dead. He knew that from before, Edgar had told him that. But the image that matched that line was stuck so firmly. Edgar should not have even had a form to attempt to resurrect. Shreds and pieces and ribbons and broken lenses.

No matter how close, there was a hole. Johnny spoke to Edgar, asked him why. Edgar hadn’t known. They’d talked about faith. Edgar spoke of faith, and Johnny had envied. Then the hole. It was such a small frame of time, but whatever was in it had decided Edgar’s fate once.

He narrowed his eyes and focused on Edgar’s ankles. A flash of a restraint.

“Nny?”

Snapped back to Edgar’s face. Glasses broken. Shattered might have been better.

Johnny pointed vaguely at him.

“I...”

“Nny, no. Stop. This can’t be good, just ignore it. Let it go.” Edgar walked slowly toward him as he talked.

“You...”

“Nny. Please.”

“I killed you.”

Edgar looked as though he’d been shot. “Ohgodno.” One word.

Johnny kept shaking his head, and the images kept flashing. He couldn’t tell if this was getting them out or helping them get in. He felt hands on his shoulders and then nothing.

*****

“Do you think you should do something? That’s going to be messy.”

“That’s just the thing. They had me ‘lend him’ to them for a while. Everything would be done already if someone they had up there hadn’t made some request that he have life again. Of course they agreed to it, it gave them more time to find a counter.”

“I didn’t think they knew...”

“I didn’t think so either. Shit. I didn’t want this to have to be difficult. Toasting the souls of the damned - fine. Sorting out the borderliners – fine. Make this random kid miserable? I don’t –“

“You completely suck at this job, Pepito.”

“Fuck you.”

*****

Devi arrived home, and collapsed on her couch.

Minutes or hours or days later, a CD was flung under her door. She rolled her eyes once, but went to pick it up. Tenna, no doubt. Last summer, she had been convinced that Devi needed to get out more, and that Devi needed to be happier. Since then, she’d burn music at the computer labs at school to get Devi to cheer up. The music never did much for Devi so much as the sentiment did.

She put the CD in, and skipped through the tracks. The YMCA.

God, Tenna, you could do better than that.

She continued through the tracks. All peppy disco and bouncy bubblegum pop. Ugh. Then one that wasn’t... well, it wasn’t quite anything. She had to have found it in that office.

“If I fall... moon dust will cover me...”

Devi raised an eyebrow.

“Spaceboy,
you're sleepy now
Your silhouette is so stationary
You're released but your custody calls
And I want to be free
Don't you want to be free...?”

Free? There was an interesting concept. Sure Tenna, okay.

“Do you like girls or boys
It's confusing these days
But moon dust will cover you
Cover you

So bye-bye love...”

Devi yawned. Johnny’s head hurt. He could see shapes that reminded him of dead people. People who were and weren’t dead.

“..ove.
Hallo Spaceboy.
This chaos is killing me.
Hallo Spaceboy.”

People were talking. “Earth to Nny! Nny?”

“Ground to Major, bye-bye Tom
This chaos is killing me
Dead the circuit, countdown's wrong
This chaos is killing me
Planet Earth, is control on?”

Confused. How were they still alive? Who were they? Why did they die?

“So sleepy now
Do you wanna be free?
Don't you wanna be free?
Do you like girls or boys?
It's confusing these days
But moon dust will cover you
Cover you
So bye-bye love
Yeah, bye-bye love
Hallo Spaceboy”

‘Boys or girls,’ huh? As though that meant anything. That was ridiculous. Someone doesn’t come from space to be asked who they want to-

“You're sleepy now
This chaos is killing me
This chaos is killing me
So
Bye-bye love
Yeah,
Bye-bye love
Do you wanna be free?
Yes, I wanna be free”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Nny are you okay? Nny, look at me!”

Eyes. Edgar. Jimmy. Devi. Tenna. Fell.

“Nny do you-“

“Do you wanna be free?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like girls or boys?”

“Yes.”

Tenna needed to find some different music.