gray ghost (the dead trilogy)

haze and silk

I found myself frequenting Sacramento more and more over the course of the next few months. Lucky for me, all those years of saving up money allowed me to fly out there and share my music with Chino and Stephen. If Madonna could sign them onto her label, then I knew in my heart that there needed to be a place for me in there as well. Every strum of my guitar and every whiff of incense smoke from that safe place Chino had took me to, and I could sense my feet rested upon the cold ground there in Northern California.
I was positive that Boston served as my home, but with every bout of Diablo winds that ventured down the sides of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and left the valley as cold and blustery as the Northeast itself.
Jon vowed to share his kilt with me if and when push came to shove, although I promised him that I need not wear a kilt for my own gigs, if and when I got my own gigs.
There came a time in which I visited Chino and Stephen in Sacramento when I overheard a phone call between the former and someone on the other end. Of course, my own wild imagination allowed me to believe that it was Madonna herself, but I overheard the words "—would like to tour with her—like have her as our opening act—" and then he followed up with "Kristina Mayfield—she's a good friend of ours, too."
A bout of silence, and then he gasped.
"Oh, you're considering Anthrax?"
I gaped at the sound of that. It felt as though I hadn't seen Scott and Charlie in a million years. I closed my eyes at the thought of kissing Scott's lips again: a distant memory, like a lifetime ago, such that I could feel the tears of nostalgia right behind my eyes. I darted away from there and into the safe spot with the marigolds and the incense: Jon stood in there with his back to the door. He turned towards me and showed me the glass bulb in his hand: a bulb with a tube on one side.
"What's all this?" I asked him.
"Inspiration," he replied, and his eyes were big and wide as a result. He lifted his lighter and heated the base of the bulb. I lunged back as he took a huff of it and let out a puff of pure white smoke. Not like any marijuana smoke I had ever smelled in my life. It smelled metallic, and even chemical.
I waved my hand before my face and backed out of there.
My memory ran dry afterwards and I wondered what exactly he had taken a hit of in there. The very smell of it was enough to send me into a haze. The cavaleras, the marigolds, the candles, the incense, the thought of Scott and Charlie riddled within my mind for what felt like days on end... I had fell into a bit of a rapture right then.
At some point, I had ran my blonde hair through a rouse of black hair dye courtesy of Chino himself, who in turn went blond for their new tour in the wake of their new record.
It was when Deftones and Korn had to go out and tour when I decided it would be best for me to just head on back to Boston. I couldn't place the blame onto Chino or Jon for leaving me up the river without a paddle, especially if that phone call was anything to go by. They were my friends, even if the latter had been doing something that erased a great deal of my memory in his wake. But I had been left out in the cold once more.
One more time in which I could not, for the life of me, find my way into the world of music. All I wanted was to head out on tour with my friends. Far too much to ask of anyone.
I stepped off of the plane when in Boston and I headed back to my apartment.
One more round of recording and that would be it for me. I had no way in and no way out, either. As far as I knew, the world wanted absolutely nothing with me.
All my friends out on tour and I had been left here to die as far as I knew. The pains in my chest had returned once again as I headed over to that neighborhood. I stood at the curb in anticipation of the bus. I was ready to throw my guitar into the storm drain below me and then find whatever it was that Jon had smoked and just take so much of that for myself, when I recognized that helmet of jet black hair on the far side of the street. So much longer and straighter than how he sat in my memory: but I recognized that streak of gray over his head as well. That plume of gray, now far more pronounced and brighter than I had remembered, and centered right on top of his head.
He spotted me and, once he peered either way around the street, he padded over to me.
"Alex?" I called out to him, and he strolled on up to me and stood before me.
"Hey, Kristina," he said to me with a crooked little grin. Still with those crooked teeth! "I almost didn't even recognize you with dark hair. But I just felt it was you, though."
He stepped up onto the curb before me and he towered over me. He had gained a little bit of weight: my memory of him was always one of a young boy who still had a little leftover from childhood, but he had slimmed down in that one time I got to see him backstage; but I couldn't hardly take my eyes off of the slightly full shape of his waist or the roundness in his face.
"You look so good," I said: it was as if I had just been reunited with someone in my family as he put his arms around me. His body was soft and even delicate, but he let me hold him around the waist. I looked right into those deep eyes, those deep diamond eyes that seemed to cut right through me.
"You think so?"
"Yeah. You look really good. Like, healthy."
"I eat when I can," he replied with a shrug of his shoulders. "It's been kinda tough since I left Testament. But—I really didn't have much of a choice, though." He turned his head a little bit and gestured behind.
"You wanna talk more in the cafe over here?" he offered me. I wanted to head on home, but it was as if he had showed up when I needed him the most.
"Yeah. Yeah, I don't see why not. I had kind of a long flight just now and I'm dying of thirst, too."
Alex kept his arm around me as we returned across the street to that cafe in question: he even held the door for me! Once we were seated by the window, he kept his eyes on the guitar case next to me.
"How you doing with that, by the way?"
"What, this?" He nodded.
"I tried to go on tour with Deftones and Korn—I even made friends with them. But the whole thing fell through."
"Oh, man. If it's any comfort, though, that sounds like my life for the past—" He glanced up with his eyebrows raised in a moment's glimpse. "—almost four years now."
"Why'd you leave, by the way?" I asked him.
"What, Testament?"
"Yeah."
"I just wanted a challenge. You know, it felt like I was stagnating and spinning my wheels with them. That, and it felt like I was back in high school again." He hesitated for a second upon saying that.
"Oh, I see." And it dawned on me.
"Yeah. The good news is I've met a number of people along the way—namely Ozzy. And I've been hanging out with a band called Savatage lately."
"Savatage?"
"Yeah. I dunno if it's gonna go anywhere, though, like there's a whole lot of uncertainty behind it all. Like you think there's uncertainty with me. It's more so the case with them. It's just—it's kind of hard to explain if I'm perfectly honest. The only thing I can do at the moment is just be the very best 'me' I can be."
He was silent for a few moments by the time our coffee came, and then he spoke again.
"I'm thinking of moving to New York," he confessed.
"Really? When?"
"Mmm—maybe a couple of years time. Gotta get things sorted out before I can actually do that 'cause it's a daunting task in and of itself."
"Oh, I bet."
"But I feel really connected with this part of the country in particular." He sipped on his cup of coffee and he peered out the window at the dark street beyond us.
"Can I ask you a question?" He lowered his voice a little bit.
"Sure," I said, and he shifted his weight.
"What are you doing Friday night?"
"Friday?" I paused for a second. "Probably nothing. Why?"
He cleared his throat, but he never followed it up. I could only sense as to what he wanted. He thought it, but he never enunciated it, especially once we finished our cups of coffee and headed back outside to the cold night. The light from the cafe windows shone onto the side of his round face and his little body as he stood right before me. The depth of his chest. The full shape of his waist and his hips. The way he just stood there, right before my body.
I knew what he wanted.
"It's been a while," he said to me with his head bowed a bit.
"Indeed it has." I turned to him and gazed right into those deep eyes. "I don't ever remember you being this sensual before," I confessed to him, to which he shrugged.
"Just needs to be unlocked," he confessed in a husky voice, and the pains in my chest subsided by the feel of his hands on the small of my back. "I like you with black hair, too. Brings out your eyes."
"And I like you with the streak," I teased him as I rested my hands on his chest.
"Kiss me," he begged from me in a near whisper.
"Only if you kiss me, baby—"
His lips felt like silk. He was warm and full, and very soft to the touch. Somehow I had found my way past that cold steely demeanor and uncovered a silky interior.
I had grown up with Scott, but my true love was right there right in front of me, all along, from the pains in my chest to the feeling of his arms around me, Alex.