deadly nightshade | fever in, fever out

chapter 82: house of mirrors

Sam and Joey stood side by side to each other as they watched Ronnie and his band go forth on that stage. His voice, much like Joey's, soared high and out into the black sky overhead. He really was like a wizard, a man who crafted potions for the world of metal and saved them for the only special ones of the grand scheme of things. She touched the pendant upon her chest and she closed her eyes and she took in the sounds before her. Testament had gone off into the trees behind them, but she was more focused on the things going on before her and next to her.
She was at a heavy metal show that took place in front of a castle, and she stood next to Joey all the while.
That castle to the right, right behind the stage all the while. If only there was a way inside of there.
The castle needed a moat of sorts, and a way down to the water from the front door as well. A moat and a stream of its own so she and Joey could go swimming about in there together. She pictured herself laying on her back down by the water's edge as Joey took to it for himself. They could have their own palace, their own place together in those woods and they would have no one else who could bother them because she was queen and he had made himself her king.
She envisioned herself in a big ballroom gown and Joey himself in the fanciest of tuxedos. He stood there at the altar with his hands cupped before him, and their rings right inside of his palms. She gave her hair a toss back and she realized that it had been styled up into a snug beehive upon the crown of her head. She glanced down at the white lace gloves upon her hands and she knew that she had been given the ultimate wedding for herself as well as Joey. He stood there before her, with his inky black curls nicely combed back from the sides of his face, and his bangs tufted up from his forehead. His brown eyes as deep and rich as the earth, as the deadly nightshade that brought him forth onto the earth itself.
Deadly nightshade. Born out of the plant on the Iroquois grounds.
He lifted the black and white lace veil from her face and he showed her a little smile.
He was in love with her. He was in love with her and now they were about to make it official between the two of them.
She lifted the bouquet of flowers before her: a cluster of beautiful pearly white and deep black carnations the size of her fist. White and black. She turned her head and there was Alex, there in the row before her with his black hair nicely combed and dangled down over his shoulders, and his arms folded across his chest. He bowed his head a bit and he gazed down to the cold stone floor beneath him.
"Please don't unwrite me," he begged to her in a small voice: a small enough voice to be heard despite the noise of the crowd. Sam opened her mouth to say something back to him, but Alex stood up and he walked out of there with a pained look on his boyish face.
"Alex—" she called after him. "Alex!"
He paid no attention to her. He just kept on walking with that inky black hair streamed behind him.
Sam returned to Joey and the rings cradled in his hands. Those dark lips in that warm little smile. He clinched the barren of the two and then took her hand with his free one: he slid on the diamond ring for her and she swallowed.
"You may now kiss the bride," said the priest next to them. Joey leaned forward and kissed her lips, which thus sealed their fate together. He led her back down the steps, past her parents and everyone else in the audience. She hadn't even met his own parents at that moment, but she strode past them as they welcomed her into the family.
She was a Belladonna now. A new sprout of deadly nightshade for all the world to see for themselves. Misty eyed and barefoot all the while, and without a shred of irony either. Her whole life now revolved around him.
And their children.
Their children.
She swore that Joey didn't want children. But by some black magic, she found herself big and heavy with their spawn. The throes of giving birth. The rite of passage into being a mother. All the blood, all the agony, all the tearing flesh, all the pain; the entire transformation, all for bringing a new life into the world. A new series of lives. She couldn't imagine it, or she could but it ached her to imagine it. She wished to think about the wedding again, but it was too late at that point.
Then there came holding onto the pile of jaded flesh, what was left of her body. Joey not wanting to touch it or give her what she wanted anymore; and his long black curls shorn away into something that she didn't want to imagine. His venom gone. His inability to go out with Anthrax again, just like what happened to Louie.
Exactly what happened to Louie.
"You've got red eyes all the time now," Joey would say to her all the time now. "All that's happened to you, Sam—I wish I could do something." She watched him walk out of that door again, and for all she knew he was going to visit Zelda, or worse: her mother. It made no sense.
"Huh?" She shook her head and she realized she had returned to the stage next to Ronnie and his band. Joey was still right next to her, but that time he had a concerned look on his face.
"D'you hear what I said?" he asked her.
"I'm afraid not," she confessed.
"I said you're gonna haveta take the red eye in a bit," he told her. "Red eye back to the States 'cause we leave, too."
"Oh. Oh!"
"Ronnie's gonna do 'Man on the Silver Mountain' here and then I'll walk ya back to the hotel."
The look of concern turned back into that lopsided little smile on his round little face. She brought her attention back to the stage, where Ronnie stood there before his microphone stand and his arms held out on either side of him as if he served as Jesus on a cross. His long dark curls at the back of his head dangled down like the mane of the biggest boldest noble horse in existence. His white leather jacket shone under the bright rainbow colored lights over them.
Joey put his arm around her and held her close to his body as if she was in fact his girlfriend for real at that point. Sam kept her eye on Ronnie while he crooned out to the crowd before him. It was hard to imagine Bon Jovi following up with this big powerful voice. She then realized where Joey pulled a great deal of inspiration from, even if he never admitted it to her right away.
The rainbow colors all around them. The darkness beyond. She turned to him with her eyebrows raised.
"I want to paint you for real now," she begged to him over the sound barrier that formed all around them.
"On a better canvas, I assume?" he teased her.
"Of course!"
Ronnie put his arms up and let out the strongest note in the form of the loudest howl she had ever heard a singer do before. Joey even gaped at him.
"Wow!" Dan exclaimed from right behind them. Ronnie then stood back and jumped in the air in the form of a high karate kick. The man really was a wizard.
Sam raised her arms and clapped hard for him.
"Thank you, England!" he declared. "Have a good night and don't stay up too late—"
He bowed back into the shadows on the other side of the stage; Sam felt something hold onto her arm.
"C'mon, Sam I am—"
She followed Joey past Frank, Dan, and Charlie into the darkness once again, back towards the tent and the trees.
"You got your guitar with you?" she asked him once the whirring in her ears started to subside away.
"It's back at the room," he assured her once they cleared the tent. That little pathway amongst the trees. They were literally right there by the road: she thought of Alex as he saw them making out there under the trees. She wanted to explain to him, but she also wanted to see him again.
But there were so many things she wanted to do with Joey as well.
"There's of course, the real thing I wanna do with you," she added as he moved a tree branch out of the way for her.
"What's that?" He lingered closer to her, such that he almost nudged her right off of the pathway.
"And I hope Bel can show me a thing or two about it this upcoming quarter here—glass."
"Glass? You wanna blow me into glass?" That coaxed a laugh out of her but then she straightened herself out.
"No, I just think of those stained glass windows Marla and I saw on the first day of school—these big stained glass windows in the front wing of the school. I just pictured myself making a window in your likeness, kind of like how I made that one drawing of you in order for me to get into school."
"Oh, I see. You wanna like translate it over into the realm of stained glass."
"Exactly!"
"Hmmm..."
They reached the street once again and they stood there with a bunch of dead leaves strewn out on the sidewalk before them. The black sky hung high over their heads like a velvety tapestry.
"It might definitely have to be sump'n to set aside for a weekend," Joey confessed in a low voice.
"Yeah, and you have to got to sit still for me, too," Sam insisted.
"Well—look at it this way. You've already seen me nude twice—and you've had your lips locked onto me, too. You've seen me as I am already. It's just a matter of doing it for a simple li'l sketch. I assume that's what you do."
"Just makes sense. I mean, Belinda works on glass projects all the time and she constantly staggers them, too. They're just time consuming for her."
They lingered there on the sidewalk for a few seconds more before Sam moved in closer to him. Despite having smoked a little bit from a joint, despite having performed before thousands of people, despite having made out with her in the trees, and despite standing there on the side of the stage for Ronnie, he still smelled excellent. Fresh out of the shower and fresh with a spritz of cologne. Marla and Belinda themselves were back there somewhere to see Bon Jovi but she fixed more on the man on the silver mountain right there next to her. That daydream was still so fresh in her mind, and all it took was the view of the castle right behind the stage.
"So—you don't want kids," she muttered to him.
"Nah." He froze right in his tracks. "Why? Do you?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "I dunno, to be honest."
"Well, understand, you're not my girlfriend."
"What if I was, though?" she asked him, to which he knitted his eyebrows together.
"What if you were?"
"If I was your girlfriend, would you want kids with me?"
He nibbled on his bottom lip at that. "And why are you asking me this?"
"Well, 'cause Aurora had that little bit of a pregnancy scare and well—if I'm honest, I'm just curious about it now."
"Oh, I see, kind of a, uh—" He cleared his throat. "—an aware of yourself kind of thing."
"Exactly, right! Becoming more aware of my own body. So, if I was your girlfriend, would you want kids with me?"
He nibbled on his bottom lip again, but he never said anything back to that.
Instead, he strode forward to the other side of the street, and those black curls streamed behind his head. Sam followed right behind him; she clutched onto the bracelet he had given her before the show. She looked over to the front window of the hotel: inside there, Alex had taken his seat on a stool and sprawled a book across the table before him. Joey held the door for her as she recalled what had happened in the trees before Ronnie's set.
"Joey, I'll meet you back at the room," she told him. "I gotta do something real quick."
"Bring back ice, too?" he asked her, still with that crooked grin on his face.
"Of course!"
He then walked on to the corridor, towards his room. Sam turned back to Alex, who looked as though he had fallen asleep sitting up, but then he raised his gaze in her direction. Still serious and with a bit of pain in his eyes. She walked on over to him and he raised his head a little bit to her.
"Are you okay?" she asked him in a soft voice.
"Yeah, I just—I wasn't really expecting to see you with Joey in the trees," he confessed to her in a near whisper even though there was no one else in there.
"It's okay—I just—kind of sort of lost a bet."
"You lost a bet?" he chuckled.
"Yeah. It's—It's kind of a long story." She knew what he meant by it, but she couldn't help but feel that she had crossed a line. He and Joey didn't like each other, and it was all the more obvious now with her having softened things with Alex. There had to be something to rectify it more.
"What'cha readin'?"
"Do you know the story of the Wandering Jew?" he asked her. "Or—as it's often referred to as—the Flying Dutchman?"
"It's a—It's a ship, isn't it?"
"The Flying Dutchman is. The Wandering Jew is a man—banished to walk the earth for eternity. Or at least Jesus comes down during the Second Coming, I don't really know the full details if I'm perfectly honest. But the Flying Dutchman is the same story, but with a ghost ship instead. It's what I'm reading about here, and I mention this because sometimes I feel like I'm actually the Wandering Jew. The little Jew boy meant to walk the earth for eternity."
"Why's that?" she asked him. He sighed through his nose and he bowed his head. He never replied to that, but she had a feeling that she had hit a nerve with him at some point during that weekend. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was eavesdropping on them. So much left unsaid between the two of them, and his seeing Joey in the trees there with her only left even more unsaid.
She then cleared her throat before she said anything more to him.
"So—what'd you think of those pen and ink drawings that Charlie had mentioned to you?"
"Oh, those were cool," he replied with a nod of his head; he then closed that book and gave his jet black a little toss back. "Do you know the artist at all?"
She shook her head. On one hand, she couldn't hardly believe that she had just lied to Alex not once, but twice. But then again, she had her own problems to deal with, especially with her getting back to Joey soon enough. He squinted his eyes at her as if he knew something that she didn't.
"Well, I hope you can find the artist soon because I kind of want to see more from that person now," he confessed to her.
"I hope I can, too," she assured him. He kept his eyes fixed on her for what felt like more than a minute.
She thought back to that drawing in her journal, the one of the mysterious man from her dreams and the streak in his hair. Those deep eyes had something more to them, something more that he wasn't telling her.
"Listen. About Joey—" But then he raised a hand to her and he shook his head.
"It's alright," he assured her in a low voice. "Sometimes things just happen." And yet she could make out the absolute pain in that boy's eyes, that sad disappointed look in those deep eyes. Her own eyes looked up to that little plume of gray over his brow, once a little sliver of a pearl now a plume: she never realized as to how feathery his hair was, feathery and light like the wisps that followed the Wandering Jew everywhere he went.
She thought about that daydream she had had before, and the look of pain on his face there.
"Are you guys gonna be following them around more on their tour of Europe?" she asked him, and he shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't really know, to be perfectly honest," he confessed. "I might just take the red eye home, or the next flight tomorrow morning, I dunno. I don't know what's going on. I heard Chuck and Eric talking about it, but who knows really."
He ran his fingers through his dark hair and that streak glimmered a bit all the while. He then scooped up the book and stood to his feet, and towered before her all the while.
"So—keep an eye out for that live album?" she recalled, and he nodded his head.
"Yeah."
But her attempt was useless. Even though the two of them didn't really know each other, Sam could see it in his eyes and the way in which he walked back to the other side of the hotel. It was as if she had betrayed a good friend. He stopped in the middle of the floor at one point so he could hitch up those jeans but Sam knew what he was really doing. He kept on walking to the other wing of the hotel until he disappeared behind the corner.
Sam turned her attention back to her side of the hotel, where Joey awaited her and where she had gather her things so she, Marla, and Belinda could head on back to New York City. She had no idea what Aurora and Emile planned to do for themselves, but as she gathered a small cup of ice for Joey, she realized that she didn't really care, either. She cared more about Alex than she did them, and Aurora was her best friend to boot. But she and Emile had gotten drunk and did the very thing that she wanted Joey to stop doing, and as a result, they missed that show back there. They missed Joey's grand performance on the guitar and Anthrax's new chapter as a quartet, and up to that point, Aurora had been faithful in going to work and going to shows with Sam and Marla.
Like she had skated by without having to do anything there in England. The very thing Alex disliked about Joey, as if he himself had skirted by as well.
It was all so round about and like such a house of mirrors that by the time she arrived back at her room, and there was Joey there on the edge of the bed with no shirt on, that she almost burst out laughing at him.
He glanced back at her with a flick of his hair and that lopsided grin plastered across his face as if it had genuinely became a part of his make up.
"The next time we get together, we oughtta go long," he told her as she shut the door behind her. Sam sauntered over to him and handed him the cup of ice.
"We'll head on back to my parents' house soon enough," she assured him.
"I do hope so. I really wanna be at your folks' place again. Just so long as your mom doesn't hit on me again."
"I'll get to the bottom of that," she told him. "Positive."
"Just how I'll get to the bottom of your bottom?"
She scoffed and then rolled her eyes at him.
"You really wanna go there?" she demanded. "Right now?"
"While we still have time. Marla and Belinda aren't back yet, either."
"True."
"So, c'mon." He beckoned her. "Let's finish what we started in the woods."
"Finish the wood in the woods?"
"See the forest for the trees and see the world as you please." He then snapped his fingers. "Ooh, that's cool. Write that down when you're on the plane."
He leaned back onto the bed with the cup of ice right next to him. She hovered right above him and her hair dangled right over his face.
"C'mon, give it to me," he begged her.
"Just so long as I don't have to call you 'daddy' like Frankie does."
"Nah—I'd have to wear that fucking puffy as hell shirt that he's got."
"Puffy as hell shirt? How exactly is hell puffy?"
"It'll be puffy as your snatch is about to be—" He showed her his tongue as he undid his jeans for her. "—I—kind of need a little bit below the equator if ya don't mind."
She hesitated as it stood there right underneath her. She had touched Cliff before, and she had gone a little bit there for Joey, but something didn't really add up to her. She just looked on at it as if it was part of his body: it was part of his body, nothing more. But he wanted it, and he wanted it from her in particular, to finish what they had started back there.
Thus she bowed forward and put her lips down. Salty. Such that it made her throat dry and parched, more so than the midori sour she and Marla had had the two days before. But he smiled and groaned in his throat at the feeling. She held onto his hips to better steady himself.
"Can ya feel it?" he croaked.
"Yes—" She ran her tongue along the taut skin, but she wasn't feeling much of anything on her end. If anything, she was thinking about the encounter she had had with Cliff in the subway. They were in the dark and yet she put her hand down his jeans to feel him. Maybe it was the darkness and maybe it was the fact that she had done it to Cliff, but the empty feeling only persisted once she closed her eyes. For a second, she swore she was back with him again, especially since Joey's heavy breathing only added to it.
"Cliff—" she whispered under her breath.
"Huh?" Joey breathed back to her.
"Joey—" she whispered back to him, and she returned her lips onto his tight skin once again. He gasped at the sensation, and then she sank her teeth down. He grunted at that feeling.
"You don't like that?" she asked him in a broken voice, and he shook his head.
"Okay—but you want to know something, though?"
"What's that?" He propped himself up on his elbows for a better look at her.
"I can so get used to this," she whispered to him.
"You wanna know sump'n?" he whispered back to her, complete with that slithering tongue about the edges of his teeth.
"What's that?"
"I can, too."
She moved herself down onto her forearms so she lay right next to his hip.
"What're you saying?"
"Well, you're blowing me right now," he pointed out. "Blowing me after you suggested a bit of glass on your part. I've become a part of your world now, Sam. I really do."
"It's funny I—I feel like I'm part of your world now," she confessed.
"Would you be my girlfriend?" he asked her in a small voice.
"Well, I'm here now, aren't I?"
He clicked his tongue. "Yeah."
"Then the answer is 'yes', Joey," she replied without hesitation; suddenly Alex's reaction to their being in the woods meant nothing. "I'll be your girlfriend. Would you like something else?"
He looked down at himself, and that lopsided grin turned into a thoughtful little smile.
"Nah, I think I'm good, to be honest. For now, anyways. I've got a tour to do the next bunch'a dates."
"And I start school soon."
"And you start school again soon, right."
"Sam?" Marla called from down the hall.
"Time to head on back home, babe." Joey flashed her a wink at that.