Achromatic

Chapter Seven

The days that followed the accident turned into weeks as winter was taking its toll; Late autumn gave away to more snowfalls as every passing day became shorter and nights became longer.

When the outside world grew cold and bitter with wind and snow, so did the inside of the flat: because it was built poorly, the heat and thin walls hardly stood a chance against the harsh weather that brewed right through the windows and walls. Noodle was still taken by her compulsive cleaning, and it had gotten much worse as time passed. To keep herself warm, she cleaned the oven almost every day just to feel the heat radiate out from it.

Russel still worked at the pub, which was now a place of refuge for him because it was much more warm and had a better atmosphere than where he lived. He frequently asked his boss to work overtime not only to get more hours, but to keep himself away from the flat as much as possible. When Russel had days off, he slowly became easily irritated and began to skip meals because he slept so much.

Murdoc, on the other hand, continued his cycle of drinking and basking himself in the dark shelter of 2D's room; While Noodle and Russel were going about their business, he kept himself wrapped in all the blankets he could find to keep out the rigid drafts that wafted throughout the entire flat.

Murdoc had spent countless hours scavenging through 2D's personal belongings, even after they were organized. He sorted through his shirts, shoes, books, vinyls and other knick knacks that were stored away in boxes.

But among the things that Murdoc scavenged the most in 2D's bedroom was the big box of unfinished songs. Every day, he traced his fingers along the ink markings that were scribbled onto the sheets, most of which was unreadable.

Page after page, word after word, Murdoc took a swig of beer until the bottle ran dry. When it ran out, he simply opened another one and let himself become numb all over again.

Inhale. Exhale. Indulge.

After he was done scourging through the papers, Murdoc put them back in the box and under the bed where he found them. But when he was pushing the box, it was blocked by something behind it. He pulled out the object from further under the bed, and found two object covered in dust. Murdoc brushed it away, and discovered that it was 2D's journal.

The first page he flipped open to was simply dated 'December.' Murdoc read on; 'It smells really bad out here. Murdoc says that the studio was built a really long time ago and is haunted or somethin. We were the only ones who wanted to buy it off the market. I kind of miss home, though. But I like it because Crawley was kinda boring anyway. We haven't really started making music yet, because we need a guitarist. Murdoc plays bass, Russel plays drums and I play pianos so we've been setting out posters all over Essex-'

Murdoc skipped ahead a couple pages. 'My heads been hurting a lot more than usual lately. I think it's the migraines again. We've been rehearsing a lot and we play a lot of noisy stuff so it's kinda hard to hear what everyone's sayin' after-'

Skip ahead, skip ahead. Murdoc continued to flip through the full journal until he found something that caught his eye.

'Murdoc took me for a ride in his Winnebago today. Usually he doesn't let anyone in it, especially because he thinks we'll mess up his stuff or something. I'm still kinda mad at him, but we have a new guitarist now so I guess we're pretty happy about that. I've never been in there before until today, and there were just a bunch of bottles and cigarettes everywhere. Murdoc told me to get in and not touch anything. Then he started the ignition and drove off. Russel and Noodle were still at the studio so they knew we'd be gone...'