Battle Ball

We've only arrived home from our weekend holiday early this morning, but I decided to come in to the office as some sort of show of support. I can't say it's a strong one, really. Mostly I'm a warm body and the lanterns are glowing, but I'm useless to any sort of actual work. Ace is in the lobby and there's tea and coffee brewing while she tackles the bulk of everything I'm not doing. There's all sorts of letters and scrolls on me desk to go through, and an unusual parcel wrapped in brown paper addressed to me from one Ixinane Stormcren. I'm avoiding that one.

The rain outside is keeping the office a bit chilly. I watch it come down sideways in thin, icy sheets of grey needles. The docks outside the window are slippery and miserable and most the veteran workers 'ave good enough mind to stand under Port Authority awnings an' nibble on hot fried sausages or chips until the dark, angry clouds pass over.

I pull me mechano-guitar into me lap and lean over briefly to flip on the amp. An electric pop fizzes to life and fills the quiet office with a low, expectant hum. Leaning back into the comfortable leather of me captain's chair, I cross me boots at the ankle on the windowsill and adjust the guitar to a lazy angle in me lap. Me fingers slide along the metal strings and pluck out a few tentative notes I've been putting to a song I've been writing off and on while my mind wanders away from the work I'm avoiding.

She turned on the tap and plugged the drain. That was step one. Taking of her shoes, step two. Unbuckling her belt and taking off her pants was step three. Unbuttoning her shirt, step four.

She could never get past step four. She would always look down as she was thumbing the buttons through the holes, she would always see that thin scar; After that, her eyes were always drawn to the tile floor. The tiles cleaned up nicely, but the grout was so porous that it had retained a rusty red color for a while. It looked lighter today, someone must have bleached it again.

She closed her eyes and stilled her hands as she relived the scenario of her last conscious moments of April 25th. Sure, it was mid May now, but every time she tried to take a bath in her quarters, the same thing. She stopped at step four, the same panic of realizing she was dying washing over her even though it had happened weeks before…