Patrick dropped his mail. The envelopes fluttered to the ground, softly, slowly, twirling on their way like the stray flower petals of the bouquets laid on Pete, Joe and Andy's coffins. Patrick didn't so much as glance at them. His attention was focused entirely on the strange bird before him. Because there was no way it had just... thought at him, right?
Patrick felt it this time instead of thinking a word. It was a strange sense of... confirmation? As if Phoenix was saying, yes, I am indeed thinking at you. But how was such a thing even possible? Patrick paled and stumbled back, falling on the pavement. He felt something else then, a strange stirring in his heart or in his mind (Both? Neither?). A faint sense of comfort as if now the bird was trying to reassure him. Patrick mentally pushed it away. This was too weird, too scary...
Phoenix who was still perched on the mailbox hopped forward. Patrick shuffled back and raised a hand in front of him as if trying to protect himself. "No, please," he shouted. "Don't get any closer. I don't know why the hell you're here, but I need you to go back to Pete's mom's house! I don't want you here!" Phoenix's only response was to cock her head curiously. She hopped forward again.
Patrick yelped and scrambled to his feet. "Nope!" he shouted, pulling at his hair and squeezing his eyes tight. "Nope, I am absolutely not dealing with this! I am calling Mrs. Wentz so she can take you home because I want absolutely nothing to do with you!" Then he ran inside and his home and locked the door behind him, thinking the word Mississippi, Mississippi, Mississippi, over and over again in his mind so that Phoenix couldn't read it. Once safely indoors, he rushed straight to the phone and dialed Mrs. Wentz.
"Hello, Patrick?" she asked, after answering the phone on the first ring. She sounded sad and tired and for a moment Patrick felt a pang of guilt. This day must have been draining for her, even more so than for him, and he felt terrible asking one more favor on top of all she had already done for him. But then he thought of Phoenix again, of her piercing stare and her strange thought powers and he shivered. Nope, he needed this bird out of his hair immediately, no matter what it took.
"Mrs. Wentz," Patrick panted, but he didn't get the chance to say much else before Phoenix herself appeared right outside the window, squawking loudly. Patrick shrieked and dived to shut the curtains while the receiver clattered to the ground.
"Patrick?" asked Mrs. Wentz's confused voice on the other end. Patrick swiftly picked up the receiver and spoke into it.
"Don't worry, I'm alright," he reassured Pete's mother. "Just one second and I'll get right back to you." Then he hung up and turned his attention to the house because he was pretty sure he'd just heard a disturbance that sounded like a too intelligent bird trying to break in through a window. Sure enough, when he stepped into the bedroom, there was Phoenix, slipping through the slit that he and Elisa had been too busy to close that morning. Patrick chucked a pair of headphones at her.
She squawked indignantly but Patrick only shouted, "You're freaking me out! There's no reason you should be able to read my mind! There's no reason you should be here or even be Pete's pet at all! Get out!"
Phoenix completely ignored him, only squeezing through the window and flapping inside. Patrick could feel it, the sense of calm tugging at his mind and he dived to the floor as if that might help in his efforts to resist her with all his might.
"Stop it!" he screamed at her. "I know you're manipulating my feelings, stop!" Phoenix squawked again and Patrick didn't have to speak bird to know that meant she wasn't going to let up. So, he decided to fight back.
Still on all fours, Patrick scrambled to the kitchen and opened one of the drawers. He pulled out one of the frying pans and brandished it at Phoenix just as she perched on the counter.
"Stay back!" Patrick demanded as he jumped to his feet. "No more mind games! Or you're going to wish you'd stayed at Pete's parents' house!"
Unfortunately for Patrick, Phoenix remained stubbornly unintimidated. She simply cocked her head at him, her gaze not as piercing but still painfully human and knowing. She hopped closer to Patrick who stepped away, but she kept following, moving across the counter while Patrick circled around it, pointing his pan at her and asking, begging her to stop.
"Oh, goddammit, why won't you leave me alone‽" he shouted when he finally lost his patience. "Can't you see I don't want you here‽" he asked, putting his face in his hands. "You're scaring me, you stupid, bird, why don't you just leave me be‽"
Patrick's voice cracked and he sobbed a little. He rested his elbows on the counter as he tried to hold himself back, but it seemed he was utterly incapable of controlling his emotions today. Silence fell as Patrick began to weep, crying softly into his hands. For several moments, Phoenix made no sound at all, and Patrick thought that perhaps, somehow, she had finally decided to take pity on him and quietly slip away. But then he heard it...
"Well, if you're going to stay here then you'll need a name, won't you?"
Patrick's weeping died down almost instantly and slowly, he removed his tear-soaked hands from his face. He gazed at the counter, his blue eyes dull and blank. Because he'd recognized that voice. How could he not? When it was the one that had screamed in Fall Out Boy's earliest songs, the one that had recited poetry through the bathroom door of the recording studio because its owner had been too self-conscious to do so in front of everyone else, the one that had hummed to Patrick during those countless nights in the van because he couldn't sing but he'd still wanted to comfort his friend with his voice, anyway.
"Pete...?" Patrick muttered, his voice hardly more than a whisper. But of course, Pete wasn't here.
Still, Patrick saw him, not in the now but in his mind's eye, standing in his house as he smiled down at someone. Phoenix – Patrick implicitly understood that he was perceiving all this in her place – and she seemed to be quite a bit smaller than she was now.
Pete tapped his chin playfully, a mock pensive expression on his face. "Let's see..." he said, the sound echoing in Patrick's mind. "What sort of name do you look like?" Pete canvassed the room – his study, Patrick realized – as if looking for inspiration. It was a warm, cozy space that Patrick had never been in before, and it occurred to him that Pete must have moved since the band had broken up. Shelves filled with books lined the walls and a warm fire crackled in the fireplace. At the end of the room was a large desk, notebooks and loose pieces of paper scattered all about it, each one, Patrick knew, adorned with painful, aching poetry.
By now, he understood what was happening. If Phoenix could already read minds what was stopping him from reaching memories? And she was giving him one of hers. But Patrick didn't want to see. He sobbed again.
"Why are you showing me this?" he whispered to Phoenix, trembling where he stood. "Why are you doing this to me?"
But of course, Phoenix didn't let up and Patrick was forced to watch as Pete drifted towards the desk, considered the pages and pages of words he'd written, detailing his many complicated emotions. One page caught his eye, and he picked it up. Patrick saw the words through Phoenix's eyes over his shoulder.
Hey young blood, doesn't it feel like our time is running out? I'm gonna change you like a remix, Then I'll raise you like a phoenix.
Slowly, Pete turned back to Phoenix. There was a big dumb smirk on his face. "How about Phoenix?" he suggested. He returned to stand right in front of his new pet. "It's sort of fitting, right? Because you're getting a new life by staying here."
Patrick heard little Phoenix chirp happily in response and Pete laughed. "Well, then, Phoenix it is. Man, it's so nice to have a pet again. There's so many of my people you have to meet!"
And that was the end. Just as soon as it arrived, the memory faded and Patrick was once again standing alone in his kitchen, with a strange, magical bird sitting on his counter, staring at him. He was still trembling because it had all been so much. After watching him be buried, after thinking he'd never hear it again, Pete's voice had echoed in his ears. He'd experienced something new with him. Patrick sobbed and slowly sank to the floor.
Phoenix fluttered down to meet him there, and for once, her gaze wasn't piercing or strange, but full of hurt like his reflection in her eyes. Patrick felt her thoughts, but they rang in his mind and heart like perfect English. Pete loved both of us, so there really is no need for us to fight. Do you understand? Patrick's only response was a single sob. He lay there, eyes closed, trembling on the cold tile, unable to think or feel or breathe or know. "This isn't happening..." he whispered tearfully. Whether he was referring to Phoenix or his friends, or something else entirely, or everything at once, he didn't know.
Phoenix was nice enough to let Patrick lay like that for a while, until he stopped actively shaking and sobbing. But when he stilled, she nudged his arm just slightly as if being careful not to hurt him as she had before. Softly, Patrick sighed, rubbed his eyes. "What is it, Phoenix?" he muttered, and his heart was suddenly pulled by a strange sense of urgency. "You want to show me something?"
Phoenix squawked, as if confirming it, so slowly, Patrick peeled himself off the kitchen floor and stood. He followed Phoenix as she flew gracefully into the living room where a shining metal briefcase sat on the old coffee table.
"When did that get there?" Patrick mumbled, because he could have sworn that wasn't there this morning when he and Elisa had been getting ready for the service (then again, he'd been so out of it that morning, he hadn't really noticed anything but the crushing weight of his own grief). Patrick had a brief vision of Phoenix slipping into the room just a few hours earlier. while he was still at the funeral perhaps? "Oh, so you broke in?" he asked her, not really expecting an answer. "Well, you're certainly Pete's bird alright."
Phoenix landed on the table by the briefcase, so Patrick sat on the floor in front of it. He looked to her, as if asking her what to do and the word unlocked flashed in his mind (Man, he didn't think he would ever get used to this telepathy thing). So, Patrick opened the briefcase.
Patrick was not sure what he'd expected to see when he opened it. It was certainly not four deep red gemstones all in identical tear drop shapes. He blinked, studied his reflection in each of them (God, he looked like shit), pulled one out and felt its cool, smooth surface. Only one thing was clear to him just from looking; four members of Fall Out Boy and four gemstones. One for each of them.
Patrick turned to Phoenix. "What are these?" he asked.
This time, Phoenix communicated through vision, one of a similar stone, blue this time. A finger tapped on it and all at once strange feelings reverberated from it. Everything from pain and fear, to love and desire, any and all experiences that a life could contain.
Patrick gasped, understanding instantly.
"These things capture souls?" he muttered, surprised. Phoenix squawked, confirming. Patrick looked down at the gemstones, then. Considered them. Perhaps if these gems held souls than did that mean...?
No. The word rang out clear in Patrick's mind. No, Pete, Joe and Andy's souls were not in the gems, Phoenix was saying. Though Silence the Noise wants to put them in there.
"Silence the Noise?" Patrick asked softly. "Who on Earth is that?" But another feeling was beginning to tug at his mind now. One of fear and urgency and a single word was slowly rising to the surface. "Leave?" Patrick asked, saying it aloud. "Like, leave the house?" Phoenix squawked in response.
Patrick furrowed his brow. "But why?" he asked. "What's wrong? I can't just go, Elisa's going to be home soon. I don't want to worry her." A pause. "Even more, anyway."
But Phoenix didn't seem to be listening (or she just didn't care). She squawked again and shut the briefcase herself, so hastily that Patrick flinched. He watched, wide-eyed as she took the handle in her claws and lifted it into the air. "Woah, what are you doing?" he asked her. "What's the rush?"
That's when he felt it. The sensation of all the hairs on his body standing straight up. His eyes widened and he turned towards the back door. But of course, he didn't see anyone there. Still, a faint sense of unease grew in his heart as it began to beat faster, and his breathing grew uneven. He turned to Phoenix, his brow furrowed. "Uh, what's going on?" he asked her.
The answer came in the form of a sickening crash.
Patrick yelped and dived under the table as he heard the glass shatter on the ground. Immediately, he realized someone (or something) had broken his windows and since it was the middle of the afternoon, he wasn't so sure if it was the typical petty burglar. Swiftly, Phoenix joined him, crouching under the table with the briefcase in tow. "Silence the Noise?" he asked. Phoenix squawked, confirming. "This was why you wanted me to leave, wasn't it?" Patrick whispered to her, and she squawked again, indignantly. "Sorry," he muttered.
Meanwhile, footsteps large and heavy, thump, thump, thumped through his house. He heard them pound on the kitchen tiles, the bathroom floor, before falling soft as they stepped into the bedroom. Patrick held his breath.
"Argh, where is he‽" shouted a woman, frustrated. Patrick winced as he heard her knock something over in frustration, and for the first time it occurred to him the danger Elisa would be in were she to come home to this situation.
Please don't come home yet, Elisa, he pleaded to the universe as if it would be able to do something. Please, please, please don't come home.
"Patience," said another woman, her tone far more serene and calm than the first. Her voice was rough and scratchy as if she had used it up trying to sing a punishingly high note. "The house isn't small, and we still have time. I know he's at home we just have to be diligent. His friends tried to hide but we found each of them. This one will be no different."
Patrick sucked in a shaky breath. Of course, he'd deduced who his friends meant immediately. These women were his friends' killers. And now they'd come here to finish the job.
Patrick watched with wide eyes as three pairs of dark boots stepped into view in the living room. If he strained, he could see the women's entire figures. And when he did, his breath caught in his throat. He recognized their attire. The black cloaks, the chokers, the heavy make-up and most of all the insignias they wore on their breast, music notes with a red line through them. These were the people from the funeral, he realized. How wicked, Patrick thought, of them to show up at the memorial of their own victims. Though, even then it had been more to torment Patrick than anything else, he realized. But at least he knew he hadn't been crazy. At least he knew what he had seen was real.
"They're here," drawled one of them, the leader's rough voice again. "They're hiding, but I'll bring them out into the open. Watch this..."
Suddenly, there was a blast of energy. Patrick and Phoenix ducked for cover as the coffee table was blasted away. In front of them the women cackled like hyenas. Patrick cautiously opened one of his eyes got a closer look at their leader in particular, a woman with blonde curls and blue eyes, taller than her peers. She was holding a dark staff in her hand, he noticed, one pulsing with red energy the same color as the gemstones in the briefcase. Patrick began to tremble. "What on Earth is going on...?" he whispered to himself, saying his thoughts aloud.
"Oh, well if it isn't Patrick Vaughn Stump," said the lead woman as she looked down at Patrick with an appraising expression. "The singing songbird of Fall Out Boy. And the last member. How does it feel to be the lucky one, baby?"
Patrick said nothing. He trembled as the tears pricked his eyes for the millionth time that day. But this time they weren't merely from grief but from anger too. These were the people who had taken his friends away from him, he was sure of it. Patrick wanted to lash out at them. To scream, to fight, to make them suffer. But all he could do was cry. God, he was so pathetic...
"I suppose we owe you an apology," the headwoman said, a smirk in her voice. "We really didn't mean to leave you hanging for so long without your pathetic little bandmates. But this one here," she pointed to Phoenix with her magic staff, "was real bothersome when we tried to kill that lyricist."
"Pete...?" Patrick said and he turned to Phoenix who was looking at the women as if he were ready to attack. "So... you defended him...?"
"Defended‽ More like needlessly attacked one of our own!" one of the lesser women said, crossing her arms. "She killed like, two of our women! Crazy ass bird, she ought to be put down!"
Each of the women looked towards Phoenix with disdain but Patrick did so with gratitude. She had valiantly defended Pete from these women. She had tried to keep them alive, and his heart flooded with both love and sorrow for her. "Thank you..." Patrick breathed. Phoenix didn't outwardly acknowledge him, she was still staring down the strange women who had broken into his house, but the words flashed across his mind; Your welcome, and Patrick knew that she felt appreciated.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," said the lead woman. "Anyway, we still killed them all, right? And now at least you got to see your friends off to the grave. Beautiful service, I must add. Very touching to have Brendon play Saturday."
Patrick choked, then sobbed. "You shouldn't have been there," he told them, still staring at the floor, still unable to look at them. In response, the women cackled.
"Oh, but we weren't." The lead woman put a shoulder on each of her peers. "That was two of our other girlfriends. And I must say, they're visit gave us a lot of heart. Why they were almost sure they'd killed you when you keeled over in front of everyone!"
Each of the girls laughed and Patrick's cheeks burned with anger and humiliation. "Why are you doing this‽" Patrick demanded through his tears, his voice harsh and accusing. "I never did anything to you! Pete, Joe or Andy never did anything to you! We were never important! Nothing more than just a rock band like any other! So, why did you kill them‽ Why did you take them away from me‽ Why are you tormenting me like this‽"
Patrick's voice was filled with so much raw hurt, but the women only snickered. "Oh, you're really being too emotional, sweetheart," said the lead woman. "It really is nothing personal."
"Nothing personal?" Patrick asked, his voice dark and dull. "You murdered my best friends. How is that not personal‽"
Patrick's voice cracked embarrassingly and each of the women laughed. Oh, look at you, Patrick, so sweet and soft and delicate," said the head woman. "You know, the boss played with the idea of taking you out first but eh, I told him to save you for last; to do the harder ones first so we could end on an easy note. And it worked out, didn't it? Now, all that's left is to deal with you." With that, the leader raised her magic staff and pointed it right at Patrick. He watched, half-fascinated, half-horrified as it pulsed with red energy, and it kept him rooted to the spot. Fortunately, Phoenix managed to push him out of the way just in time.
"Argh, stupid bird!" the woman shouted, her expression crazed. She noticed Phoenix was holding the briefcase in her claws and spit at the ground. "I'm going to need that back too!" she shouted at him. "Once there's no one left of your precious rock band to protect you'll have no choice but to give it to me!" Phoenix swiftly responded by flying straight towards her and attempting to peck her eye out. Patrick screamed in terror.
Go! The word rang out in Patrick's mind, and he knew it was from Phoenix. He stood rooted to the spot for a moment, not wanting to leave her but then one of the other women tried to blast him with the red energy again and he knew that if he'd stay, he'd die. Quickly, he made a run for it, bolting through the kitchen and out the back door, to the other side of the backyard where the tree line began, and the twilight sky overhead faded into darkness.
"Go get him!!" he heard the head woman scream at her subordinates and very faintly he heard them scramble to give chase, but Patrick knew he couldn't look back. Instead, he ran as hard as he could into the trees. Perhaps the forest would be enough to swallow him and make him disappear.
ns3.135.64.92da2
然後按「加至主畫面」