Beautiful Musician Read online

  Beautiful Musician

  By Sheri Whitefeather

  Copyright © 2013 Sheree Whitefeather

  Smashwords Edition

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  Thank you.

  Chapter One

  I stood outside her window in the dark, my heart filled with angst. I considered her my everything, and I was certain that I was hers. But we hadn’t told each other how we felt. Neither of us knew quite how to say it. Loving each other was dangerous. Someday we would be separated, and we might never find our way back together again.

  I fanned my hand against the pane of glass. Was she asleep? Was she nestled in her bed, the covers drawn tight?

  Her name was Abby Winston, and she was nineteen years old. Currently, she lived in a treatment center called The Manor, and I paid secret visits to her.

  They claimed that she had been schizophrenic for most of her life, and that I was one of her hallucinations. According to the rest of the world, I didn’t exist. But to her, I was real. As much as I hated to admit it, I knew she was mentally ill and that I was a component of her disease. But I would never, ever tell her that. It was my job to keep her warm and safe, to let her believe in me.

  She’d created me when she was a child, several years after her parents died in a devastating car crash. She imagined me, and I appeared to her. I was a kid then, too, just a few years older than she was.

  These days I was a man: tall, dark, and leanly muscled. I was known as Smiling Seven. An odd name, but she’d given it to me, so I’d always treasured it just the same. Besides, mostly I was called Seven, and that suited me fine.

  On this Southern California evening, I was one with the night, pressing my hand gently against her window. I liked being part of the darkness, the moon scattering its silvery beams down on me.

  But I wasn’t going to stand out here until morning. I longed to see her, to be near her.

  My sweet Abby.

  I didn’t try to open the window. It wasn’t necessary. I could simply pop into her room, sort of like the “Beam me up, Scotty” thing, only I wasn’t from outer space.

  Then again, I wasn’t from this world, either. I hailed from a meta-universe called Room 105. According to Abby, everything and everyone in it had been created by people like her, who were prone to using their imaginations. It was where I lived when I wasn’t with Abby.

  105 was a bizarre place. To me, it was like Oz on crack or maybe the Mad Hatter ingesting molly. You never really knew what to expect. Of course, Room 105 wasn’t any more real than I was, but that didn’t make it any less my home.

  Anxious to see Abby, I beamed into her room and stood in the golden-hued shadows. She’d left a nightlight on. She’d always been afraid of the dark. I moved closer. She was asleep, but the covers weren’t tightly drawn. At some point, she’d kicked them away.

  She looked like a troubled princess, locked in a twisted fairy tale. She wore her white-blonde hair short and choppy, and she was small and frail. Sometimes I had to remind her to take care of herself, to wash her pretty face, to shower, to wear clean clothes. Her crappy grooming habits were a symptom of her illness.

  Sometimes I was a bit of a mess myself. My medium-length brown hair looked as if it had been styled with an eggbeater, and I always had a dusting of beard stubble on my chin. I favored black clothes, leather accessories, and rugged boots. On top of that, I had a pierced tongue, my left ear was decorated with silver studs, and both of my arms were inked with full-sleeve tattoos, the artwork a hodgepodge of random shit.

  But what could I say? I was a musician, and my creation and the development of my persona was inspired by a young Nikki Sixx. He was the co-founder and bass player for Mötley Crüe. He was also a brilliant songwriter, author, photographer, and radio host. Abby had chosen him because her mom had harbored a crush on Sixx back in the day. I didn’t look like him, but I had his bad-boy vibe, I supposed, with a schizophrenic dose of romantic hero tossed in.

  Abby thought I was as hot as fucking sin and ridiculously handsome. She’d always had a bit of a thing for me, even when we were kids, but she’d been better able to hide it then.

  I glanced down at the foot of her bed and noticed that Dingo, the dancing dog, was curled in a ball, keeping her company. He was another of her hallucinations. There were four of us altogether and she called us her “people,” regardless of whether or not all of us were human.

  I was friends with her other people, but sometimes they got on my nerves, especially when I wanted Abby to myself. Dingo was cool, though. He didn’t talk or do anything annoying or abnormal. Abby said that he danced, but it was typical doggie stuff, jumping around in circles and whatnot.

  He lifted his furry head and perked his ears at me. I put a finger to my lips, warning him to be quiet. Sometimes he could be rambunctious as hell. He was a Jack Russell terrier, and they were a feisty little breed.

  The dog settled back down, and I sat in a chair in the corner and watched Abby. We’d never kissed or touched in a sexual way, but I wanted her.

  Damn, I wanted her.

  I’d been with lots of women in 105. I wasn’t famous, not like the rocker who inspired my creation, but my career was beginning to bud, and I got my fair share of long-limbed, sultry-eyed groupies. But recently, I’d stopped partaking of their favors. I couldn’t bear to fuck someone who wasn’t Abby.

  I didn’t do drugs. I didn’t see the need. I was already a weird-ass guy, invented by a beautifully strange girl. No drug could ever expand my mind the way Abby could. But don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a teetotaler. On occasion, I got bleary-eyed drunk and painfully maudlin. Other times, you could catch me on the happy side of the bottle, charmingly, laughingly wasted.

  Tonight I was neither. Tonight I was blindingly sober and admiring the girl I loved.

  Chapter Two

  I dozed off in the chair, but I kept waking up every few hours and watching Abby. She thrashed a bit in her sleep. I wanted to climb into bed and hold her, but that might cause the kind of intimacy neither of us was ready to deal with. So I stayed where I was.

  In the morning, she sat up and blinked through the sunlight stealing into her room. She had the biggest, brightest blue eyes, framed with silky lashes. Her pajamas were out of sync. They had a Christmas print on them, even though it was nowhere near that time of year. But Abby didn’t pay attention to that sort of stuff.

  She petted Dingo, but he didn’t bounce to attention. He wagged his tail and went back to sleep.

  When she spotted me, she smiled. “Seven. How long have you been there?”

  “All night.”

  I returned her smile, and she made a girlish sound, a sigh of sorts. The devil-may-care tilt of my lips was a source of fascination for her. She’d named me Smiling Seven because she said that I had a secret smile that enhanced my psychic powers.

  I was considered an empath, which meant that I was able to read people’s emotions, to feel what they felt. I was clairvoyant, as well, predicting events destined to happen.

  Of course I didn’t know everything about everyone. Mostly I felt what Abby wanted me to feel about the people associated with her, whether they were real or imagined.

  In the real world, she had a matronly aunt named Carol and a twenty-year-old sister named Vanessa.

  The sisters adored each other. They even looked alike, except that Vanessa took better care of herself. She wore
stylish clothes, had longer hair, and wasn’t mentally ill. But that didn’t mean she didn’t have issues. Vanessa spent most of her time worrying that she was going to develop schizophrenia and become just like Abby. There wasn’t much I could do about Vanessa’s fears. I already had my hands full with Abby.

  “Why are you being so quiet?” she asked me.

  “I was thinking.”

  “You’re always thinking.”

  That was true. I was always trying to figure things out. Abby’s poor little mind moved at a dizzying pace. Either that or it slugged along in states of dark-cloaked depression.

  She ran a hand through her haphazardly chopped hair. She cut it that way herself. She’d been hacking away at her hair since we were kids.

  I checked the clock on her nightstand. Then I said, “You need to get ready for the day. To bathe, brush your teeth, go the dining hall for breakfast, take your medicine.”

  “I want to stay here with you and Dingo.”

  “They won’t let you stay in your room all day.” I grinned at her. “Besides, this place is pretty swanky for a loony bin. You might as well try to enjoy it.”

  She laughed. She liked it when I poked fun at The Manor. But in actuality, it was a damned fine facility, a private treatment center designed to teach people how to manage their disease and then, hopefully, transition into mainstream society. Abby would probably never make it that far, but at least she was here, learning what she could.

  The Manor didn’t come cheap. Her aunt footed the bill, but it was Vanessa who’d convinced Abby to become a Manor resident.

  I gestured to her bathroom. “Go get ready.”

  “Will you still be here afterward?”

  “Absolutely. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Pinky promise?”

  “Always.” I came forward and held out my hand so we could lock pinkies, a cozy habit from our youth.

  Only now her touch sent a jolt of hunger through me. I severed the connection quickly, shooing her into the head. What I really wanted was to take a shower with her, to lather every inch of her sweet body.

  She grabbed a change of clothes and gave me a lingering look before she closed the bathroom door, wanting me as badly as I wanted her. Even a guy who wasn’t psychic would’ve recognized the yearning in her eyes.

  Dingo roused from his sleep and jumped off the bed. While I waited for Abby, I rifled through her desk drawer, where she kept the imaginary dog treats. Dingo barked and twirled, and I tossed him a cheese-flavored bite.

  Abby had created him a few months after she’d manufactured me, but he didn’t grow older the way I did. He would be the same young, playful age for the rest of his fake-canine life.

  After a short while, Abby emerged from the bathroom looking like a ragamuffin. Her oversized oxford shirt was wrinkled and misbuttoned, and her razor-edged hair had been towel-dried but not combed. She also had a speck of toothpaste near the corner of her mouth. If she were my lover, I would’ve pulled her tight against me and licked it off. I did the next best thing. I scooped it up with my thumb and tasted it that way.

  To cover my tracks, I named the brand, as if identifying the product had been my agenda.

  She merely blinked. The heat between us had gone minty fresh. I craved another taste. I pointed to her blouse instead.

  “You better fix that before you go to breakfast,” I said.

  Visibly dazed, she glanced down. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  She debated what to do, the indecision evident in her baby blues. She didn’t know whether to turn her back or fix it in front of me.

  My pulse pounded with anticipation.

  Waiting…

  Hoping…

  She remained where she was. A bold step for her. Bold for me, too, because I shouldn’t have stood there and watched, not with the way I was feeling.

  She undid the buttons, one by one, her hands unsteady. I didn’t dare offer to help. She was the least deliberately sexy girl I knew, yet I’d never been so aroused. A barely-there glimpse of her plain beige bra was enough to give me a hard-on.

  Her cheeks flushed. Not because she noticed my skinny black jeans were getting tighter, but because she was shy about what she was doing.

  She finally completed her task and neither of us breathed for what seemed like a century.

  “Did I…get it…right?” she asked, her voice crumbling like a deliciously iced cake.

  “Yes.” I expelled the air from my pent-up lungs. The buttons were in their respective holes.

  Truthfully, neither of us was getting any of this right. We’d both gone silent again. I was behaving like a dumbstruck schoolboy. Every song I wrote these days was a tribute to Abby.

  She slipped on a pair of sandals, the huarache kind the Beach Boys sang about. Surfin’ USA. I thought Brian Wilson was a genius. Not only because of his stellar contribution to music, but because he suffered from a schizoaffective disorder that mimicked schizophrenia. His troubled mind made me admire him even more. Anyone who was similar to Abby was sure to captivate me.

  I glanced at her toes peeking out from the woven leather. She needed a pedicure something awful. I would gladly massage her feet and paint her toenails, but not at the risk of getting another boner.

  “I better go,” she said.

  “Yeah, you better.”

  More silence.

  She hesitated. Then she furrowed her eyebrows. “I’m not crazy. They just think I am.”

  “I know.” What else could I say? “You’re as sane as I am.” Which was about as insane as it got, considering.

  “The medicine they give me is a waste. They should save it for someone who needs it.”

  “Just humor them and take it, okay?”

  “Okay. But I only agreed to come here to get away from Aunt Carol.”

  I was well aware of how she felt about her aunt. She was terribly paranoid of Carol. But I had to admit that there was something unnatural about the way her aunt interacted with her.

  She fussed with the tails of her properly buttoned shirt. “I’m scared, Seven.”

  “I know you are.” She wasn’t talking about her aunt anymore. She was making a reference to me, to us, to our shaky future.

  At some point, I was going to get stranded in Room 105, losing my ability to return to Abby, which would make me a target for the monsters who patrolled the 105 border. All of Abby’s people were going to get stuck there. This happened to 105ers who were created by kids.

  The border monsters were the same type of horrific creatures that sometimes hid under children’s beds and scared them half to death, which was why they preyed upon those of us who’d originally come from the minds of children. Their favorite victims were 105ers like me. At one time, I’d been a kid, created by a kid. I was a monster’s dream. They would have ambushed me a long time ago if it had been allowed. But they weren’t permitted to attack a child. They’d been waiting for me to grow up, toying with my future and preparing to seize the moment. When they decided the time was right, they would try to take out Abby’s other people with me.

  The only way for us to survive was to be rescued by a man known as the warrior. He wasn’t going to be invisible like me, though. When he appeared, he would be a regular person, seen by everyone he came into contact with.

  The clincher was that Abby had given Vanessa the responsibly of creating him. Yes, Vanessa. The non-schizophrenic sister who worried about being becoming mentally ill. How that was going to resolve itself was beyond me.

  “We just have to wait it out,” I said.

  “What if the warrior never appears?”

  “He will,” I assured her, when in fact, I had no idea if we could count on him. Vanessa certainly didn’t want him to appear. She wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.

  And that made the possibility of Abby and I losing each other a terrible reality. If the warrior didn’t show up when Abby and I needed him, we were doomed.

  He was ou
r only solution. I couldn’t stay here, instead of traveling between both worlds, to eliminate the risk of getting stuck in my homeland. Defecting wasn’t an option. I was connected to 105, and it had a permanent hold on me. If I tried to escape, it would pull me right back.

  Abby fussed with her shirt again. “I wish you could come to breakfast with me.”

  I should insist that she go by herself, forcing her to be independent of me. It wasn’t wise for me to keep coddling her, especially with our separation looming in the balance.

  But I caved in, falling deeper under her mentally mixed-up spell. “I’ll come with you, and I’ll bring Dingo, too. But you shouldn’t talk to us while you’re there.”

  She gave me an adoring look. “I’ll be good. I just need you to be with me.”

  I scooped Dingo into my arms, and the three of us left the room together. Hell and damnation, but I needed her, too.

  Chapter Three

  We entered the dining hall, where a cafeteria-style breakfast was underway. Some of the other patients were already seated at circular tables and others stood in line, waiting to be served.

  Abby shuffled forward. She didn’t like being around groups of people. She glanced back, making sure I was there. I definitely was, right behind her in line, even if I wouldn’t be receiving any food. Dingo squirmed in my arms and sniffed the sausage-and-bacon-scented air.

  I could tell that Abby wanted to talk to me. I shook my head, reminding her not to give in to the temptation.

  Curious, I glanced around at the other patients. Most of them looked much more normal than Abby. But I suspected the majority of them were on the road to recovery.

  Schizophrenia was a freaky disease, where the victim struggled to separate reality from fantasy. It was often confused with having multiple personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder or whatever the fuck it was called these days. But the fact of the matter was, schizophrenics only had one wacked-out personality.