“So you’re not allowed to leave?”

Frederic took a bite of the cake, savouring the smooth milk chocolate on top of it, a tiny rectangular that was meant to be purely cosmetic but still added a whole new cascade of flavour.

“Frederic,” Neon replied, wiping the cream off his lips with the sleeve of his tracksuit, “I’m in a mental asylum. What exactly about this whole thing screams freedom to you?”

“Well,” Frederic countered, taking a sip of the tea, feeling uncomfortable on the plain wooden chair, “I mean, they  could’ve let you out for your sister’s birthday.” He munched on the cake gleefully. “Happy birthday to her, by the way.”

“It was yesterday,” Neon took a thin, tiny slice of the cake, “and Vinyl only came in the evening. Nobody’s gonna let me go for a night. Besides,” he took a small bite, “my doc thinks I’m still too unstable to go socialise with normal people.”

Frederic put down the cake, gulping the chewed mass. “Well, you do socialise with me.” Seeing Neon’s grin and a raised brow, he slammed his forehead with a hand. “Of course. ‘Normal’ people. Not me. Har har.” He straightened himself on the chair. “Well, just so you know, I am officially running The F Records, LLC, from today on.” He puffed out his chest proudly.

“Seriously.” Neon blinked, feeling dumber by the second. “Seriously. You called your label ‘The F Records’? Are you bananas?” He looked around, as if trying to find someone else to address. “I thought I was bananas.”

“You are bananas,” Frederic confirmed with a laugh. “I’m maracujas.” He sighed and stood up from the chair, taking a short walk towards the window. Summer was still in charge, with its hot, stuffy atmosphere, its days and filled with sunlight, but autumn was crawling over the city, tiptoeing towards it with humidity and soft summer rains, embarking on the natural cycle. “Everything changes, Neon,” he said sadly. “I run a label, your sister has found her love, Octavia is learning to care for people, and you… well, you are you.” He sighed and lowered his head. “Everything changes.”

“You do know what I’m gonna say, right.” Neon wasn’t asking; he was punctuating. “About how war-”

Frederic raised his right hand in the air solemnly. “Neon, if you quote that stupid game, I swear on my immortal soul, they will never find your body. Besides,” he turned towards the man in the tracking suit, looking even more ridiculous in a white suit on a grey T-shirt, “everything changes, Neon. Even war.”

“Everything stays, Freddie,” Neon protested amicably, getting up and walking up to his friend. “Like the vampire queen sang in that cartoon series, everything stays. Look, changes are temporary. What has changed, though?” He placed his hand on Frederic’s shoulder, but the Polish man was still looking outside.

“You may get philosophical with me, Neon, but I bring you facts.” He showed his palm. “The cold facts. Octavia and Vinyl and totally an item now, driving the highway to marriage.” One finger went bent. “You have tried to commit suicide, and, even though I saved you, I cannot save you from going nuts in the process.” Another finger went bent. “I have practically stolen your label, taken it for myself, and now I don’t know what to do with it.” Another finger went bent. “Madeline is gonna go nuts when she finally learns-”

Frederic felt strangely tense as he felt the grip on his shoulder tighten. In a moment, something vibrated in Neon’s pocket. Without looking at the phone, Neon turned it off. He didn’t need to look at the caller. “Don’t summon her,” he said very seriously, his eyes taking up their mad glimmer again. “I hope she will get the notion and will stop calling me. Ever.”

“Neon, it doesn’t work that way-” Frederic tried to explain, but, upon turning round, saw the fires of madness and, instead, guided his friend slowly to the bed. “There. There, Neon. Easy now. Madeline won’t get you here.” He smiled at his friend, whose eyes were running about hectically. “I will stand guard. Now just to tell your doctor you’ve got agitated… I think a sedative will help you…”

“I’m fine.” Neon took a few deep breaths. He extended his left arm and then pressed his palm against his chest. Taking a few more deep breaths, he closed his eyes and opened them up again, looking at Frederic more or less normally. “I am fine, really. Don’t leave. Let’s talk some more.”

“Sure, buddy,” Frederic agreed readily, pushing up the chair to the bed and subsequently sitting on it. “I can stay for as long as you want.” For a while, the room enjoyed a deep, manly silence. Then, Frederic decided that even silence has its limits. “Did I tell you I named my label-”

“Yes.” Neon nodded with a frown. “Yes you did. And,” he pointed his finger at the man thoughtfully, “you also told me you didn’t know what to do with it.”

“Kinda,” Frederic agreed, rocking back and forth on the chair. “I mean, who am I gonna sign? Who will be my first act?” He shrugged. “For that matter, what’ll be the first album that brings me my well-deserved millions?”

“Oh…” Neon smiled and winked and laughed at the same time. “I think I have an idea…”

***

“What’s up, birthday giiiiiirl~”

Vinyl looked up from the fridge that she had been about to raid (but had found devoid of anything worth eating) and her mouth fell agape. In a moment, she collected herself and pinched her nose. Then her arm, to see if Octavia’s stupidity could indeed reach such a level. “Tavi,” she said finally. “Either I am dreaming - which I really hope I am - or you have just come to the kitchen wearing a strapon.”

Octavia wiggled her crotch victoriously. “You are not dreaming, but you wish you were! I am here with Solid Dick and I have come to conquer the She that turned twenty-three yesterday!” She made a scratching motion and a growling noise that didn’t go together at all.

Vinyl groaned. “Octavia. I am not even going to ask you why you bought a strapon. I am not going to ask you how on Earth you thought of calling it Solid Dick. I am just going to ask you to remove it and buy us some food.”

“B-but…” Octavia pouted, her eyes watering up like a puppy’s. “What about the hot sexings? Vinyl, you’re not gonna leave me and Solid Dick hanging, are you?” Suddenly, the idea hit her. “Heey, ‘hanging’. Get it? Because it’s-”

“Yes.” Vinyl sighed and began massaging her eyelids. “Yes I get it, Tavi.” Since when am I the voice of reason here? For a moment, Vinyl felt very weird. It wasn’t like this relationship had undergone a full character reversal. But, in reality, ever since Neon had ended up in hospital, it was she, Vinyl, who was the reasonable one, able to carry the burden of Help on her shoulders. And it was Octavia who seemed to have lost her calm - though, in reality, had she ever truly had it? With all she’d been through? But then again, I’ve been through some shit too… But I’ve changed. I guess Octavia is changing too? “Everything changes, Tavi,” she said suddenly, very sadly, as she finally moved away from the fridge and sat on the stool.

“How do you mean, love?” Octavia immediately sat down next to her girlfriend. Somehow she realised when was the time for jokes and when there was the time for seriousness. She had lost some points in the past, sure, but she could still be there for Vinyl, any time the spinner needed her. She could still be her beam of support. She could still be her Octavia. “There hasn’t been any great change, love.”

“You don’t get it.” Vinyl shook her head and looked away from the cellist, tears in her eyes. “Neon will never be the same after that suicide attempt. Even now as we speak, they are filling his mind up with chemicals just so it keeps functioning properly.” She trembled. “Your Frederic will never be the same, now that he’s got the label. Greed poisons men’s souls.” Octavia grabbed the woman in an embrace and held her. “You will never be the same now, after you got stabbed.” The trembling intensified, and Octavia held her woman tighter. “I will… I… I…”

“Shh.” Octavia leant in, pressing her lips against Vinyl’s in order to silence her. “Vinyl, listen to me. Those are unworthy changes. Those are just small, tiny changes that life is full of. In reality, look how it all really goes down.” She kissed Vinyl’s forehead. “Neon will still be your loving brother, always.” Vinyl ceased trembling and put her head on Octavia’s shoulder. The cellist began running her fingers through the spinner’s wild, dishevelled hair. “Frederic will always be my friend, the loving, caring…” But admittedly weird. “Guy that he is. And I… And you… Octavia smiled, trying to show her beaming face to the DJ. “We will always be together, you and me. I will never leave your side. I’ll change, but, by changing, I’ll just make sure our relationship stays the same. That you stay happy and positive. See?” Octavia laughed. “Everything stays, Vinyl.”

Vinyl sniffed one last time and offered her cellist a weak smile. “Maybe you’re right, Tavi.” She leant in the embrace and exhaled contentedly. Then, she felt something poking at her leg. “Tavi?”

“Hmm?”

Vinyl deadpanned. “Take the strapon off, please. Now.”

***

“Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra.”

“On earth as it is in Heaven,” the woman repeated shyly as the preacher moved on with the prayer:

“Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris.” The preacher shifted a little, casting a look at the few people who had gathered for a prayer.

“Forgive us our sins.” The woman tried to smile at him, but the preacher didn’t smile. “Or was it ‘trespasses’?” Ashamed, the woman looked away.

“Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.”

“Yes.” The woman nodded and crossed her chest. “Deliver us from evil. Amen.”

The preacher bowed his head and walked off, in the direction of the confession boxes. Ashamed, the woman looked around her, but all she could see was an old couple lost in prayer on the bench and a woman reading the Bible in the corner. She quietly got up and walked past the benches.

The Church wasn’t as full or as lively as it used to be. Many people had shifted to a new religion, the Internet. But here, the woman could remember the times when she was a girl, when her parents would take her to church where she would hear priests pray in a language she, then, couldn’t understand. It looked mystical. Now, the Church was trying to be as modern and down-to-earth as ever, as opposed to Orthodoxy which was clinging to its old traditional values, or more and more new Protestant churches, some of which went as full-on mystic as to actually discard the Bible in favour of a new book. But here, well, this was Christianity as she remembered it back from when she was a girl.

Besides, being in a church was nice. Definitely a nice change from the coffee shop, where she toiled away, no longer looking forward to the day’s end, or home, where she would call him for hours, trying to get an answer. Deep inside, she knew the answer, but she feared it so much. How many men had promised to marry and then ran away before? Of course, some loving part of her heart was worried that something might have happened to him, to her fiance, but the more rational part told her that he had probably just run away. And she was so stupid, to believe that, in such short time, a marriage could be born!

Not that she was that ready for marriage. But… he had proposed! And she-! “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” She waited for the preacher to bless her. “I… It’s been a while since my last confession… not that I actually came here to confess.”

“Why did you come here, then, child?”

“I… I wanted to talk. But I don’t want to see a psychotherapist. I am used to the Church helping me so… I just came here.” Madeline gulped and looked away - even though there was no point of looking away in a confession chamber.

There was a pause coming from the priest’s side. Then there was a sigh. “What do you want to talk about, child?”

“There is this man, Ne- Nigel,” Madeline began slowly, trying to come up with the right words to tell her story. “We dated for a while and- yes, I know, we, um, we did it before marriage. But he proposed!” It looked more like she argued with herself. “He proposed to me and then… Then he… Vanished. He doesn’t answer my calls. I am afraid something has happened to him, but…” She gulped again, feeling her mouth all dry. “Well, my sin here is that I think he just left me.”

“God will have mercy on the meek and will punish the offenders,” the preacher suggested in a gravely voice. Hearing no reaction, he cleared his throat and carried on in a more therapy-like manner: “So… You are worried because you are afraid you will never see him again?”

“That too.” Madeline put her face in her hands for a few moments. “I am afraid, more or less… of change. I mean, life will never be the same after him. Now that he is gone, everything has changed, and, and I have to lead my life somehow.”

“Have you changed?” the preacher asked. “Has he changed you?”

“N-no, I don’t think so…” Madeline tried to gulp but her whole mouth and throat were dry, so the gulp came out pretty painful. “I mean, we haven’t been together for that long… For him to change me or for me to change him…”

“Has your family changed?”

“No, I guess…” Madeline began drumming on her knee. “My family is still the same, and I’m, well, I’m as unmarried as I was…”

“Has he changed your beliefs?”

“No…” Madeline could almost see the smile on the preacher’s face. She expected a kindly, soft smile. “My faith is always with me. It’s always in me.”

“Are you better now, child?” the preacher asked with a smile in his voice. “Do you see now?”

“See what, Father?” Madeline tried to pierce the partition with her gaze, but saw only wood. “Yes, I’m better, but what am I supposed to see?”

“That everything is still the same, child.” The preacher let out a sigh. “Everything stays.”

Madeline paused for a moment, then blushed a little. “Can you pray with me, Father? My favourite prayer.”

She began suddenly, and the preacher soon followed. The two voices formed a strange, interesting harmony as they chanted together:

“Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio, contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium. Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque, princeps militiae caelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtute, in infernum detrude. Amen.”

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