# Pink Fuzz Chapter 3

Pink Fuzz 3
​
Relapse
​
Reed showed Anon a side of himself he showed nobody else. He gave speeches he thought he’d never manage, ones he didn’t know he needed to give. The feelings didn’t come up until they did. Now he felt naked.
Things were easier when he made quips to shock and entertain the worry-addled minds around him, when he Bugs Bunny’d dumb bimbos like Naomi into taking their bootlicking faces outta sight.
At least then he felt he was helping people by default: Reed, the goofy stoner, the coolest bro you could ask for… as long as you didn’t ask for much.
It had been a month since Fang’s rooftop fiasco. Reed said so much then, but knew he didn’t live up to the standard.
He had a lot of time to think about this, especially after tuning out most of Trish’s harebrained schemes for the concert. All he remembered was Fang and Anon (that lucky devil), scored a venue at Dino-Moe’s Pizzeria.
It’d feel weird seeing a high-profile client outside strict business, but he’d manage.
“It’ll be sweet. You and Fang will sync up your strings and jam out. Sound’ll bounce off the walls with a venue that small.” Reed said, interrupting Trish’s worrying over a t-shirt booth or something. He wasn’t listening and didn’t want to wait until getting called out on it.
“Tch. You actually think it’ll work out for us?” Trish replied.
“Sure will. Ever been to The Sewer?”
“Not old enough to barhop, Reed.”
“Okay but… small venues make us louder. This kind of stuff makes noise punk tolerable. It’ll go great.”
It was quiet in the auditorium without Fang and Anon’s cooing. This also forced Trish to unload her cheap t-shirt ideas entirely onto him.
Still, tender moments did come, and it made life worth living:
“We’re doing this to help Fang too, right? We can’t let Anon do all the work.” Trish said and tried to chuckle, but her bitterness toward the latter still leaked from her clenched teeth.
“Huh? Oh yeah, of course. Fang deserves the best.” Reed said, or at least something with his voice spoke for him. His nervous system buzzed so harshly he felt like a pair of eyeballs attached to a floating brainstem. Maybe it was old instincts that kept his eyes on the prize: Mr. Jingo’s plush chair…
Later that evening, Reed shuffled out of the chem lab. He slid a spare key into his pockets. Everyone from IT to bio knew the drill when the dingy dromaeosaur came around.
He held a mound of a strange, crystalline substance bundled in a sheet of paper. He carried it like a toddler made of stained glass.
This was a knockoff thermite recipe he found online years ago. After baking the ingredients, one had thirty minutes to place it before the mixture hardened. After that, any movement or fluctuation in heat would activate a screaming white light that’d eat through concrete.
A pit of worry welled in his stomach as he gently tucked the substance onto the lock of the auditorium's back door (out of sight from the streets or nearby neighborhoods). This wasn’t just because he was transferring explosives like a fresh pastry, but because he needed to blow his way into the auditorium just to feel something plush beneath his ass.
Anon’s apartment, Skin Row. Reed still couldn’t believe he got kicked out of there. It was his own fault. He got too sloppy. After that beat down, he invited clients over while Anon was out. They even ‘tested’ product together. It was more than just carfe, too…
Anon’s humble neet den became a flop-house, with walls tinged with numerous copulations of pipe-smoked fancies. Ever since then, Reed kept to motels, back alleys, and a pocket full of sudafed.
The humans were still looking for him and his loving family froze his bank account. He hadn’t been home at all since Anon visited.
He didn’t even want to think about his Creamcast… or Killer’s Heaven…
His funds dwindling and mind wandering from cutting into so much of his own supply, sometimes spiders crept in the corners of his vision, and he heard the voices of his friends say terrible things about him as if he wasn’t there:
“Can’t depend on him at all.”
“Reed’s… well, Reed.”
“He’s just a weed, a stepping stone to my success.”
That last bit voiced itself through both Anon and Fang.
After the thermite did its work, Reed kicked the door down and was greeted with a backdraft of plastic and varnished woodwind instruments. He floated through this palace of memories like a spectre, unable to hear his own footsteps as figures loomed in the dark, hiding behind monoliths of sheet music stands and towers of plastic chairs.
His breath halted in his chest as he approached Mr. Jingo’s prized chair. It was a plush, Swedish high modern something-or-other, pink and egg-shaped like a womb.
Reed trembled as he peeled off the green longcoat he stole from a laundromat. He’d gained a few more welts from sleeping in the wrong neighborhood park a week back, and he didn’t know using his arm as a pillow on concrete would make him scab up so bad.
It was so pleasantly dark he didn’t have to look at what he became. His slouch became less of a relaxed mannerism and moreso a circumstance of weak, jelly-like limbs and a burnt out motor skills.
He collapsed so hard into the chair that the cushions enveloped him. For the first time in ages, something soft wrapped itself around him.
He tossed his stimulants into the trash and took advantage of this hangover to close his eyes.
He could afford a few hours of sleep…
Hot streams poured down his cheeks, but he couldn’t hear himself cry.
​
Seven days until VVURM DRAMA plays. He only remembered this because Trish and Fang mentioned it constantly. The few times his friends looked to him he managed a half-lidded grin, but he didn’t feel anything about it. He didn’t even feel alive anymore. Anon wouldn’t even look at him.
The gang buzzed around him like little beings of energy and he fed off it by approximation until lunch ended. Unsatisfied with himself, he skipped class to roam the halls.
Were palm trees always this big? He thought. What about these vines? They’re everywhere! The humidity and oxygen levels are crazy here. He then looked to a crowd of fellow dinos as the school counsel introduced a gaggle of kids to the campus.
“We’re all like, cereal mascots. Raptor Jesus, all these colors burn. What, do we live in a cartoon?” he asked, his voice rattling wearily.
“Reed? Is that you? What are you talking about.” a familiar voice replied, one so ominous it froze him in terror and left his mouth agape.
The orchid oppressor, the marmalade maestro, the apricot abjudicator: Naomi.
He thought he was talking to Fang, which just went to show how fucked up his head got.
“You look homeless. Are you going for a Kurt Cobain look? It wouldn’t be appropriate to introduce kids to Gus Van Sant this early…-” she babbled.
“Ummm. I don’t speak French,” was all Reed could come up with when it came to misdirection.
Naomi’s eyes intensified from behind her housewife-like cat glasses, staring right through him.
“Whatever.” she said. For once, she didn’t feel like playing hall monitor, and curtly turned away. Her narrow hips in those high riding mom jeans swayed like a metronome, headed off to whatever bootlicking endeavor buzzed in her robotic brain.
It was surely Reed’s least confident comeback, one that even made Naomi realize he wasn’t worth the time.
He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
​
Trish corralled Reed after school into coming for rehearsal. She pushed him like a mule to make him remember where they were walking.
“Come on. It’s not like you have anything better to do,” she huffed.
Of course they would need him to ready the electronics, and while Anon seemed more friendly to him again he did his best to keep out of everyone’s way. He kept his jacket tight over himself despite the heat, and hid his usually vibrant aquamarine eyes behind the shield shades he snagged from a shop a bit ago.
Since technical work was the bane of most, he had guaranteed time alone. He knew he had to do something with the lights and amps, something about syncing them to the patterns of their songs, but he mainly fucked around with switchboards and feigned activity.
He couldn’t pay attention even if he wanted to. His mind was playing silver screen flicks of horrible memories, gripping his mind like a devil’s claw:
“You’re gonna be retarded forever! Skinnies used to poison each other in war with this stuff!” the laughs of Rhine, his chickenshit older step-brother, played loudly. Working in the nooks and crannies behind the stage, it reminded him of the gardening shed they (Rhine and dear old step-dad) locked him in after getting his first honors certificate.
They told him it was man time, and that certain skinnies forced children to inhale the fumes of hallucinogenic datura for a ‘vision quest’.
He remembered scratching his claws off against the plastic door of the shed, which was barred from the other side. He cried his eyes out and called for dad, his real dad, but purple smoke burrowed into his lungs in response.
Only after the trauma did he realize the average datura trip lasted for three days, and that one could survive to the very end and still die from complications. Datura, even the most common trumpet flower, had greatly variable strength from flower to flower.
He doubted Rhine thought of that when he invited friends over to take bongloads and laugh at him.
Would they care if he died, or even panic?
What would his tombstone look like?
Reed decided that his headstone would bear his real name (before his gold-trigger mom changed it) and the following epitaph:
Marcus Streiland. “Another sad story.”
“Are you finished already!?” Fang’s voice awoke Reed from a replay of the nightmare world he called a childhood.
He was on the floor, looking up to the chins of his friends. They grimaced at him like he was a stain, with a mix of confusion, anger, and worry distributed between them in random amounts.
“Uhm. Yeah. Good to go!” he rattled uneasily, and smiled.
​
The harsh claxons of the fire alarm forced Reed to cover his pounding ears with his arms.
A firetruck drew the rubbernecking of students passing by, who were shooed away and told to go back to class.
No one was injured, thankfully, but over twelve-hundred dollars of stage lights were ruined in what the head IT guy agreed was the worst case of switchbox jigsaw in school history.
Anon and Fang and Trish didn’t stick around after the sparks rained on them. Their enthusiasm transformed into fear the second they flipped that switch…
“Only six days until the concert!” Fang panicked.
“We can do it without him. Moe has good people.” Anon assured them.
He couldn’t bear to look at them, and simply sat in the office’s grilling chair to sponge reprimands from the IT and Principal Spears. That hulk of a man nearly tore his head off.
Of course, Reed accepted all the blame, and by the time he was told to leave the sun was setting and no one waited for him outside. He knew this, so while Naomi positioned herself to shoo him out like a bum from a storefront, he shouldered past her and bolted back into the office. His legs were so weak each step threw him off balance. He bounded off the walls like a pinball as he barreled to the one place that could save him.
‘Anon is a new player. He’s bringing something new. He helped Fang-.’
Who said that? Oh right, he did, and while the heads of suits swerved to catch the ragged, filthy, run down pinky raptor before them, he charged down the front door of the counselor’s office.
His body gave out immediately, and he collapsed to the floor and cried. He drooled all over the carpet and held himself tight. The poor, confused ptero woman who signed up for this job took to her notepad frantically:
​
-Reed’s father was killed in an underground electrical incident when he was young.
-Left to abusive family.
--Highly abusive.
-Also hates father because he’s a ‘fed stooge’ who let himself die to tinker over subjects instead of ‘embracing sauranity’.
-Obviously involved in criminal behavior (unstated).
-Unloved by anyone, despite wanting to support his friends.
-Too ‘burnt out perma-retarded’ to help them…
-HOMELESS ADULT.
​
By break time, the hall was packed with students. It sounded like several bombs made of bottled screams went off in the school office. One student reported seeing Reed, rocking and shaking in a large blue dino-blankey, surrounded by the school counselor, some concerned faculty, and a security guard.
He stared into the colorful, smiling dinos spread across the blanket’s design, wishing it was a vista he could dive into.
Reed was eighteen. He was a homeless adult. While things might’ve been done to secure housing for students, he only had a few hundred dollars left to his name and it was doubtful his parents would help him.
In fact, due to numerous PTA meeting incidents, they were placed on the ‘do not call’ list.
​
I got to sit on Fang’s lap, her skin like porcelain, as we gently plucked her guitar. Unlike my room, the window sat wide open, letting the drapes flutter with calming sea salt wind.
Aside from being on lookout for her father’s car, everything was perfect again.
It seemed like we found each other right when everything was falling apart. We jumped from the crumbling platforms of our crappy, neglected loner lives and made something for ourselves.
Even if this is the crest - our happiest moment together - I’d be okay with that.
Our reverie was broken when Fang’s cell rang. I pretended not to pay attention, but several stern voices spoke to her from the other line.
“Can he stay at my house?” Fang restated, and then very quickly replied, “No. My parents would kill me. There’s no way they’d-. Yes. Alright. No problem. Bye.”
Fang’s glowing ease transformed into anxiety in an instant. Her eyes paced across the room, but focused on me. Her limbs squeezed tighter around me for support.
“I think Reed’s at his limit…”
“Hm?” I replied.
“He broke down. It sounds really bad.”
“He seemed fine a month ago. I… don’t know what happened.”
Fang nodded. Her eyes strained until crows feet sprouted beneath them.
For a stoner, Reed seemed fine when I first met him. I wasn’t sure if his behavioral issues made him swing into huge bouts of junkiness, but it stressed out everyone around him.
No wonder Fang was so insecure.
“He’s been homeless for a while now. He didn’t even tell me.”
My body tensed at that.
Did he really not have a place to go after I threw him out? This can’t be my fault. He pushed this himself. He let four crusty dudes blow hookah on my bed. There are still coal stains on the mattress!
“W-why won’t he tell me anything? He won’t let me in…” Fang whimpered, and set her guitar aside, too frazzled to play.
He taped the fire alarm too. My landlord found it and I got fined five-hundred bones. My parents were so pissed…
“Is this our fault? I should’ve asked about those jackets… The nurse said he was covered with scabs.”
I know that was jizz. He let someone jizz on my wall.
That tears it.
“No! I mean, it’s not your fault. He said he wanted to help, but he got himself into a ton of trouble. The guy can barely see straight.”
“Are you saying I should just give up on him!?” Fang snarled as if I called her a waste of time too.
Maybe that’s how close they were, or maybe she just thought she was like him: an outcast.
“There’s a difference between you and Reed. Reed… his home life is horrible. His family all compress drug crystals or something. Their place could go out like a pressure cooker.”
This only dug Fang’s face deeper into my chest, as if to muffle herself away from the pain, but I gently part a silky, silvery bang of her mane and she looked up to me, her massive eyes pleading.
“Reed has a lot of problems. So do we. We can’t… dedicate all our sympathy points to him.”
Fang’s eyes suddenly narrowed. Her voice lowered back to its usual punky self. “Sympathy points?” she asked.
Fuck fuck I referenced TableQuest aloud!
“Sympathy is a resource. If you’re feeling down, you have to invest that much more sympathy into yourself. If you give all your sympathy points away you’ll burn out and they’ll want more from you. Nobody wins.”
“Reed isn’t an emotional vampire, you cock sock! He’s-!”
“He let someone cum on my wall! You can’t help someone when they do that!”
In a split second, my pure white pterosaur dug her palms into my chest. She planted herself firmly on my stomach, pinning me to the bed.
“You said you went to his house before,” her voice was unshakable and low, like a chiding mother who caught her son smearing shit on the walls. The way her muzzle pulled back into baring fangs and muscle was the most terrifyingly arousing thing I’d ever seen.
“Tell me everything. Now.” she growled.