Chapter 10
Dethklok were characteristically hungover the next morning.
Pickles had indeed told everyone, who had simply shrugged and dealt with it in their own ways, by shrugging or grunting or completely ignoring the drummer. After all, she was just some chick Charles was banging. Big deal. But, internally, all of them were a little peeved at their manager. It was just like when Melmord had disappeared, and when Charles had blown them off to work, and Nathan's "girlfriends" had finally stopped coming to visit the rest of the band, and when a slew of other people had just…stopped caring over the years. Caring wasn't metal, but having someone to get completely hammered with and do stupid things with was.
They had been grooming Zoe to get to that point. After all, hanging out with the same four other people got pretty annoying after a while. She had been a nice change of pace.
Toki was the one who reacted the worst, as he was practically crushed when he had heard the news, and still hadn't let go of deddy bear to go about his daily business. When Charles walked in, calm and collected as always, it was too much for the young Norwegian, and he glared daggers at the tired manager before retiring to his room with the bear and a beer bottle in tow. The rest of the band continued to eat in silence, giving Charles the cold shoulder.
"Morning, guys. I, ah, just have a couple ideas to throw at you today, so, ah, here we go." He decided which one to bounce off of the remaining band members first, but was cut short in his thoughts by Nathan's growling voice.
"Just shut up, Ofdensen."
A bewildered Charles looked up from his thoughts, four bloodshot and narrowed pairs of eyes staring back at him.
"Ah…well, I'm sorry. I can't do that, Nathan, because I need you to hear these pitches and decide if any of them might be something you're interested in do-"
"Hey, I said fucking shut it!" He bellowed, and Charles' mouth snapped closed tightly.
"I take it you told them, Pickles?" He muttered.
"Yer damn right I told 'em, dooshbeag." The redhead retorted, downing the last of his morning alcohol and beginning on his afternoon drinks.
"I see. Well, I'm sorry guys, but it had to be done."
"Schorry. Schorry?" Murderface was lost for words beyond that. He was going to miss baked murder goods and getting to stare down the young lawyer's cleavage when she leaned over to wrap up his knife wounds.
"You's ams sorries, Ofdensens? You's ams not sorries. You's am not sorries at alls. You's ams de robot- you's feel nothings. You's has de hearts of ice, remembers? Ands now we's has anothers robot to be dealings with." Skwisgaar turned his nose up at the CFO, sneering. Charles just stood there helplessly. He wasn't even getting yelled at- instead, a deadly calm had fallen over his boys, and he was forced to take a dose of his own medicine, not much caring for it.
"Well…it's, ah…it's over with, now. So, you know what? I'll come back later and we can, ah, talk about these ideas some more, alright?" He beat a hasty retreat, knowing there was no getting through to them like this, and all sorts of insults were being hurled at his back.
His day only deteriorated further when he arrived back in his office, to find Toki had not returned to his room, but was standing in front of the masked assistant-manager, waving his hand in front of her face and smothering his face in his stuffed animal to hide his weakness. Charles remained in the doorway, an unfamiliar feeling tugging at whatever heartstrings he had left to be pulled. Toki was the baby of his boys- seeing him cry and knowing there was nothing he could do about it made him want to hurt whatever it was that caused the pain.
A difficult task, seeing as he had never been one to inflict self-harm.
"Yous was likes de mothers I never hads, Zoe! Whys you has to let dildos manager takes that away!" He sobbed to the stony figure, who said and did nothing, even when deddy bear was hurled at her face. Toki ran past Charles, not even looking at him as he sprinted past, down the corridor, and disappeared. His unusually open cries, however, were still cuttingly audible. Charles had to shut the door and lean against it, fighting to keep his breathing steady and to keep his cheeks from darkening in both ignominy and anger.
Zoe, her movements slow and dreamlike, touched her mask where the small stuffed animal had collided with her head, bent down, and picked up the bear. Charles felt himself desperately hoping that she was coming out of the brainwashing his lackeys had put her through, that this waking nightmare (why did he feel so strongly about this, again?) he'd inadvertently landed himself in was coming to a close. She brushed off the bear, and seemed to study it for a moment.
But, of course, Charles should never be so lucky as to have things go his way on a regular basis.
"Sir. Shall I return this to master Toki at once?"
He heard the machine-like quality in her voice, as though her minimalist thoughts were being channeled through his laptop. The timbre of her words rang hollow in his ears, and he barely found himself able to mask the expression of absolute terror that wanted to worm its way so desperately onto his pale features. For the millionth time in two days, he straightened his tie and tried not to question his motives.
"Ah…no. Just leave it here. I think its best if you and the guys didn't, ah…didn't have contact for a while."
There it was. His world-famous nerves of steel automatically dealing with the situation better than anything he could have come up with, had he allowed himself time to think. This blessed, yet despicable quality of his was one that came with both a natural talent and years of practice. He would never back down, never make a wrong move, never surrender to anyone or anything that wasn't in Dethklok's best interest. And developing personal feelings of any kind for his assistant manager was certainly never in the cards. Again, he tried to reckon with himself, that things were easier, this way. She was a nameless, faceless Klokateer. Just another gear in the grand machine. He didn't have to worry about her anymore. If she died, or worse, it was of no consequence. There were more where she came from.
Yet he still worried that he had done something horribly, irreversibly wrong.
Zoe had retired for the evening after asking if there was any more work "sire" would like done. The night settled thick and black over the giant land-bound Viking ship, causing the usually impassive manager to clutch deddy bear tighter under his arm, wary of the long shadows all around him.
He came to the room he wanted, listening silently at the door. Soft sounds of breathing and the occasional mumble from a fitful slumber reached his ears. He eased the door open, careful not to disturb the chamber's occupant.
He was happy Toki slept with a night light. It made him far less jumpy as he approached the snoring Norwegian. Charles looked down on Toki for a while, studying his young face. Yes, his boys were the only family he had now, and that's how it would stay. He would keep his distance during the day, be professional and cold, but every night, he found he couldn't sleep if he didn't check on them first.
Tears still glistened against Toki's pale skin, and his moustache was wet with salt-water. Charles sighed quietly, reaching out to wipe the excess sadness from the guitarist's cheek, the way a father does for a little boy who suffered a great disappointment. Toki grumbled in his mother tongue again, incoherently, and shifted. He wished he could take the nightmares away, take away the screaming that sometimes reached his ears in the middle of the night and broke the already shattered pieces of his heart and soul, but it wasn't his place. There was nothing he could do, nothing he did do, except gently tuck deddy bear under Toki's arm, which he curled into immediately. He didn't linger a moment longer than that, shutting the door softly behind himself and not looking back.
Next on his check list came Pickles. Charles made his way to the drummer's bedroom, again listening and then daring to peer in. He'd learned his lesson in the past for not following such protocol, and he shook those unpleasant images away now.
The smell almost always hit him first, above all else, but by now, he was used to it. Pickles lay sprawled out on his bed, his own vomit staining the sheets and a bottle of booze clutched to his chest like a security blanket. A half-smoked joint lay haphazardly in the ashtray. The manager took the time to extinguish the smoldering smoke, and then checked to make sure the redhead Yooper was breathing, before slowly and gently turning him on his side and removing the bottle from his grasp. Charles tossed one of the kicked down, unsoiled sheets over Pickles, and then continued on his way.
Skwisgaar came after Pickles. He was the one person Charles worried about the least, because the Swede was almost always up late with a group of women. Tonight, however, Charles only heard moans of ecstasy from one or two females, instead of a whole busload. He moved on, then, to Murderface, who he always made sure didn't have a sharp object in his hands or near him on the bed, and wasn't already bleeding to death. Satisfied with the bassist's contented snores and that there was nothing that could cause severe bodily harm in the immediate vicinity of the sleeping man, Charles made his last stop at Nathan's door.
Inside, he could hear Nathan muttering to himself, obviously laying down some song notes into his trusty recorder. Charles lingered for a moment, wondering if it was anything that would end up on the next album. He wished he hadn't, after, when it occurred to him that Nathan's song titles- namely that night, "Dream Smashing Dethcount," "Cataclysmic Fucking Ogre" (or, CFO, when abbreviated, which stung), and "Mommy Slaughter" were reflections on his treatment of Zoe. When it finally occurred to him that Nathan was physically fine, he hurried away from the words at his back as fast as he could without running or looking suspicious.
But when he reached his own rooms within Mordhaus' unfriendly walls, he stopped for a moment, before he turned back, and moved deeper into the structure's depths. There was one other person he needed to check up on before he could rest. He could always just invent something for her to write down while he was there. It wouldn't be unlike him to wake a sleeping assistant just to have them scribble down three or four words. After all, that's what they were there for.
Down he descended, down into where hundreds of small cubicle style rooms created ruts in the walls for as far as the eye could see. He knew exactly where she was, as he had pulled that room (it was bigger and would accommodate more books and work) especially for her.
Zoe's door looked identical to everyone else's, save for the number on it. He listened again, not sure whether he dared to go in or not. He wasn't sure what he thought he would find, but he didn't want to find it, either way. Charles heard next to nothing coming from the room. No sobs, no sighs, no snores. His curiosity got the better of him, and he pushed the door open, to find there was no one inside. He completely ignored the small waves of panic that welled up in his gut, succeeding in believing they weren't really there. But then Charles had a thought, and hurried down into to the last level of Mordhaus.
Sure enough, there she was. Hood and all, a training sword held limply in her hands. The blank mask stared at the stuffed fencing dummy, and her body language came off as uncertain of how to proceed.
"Parry and thrust, for, ah, starters." He heard himself saying. He approached Zoe, quietly coming to stand behind her. If she was surprised at his sudden appearance, she never showed it.
"I'm sorry, sire. I don't know how."
As though dealing with a wild animal, Charles reached out, tenderly taking the saber from her grasp. Her movements, once so feminine and fluid in the simplest of actions, were now jerky and perfunctory. Without a word, he demonstrated the technique he wanted her to begin with, and the hood nodded.
"Yes, sir. Thank you sir." She said. Charles didn't have to fight hard to resist the urge to tell her to get some sleep. He resisted the urge to tell her to do anything, because it wasn't his place and it would mean he cared about something that was not meant to be cared for by him. He turned away, lifting a hand to place it on her shoulder, but then let it drop.
"Well, ah…keep up the good work," was all he said before exiting the training room.
He never slept that night.