Rowan stirred slowly, shifting slightly under the blankets, stubbornly holding on to the last dregs of sleep he could squeeze out of the morning. Something pulled at him, drawing him up, something just on the edge of his hearing.

Music, playing somewhere.

Rowan frowned. Turning onto his back, he just listened for a moment, trying to work out the song.

It was too soft to make out the words, but he caught the rhythm, and started tapping out the beat against his quilt. Something slow, weaved with guitar and... violin?

Then the tempo swelled, and the sound washed over him in insistent waves.

Rowan opened his eyes.

The soft glow from the curtains catching the full sun of late morning bathed his bedroom, and he lay there for a moment, staring up at the ceiling, listening. For the life of him, he couldn't work out where the music might be coming from. Didn't help that his door was closed. Wasn't from Bran's room though. Maybe downstairs?

It kept niggling at him, just low enough that he couldn't work out the song. So infuriating.

With an irritated groan, he flung the covers off the bed, and stood up, running his hands through his hair as he scratched the back of his head. Grabbing his jeans, he tugged them on as he hopped around his room, then rummaged through his drawers for a t-shirt.

He really needed to do some laundry. The only clean shirts he had were grey.

Pulling one on, he crossed to the bedroom door and yanked it open. The music got a little louder, but not enough to solve the mystery of what was playing, and now he was even more confused. Maybe someone was watching TV?

Yawning, he hopped down the stairs and traced a finger in a path around the framed photos and drawings in the hallway on his way to the living room. Passing the kitchen, grinding his fingers against his eyelids, he finally stopped against the old couch facing their modestly sized television.

Which wasn't on.

And nobody was here?

"Mom?" he called, and waited for an answer.

None came.

"Dad?"

Still no answer, but now he knew they weren't here. He could feel it, the emptiness of the house pressing in around him.

Maybe they'd gone out to the mall or something? Looking for a note, Rowan wandered into the kitchen to check the little whiteboard on the fridge. There wasn't anything from his parents, but his brother has scrawled something, the letters generously round and carefully rendered:

Rowan is a buttface

Sighing, he grabbed the pen, wiped his name clear with the heel of his hand and put his brother's instead. With a small smirk, he stepped away from the fridge and left the kitchen to stand in the living room again.

He had no idea where they were, but that was cool. He'd call Dave over a little later, they could jam in the garage till his folks got home.

Yawning, Rowan turned to go back up to bed, but the music swelled again, tugging at his mind as he reached the hallway.

Frowning, he looked at the front door. It sounded like it was just outside. Maybe somebody was playing out in the street? Maybe a stereo in somebody's car?

The beat pulled at him, and he headed towards the door. This was driving him nuts. Time to work out what the hell they were playing.

Not even bothering with shoes, he pulled the door open and stepped outside, into brilliant, blinding sunlight.

Jesus...

Throwing a hand up to shield his eyes, Rowan tried to scan the neighborhood for the source of the sound.

But... there was no neighborhood.

The light levels drew down suddenly, and blinking against the afterglow, Rowan found himself in a dimly lit space that didn't make any sense.

"What the..."

He turned to head back inside, reaching for the door handle he'd grabbed a thousand million times before, and his hand groped against a smooth white surface, oddly curved.

There was writing on it.

A big red arrow in a half circle, and the word, in similar red:

OPEN

"Huh?" Rowan mumbled, rubbing his eyes frantically. What the hell was going on?

Where'd the fucking house go?!

The music faded behind him, and he twisted around, feeling a sudden strange fear settle right between his shoulder blades.

No...

Blue vinyl seats spread out to his right in neat rows, buried under piles of junk. Pale light streamed in from the small rounded windows against the far wall, smeared in dirt and layered in dust. To his left a curtain partially blocked his view, blue like everything else, but he could just make out panels of switches and curved glass...

This... this was...

The plane.

"No!" he yelled, twisting back to open the door, but the handle refused to budge under his hands. "SHIT!"

He wrestled with it a moment more, then turned back.

"No..." he whispered, pressing up against the door as far as he could.

Because someone was sitting in one of the seats.

Watching him.

Someone he hadn't noticed before, because they'd been as motionless, without life, as everything else.

"Oh fuck," he moaned, as the person brought their seat up, and stood. Slowly, awkwardly.

The figure started towards him then, tall and terribly grey, red hoodie torn and faded over jeans just as wrecked. The pale eyes fixed on him, alien and unblinking.

Jesus Christ.

He really did look like shit.

"..hi.." R said, drawing nearer.

"STOP," Rowan growled, and looked desperately around himself for some kind of weapon, anything he could use against the advancing shade wearing his face.

"..no.." R answered.

"I MEAN IT!" Rowan roared, the fear ramping up inside, chased by jagged rage. "I will beat my own fucking head in! I mean, YOUR head, not my h-JESUS, STOP!"

His double didn't stop, shuffling towards him with that piercing stare, mouth stained in red and black, hanging slackly open. Rowan's hands finally closed on something hefty - a snowglobe - and he threw it at the corpse with a guttural cry.

R caught it.

Rowan's eyes grew huge. "Wait. N-no," he stammered, "you can't.."

Almost tenderly, R returned it to a nearby pile.

".. don't break.. my stuff..." he whispered, and shuffled closer still.

Rowan snapped from his shock into a quick, jagged anger. "What stuff?!" he sputtered. "THIS STUFF?!" Picking up an old tin car, he quickly realized it didn't have enough weight, and found a glass paperweight in the shape of Arizona instead. "THIS SHIT?!"

With another wild cry, he threw it, and it bounced satisfyingly off his double's forehead. The corpse walked on, oblivious.

Rowan couldn't stop then - everything within reach became a missile to attack himself with.

"It's all SHIT!" he screamed, flinging everything he could. "It's all stupid useless CRAP!"

R grew closer still, new cuts on his face oozing black. "No..." he whispered. "It was.. all... important."

"Oh?" Rowan sniped, shifting from the door to escape down one of the aisles. "This?" He spat, snatching something off a nearby crate. "This plastic fucking saxophone was important?!"

The toy bounced off R's chest as the corpse came closer still.

"Yes.."

"This?" Rowan barked, throwing a macrame owl, then quickly following it with an ornate pill holder. "THIS?!"

The pill holder clipped R's shoulder and opened, sending a spray of colorful capsules spattering to the already crowded floor.

R looked up from the mess, his grey eyes sad.

"Yes..." he sighed.

"You killed that old lady," Rowan growled, pointing down at the upended container, and his voice cracked as the words continued to spill, "You broke into her home and you killed her. And when her son came back, you killed him too."

"Yes..." R said, his dark lips thinning. "..we.. did..."

"NO!" Rowan roared, and he grabbed the thing he'd been searching for, the thing he'd known would be there - a pipe wrench with a bright red handle, heavy as hell. As his fingers closed tight around the cold metal, he swung it around, and stabbed it at R as he stormed towards the corpse, rage obliterating his fear. "NO! YOU did it! YOU killed them! NOT ME!"

R stopped.

"..you.. are me.." he sighed. "..we did.. this.. all of this.."

"NO!" Rowan screamed, and he swung the wrench in a sloppy, desperate arc towards R's head.

With a horrible crunching sound, the corpse's skull caved inward with a spray of gore, black as tar, and R dropped to the floor of the plane like a broken puppet.

Rowan stood, trembling with the remnants of his rage, and stared down at the grey body at his feet, wearing an empty mockery of his face. Sagging slowly, he fell heavily to his knees.

"Someone should have done that.. ages ago," he mumbled over the body, his voice strangled as he tried to choke down tears he didn't understand and didn't want. But he couldn't keep them back, and they spilled out of him in a messy rush as he looked down at the pale, dead face, the black blood from the jagged wound oozing over a scattered mess of cookbooks, car repair manuals and travel magazines.

And he started to remember.

He remembered the last moments he'd been alive as the disease ate him up, the inevitable slow ending that stole his dreams, his life, his hope. Took everything from him, and left him this searching husk, trying desperately to find himself in the things he took, the collection of junk sitting in quiet piles around him now. He remembered the way music made him feel as a corpse, how it seemed to answer a deep question he hadn't even known he'd been asking, and how he'd groped for anything that spoke to him of the same... moving from a kid's xylophone and that stupid plastic saxophone... to an old record player from a long abandoned house, and a guitar propped against the wall of a gutted dead-end alley store.

A guitar he knew was important, but no longer understood, as he held it over his lap, plucking strings and making sounds that he couldn't weave into anything meaningful anymore.

He remembered, and saw himself as a corpse struggling to be, even as everything around him, the voice inside him, guided him to simply take.

And he didn't see the monster anymore.

He just saw himself.

Heart arching, Rowan reached for his own broken head on the floor, stopping when he realized the damage was too great, that there wasn't anything he could do to put himself back together. "No.. I... oh Jesus.. I'm sorry.." he mumbled. "I'm.. so sorry."

R's dead eyes swiveled to lock onto his, and his dark, cracked lips opened.

"That's... okay," he rasped.

With a sharp breath, Rowan jerked back, but R's grey hand whipped out and grabbed him tight around the wrist.

Rowan stiffened with a gasp. The touch was frigid. He felt his body grow swiftly cold, and watched R in numb shock as the corpse sat up in front of him, head slowly reforming. Healing.

"I'm.. not something.. you can kill.. or forget.. or escape.." R sighed, and as he spoke the hesitant tones turned confident and sure as color rushed to his face. "Because I am you. What I did.. what you did.. will always be a part of you. You know that, right?"

Rowan stared at R in stunned silence, even as he felt his own heart still, his body growing distant and grey. Because he'd felt himself saying those words, even as the last stubborn part of himself resisted.

And finally he nodded, his head moving sloppily, as his grey eyes fell. "Yeah.. I.. know."

"But it's just a small part of you," R said, and smiled, his blue eyes bright. "Even smaller now, because of what happened. Because of what we did."

Rowan's eyes lifted again, flooding with color as his heart trembled to life again in his chest, and the comprehension of what his double was saying rose in startling clarity.

His mouth fell open.

"Oh my god.." he whispered.

"Yeah," R grinned, and he slowly rose to his feet, pulling Rowan with him.

"Holy shit," Rowan said, as his eyes drifted between the teetering piles of his collection, to every object he could see.

Silence.

Nothing spoke to him anymore. The ghosts... were gone. All of their inner stories... were gone. The hundreds of lives he'd been carrying over his shoulders for years...

...were all gone.

Jesus... I'm...

I'm free.

"Yeah," his double said, grinning, vividly alive, just as he was again.

"Oh dammit!" came a warm voice from seemingly everywhere around them. "Didn't realize it'd stopped!"

Rowan jumped, feeling on the edge of some deep, indescribable joy, and twisted in place, searching for the source.

"Julie?"

R smiled, and nodded gently. "I think.. she's trying to wake me up."

And a song filled the cabin of the airplane then, bouncing off the walls, reverberating down the aisles, wrapping around the two of them.

Like a old, scratchy woolen blanket.

They both made a face.

"I hate this song," R grouched.

Rowan groaned. "It's the worst one on the album. How do we make it stop?"

R laughed. "By waking up," he said with a smile. "I think it's time. You ready?"

Rowan sighed, gazing one last time around his collection. It was just a pile of random junk now.

"Yeah," he whispered to himself, and smiled back. "I think I finally am."

Then something struck him, as the plane started to fade into a void of brilliant white.

"Wait, did I just imagine it, or am I a dad?"

R just grinned.


Hi everyone, sorry this got up so late, but it needed a lot of tweaking. Apologies if you find any typos... I'm a little asleep. Btw, if anyone gets the 'he really did look like shit' reference, I'll be happy. If not, not big deal, it might just seem really random. It wasn't! G'night and I'll be posting more tomorrow, perhaps even the end of the story. ;) Thanks to Chad for all of the reviews lately - you've been making my day.