Seven
February 1995
Saben Mariley Frost often walked around with a furrowed brow as if there were something she was trying to remember or some problem she were trying figure out, impossible arithmetic or complex equation she was trying to solve.
She lived in a crumbling tenement, stuck, stranded in Vegas, trapped in the desert she hated. "It's the best we could do on such short notice." The clerk had told her at the housing office; it was better than sleeping on the streets, she supposed.
When she had first stepped inside door 52 she had found crisp clean bed linen folded and placed on the floor, a sunken mattress in one corner and a small black and white television in the other.
She hawked a bracelet she had found for a cheap stereo that couldn't pick up any stations but had a decent tape deck. She had picked up a few tapes too, mostly Pantera and ACDC bootlegs. She set her guitar case in a corner of the room.
The first night she found she lived beneath volatile lovers, shouts, screams and ominous thuds echoed constantly through the midnight hours. Saben would crank up the volume on the stereo and crouch on her mattress focusing on the warbling cassette, Phil Anselmo shouting above all other noise and sometimes she screamed along to it and other sometimes she buried her face in a pillow and filled herself with the stench of her greasy hair.
These things were small in comparison to her discovery of the Night World.
She had replaced the phone on its cradle that December and stumbled away from the phone box and in the vague direction of the herb store she had come across by accident.
She had been intercepted on rout, a suited man had grasped her hard by the arm and guided her to a silver Sedan and they drove for what seemed like hours.
For countless days she had endured questioning and prodding, people with large, shining, unnatural eyes: kin to the scores of creepy kids that had frequented the Black Iris clubs. They grilled her for hours on end and she slept little, tossing and turning and shivering with confusion and frustration. How had she found out? They wanted to know.
She remembered being chased, a skinny girl glaring down at her with eyes that glowed like the sun and moon. Saben must have passed out, must have escaped somehow, must have blocked it out because all she could remember was the solid feel of greasy plastic in her hand as she phoned the witch, Tobias.
With the roiling combination of her paranoia, symptoms of shock and panic they divined that they could not simply release back into society. She had no family or friends. They decided to keep her, put her in some housing so they could keep an eye on her, keep her alive, and figure her out.
She had been assigned a therapist, Celeste Morgan. The woman was a witch, not that Saben truly understood what this was, she looked perfectly normal. Saben avoided appointments, she didn't need that shit, she had her music, her battered cassette deck and change for new bootlegs and of course her Les Paul sitting safe in her guitar case propped in the corner.
She hadn't seen the boy Tobias or his magic shop since though she had been told it wasn't far from where she now lived. Apparently he was quite high up a social scale that she was only beginning to understand, the scale of which, as usual, she found herself near the bottom echelons.
She walked out of her apartment block, lacerated boots splattered with paint and a jumper too many sizes too big, it hung on her like a dress. She had a few dollars stuffed in her bra to buy some pink hair dye or maybe something to eat, she didn't have enough money for both.
She chose hair dye. Clutching the paper bag close to her she headed back home. No sense in hanging out on the streets not with Them about. Her eyes moved slyly either side of her, trying to identify the subtle differences that marked this persons steps or that persons' eyes.
Whilst straining to see either side of her she knocked into someone, she muttered a quick "sorry," and continued on.
"Hi. Yeah. Aren't you -"
She paused to look back and saw Tobias. It had been months and she had only had one encounter but he was unmistakeable, he pushed up sunglasses on top of his hair. Copper brown curls and cornflower blue eyes…blue eyes…Think of the devil… "You."
He looked her up and down taking in the sight of her, dishevelled. "How are you?"
She felt awkward, as if she'd been placed under a large spy glass. Utterly exposed. "Okay." She spoke through clenched teeth. It was Tobias that had landed her in this mess, took her away from her life…a life she couldn't remember. Now she was stuck, trapped in the goddamn desert.
"You look…healthy. Where are you headed?"
She pointed into the distance, there was a high rise a couple of blocks down.
"Do you want a ride?"
He looked at her as if she were something small and precious, though she was shorter than him, I'm not a kid, she wanted to say, he must have been two, maybe three years older than her. "I'd rather walk." She replied instead.
She began to walk, forcing her hands to swing by her sides and not grasp at her unkempt hair or baggy jumper. It took her several minutes to realise he was following her. He fell into step beside her but didn't bother to speak.
He followed her into the building, catching the door, running up the staircase to her front door. She didn't want him to come in, hadn't expected him to come this far. He put a hand on the door as she tried to slip inside, he forced it open and strode into the room.
He stopped short, a look of disgust, pity, confusion flashed across his handsome face before he placed his sunglasses back over his eyes.
"Seen what you wanted to see?" She asked placing her paper bag on a windowsill, perched on the edge, her frame silhouetted against the midday sun.
Silence filled the space between them, she couldn't see his eyes but could imagine them filled with scorn and something else. Screaming erupted from above and he saw her cringe at the shrill tones of an argument.
"Look. Sabrina, is it?"
"Saben." She corrected.
He stared at her, head turning to one side as if considering and her brows drew together as it triggered the phantom of a memory beyond her reach.
"Right, of course. Saben." He pronounced her name slowly, as if testing the syllables. "I was thinking, I need some help at the shop, it's been a one man show lately and I find myself needing a little bit of company. Come over at seven." He flinched when he heard a thud echo from above his head.
Her eyes flew to the ceiling where a slim crack spider webbed across the plaster.
When she looked back, Tobias had sealed the door between them.
She parted two stems of the dusty blind and waited for Tobias' silhouette walk across the street and walk back in the direction of his ride. When her head hit the pillow that night she didn't get a wink of sleep.
The closed sign was displayed in crude letters at the front of the store that looked as if it were already derelict inhabited by leftover junk, and crawling vermin set up their nests in the nooks and crannies.
She knocked on some part of the door and heard a creaking that made her take a generous step back lest anything come crumbling down at her feet or on her head.
"I'm out back." A voice erupted.
A dishevelled Tobias in ripped jeans and stained T-shirt was boarding up a back window where cracked shards were bared like teeth of a great monster. "Punks." He explained as he kicked through the broken glass at his feet.
She smiled sarcastically but he didn't seem to notice.
"You ready for work?" He walked toward her rubbing his hands together.
She looked at the back alley, in as poor state as the front and couldn't remember the insides or imagine it being a functional store. Mustn't make too much money, the punks probably thought it was a squat shack for them to spend a few nights out of the desert dust. She offered a shrug.
"That's the attitude." He said and patted her head as he walked past.
Anger infused her limbs and a terrible ache crept into her shoulders. This was going to be a long day.
He had her sweeping the floor as he disappeared for hours.
No one came in that day, if the closed sign didn't scare them off then the general malaise of trash and gutter rats would be enough to put anyone off. Once she glanced up and saw someone peer in through the window, as their eyes met the person detached themselves and jogged away.
She was sneezing as she kicked up wave after wave of dust with the broom. Billions upon billions of cells collected in corners speaking of population, maybe once it had been a bustling affair, a hit, a gem but now the store was falling into disrepair. Neglected.
She had put headphones on, plugged into a lifted disc man. She had turned the volume up once she was convinced she would not be disturbed. She began to hum and then sing along.
She paused in sweeping to straighten her back and found Tobias standing between two aisles, mouthing something she couldn't make out.
"What?" She pulled out one earphone.
"I didn't know you could sing." He said.
"Well that's not a surprise. You don't know anything about me."
"That's true." He was staring at her intensely and she turned her head away half heartedly sweeping at one corner. He slipped on his jacket. "I have to go and run some errands, I'll be back before closing time."
Saben glanced through the greasy window and saw a gorgeous blond girl leaning on a red sports car. She looked him up and down, dressed semi-formal, smelling nice and handsome face glowing and knew he had no notion of coming back that night.
"Sure." She murmured.
He left through the front, the bells jingling singing to his exit. She took the time to poke around the jars, vials and bric a brac, trying to twist the words of the labels around her tongue and fathom this concoction or that. She grew bored quickly.
She went to the antique cash register toying with the thoughts of cracking it open but her conscious was not silent as her fingers hovered over the pad.
She didn't know how to work the cash register, anyhow and it would be thoroughly useless if someone came in to actually buy something. She noticed the items weren't priced and there was no price list behind the counter. She was babysitting.
She walked to the back of the store and peered behind the beaded curtain, she had come through a narrow hallway but she knew the store led further back to a proper house. There must have been two or three bedrooms. She could explore, maybe pick something up to make a little money…
She felt guilty at the thought. She would be paid though, she hoped, for her few hours of babysitting. That would be a good thing to report back to the suits at Day Break, evidence of her being normal, functional. The thought of it was nice.
She sat behind the counter alone for so long she lay her head on the counter and fell asleep for the first time in a long time, she fell into a peaceful sleep.