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Corvid Hospital’s rooftop was sobering and cold. It was harder for him to slip into dreams and dissociation from his numbness.

“Don’t let me go please, I need you to-”

“-didn’t say it would burn so badly, but it’s-”

“-want to thank you, but I’m not sure how to.”

“It’s always like this. Always so empty and-”

The rooftop wasn’t ideal, but he found if he paced the hospital’s halls for too long, late-shift nurses and insomniac patients became wary and angsty with his presence. Eventually, he’d writhe within his needle-pricked skin until he was forced to retreat beneath the stars. A baseball swelled beneath his breastbone at the thought of their eyes upon him.

“Am I dead? How long have I been here?”

“Where am I supposed to go?”

“How can anyone survive-”

He rocked on his toes and squinted at Polaris in the sky. It wasn’t even past three AM. He had so many hours to go. Tears boiled beneath his lids with ravenous exhaustion, yet The Voices roared onward with Their tragic song.

He moaned.

He tried to think of nothing.

Of lovely things.

Of old poems he’d memorized about the skies.

Nothing made his headspace bearable.

“Io, Europa, Callisto, Ganymede…” he muttered, narrowing his gaze at the skies. “Aladfar, Alchiba, Algorab, Buna, Sterrennacht, Azha…” Despite the yellow light pollution of Corvid, his eyes found the voids in the sky where each star would reside. He chewed on his cheeks until copper coated his tongue and bloodied his teeth.

“Phoenix, Pavo, Grus, Tucana, Apus-ow, dammit, irrumator!” Bastard.

He skittered backward in the rooftop gravel with a hiss, hand recoiling from an unseen pain against his fingertips.

He looked down to find he’d dropped a lit cigar, now spewing centripetal plumes as it rolled away. A broken pile of neglected ash littered his leather shoes.

How long had it been burning in his grasp?

“Dammit,” he muttered, picking up the cigar and blowing debris from the papery tobacco leaves. Yet another he couldn’t recall lighting.

What the hell is that about?

Are my faculties gone to hell so soon?

He smeared sooty fingers across his eyes with a sigh and pulled on the cigar, but his drag was greedy and ash filled his chest. Smoky tendrils dug their nails into his throat, leaving him to choke, spasms, bending him across his kneecaps in the dark.

Eyes weeping, he regained his breath and eyed the crackling ember on his tobacco stub.

His gaze then dashed to his hand, to the ancient tattoo of a faded bird flying across his palm. His fingers twitched, and his dry, dead apathy shuddered with interest. He sat on his rear, hand poised above the ink.

He pressed the burning cigar into the bird’s chest until it peeled with sickly white fumes of melted flesh. The smoky stench swirled like a ghost. He gnashed upon his teeth as his skin blistered and blackened.

It’d been ages since he’d attempted such a means of feeling. It warmed his skull guiltily like a drug. He unfolded onto his spine, his blood cold and alive.

His innards bulked, fire wrinkled the thin epidermis, and his limbs convulsed without permission. His moans tore into cries and streaming tears. His teeth grimaced but grinned with fleeting existence.

But it wasn’t enough.

He wrapped his fingers around the cigar like a dagger and stabbed it until it was snuffed in soupy, soft tissue and leaking fluid. His skull screamed with panic, dominating The Voices.

Burning and oozing, his spine bucked on the stone roof. The smoking crater simmered into the heavens like the battleground of a ceasefire. Sweat and tears leaked down his temples.

But the euphoric high of feeling drifted, and the blanket of numbness returned to his warm, unfeeling corpse. Droning pleas crashed against the halls of his brain.

You feel nothing because you are nothing.

He clenched his eyes shut and crushed the cigar butt against the concrete. He lifted his head and frowned at the seeping burn. It swelled with white bubbles of putrid flesh. Lava-hot pus and secretions dripped.

But it wasn’t enough. It never was.

He was still hollow. Vacant. Unfeeling. Dead.

“Are you there? Can you hear me?” screamed The Voices.

More blood-curdling screams.

They were furious with his brief reprieve.

“Please, no…” he moaned, digging through his scalp for distractions. His wet face was covered by his abused hands.

Why? Why am I here? Why am I here if I can’t feel anything?

He opened his eyes and stared at the stars through his shaking fingers. Their burning, radiating bodies, swollen with life. Energy. He swallowed, throat hoarse with unheard cries.

Or perhaps they were simply ignored.

“Alchiba, Algorab, Buna, Sterrennacht, Azha…” he returned to the blinking balls of fire.

The baseball in his throat twisted, allowing more breath to hiss through. His eyes jumped from star to star, speaking on their nomenclature as he did so.

He found Pollux and considered its Grecian namesake, Πολυδεύκης, Polydeukes. Very sweet.

“Maybe our luck is turning around…”

Norah.

His hands slid down his cheeks, and he beheld the skies fully, eyes burning with tears.

Those Neptune green eyes actually saw him. A real friend.

He’d been fading and falling apart for all of his miserable life, but as of late, he’d observed more cognitive disintegration. He’d find himself craving a cup of coffee or a cigar, and without recollection of the time in between, he’d suddenly be holding it in his grip. Sure, the bodily pains of his mortal coils had lessened, but God only knew what further atrophy would come of his brain.

The hospital would ask me to step down, he grieved. Telephone clients would still satiate his rent and coffee addiction, but he’d lose his chance at redemption. At fixing the untold thing in his life that needed to be fixed.

He’d lose his only friend.

He recalled their earlier conversation about myths and monsters. He had heard whispers of her origin story amongst the denizens of Corvid. They took crude and wild stabs at the events that toughened her heart, but Dex always turned his ear away promptly. If she wished to talk to him about her past, he’d be honored to know her story firsthand. Otherwise, it wasn’t his gift to have.

But ruminating about their potentially shared pains rocked him into a disassociation, more powerful and peaceful than the breaks in his bones and the burns in his flesh. He considered the aligned stars in their galaxies and the forces that had drawn them nearer to one another.

What a strange constellation they formed.