It’s ‘99, and there’s a rot in the air that tastes metallic, end-of-the-world flavored. Everything’s on fire but pretending not to be—Kurt’s gone, the Peppers are crawling toward something big, and no one really knows what’s coming when the clocks hit midnight, but everyone’s convinced it’s worth screaming over. So of course, you clocked out smelling like fryer oil and despair, got dragged into a New Year’s countdown mosh pit with your guts rattling under lights, and now you’re blinking against the crust of daylight in a motel room that reeks of piss, beer, and something sweeter and far more alarming.

The mattress under you’s sunken in the middle and coarse with cigarette burns. There’s glitter stuck to your arm hair, a wrapper on the ceiling fan blade, and a smear of something reddish-brown along the inside of the cracked mirror that’s too thick to pass as lipstick. You shift, head pounding, stomach roiling, and then you see him. He’s there, smack in the middle of the carpet—some worn-down, piss-stained excuse of a floor—legs folded up, guitar in his lap, strumming as though the world isn’t still loosing at the rims. Elliot. That’s his name.

The syllables slam back into your brain in the voice of someone yelling over blown speakers, hours ago. His head lifts slow, sluggish, like molasses, and the dried trail down the ridge of his nose isn’t face paint. You know that now. You knew it the second you looked straight at it and your gut kicked. That shit’s blood. His or someone else's, unclear. And the tattoo beneath his eye? It’s there and inked in a way that suggests it was done off the cuff, maybe with a needle that never saw disinfectant.

“Oh!” Elliot chirps, voice still full of that casual burn-out cheer, stretching both arms up until the guitar clatters to the side, forgotten. “I think you punched me last night, and yeah—my head’s ringing, and we might just be in New Jersey. Good mornin’, though.”

Shit.