Free Punktown: Shades of Grey by Jeffrey Thomas, Thomas Scott

foolish grin when she was happy, when he’d made her laugh.
    He pushed out of the nest with its smothering darkness, squinting in the harsh light, ignoring the beetle as it anxiously called after him, plucked at his shirt with a pincer.
    As he walked back to the stairwell, he glanced down at the crumpled scarecrow body. Death sculpted in flesh, not music. Bone, not words. It was real, not an abstraction. It was ugly, and a waste, and it cut like a laser through the noise, the voices, the tumult. Karlos descended the stairs. He would confront her, yes. But with words, and emotions, not bullets.
    He tapped his arm, banished the music. For a few minutes his head fizzed with immense emptiness and all he heard was the hollow clanging of his own footfalls, as if it were the sound of him wandering lost in his own skull. He must think…must find just the right words, the perfect lyrics to express his pain to her as never before.
    But not an angry song. A love song.
     
    ««—»»
     
    “Will you be mine and mine alone,” Josh recited, lying in his bed while he watched Aundrea dress. She had had to remove her wings to replace her bra and T-shirt. “Or when the sun finds me again, will I find you’ve already flown?” He held out his hand to her and after she sealed her slacks she took hold of it and squeezed, rubbing her thumb across the top of it.
    But she gave him a sympathetic look that to Josh felt almost pitying and said, “I can’t promise you my heart when my mind is undecided and my soul is divided and I feel so torn apart.”
    Josh propped himself up on one elbow. He was too lacking in confidence to debate with her as aggressively as he wanted—perhaps he would wait to express his fullest feelings in a letter—but he had to say something. He was feeling more and more earnest about his emotions by the moment. He was truly and deeply falling in love, he believed. And he certainly didn’t want this to be the last time he had her in his bed. “How long can a person be torn between two lovers when one plus two is three?” he quoted Rickee Ortiz meekly, but with a repressed desperation.
    Aundrea sighed, turned slightly away from him to slip her wings back on. Josh noticed that some flecks of purple glitter and one sequin had dropped off and scattered across his floor. She said, “Please don’t pressure me, love, to follow the path you choose; if I surrender to your dreams or you give in to mine, both of us will lose.”
    Josh wanted to sigh, too, but he dared not. He lowered himself to his back again and gazed up at his ceiling…but he felt Aundrea’s eyes on him and became self conscious about his nakedness. Keeping his eyes off her, ashamed and hurt and a little angry, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and rose so as to dress.
    “Let’s go grab a burger,” Aundrea blurted out abruptly and jovially, singing the jingle for the BurgerZone VT ads, “A Fishsand and some fries! An extra-large bag of dilkies and a choc-o-late surprise!” She darted over to him and pounced on his bare back, piggy-back style. He tried to grab onto her legs to hold her up but they both toppled to the bed, Aundrea laughing loudly and a smile coming even to Josh’s lips.
    He must keep on waiting, he thought. Waiting and hoping to be the one who won her…
     
    ««—»»
     
    The dashboard monitor showed Karlos a static-shot, flickering street map, yet he was grateful that his onboard computer system was still functioning at all. He himself had never been to Josh’s condominium before, but when he’d asked his navigation system to set the course it had done so, though his hovercar’s autopilot mode was not up to the task by itself. He followed the directions while playing actual, audible music over his car’s entertainment system, rather than piping it straight to his brain chip.
    He had found a song that suited his mood, his feelings. Normally he wouldn’t have listened to Del Kahn, who was now in his early forties