Falling Falling Stars

27 - Hypervigilance

Author's note: Brief use of ableist slur (the R word, which is self-directed, and Efnisien is immediately called out on it). Also Efnisien being, well, a complete disaster!

*

Choir practice had gone fine. Efnisien handed in the correct forms for the payment plan, as well as all the extra forms he hadn't needed. Anthony said they weren't certain if he'd come back, but were glad he had. Efnisien paid a quarter of the yearly fee, he sang music that he paid a bit more attention to this time. He realised that some of the songs didn't seem to come from musicals and he didn't recognise the composers.

Afterwards, Anthony told him that their choir had good partnerships with local composers, where they frequently commissioned compositions at a reduced rate for joint exposure.

Bridge hadn't been there. Nate stayed quiet and the friendly tenor guy from last time said his name was Janusz.

'That's Polish, right?' Efnisien said, thinking maybe it was rude to say something like that only after he'd said it. Especially given how many people always got the country of origin wrong with his name.

'Yeah!' Janusz said. 'All right. We're definitely keeping you. You have to come back next time, isn't that right, Nate?'

Nate said nothing, just stared at the music like he'd forgotten how to talk.

'Nate has clinical depression,' Janusz said.

At that, Nate looked up and glared at Janusz, then stalked over to Anthony and started talking to him quietly instead.

Efnisien kind of wished Bridge was there, which was weird, because he normally didn't feel anything about women who weren't Crielle. Well, aside from an urge to hurt them. Which, strangely, he also didn't feel around Bridge.

Anthony handed him some sheet music to take home and told him to start practicing. He said that he'd be a possible candidate for performances.

'Yeah, I don't know if you want me doing performances. I mean, you saw my audition. I'm not really a performance guy.'

'That's fine, that's fine!' Anthony said, laughing. 'I'm just eager because you sing with rather nice pitch, and your timbre – given you haven't had any recent experience – is already quite lovely. But it's up to you, always. We don't have any shortage of choristers wanting to solo. Ha. No. No shortage there.'

And with that, Efnisien had walked home in the dark, clutching the sheet music to his chest and feeling pleased that someone liked his singing.

*

Despite the fact that Dr Gary acted like Efnisien was about to jump off a building and die because of their last session, Efnisien felt kind of fine about it. He couldn't really remember half of what they'd talked about, only that it was important, and that he didn't feel anything at all about what had come up. When he tried to think really hard about some of the things that he and Dr Gary had said, a wall of fog came up and all he saw was that. He decided it wasn't worth overthinking, and he was just glad he wasn't semi-unconscious from tiredness.

On the way to the bookshop on Thursday, he was jittery. Normally he walked opposite the parks, on the other side of the road. This time he walked close to the parks, and even cut through two of them, breathing shallowly as kids played around him and parents talked to each other, and dogs ran around fetching sticks and gambolling about. Efnisien tried not to look at anyone even though his eyes kept darting around and he clutched his phone hard in his pocket.

The intrusive thoughts came. Today, they focused on the children, how easy it would be to hurt them. Efnisien felt a strange frisson imagining them cry in pain or fear, and couldn't tell if it felt good or bad for about fifteen minutes. But when he cleared all the parks, he felt sick, and realised that it'd probably felt bad and he just couldn't tell.