Scandinavian Heartstrings, in Drop D.

Chapter 8.4 Chernobyl Snow

The laughter continued for about 2 straight minutes as they both rolled around on the bed in the low rent room.

"I cans just imagine de looks on hims fuckings face!" Toki pushed out between breaths.

"Well you're the talent, so if they want you to record then they can bloody well wait until you're ready." The girl said smiling as she threw her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up.

"Really? Whys you says dat?" Toki asked, genuinely curious and not at all used to being referred to as talented.

"Are you kidding? I saw you school Reggie last night at Palamino's. I thought he was pretty good but you're fucking amazing!" She said as she rummaged around the floor for her jeans and a T-shirt. She stopped and turned her head to face Toki, "How are you not famous?" She asked sincerely and smiled at him.

Toki gave her a confused look but didn't say anything. He was almost waiting for her to explain herself but she just kept talking as if she really believed in her own joke.

"Well, you will be one day, I'd bet on that." She continued casually, "Dear god I need coffee, you want one?"

"Ja, takk." Toki answered

"Oh my god, are you actually Norwegian?" The girl asked excitedly as she slipped on a badly printed Thunderhorse shirt over her naked breasts.

"Ja, I ams." Toki replied cautiously, going along with her odd façade.

"Oh, I have a friend in Oslo that I've been meaning to see for ages! Where abouts are you from?" She enquired further as she opened the door a crack. Toki thought she seemed more keen on him now than last night when she had a face full of his cock. Women were strange creatures.

"Nears Lillehammer, norths of Oshlo." He pronounced the capital city in the native way.

"Ohhhhhh, it all makes sense now." She said as she stood in the doorway and drew a figure of eight with her finger at Toki's whole body. "Well I suppose if you are pretty close to the real deal already, then you might not end up with the same mental problems as a lot of other cos-lifers do." She dropped her voice and leaned her head towards Toki. "I heard of this guy who used to cos-life as Kurt Cobain; He got so far into it he actually blew his own head off." She made the explosion noise and the appropriate hand gesture next to her temple then slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Toki searched for his clothes which were strewn all over the revolting carpet and processed the conversation that had just transpired. Then his proverbial light bulb clicked on and a collage of exciting possibilities fashioned itself inside his mind. Could he repent for his sins by giving up the life of 'Toki Wartooth'? Could he escape into obscurity? To finally stop being... him? The more he thought about it, the more enticing the idea became.

He walked out of the bedroom into the hallway of the split-level town house. The first thing that hit him was the smell; a mixture of old laundry, mould, week old dirty dishes, really old laundry, stale beer, ashtrays, ancient fucking laundry, bong water, a variety of bodily fluids and something that had liquefied behind the fridge. He slinked along the creaking hallway to the bathroom, or at least, the smell indicated it was the room that people pissed in. The toilet was stained black and had an odd aura of life, mostly due to what sort of looked like algae clinging to the surface of the water. The fluid that came from the tarnished taps had a brownish tinge to it and the basin had developed veins from the mould growing in the cracks of the ceramic. He gazed dreamily at his face in the bubbled mirror covered in the facial squeezings of the last 3 years' worth of tenants, and smirked; this could be fun.

He bounded down the stairs two at a time until he realised how incredibly unstable they were, and ended up in the lounge room where three long haired, snorting, snoring, snoozing bodies cascaded like little waterfalls from the furniture to the pool of the floor around them. He tip-toed his way into the Kitchen where the black haired girl was making coffee.