"But he's dead," he muttered, half-conscious, to the silence of the room. While the borders of his dream were quick to fade, falling away like mist under the morning sun, and with them, the context to his words. But he knew the context. He always knew the context. He only had so many dreams, and this one was undoubtedly another specter dredged up from a past he seldom mentioned. What grew with his recognition of the room around him, the dressers imperfectly put together after a night of drinking with one of his boys, with his understanding of time from the Sunken City's strange facsimile of orbiting stars, was his sense of indelible isolation.

Faustite reached from where he lay and his hand met cold sheet. This he bunched into his grip, claws slowly closing around it as he dragged the edge of his bedding toward himself. His body shifted, turned to the side, knees raised up until the hot glow of his core should have been blazing against his thighs. His teeth were a white gleam against the pallor of his face. The only sounds to disturb the otherwise unlived silence were that of wracked shoulders and hushed breaths.

Seizing the pillow by his head, Faustite threw it away from himself. It thumped against the railing to the sunken bed, falling back in with no signs of damage. Then he kicked it, twice, thrice, until clawed feet put holes in its case. He snorted and wiped the snot from his nose.

Once he crawled uneasy over the railing, the pillowcase was stained with pools of black. He dragged his bare feet across the stone floor, warming it as he went, listening for the telltale scratches of an errant youma or cat's claws. He felt no auras as he passed the dresser, rounded the pit. Glancing at the bay window on his way out, he saw no movement in the distance, either. The place was dead. He curled his fists until his nails bit into his palms.

Downstairs, the kitchen sat untouched. He paused in its entryway, heaved a sigh for it. His gaze swept from the stove to the refrigerator, then he pinched the bridge of his nose as he tried to recall the layout for where everything was stored. It took him three wrong guesses before he finally opened the cupboards concealing the pans, and without knowing which size to pick, he figured the largest one would do.

Faustite sat the pan atop one of the stove burners, then looked at the dials below them. It was easy enough to figure out which knob belonged to which burner, but not which number to choose. Was it better to do 3 or 9? What about 7? 6? 5? Did it depend on what he was making, or did it matter at all? Was it just about speed? Faustite didn't know, and he lacked a means to text Axinite and ask him. He didn't know anyone else who was so fond of their appliances as him. Waru would know, since Waru was the one that cooked so often, but Waru was on the hardest mission of his life. Not that Faustite could contact him now, regardless.

There was nothing for it but to guess, then. Faustite set the dial to 3, then went to the fridge for food.

He didn't know what food to use. There were carrots, celery, field greens, zucchini, mushrooms, tomatoes, eggs, bell peppers, smaller peppers, half an onion, and some other s**t that Faustite didn't recognize. He took up the eggs, mushrooms, bell peppers, zucchini, and smaller peppers, thinking that should be enough to get him started. He recalled that Waru usually cut these things, but Faustite couldn't recall how. He took up a knife from the block, went to the wooden cutting board, and started slicing the mushrooms into irregular shapes.

That wasn't terrible, he told himself, as he tossed the handful into the pan. They made no noise at all – not a sizzle, not a hiss. Faustite turned the dial to 4.

Eggs should be easy, so those were next. No need to cut, just crack open and dump. He remembered Waru doing that on the side of the pan, so he tried it, and busted the whole egg in his hand as he nearly toppled the pan over on himself. Cursing, he righted the pan and let the egg innards ooze off his hand and into the pan. Some of the shell splinters remained in the gelatinous mess, but he told himself he could pick those out later. The second egg was a cleaner break, but he struggled with the runoff connecting half a shell to the pan. He swiped it off with his finger and sucked the raw fluid from it, whereupon it sizzled in his mouth.

He was hotter than the ******** pan. That was a galling thought. He then moved the dial to 5.

The bell peppers, smaller peppers, and zucchini still needed cutting, so he took up the knife again. Smaller peppers seemed easiest, but as he sliced them open, he found seeds that seemed troublesome. He couldn't finagle them out with his long nails ever impeding him, and frustratedly resigned to pick them out of his grate later. Same story with the bell peppers, he found – seeds upon seeds. He quickly gave up on picking them out, one by one. Last was the zucchini –

And he managed about halfway through before he cut the side of his finger, before he bled at an astonishing speed all over the rest of the vegetable. He cursed aloud once more, wrapping his wounded hand with a kitchen towel that quickly began to smoke. This was then discarded, christened with more invective, and he gave up on any wrapping in favor of sucking on the wound. He decided there was nothing more for it, and tossed all the sliced vegetables into the pan along with the uncut half of the zucchini.

The nhe waited. Stared at the mass of egg and vegetable that slowly congealed in the pan. He turned the dial to 6. Then he remembered that he was supposed to stir it, or jostle it around, or something. Seemed easiest to use a fork, so he scraped around the vegetables until they were caught in the partially cooked egg. Then nothing wanted to budge, and any time he scraped at the egg, it came up in pieces. <******** it," he hissed to the rest of the kitchen. "Can't ******** do this either." He shut the burner off and left the pan, summoning to hand a screwdriver that he took to his grate thereafter. The loose screws he then set behind himself, on the island that often saw more of his butt than his plate. On the stone surface went the circulate faceplate to his grate, then Faustite was taking up the pan with one hand and scraping its contents straight into the fire with the other. It was only then that the mass sizzled and popped, frying up proper with an engulfing fire to reduce it to char.

He slammed the pan back on the stove. It bounced off, clattering to the floor and sending stray dislodged seeds onto the floor. He retrieved the pan and set it on one of the unused burners.

Then he kicked the base of the stove. Moments later, he was howling his poor decision-making as he doubled over, hopping on one foot as he tried to shake out the other. A glance told him that he broke a couple toenails from that.

There were better ways to vent his anger, he knew. Donning his uniform with a thought, Faustite vanished from the house.