ShapeShifter Fiction: Glass

Glass.

If he closed his eyes, that’s what Mitchell visualized. Shards of glass, poking their pointy, broken ends into his throat. His sore, tender throat. The one that needed to be able to sing for two and a half hours.

Last time he’d felt like this, Amy had sent him medicine. It had worked just fine on his throat but fucked with the rest of him. Not in a good way for a guy on the road. Eric hadn’t minded the extended guitar solos the first two nights, but when it dragged on for eight, not to mention how it’d slowed down their travel with Mitchell’s constant need to stop, even the guitarist, the most tolerant of all of them, had had enough.

As if Mitchell hadn’t. After all, it was his body the medicine had fucked up.

He wasn’t calling Amy so fast. Not if she was going to do that to him again.

Still, he had two interviews to give before the show later that night. Sucking on lollipops helped a bit, but not for very long, and it was hard to talk with a sucker in your mouth. That wouldn’t work with the press, even if most of them were dicks. It wouldn’t wash later, during the show, although it might be fun to flick a sucker from your mouth into the crowd, just to see what would happen.

Probably fall in that safety zone between the fans and the stage.

“Dans? Where’s the honey?”

The drummer crossed the room; he’d been primping for an interview of his own and the dressing room felt empty with just the two of them in it. Eric would show in another hour, to give some face time himself, and Trevor would appear… whenever King Trevor felt like it.

“Right there, by your right hand,” Daniel said, surveying the catering table set up in their dressing room.

Mitchell figured that was how it went. He was busy looking at the set-up for the tea, the bags and the sugar and the powdered flavored creamers for coffee, the real milk in the ice tubs with the beer and Gatorade. The honey was… there with the ketchup and shit. Made perfect sense.

It was one of those honey bears. They were fun to fuck around with; Daniel was constantly coming up with new things to do with the stupid things. Mitchell picked this one up, turned it ass-up, and poured a dollop of honey directly onto his tongue.

“Slick,” Daniel said.

Mitchell swallowed and shrugged. And then he closed his eyes and swallowed again. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better.

He set the bear down — near the tea and coffee shit this time — and eyed the back of its head. That same spot he liked to whack Trevor in. He swallowed again, and gave the bear an affectionate pat.

It may have been an old wives’ tale that honey soothed a sore throat, but those old wives sure knew a thing or two.

Whoever the fuck the old wives were.

“Mitchell, ready?” Charlie asked, sticking his head in the dressing room. “I’ve got one reporter on the hook for you, and a quiet spot for you to inflict the torture.”

Mitchell turned to go, then stopped. He twisted and picked up the bear. It could come with him. Maybe he’d have some fun with it and the reporter.

Maybe the reporter would know who the old wives really were.

Honey on glass. He’d take it.