by Jamie Knight
There were only ten guys named Augustus in the state. I started scrolling through the profiles, most of the guys in the photos looking like they were my dad’s age or even older. Finally, between six and nine, I saw him. His face was recognizable as it was unreadable. Augustus Graves.
The words hit like a brick right between my eyes. A deluge of memories nearly blowing me off my chair. Getting up onto shaky legs, I stumbled my way toward the bathroom, hoping I would make it in time.
Putting in a good bit of devotion at the porcelain shrine, I reached up with a shaky hand and flushed. The bathroom tiles cold under my knees. My soft, empty retching turned quickly to sobs. Deep and loud, bursting out of me like the puke had. The scars started to ache. The cross on my forearm and the smaller ones on my ass. Both punishments for ‘consorting with the enemy.’
All I’d really done was stumbled across some Black Metal on YouTube. Though Dad acted like I’d already turned to the dark side, and he needed to remind me of who I was. Or, at least, who he expected me to be.
What would he do if he found out I was even talking to the son of Judas Graves? Let alone all the truly filthy thoughts swirling around in my head. It would hurt like being stabbed but I had to stay away from him. To treat like the enemy daddy always insisted that he was.
In the distance I heard my phone dinging. It was the campus alert system sending me a new message. Hauling myself to a standing position, I lolloped back into the bedroom and checked the message.
COVID-19 UPDATE!
Until further notice new dorm regulations will be in place. Students currently in cluster housing are to be dispersed into dorm housing with a maximum of two students allowed in any given unit at any time. Actions are being taken so that coursework can be done online.
Well, this sucked. I had barely started school and now everything was changing, right before my eyes.
Chapter Six - Augustus
You never know what you have until you lose it. I’d been appreciative of Amelia’s help in unpacking but never really knew how much of a help she had been until I had to do it again, all by myself. Less than three weeks after doing it the first time.
I always knew it might happen. That something would transpire and I would get expelled. Though, thankfully, that wasn’t what was going on. I was just being moved and, frankly, I wasn’t sad to go. I had no idea what was awaiting me at my new place but at least there would be someone else there. Cold as it might sound, anyone would probably be better than the six jackasses I’d been sharing with.
Keira was the only reasonable one. It could have just been my mighty male bravado, but I was fairly certain she was sweet on me. Wouldn’t have been the first time. Though it would have been the first time a girl who was already attached had set her eye my way. Nothing could happen. Despite the rumors, things were made quite clear by several of the Seven Tenets and another person’s partner was strictly off limits unless agreed on by all parties well in advance.
Getting the flag down was the easy part. Gravity helping as much as anything. The difficult thing was stacking and moving the records which weighed a bloody ton. One of the solid downsides to vinyls. Yet, I persisted, getting my three boxes and a backpack by the door in good time. Incurring only a one-Advil backache. A new record I was pretty sure.
Everything set just so, precision being near the top of my list of priorities, I stepped out into the gathering clouds, Autumn finally deciding to show itself, and turned in the direction of the housing office.
Happiness really is mostly a state of mind. Though there are some places, so soul-crushingly depressing, it is like they were designed to kill any happiness that might potentially take root. Airports are one. As well as most DMV offices. Highway Motels also have a history of this. Though the one place I would never expect to find such ardently dedicated killjoys was among the university employees in charge of giving out keys.
There was more to it than that, I was sure. They certainly seemed to be typing enough to give the illusion of working, but then again so did most bank employees. It must be a trick they learn during training.
Taking my place in line with the miserable wraiths, I turned up “Square Hammer” on my first-generation iPod and did my best to stay complacent. No one has control over their circumstances. The mark of maturity is how one faces them.
The process was surprisingly easy once I actually got to the desk. Merely a matter of giving my name and trading my keys from the ones for the cluster house to the ones needed for my new apartment dwelling.
All the boneheads from the cluster were at some kind of sporting event. Leaving me the lovely task of carrying the load across campus to the fancy-pants apartment units overlooking the bay. It only took three trips, the backpack on my back for the third. At least the room was on the first floor. A small mercy for which I was still grateful. We didn’t really believe in ‘blessings’ in the usual sense but good fortune was still something to be noted. No matter what its source.
The smells filled my nostrils as soon as I was through the door. No one seemed to be home. I wondered if I should have knocked first. The officials had put out notices to everyone but it was still nice to give some warning. It was technically my place too, but I didn’t want to be walking in on anyone. Personal space and security are really important.
I decided to compromise and stay in the living room, my boxes piled beside me on the floor by the couch. My cards were already out on the table. I didn’t see any reason to be hanging around outside or in the corridor since I was already there, but I decided not to cross the line into the bedrooms or bathroom before making proper introductions. It was only polite.
Digging through my backpack, I excavated the battered copy of I Await the Devil’s Coming and awaited the arrival of my new roommate.
I hadn’t heard the shower, but I’d heard the door. Looking up in time to see Rachel, the girl from class and the fountain, stride in, clad in nothing but a towel. Her skin was still carrying the sheen of a recent shower. That’s what I had smelled. Her shampoo and whatever else she used.
I kind of expected a scream. Perfectly understandable under the circumstances. Instead, I was faced with something much worse. A cold, silent, terror. Like I was going to brutally rape and torture her before carrying her remains out in a suitcase the next morning Henry Lee Lucas style.
“Hi,” I tried.
Silence. Her expression did not move one inch. A tear beginning to roll down her cheek. I pulled out my keys and held them up as though trying to amuse an infant.
“I’m your new roommate. Because of the new regulations. Crazy, hey?”
Without a word, she backed away and burst into a run, going into what I assumed to be her bedroom. The door slamming so hard the windows in the living room shook.
I was surprised by her reaction but not furious. People tended to fear things that were different, and I was about as different as it was possible to get. Not in the usual ways people tried to distinguish themselves. By what they wore, or the music they liked or who they slept with.
Even politics has become a mark of pride. The two sides playing off each other as though there was that much of a difference between cats and dogs. Even the self-proclaimed ‘anarchists’ were picking from the set menu of options like they were ordering Chinese. All the ‘choices’ pre-set, even among the ‘deviants.’
I was deviant in a different way. Inside the head. My thoughts on the universe and humanity’s place in it, tended not to match up with the consensus. Therefore, very little of what I thought did either.
Giving it a respectable amount of time, I put my pack back on and started hauling boxes to the room where the door wasn’t closed. It was about twice as much space I needed, the bed roughly double the size of the one in cluster housing. I could pull it out from the wall a little and run laps around it. Burning a fair few calories in the process. At least I could if I ate many. By circumstance more than intent I’d gotten used to about fifteen hundred calories a day. Which
was how I managed to style so athletic looking despite not having kicked a ball in my life.
I found a place for everything. Using the nightstand, which was similar to the one in cluster housing. There wasn’t a bookshelf but there was a desk, so I lined them up across the back of it. Using two of the heavier, hardcover edition laid flat as bookends
With everything else where it needed to be, there was only one last order of business. Raise the flag and claim my territory, letting my intentions be known. The tacks going into each of the four corners with a satisfying sound.
I backed up a bit to take in the glory of the duochrome Old Glory. The cause of more than one fight back when I had it hung as a curtain in my bedroom window at home. Indoctrinated losers literally knocking on the door wanting to fight me. Not getting the joke. Seeming to get even more upset after I explained it.
I was going to stay. It was where I was put and I wasn’t leaving. My presence upset Rachel, and even if I didn’t know why, I had enough empathy in my dark little briquette of a heart to not want to provoke her. We would just have to steer clear of each other for a while. How hard could it be?
Chapter Seven - Rachel
I was frozen. Emotions completely shutdown. Better than letting what might happen out. The white lights I was focusing on in my mind getting so bright it was nearly blinding. My body didn’t quite get the memo and the tear started to fall. I could sense a tear rolling down my cheek.
I wanted to wipe it away but that would require acknowledging it was there in the first place. Acknowledging my weakness. I had to be brave even though I didn’t feel it at all. There was no way I was going to give him even more advantages than the ones he already had.
It almost seemed too perfect really. Just so happening to appear in my room, with the full weight of housing authorization behind him. Key and all. It all had to be a dream.
Hit with a sudden burst of energy, I bolted from the hallucination in the living room and shut myself in the safety of my bedroom. I was pretty sure I heard the windows in the living room rattle through the door. Though I couldn’t really be sure of anything anymore.
The sting was sharp. Ripping into my cheek like a blade, the sound echoing around the big room. I did it again even harder. More tears came as my face started to burn. It wasn’t a dream.
I dropped to my knees, the tears still coming. My mind spun so fast it was making me dizzy. If it wasn’t a dream, that meant it was all real. He was actually there, in my place, boxes stacked ready to move in. He had a fucking key!
Okay, not a dream. If it wasn’t a dream, then what was it? Some kind of sick joke? I couldn’t really see it. I didn’t really know anyone in that town and I didn’t think the administration would be involved in such a conspiracy against me. To think otherwise would be downright paranoid. I was wide awake and there was no conspiracy.
Sadly, this fact didn’t make me feel much better. The fact remained that the sworn, blood enemy of my entire family was sitting in my living room.
Reaching out, I took the chair by the leg, pulling it toward me. One of those solid wood things with leather padding and a low, C-shaped back it would do well for my purpose. Using all my strength I got the chair over in front of the door and wedged it up against the handle. Then sat on it. I didn’t know how he’d found me but was damned if I was going to let him hurt me. To be fair I had no idea what he might do. If he wanted me, he could have done it when I first came out of the shower.
He had the drop on me when I wasn’t wearing anything but a towel. In the reality that existed outside my head, he had only really looked at me and not even in a lustful way. Keeping his bewildered gaze on my eyes as I fell to pieces. Had he seen the burns? Not likely. He could still be planning something though. Possibly to kill me in my sleep. Daddy had warned me about them. What they were really like.
Vivid tales of terror that would traumatize any kid. Particularly one as young as I was at the time. Most kids worried about monsters under the closet. I worried about people like the Graves. Checking under the bed, in the closet, in the hall, in the yard. Just to make sure they weren’t there to snatch me away. I slept with my bedroom window nailed shut until I was fifteen.
He was a Graves which made him dangerous. To me and all others like me, as well as the neighborhood cats, and he was in my place. All my worst, childhood nightmares come true. Locked up with a Graves with nowhere to go. I considered the window. The apartment was on the first floor so the drop wouldn’t even hurt me, let alone kill me. I had a lot of stuff though, none of which I wanted to leave behind. It was more than possible he would know what I was doing and bring me right back. Using the quarantine as an excuse. Then I would really be in for it. Even if I did get away, daddy would have to come all the way back which would make him mad. Not least because I’d wasted so much of his hard-earned money. I could be in for another reminder and I really didn’t want that. I was trapped with a Graves and there was nothing I could do about it.
It really shouldn’t have been my priority at that exact moment, but I couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t tried to hide who he was. Surly others knew about them and their ‘temple.’ The founding chapter and Salem had certainly made enough of a stink. Yet he was there under his actual name. Like I found out online, there are so many dudes Augustus to go around and Graves wasn’t all that much more popular. At least not in that part of the world.
If he was trying to fly under the radar, he would have used another name. Like when the Dusks changed their name to Dawn, to throw people off the scent. Not that they were the same as the Graves, though I didn’t know that at the time. As far as I knew, anyone who wasn’t like us was evil and to be avoided if not stopped entirely. With a bullet if necessary. To kill went against the Lord’s word but was still doing the Lord’s work and was considered to be a wash where I grew up. The realization hit like a battering ram. I’d found out his name but I never gave him mine. There are lots of girls named Rachel all over the place. Even O’Flanagan wouldn’t be that strange. So if he did happen to find out he wouldn’t immediately connect me to my family or their crusade. All of the sudden, after what seemed like hours of fear, I had the advantage.
Energized, I jumped up from the chair and whipped off the towel. Going to my desk, the cool air kissing my bare skin, I put on my playlist of choral pieces and selected my clothes. It didn’t really matter what I chose, not least because I couldn’t go out but also because I’d decided to try and avoid Augustus. He was, no doubt, wondering what the heck was going on but let him wonder. It was a small price to pay.
Some would likely say that it wasn’t good to blame the son for the sins of the father, and we all had original sin. Except that would have required thinking clearly. Which I absolutely was not. The sweet sounds of thanks to the Lord were joined by the jangling of my cell. Pausing the playlist, I picked up the phone, still swaying gentle as I put it to my ear.
“Rachel? Have you picked up or is this your voicemail and you’re messing with me?”
“Hey, Jenna,” I sang, deliriously happy.
It was a bit strange I knew but the relief was irrepressible. I was already developing a plan that would keep me safely in my room as much as possible. Which seemed to be what the administrations, both campus and national, seemed to want anyway. I was always the type to follow the rules. Dad might not have been thrilled with the idea of me sharing an apartment with a boy.
I’d actually wondered how that had happened but desperate times and all that. It was likely they hadn’t even noticed. Dad likely would have come right back and whisked me away, particularly considering who the boy in question was but, in a funny way, it was more or less what he wanted. Me cloistered away in my room doing nothing but eating, sleeping and studying, with occasional bathing thrown in, when the coast was clear. I started making a mental inventory of all the foods I liked that didn’t need to be refrigerated and I could keep in my room.
“Yes, I’m here,” I said.
“Oh, g
ood, I thought you might have been murdered or something.”
“Why would you think that?” I asked, the fear creeping back.
“I dunno, paranoid, I guess. I always think people are dead or going to leave me. Have some separation issues I guess.”
It took a moment, but I soon got used to Jenna and her oddities. In a way it was nice to have something to distract myself. I did my best to do a Jane Eyre and not judge or pity her. Just listen to her and her concerns and give her the best advice I could.
It was weird. She was at least two years older than me, and I was trying to advise her as I saw it. Despite the fact I hadn’t really lived yet.
Chapter Eight - Augustus
The best laid plans soon turn to shit. That’s not quite how it goes but certainly seemed to be the trend in my case. Which was part of why I stopped making plans when I was still in elementary school.
There was really no point in it. Not least because it bought into the ideas of success and how it could be achieved. We hardly did anything the ‘expected’ way but still got stuff done. That’s why we still had so many enemies. As another old, rusty saw goes, if you’re making enemies, it means that you’re doing something right.
The whole encounter lasted less than a minute, but it stayed etched in my head. She looked so beautiful. Her healthy skin glistened as the sunlight from the curtainless window glowed in her bright red hair, making it look as though it were aflame, even while it was wet. I tried to imagine what she looked like under her towel.
It might seem sleazy, but it was how he tended to see things. Seeing sex as a good and wonderful thing. Essential for maintaining health and continuing the species, as well as one of the things that makes earthly existence going on with. A conviction only affirmed by how long and hard the religious bugaboos have tried to stifle it.