Silent Ground: Part 1

by Quil Carter

  “Good…” Tom said, and lowered his voice. “Now tell me what’s wrong? Be truthful and don’t feed me bull. I want the honest answer.” He stared at Sasha for a second longer before looking over his shoulder. “Lex, can you give us a moment?”

  “Of course.”

  Sasha watched Lex turn around and walk up the stairs towards his bedroom. Everything had happened so fast, he barely understood just what the hell was going on. Why he was sitting here with some guy he barely knew, with an expectation to tell him what he was going through?

  When the door closed, Tom took off his shoes and jacket and sat down. “What’s going on?” he asked, straight and to the point. “Why do you think people want your blood?”

  A heat filled Sasha’s head, one that was laced with embarrassment and a sense of being naked in a room full of people. He looked around for something to distract himself with, and found his own bottle of pop.

  He tilted it back and forth and stared down at the bubbles popping around the dark brown liquid. “This was supposed to be a nice evening with my uncle,” Sasha said quietly. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

  “But maybe this is exactly what you need right now,” Tom said. “It sounds like you need someone to talk to.”

  Automatically, like the reflex it was, Sasha’s mouth opened to counter Tom’s words, but strangely he found them lingering on his tongue.

  “I don’t know you,” Sasha said slowly. He glanced around to make sure Lex wasn’t hiding behind a plant or something, spying on him. “You’re my uncle’s friend… I’m not letting you be his fucking translator.”

  “I’m a psychiatrist before I’m Lex’s friend, Mr. Zakharin,” Tom said patiently. “And yes, I am doing this as a favour for him, but he understands, as do you, that the only way you’ll seek out help for what’s bothering you, is if that help comes to you.”

  Once again, Sasha’s knee jerk reaction was to disregard what Tom was saying, but in the back of his head, his own fears were making themselves known. The fear of pushing away Jobe and Lex because of how much work he was, how much shit he brought into their lives.

  But… then was he supposed to just keep all of this to himself? To hide away like a deformed child, locked in a closet to grow insaner by the day?

  ‘No, you fucking idiot,’ the voice suddenly muttered. ‘You talk about it to the fucking shrink.’

  Sasha sighed, and as he rubbed his head, he closed his eyes. “The voice in my head is telling me to talk to you,” he said slowly. “How’s that for an introduction to how fucked up my mind is?”

  Tom crossed a leg and folded his hands over his knee. “Well, Sasha, this voice you’re hearing… is he a negative force in your life?”

  “Yeah,” Sasha said. He shifted around before reaching for some Oreos, then began fidgeting with the cookie. “Almost all the time… he points out everything wrong with me. He reminds me I’m nothing but an insane piece of shit.” Sasha twisted off the Oreo, a scowl on his face. “Funny, the head voice is the one telling me I’m insane. That’s gotta be ironic.”

  “Does he tell you that people want your blood?”

  Sasha continued to play with the Oreo cookie, smushing the icing together before squishing it between the cookie parts. The prickly heat seemed to boil his brain alive in its own fluids. He’d never felt more put on the spot, and more… exposed and uncomfortable.

  “I didn’t imagine it,” Sasha said simply and slowly. “I was walking around while Jobe was at a party, and I was jumped by two men.” He closed his eyes, knowing how crazy this was going to make him sound. “They introduced themselves to me and then they attacked me.” Sasha brushed a hand over his face, showing Tom the scratches and road burn. “And one of them cut my arm, drained my blood into a flask… and…” Sasha’s cheeks burned.

  Tom, watching him intently, raised an eyebrow. “And…?”

  “And that’s all I want to say…” Sasha said. “They took my blood and they left…”

  “Jobe found you after?”

  “They… drugged me. I didn’t come back to reality until the next morning.”

  Sasha put his face into his hands. There were thousands of places he would rather be but here and in this moment. He could smell the doubt surrounding Tom, it was a heavy stink in the air that had a stickiness that affixed itself on everything porous. It was all he could smell: doubt and pity.

  “There’s a good way of finding out if this really happened,” Tom said. Sasha’s head shot up when Tom took his arm. “I’m going to write you a referral to get your blood checked. Have it happen as soon as possible or the drug might leave your system.”

  Sasha looked down at Tom’s hand, still grasping his arm. “I feel that bandage,” Tom said, his tone concerned. “Can I see the cut on your arm?”

  There were a thousand reasons for Sasha to say no, and every one of them slithered around on his tongue, but eventually he nodded and rolled up his sleeve. He then took off the small bandage and showed Tom the laceration that the two mysterious predators had caused.

  “That was certainly made by a knife,” Tom murmured. He withdrew his hand and Sasha quickly covered his arm back.

  “I didn’t imagine it,” Sasha whispered. “I swear, there are people after me. I don’t know why they want my blood… but they do. They told me their names…”

  “Did the voice in your head know of them?” Tom asked.

  Sasha shook his head no.

  “Okay,” Tom said. He slapped both hands against his knee and rose. “I won’t stress you out further, but what I would like… is to open a dialogue with you. Will you meet with me once a week? Perhaps twice? I’ll come to your door personally, with no Uncle Lex as middle man. He doesn’t even need to know we’re meeting.”

  Sasha watched him rise and got up too. “I…” He didn’t want to, but when it came down to the bones of it, Sasha realized that what he wanted, and what he was doing, wasn’t working for him. “Okay.”

  Tom looked shocked, but like the professional he was, it disappeared almost as quickly as it came. Instead, the doctor held out his hand and shook Sasha’s. “I think we’ll make great progress together. Not only will we improve your mental and emotional state, but I believe we can begin working on that depression as well. I won’t prescribe you medication yet, but prepare yourself that it might be brought up as an option.” Tom called Lex’s name, before lowering his voice. “I’m going to speak with Lex and make sure he isn’t going to stick his nose into our business. It was nice seeing you again, Sasha.”

  Sasha stuffed his hands into his pockets and watched Tom as he left. “Thanks… it was… nice meeting you too.” He sat down, and with a sigh, distracted himself some more with the Oreos.

  Tom met Lex in the upstairs hallway, and without a word, he motioned towards the nearby master bedroom. Lex nodded, making no effort to hide the concern on his face, and followed a step behind the psychiatrist.

  Tom shut the door behind him and leaned against it.

  “Lex, that kid is a danger to himself,” Tom said.

  Lex’s face dropped. “I… know,” he whispered as he sat down on his bed.

  “No, I don’t think you do know… he showed me the cut on his arm, and there are almost a dozen silver scars, every one of them made by a knife, and several newer-looking ones. He’s telling me that guys are after his blood, but… I think he’s inflicting all of these wounds himself. The cut on his arm was self-inflicted, just like the others, and I believe it’s only going to escalate. If he’s hearing a voice in his head… what next? What if this voice tells him to kill himself? Or kill you?”

  Lex looked up, his eyes glassy from the tears he refused to let shed. “Sasha would never hurt us,” he said in a tone that dared Tom to disagree. “Don’t say shit like that, Thomas.”

  “If the voice tells him to do it… how do you know it won’t drive him to act?” Tom shook his head. “I think these migraines he’s getting are probably from blood loss, that and exhaustion. I… I
told him I wouldn’t medicate him yet but I’m starting to think he might need some strong antipsychotics. He’s already hurting himself and listening to voices, I’ve prescribed Lamronall for less.”

  The expression on Lex’s face was easy to read. It was devastation, and the last vestals of hope, hope for Sasha to not be as bad as Lex knew he was. The shock of it had Lex burying his face into his hands, and a sniff could be heard after.

  Tom walked to him and put a hand on Lex’s shoulder. “You’re his guardian, and the only reason why I’m telling you that he’s a danger to himself is because I’m a mandated reporter. I… I should be telling Cottonwood but…” Tom stopped talking when Lex’s head rose.

  “The psychiatric facility? The fucking nut house in Victoria?” Lex said, his voice strained. “You’re talking to me like sending my nephew, practically my son, to the fucking insane asylum?”

  “You watch too many movies, Lex,” Tom said flatly. “It’s not a nut house and there are millions of functioning people with mental health issues that would kick your ass for calling it that. It’s for people like Sasha with issues that make them a danger to themselves, and the cuts on Sasha’s arm, where Jobe found him, the voices, the delusions… Look me straight in the eye and tell me that that may not be the best place for him. Only if, and I say if, medicating him doesn’t work. It’s not our solution now, Lex, it’s one you may need to consider.”

  Lex raised his head as Tom’s words died on the air. “You got all of this from talking to him for fifteen minutes?” He got up and headed towards the door.

  “I got all of this from fifteen minutes and three years of you telling me about his steady decline,” Tom said. “You begged me for my help and I told you that you might not like what you hear.”

  Lex walked past him and opened the door. “I know, just…” He closed his eyes for a moment and took in a deep breath. “I don’t want to drug him yet. Let’s just see how the next couple weeks go.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Sasha took in a sharp inhale of breath before gagging. His eyes flew open and he looked around the dark room, his pulse racing.

  “Shh, hey, it’s okay,” Jobe said. He put a hand on Sasha’s shoulder. “It’s just us here. No scary monsters.”

  Sasha’s eyes carefully analyzed every part of the room until he was content with what Jobe was telling him. But then that led to another question. “Why are you still here?” he asked with a yawn. He laid back down in bed and Jobe did as well.

  Jobe was still wearing his clothes from the previous day, and the black eyeliner he always had around his eyes was smudged. His hair wasn’t any better, the gel he used to spike it up had turned against him during the night, leaving his hair to look like he’d stuck his finger in an electrical socket. “You fell asleep during the movie, and I know you’ve been sleeping bad lately. Decided to stick around,” he explained. “I’m working late tomorrow so we might not see much of each other. I need to get all of my Sasha time in.” Jobe raised his arm and put it around Sasha. “I can sleep on the couch if you want.”

  Sasha shook his head. “No, I don’t mind you.” He closed his eyes and smiled when he heard Jobe laugh.

  “Sasha doesn’t mind me. Victory!” Jobe shifted closer to him and Sasha’s forehead scrunched when he felt his lips press against it. “You’re so cute. Have a good remaining sleep. It’s six in the morning, we still have many hours left until the day starts.”

  “No starting days,” Sasha grumbled. It had been two days since his dinner at Lex’s, two days since the meeting with Tom, and the psychiatrist had been calling his phone and leaving messages about him coming over. Tom coming again was the last thing in the entire world that Sasha wanted, but he’d told himself that today he would answer the phone.

  Unless he was still sleeping.

  “No facing the day. Just bed… never leaving bed.” Sasha yawned and he adjusted Jobe’s hand so it was resting on his neck. “Bed… all day.” He fell asleep soon after that.

  When Sasha woke up again, he was dismayed to feel a twinge of pain in his head. He groaned and held a hand to it, then stumbled out of bed to the bathroom. On the way, he smelled breakfast cooking, and that gave him the motivation to shower and shave so he could look half-presentable.

  Sasha emerged twenty minutes later and walked into his living room and kitchen. Jobe gave him a sunny smile and an overly-cheery hello, and Sasha saw two plates in front of him. He walked to the counter and his mouth filled with saliva when he saw that Jobe had made scrambled eggs, fried mash potatoes, and breakfast sausage.

  “You’re a god,” Sasha said. He grabbed a plate and sat down. “My head is starting to kill me, I couldn’t cook breakfast if my life depended on it.” Once Jobe left it would be back to the bloodletting, at least he could still draw blood from his stitched wound. It was easy and readily accessible.

  It was a fucked up way of doing it, but it worked.

  Sasha rubbed his head and sighed.

  “Poor Boogie,” Jobe clucked. He sat down beside Sasha and rubbed his head. “Is there anything I can get you at the store? I have some old Percocet from my root canal last year. Did that junk ever help?”

  Sasha shook his head and speared a breakfast sausage. “No, unfortunately not. Pain killers never really seemed to help, they only made me sluggish and nauseous. Thanks though.” It was just the blood… how was that even possible? Then an idea popped into Sasha’s head. “Are you going to go home to change and stuff?” Jobe’s house was only minutes away, but it would hopefully give Sasha enough time to drain some of his blood. It would be incredibly difficult to do it with Jobe in the house, pretty much impossible since it took the better part of half an hour.

  “Yeah, after I eat. I smell like ass from sleeping in my clothes and I look like an idiot with my makeup all fucked. I’ll probably shower too so I don’t have to use your crappy store-brand shampoo,” Jobe said. He raised his fork and tried to steal one of Sasha’s breakfast sausages. Sasha grabbed his table knife and fended off the invasion successfully, and Jobe retreated with a mock sigh.

  “I’m sorry we can’t all afford Herbal Essences shampoo, gay boy,” Sasha said with his mouth full. “I save seventy-five cents a bottle with my Walmart crap.”

  “I might as well just bring all my stuff here, save you some rent,” Jobe said, and he said it with a smile that told Sasha he was only pretending to be joking. “I could cook you stuff like this every day, right? You only have boxes of crap in that second bedroom and half of it is Lex’s.”

  Sasha shrugged a shoulder and busied himself with his food. He didn’t want Jobe to move in with him. He loved Jobe, don’t get him wrong, but he liked having his own space, his own place he could lock up tight when he felt like ignoring the outside world. To have Jobe move in here, and for it to be his space too… the small shreds of privacy he got would be thrown right out the window.

  And Jobe only lived a few minutes away. What was wrong with it keeping it the way it was?

  “I work a lot…” Jobe said, seeing the hesitation clear as day on Sasha’s face. It was obvious though that he wasn’t really expecting a different reaction. “You could put a deadbolt on your bedroom door if you want, since I know you’d still need your locked-away happy place. I mean… it would only be like four hundred bucks between us for rent and a lot less for food.”

  A heat came to Sasha’s face like he’d just opened an oven. What had been light joking had obviously turned into an actual proposal, and Sasha didn’t like any of it. Nor did he enjoy being put on the spot.

  Didn’t he have enough things to worry about? Like the fact that two guys jumped him and no one in the world seemed to believe that it had actually happened?

  ‘That’s the reason Jobe wants to move in with you,’ the voice hissed, his tone as slippery as a soaped-up snake. ‘They want to keep an eye on their little lunatic.’

  Sasha pushed the voice away and swallowed his food. “I like having my own apartment,” Sasha said quietly, tr
ying to make his tone sound as inoffensive as he could. “Having all of you keeping an eye on me is just going to stress me out. Maybe I would function better if I didn’t have everyone swarming me.”

  The mood in the room dropped. After the silence had turned to awkward, Sasha looked over and saw that Jobe was staring down at his food – or glaring more like it.

  “Having everyone ignore you and pretend you were fine… is what got you in this situation in the first place,” Jobe said. And Sasha was surprised to find frost in his tone. “It’s as if you’re acting like nothing happened… you did something to yourself on the road, Sash. We just want to make sure you’re not… hurting yourself.” Jobe glanced down at Sasha’s arms, covered in a long sleeve blue shirt.

  “I fucking…” Sasha shook his head as the migraine gave another pulse of pain. It was getting worse, and Sasha knew enough of his body to know that if he fought it, it would become unbearable.

  “I’m not talking about this,” he said instead, and began to eat faster. “I’ve said my piece.”

  Jobe nodded slowly and the awkward air to the room continued. Neither of them spoke; they continued to eat in silence.

  And when Jobe was done, he got up, and put his plate into the sink. “I’m going to go shower and get changed. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  “Yep,” Sasha said quickly and curtly. The door closed soon after, and once Sasha knew that Jobe was gone, he got up and locked it.

  Then he went to his bedroom and closed the door. It didn’t take long for him to have his arm over his stained water glass, and just to show how unfortunately routine this had become for him, he even watched television as he laid down on his bed.

  It was like he was in a community centre giving blood, just relax and let the red fill the glass… then drink it like the little queer vampire you are.

  Too bad vampires didn’t exist. But why this worked was just… eh, who knows.

  Sasha held up the water glass, an inch of red blood now at the bottom. He downed it with one gulp, cringing at the taste, then set it down and closed his eyes. It wouldn’t take long now, it never did.