by McGill, Brie
The boy dispatched a splintering kick to his shin.
The monster remained unphased. Resistance was hopeless.
Andrealphus dragged him by the hair out of the room, in a hurry through the gold-plated halls.
Gold-painted servants with gold masks passed in small throngs, all bowing in worship to the passing demon, willfully oblivious to the plight of the boy.
He dragged the boy to the back of his formerly sacred room, opening a dark closet, and thrust the boy inside.
The boy crashed into the closet, tumbling through a heap of gowns, body cracking against the wall.
“Now sit tight.” Andrealphus poked his head into the closet. “Don’t make a sound—” He pointed a sharp finger. “Don’t move. Watch everything. Deviate from any of these instructions, and I will spill every ounce of the girl’s blood before your eyes.”
He left the closet door open a crack, enough for the boy to see the bed.
The boy fought to break his bonds, but the cord was thick. He wanted to scream, but his mouth was dry, stuffed so deeply with fabric that little sound could escape. He slammed his body against the wall, enraged, circumvented, impotent.
A moment passed. He stared into the blackness of the closet, frocks dangling around him. The closet smelled ancient, musty, like a tomb.
Andrealphus returned. The door slammed. He sat on the edge of the bed, taking great care to face the boy, and brandished a glistening knife. “Get over here.”
The boy heard a feminine whimper.
Andrealphus yanked the girl by the hair, sitting on the edge of the bed, and poked the tip of the dagger into her face.
She trembled, too terrified for words.
“I feel like taking our time today.” He smiled cruelly, pulling the girl toward him by the wrist, and unfastened the button on his pants.
❧ ❧ ❧
The trio stood before an ultramodern metallic building with no windows. The door was a monstrous, metal circle that required electronic activation before retracting into the walls to grant them entry.
Ninkasi swallowed. “I know you said we won’t get caught, but. . .” She listened to the wind in the trees, rubbing the goosebumps from her arms. “But what about killed?”
“Buttercup, please.” Aleister flipped open a panel to reveal a numerical keypad beneath a large black box mounted on the wall. “I'm a professional. I just have to input these access codes, and then we're in. . .”
Nero crossed his arms, tapping his foot.
Ninkasi frowned. “Why are you angry?”
Nero cast her a burning gaze. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“Well, I came.” She shrugged. “Get over it.”
“I bet you did.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust, and jerked his head away. “You’re mixing yourself up with all kinds of things you don’t understand. You don’t belong here.”
Ninkasi raised her eyebrows. “So what! Why do you care what decisions I make?”
He sighed. “You’re a fool.”
The keypad chirped and the metal doors whirred open.
Aleister motioned for them to follow. “It’s time, kids. . .”
“This is creepy.” Ninkasi trailed behind Nero and Aleister, gawking at the building’s interior, its silver-plated floors, the nauseating shade of purple on the walls, like wilted orchids. A foggy, pewter light emanated from frosted wall sconces, like the whispers of a ghost. Cool air prickled the hairs on her arms, and she wrinkled her nose at the pungent odor of antiseptic.
“Our first stop” —Aleister marched ahead, adjusting the thick black frame of fake glasses on his nose— “is the security room!” He lowered his voice. “We’ll confirm the most strategic route for setting our share of the explosives, and hopefully determine Orion’s whereabouts on camera at the same time.”
Ninkasi studied the series of identical doors they passed, all metallic, circular, retractable, each outfitted with a crescent-shaped lance and skull with jeweled eyes floating in the center. Beside every door was a mysterious black box—like a mailbox, but not quite.
She glanced nervously to Aleister. “Do you know why he came here?”
Aleister adjusted the backpacks on his shoulder. “He has history here.”
She scuttled ahead to keep up with him. “I thought he spent something like the last twenty years at the chateau with you.”
“He did.” Aleister remained focused on the path ahead. “That was after I found him wandering alone, not too far from this place.”
“Look.” Nero stopped and shot her a stern glance. “None of this has anything to do with you.” He resumed his stride. “We appreciate the circumstantial assistance, but beyond that, you shouldn’t concern yourself.”
They rounded a corner.
Aleister cleared his throat. “She’s a big girl, Nero. Let her make her own decisions.”
“The security room should be the second door on the left.” Nero pointed.
Aleister flipped open a keypad. “I’ll input the access codes. . .”
“If Orion did come here by himself, I don’t understand why he didn’t give us the codes, at least. He gave me the map.” Nero shook his head. “Those codes would have saved me a headache.”
Ninkasi’s eyes fell on the box against the wall. “Maybe he didn’t have the codes.”
“This whole place rubs me the wrong way.” Nero glanced over his shoulder. “I think I do a better job working from home.”
“Nonsense.” Aleister’s haggard left hand plunked a series of keys. “You, of all people, need to get out more than anyone.”
The keypad blipped and the doors retracted.
Nero shouldered past them, entering the room.
“You’ve got to learn that there isn’t only a great big world out there.” Aleister followed Nero, gesticulating his lecture. “There are worlds, scores of worlds out there, many of which you don’t fucking know.”
Groaning, Nero pushed ahead to the central computer bank in the security office.
“Because you can’t see them, or don’t believe they exist” —Aleister tromped behind Nero and grabbed his suspenders— “doesn’t mean they don’t impact the one world you take for granted at a fundamental level!”
Nero gritted his teeth, twisting himself free from Aleister’s grasp.
Ninkasi maintained a safe distance, observing them. “And. . . is that why we’re here?”
“Yes!” Aleister thrust a crooked finger in her direction. “She is a smart one!”
Sinking into the swiveling leather desk chair, Nero stared into the bank of computers. “You’ll have to forgive my all-encompassing sense of dread.” Entering a combination of keystrokes, he determined the control mechanism for the cameras.
Aleister pulled a retrofitted anzein rifle from his belt, pumping the barrel until it glowed red. Pointing the gun at Nero’s head, he pulled the trigger and fired a blast of crackling red energy.
Ninkasi clamped a hand over her mouth.
The gun’s blast moved through him; Nero was impervious.
Aleister chuckled and holstered the gun.
He shot him a disparaging glance.
“See?” Aleister patted him on the head. “Nothing to worry about. You’re clean.”
“Clean?” Ninkasi narrowed her eyes. “Do those guns work?”
“Nero!” Aleister gripped the back of the desk chair and shook it violently, jostling him. “What’s our status? Where can we go?!”
“I was scanning. . .” His fingers clacked against the keyboard. “Until you shot me.” He paused. “I don’t see Orion anywhere. This whole place is strangely devoid of personnel. . .”
“Alright, let’s focus on the task at hand.” Aleister clapped. “I fucking told him I’d blow this place rain or shine. I know he knows.”
Ninkasi’s eyed widened. “Do you think he’s in trouble?”
Aleister waved a finger. “We have a third of this building to cover with charges—that’s a convenient amount of ground
to cover for a search and rescue. Let’s get the job done, cover as much area as we can—we’re bound to encounter something. If we don’t, we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.” He rubbed his belly and laughed. "Or, blow it up."
Ninkasi shoved her hands in her pockets, and tilted her head to the side. “Do you mind giving me a quick primer in how you’d like these devices wired?”
Orion slowly opened his eyes. Hazy white ceiling panels came into view. His stomach churned; he felt poisoned, ill.
“It’s about time you regained consciousness.” He heard the approach of heeled shoes against a tiled floor.
He knew that voice, a voice he never wanted to hear again, so long as he lived.
Orion couldn’t sense anyone in the room with him: he shut his eyes, and tried to sense again. He heard a person stop somewhere beside him, but he felt nothing, no biofeedback.
Mind clouded in a billowing fog, he concluded something had been done to him. Whatever the alteration, he hoped it wasn’t permanent.
He tilted his head sideways, opening his eyes. His body was propped up in a hospital bed.
Vision blurring, everything in his line of sight wobbled, fuzzy. He saw a woman’s figure clad in a sparkling black sequined dress. Black netting around her wide-brimmed black hat concealed her face, though his eyes couldn't process the details. She kept her blonde hair pinned tidily from her face.
“Echidna.”
She placed a cold hand on his forehead. “Is that all the affection you have for me, after all these years?”
Orion rolled his head from side to side, combating the dizziness, the nausea. “What have you done to me?” It drove him mad that he sensed nothing; he may as well have been blind.
“I had to stop you from wrecking my lab.” She ran fingers through his hair. “Not that you posed much of a threat, anyway.” Her voice was low, grainy, with a masculine air.
Never in his life had Orion wished harder for Aleister’s success. “You’ve thwarted my plans.” Turning his head away, he smirked bitterly. “Congratulations.” What she didn’t know was that it was only a matter of time before Aleister blew this whole place to hell, likely with him still in it.
It didn’t matter. He supposed he never quit throwing his soul away. Maybe it was all he had to give.
Maybe he felt like he had to throw his soul away, because he knew of no other method to verify whether or not he had one.
“That, and, I did create you.” She traced a finger over his face. “It’s amazing how you’ve grown. My studies require that I monitor the growth of my creations.”
“Technically.” Orion struggled to sit up in the bed, realizing his hands and legs were shackled in place. “It was my surrogate mother that created me.” He narrowed his eyes. “The fabric of her body created me. She gave me life. You gave me nothing.”
“That filthy human.” Echidna pointed a finger. “She was a fuel source, a food source. You were animated with my superior DNA; without me, you would have been a heap of dumb animal cells. Anything taken from my body is my creation, irrelevant of how it’s harvested and grown.”
"You're insane." Orion gave a wicked smile. “It’s because you’re barren, because you always have been.”
She roamed across the room, and settled at a desk. “You’re incorrect.”
He burst out laughing. “Then why go through the hassle of having someone else bear your child?”
“There was no reason for me to waste my time or energy.” She rifled through a drawer. “Childbearing is a strenuous process.”
Orion stared at the blank ceiling. “Waste, you say.”
“I used to think you were a complete waste.” She slammed the drawer.
“Is that why you peddle your unsafe drugs to children?” Orion shifted within his bonds, recalling Aleister’s impassioned rants. “I think you know you’re barren, and it’s made you insane.”
“You waste your time trying to frame my motives with human psychology.” Echidna stood up, and sauntered toward the bed. “Your existence is proof that my seed is viable.”
He threw his head back and laughed again. He would happily meet death, happily march straight to the gates of hell if he knew she would be there beside him. “If you crawled back under your rock, you’d do the world a favor.”
“This world is our rock!” She raised a fist. “It’s been our rock long before that pestilence spread across the surface.”
He observed her with disgust.
“For years, I thought there was nothing special about you.” She sat on a chair beside the bed, crossing her legs. “I thought you were defective, some kind of runt.” She pressed a finger between his eyes. “I thought you weren’t capable of anything worthwhile. All this time, you’ve deceived me. You were such a corrupt and deceitful child.”
Orion closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “What’s that about apples. . .?”
She put her hands on her knees. “I patented them.”
“Right.” He jerked against his bonds to raise a hand, and lifted a stilted finger. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“You owe me an apology.” She crossed her arms.
“What I owe you, woman” —he lurched forward and shook the bed, flashing his teeth— “is worse than death.”
“It was pure wickedness, what you did to Andrealphus.” Looking at the ceiling, she sighed. “Not even I contemplated anything so wicked at such a young age.”
Orion shut his eyes.
“Some day, I ought to show you what clever thing I’ve given him instead of a heart. It’s something you won’t destroy so easily.” Echidna lifted a hand to her mouth and chuckled. “In any case.” She leaned over the bed, and affectionately pressed a hand against his face. “Since you’ve come to visit me, I think you should stay for a while.”
Orion jerked his head away. “Soon enough, we’ll spend an eternity together.”
“You have some unique capabilities. I’d love to learn more about what that brain of yours can do.” Echidna rammed a needle into his arm, and laughed. “That brain of mine. . .”
His consciousness dissolved into blackness.
❧ ❧ ❧
The boy pushed open the door with a trembling hand and peered inside.
It was too dark to see anything: he knew Andrealphus slept on a special bed tailored to his enormous size, with a frame of gold, and bedposts like scepters with jewels bigger than fists.
In one hand, the boy gripped a knife. Breaking into a cold sweat, he closed his eyes.
Taking a deep breath, he shook away her screams that echoed in his head, banished the disgusting look of enrapt pleasure on the demon’s face.
Now he would pay.
The boy was past being covert. He would drive his knife into the monster’s black heart, deal the definitive blow to dispatch him straight to hell.
He slipped out of his cloak, leaving it in a heap on the floor by the door—he didn’t want to roam the halls openly covered with blood.
His mother bestowed Andrealphus the highest honor, her consort.
The boy closed the door behind him and crept into the room, hesitantly tiptoeing toward the bed. He felt the monster’s aura.
Andrealphus slept on his side, breathing steadily, his mind coasting gently through the deep waves of sleep. His big heart beat steadily, slowly, obliviously.
The boy snuck to the edge of the bed, clutching the knife, observing the monster in his sleep, smelling the booze on his breath.
In a moment, he would breathe no more. His life would disappear from this world, along with his cruelty and perverse desires.
The boy had to do it.
It enraged him to think she suffered so deeply and felt too ashamed to confide in anyone, not even him; whether he told her or not, whether they ever discussed it or not, she was not alone in her suffering, and the boy was certain to bring it to an end.
His heart broke for her loss of innocence.
Andrealphus had taken his
innocence; thus, in murdering him, the boy had nothing to lose. Already damned, killing the monster couldn’t make him any more damned than he already was.
Shivering, he bit his lip and stepped into a wide stance. He shut his eyes and lunged forward, plunging the knife into his back.
Crying out, gurgling and incoherent, Andrealphus thrashed and rolled onto his stomach.
A cold chill swept through the boy, feeling the knife rip through the fabric of his clothes, piercing his body; his stomach knotted, feeling the hilt slam against his flesh. The boy ripped out the knife, climbed onto the bed, and knelt on Andrealphus’s back.
He drove the knife into him, shredding through flesh, pulling out the knife and stabbing again.
Andrealphus screamed, a tortured, agonized howl, too addled with drink, sleep, and darkness to make sense of what became him.
With every thrust, the boy channeled rage, pain, disgust. Each blow of the weapon into the demon’s expansive back was like a drug, ecstatic, addictive, begging him to strike again. He stabbed blindly, wildly in the dark; the knife rent skin and muscle, cracked against bone.
The boy wanted Andrealphus to know. He wanted him to feel the torture, the absolute violation of something unwanted penetrating his body, desecrating him, destroying him, vitiating his life without his consent.
The only difference was, in death, Andrealphus’s pain would stop and he might know peace.
Unlike her—Andrealphus forced her to live with the pain forever.
Tears streamed down the boy’s face and he struck again. It wasn’t fair.
Rolling over, Andrealphus swatted the boy off his body with a growl.