by Quil Carter
“Well, you weren’t really in a state to… be talking about that sort of stuff anyway,” Julian said, his laughter dying like the quarter he’d inserted into the laugh machine had run out. “And of course, he wouldn’t talk about me when he first came to live with you… he didn’t want you knowing about me.” I was amused to see faint shimmers of animosity in his eyes, just fleeting sparks but ones I picked up easily. I was quite fascinated with what I was seeing on him, and the fact that it was me making him squirm in my palm was quite empowering. This wasn’t only good training for when I went back to Skyfall, but the fact that I was, if only slightly, paying him back for everything that he’d done to me, calmed the fires inside of me and soothed my blistering wounds.
“Yes, that’s probably it,” I said. I drew the sizzling meat from the fire and made my touch cold. I put the piece on my palm and steam began coming off of it due to the sudden change in temperature. “I always just assumed it was because he was happy with me. When one is content with their life they don’t find a need to dwell on the negativity.”
“Yeah…” Julian said quietly. His eyes were fixed on the meat over the flames, there was hurt in his eyes that I enjoyed seeing. And I was reminded that his jealousy for Finn had been the catalyst in everything that had happened. It was not to be underestimated. That was something I could use as a tool, but also something I needed to watch out for.
He wouldn’t dare hurt my sengil. But I was not concerned about such things, I was strong enough now to protect my property.
“How is Finn doing anyway?” Julian asked. I was surprised by this question, more so when I saw that he was attempting to smile. He was perhaps playing his own game, or maybe he was just trying to quench what had the potential to become an argument. Julian was a dog with his tail between his legs, the man badly wanted my forgiveness.
“Wonderful. The slight, harmless-looking boy has become quite the handsome man. And the closest thing to a partner that I’ve had in the eleven years we’ve been together,” I said, watching Julian’s face as I said this. “He’s attentive and caring, selfless and fiercely loyal towards me. He knows what I want before I even ask, and I take care of all of his needs.” Then I added, just for my own amusement. “I love him dearly. He’s the only man in my life that I love more than just a brother or a friend.”
Julian chuckled, but this was no weightless cajole, rather one that currently had bricks stacked against it. “Yeah, you like torturing me, don’t you?” he said dryly. He removed the meat from the fireplace and rolled the coat hanger in his palm so it turned the meat in a circle like a rotisserie. “You know all of this started because I was jealous of Finn and now you’re just twisting that knife.”
“You asked me a question and I responded,” I said dismissively. “If I wanted to upset you, Julian, I’d point out that from the very first night up until the present, he’s been sharing my bed. I’ve been falling asleep to his breathing for over eleven years.”
Julian’s lips pursed and disappeared inside of his mouth. “You avoided telling me that when we were together,” he said curtly. “You think I was crazy being jealous of him… when the entire time you were sharing your bed with him, and he was hanging off of your fucking arm.”
“He’s my sengil,” I said. His words were stirring up the anger that I’d managed to settle, but I found that I was easily able to control the anger. I was getting better at it, which I was proud of. “He was scared when he first arrived due to Silas’s tormenting him to get a rise out of me. I’m sure you were busy at the time selfishly reaping the benefits of mentally destroying a man who’d already had two mental breakdowns, had attempted suicide twice, and was in a crippling depression but I’m sure you could see past your own disgusting attention-whoring to know that Silas would use him to control me.”
The room fell to an awkward silence after that. I ate my pieces of meat and skewered another four onto the coat hanger. Julian stared at the fireplace the entire time, his own meat forgotten with the hanger clenched tightly in the palm of his hand.
When Julian finally spoke, his deep voice against the silence was reminiscent of a sudden thunder crack. “If he’d chosen me…” he said, his face twisted as if the bitter words he was spitting had an actual tart taste. “I would’ve been able to endure Silas without causing you stress. I would’ve been there for you when Silas hurt you.” Julian suddenly slammed his hand down on the side table that separated our two blanket-covered chairs. “I’m stronger than him!” he raged. “The only reason Silas chose Finn was because he was weak. He knew he could use Finn against you more than he could me. Silas fucking knew I’d protect you, instead of needing protection! It wasn’t fucking fair, Elish!” Julian’s eyes threatened tears. “He didn’t chose Finn for you; he chose Finn for him and I was left with fucking nothing!”
I brushed away the twinges of empathy as if I was batting away a fly. “I would’ve chosen Finn a thousand times over,” I said calmly. Julian gave me a crushed look at this. “Silas didn’t chose him because he was an easier weapon. Finn is perfect for me and still remains so. Yes, Silas has, and still does, use Finn to control me… but that is just who Silas is and he does it with all of us. All of that aside however, my love for Finn is deep. I said nothing false when I stated that he was the closest thing to a boyfriend that I’ve had since you, perhaps in a way he was my true boyfriend the entire time.” Julian’s tear-filled eyes widened at this statement.
I continued, “Whereas you were further contaminating and infecting my wounds, twisting my broken arm, and adding drama to my life as a means of garnering sympathy, getting me to kill who was a threat to your false backstory, and having no care of the fragile mental state I was in, as long as it benefited you… Finn was my loyal sengil. He only had my own happiness in mind. He was there to take care of me when Silas abused me, and he was a bright light in the dark catacombs I was trapped inside of.” I couldn’t hold back the faint smile when I thought of him. “Did you know, Julian, he’d found out about your origins before I did? But he decided to say nothing because he saw how happy I was with you. Only after you sent those greywasters to try and lure me out, another grand plan of Julian whatever-your-last-name-really-is, did Finn decide to seek you out to warn you to stay away from me.” My jaw tightened when my memories brushed upon the night Finn was raped. Not only raped, Julian had wanted him dead.
Which inspired my next words.
“I’m glad my first time inside of a man was with him and not you.”
Julian inhaled sharply. I glanced at him to see that he’d gone several shades paler, and as I looked, I was treated to not only a jump in his pulse, but his breathing had quickened too.
“You… you fucked him?”
“I made love to him,” I corrected. “After murdering that greywaster in front of the pharmacy a thirst took me. As soon as I got him back to my bedroom… I buried my face into his ass and devoured him as he moaned and pulled my hair.” Julian was staring at me with an expression of hurt and guttural despair. “I was unable to hold myself back, and it didn’t help that he began begging for me to take him. So I did, I made love to that boy, his first time and my first time actually enjoying sex. Before Finn, the only time I’d been physically intimate with a man was when Silas was forcing himself on me. Even cumming was traumatizing to me, I felt disgusting afterwards since it reminded me so much of what Silas had done to me. But this time… as I made him into a man, he made me into a god.” I smiled coldly. “I’m looking forward to the joy on his face when he realizes I’m back to my old self… and I’m looking forward to making love to him as me, not the half-assed sex we’d been having since my mind was so fucked up it had destroyed my sex drive outright. I look forward–”
I stopped talking when Julian rose to his feet. He turned and began walking towards the door.
“You made your own medicine, Julian,” I called after him. “Don’t blame me for the bitter taste of it.”
“You don’t have to fucking t
orment me like that, Elish!” Julian yelled. He looked just like the Julian I remember when he cried, there was something about real tears that brought out the boy in every man. “All I fucking had in the greywastes were our memories, and now you’ve fucking pissed all over them!”
Anger stabbed me. I rose as well, as if trying to physically break its hold on me. “You derive comfort in my suffering if those memories to you were good,” I said in a vapid tone. “You were destroying me for your own selfish purpose and now you act like I’m some cruel person because I found comfort in my sengil, my property. You really are a fucking joke, Julian.”
“It wasn’t all fucking lies, Elish!” Julian cried. What a state this man was in. I’d succeeded and had succeeded well. Even after he called me out on what I was doing, I still managed to complete my goal. I was getting to be quite the master at this. Yet, I’d only just begun. “We had amazing times together and I made you happy. I just… I just couldn’t stand that Finn got to be your sengil, but I did help you, I did make you love your life. We had a great time the two of us… you…” He sniffed, misery surrounding him like the radiation that had killed the world. Even the greywastes hadn’t calcify his jealousy towards Finn. “I might not have been your first… but you were mine. Though you weren’t my last.” He then turned to the door, his jacket sleeve wiping his eyes. “I’m going to patrol a bit…” His lips pursed, his eyes fixed and grief stricken. “Eleven years becoming a hardened greywaster, and just a couple days with you and… you really know how to make me remember what emotions were.”
“And it didn’t even take a surgery,” I said dismissively. I took Julian’s forgotten shish kebabs and pulled off a piece of meat. “If you wish to be dramatic, go right ahead. You’re a fool if you think I’m going to be civil when the topic comes up of what you did to me and Finn.” I glanced at Julian, and soaked in the grief dripping from his anguished face. “I’ll keep the fire going.”
He looked like he wanted to say more, but whatever it was would remain a mystery to me. Julian only stared at me for several more moments, before he opened the door to the outside and disappeared out of it.
And I carried on eating the strips of tender meat, a hidden smirk on my face, and a mind that was only just beginning to reach its full potential.
CHAPTER 50
That morning was spent in an awkward silence. Julian was moping when he emerged from his bedroom, his head hung low and his beard and hair mussed up and unkempt. He was even wearing the same clothing he did yesterday, and I believe he’d slept in it. I, of course, only had one outfit myself, but I was planning on washing it near a river I knew cut through the west side of the abandoned city.
Breakfast was eaten in silence, I made no attempt to engage in conversation and Julian made no effort to start one. We ate a meal of tact crackers with more roasted deer meat on top, and Julian put an old Kit Kat bar in front of me, one of his own in his hand.
After breakfast was finished, I grabbed a book I had been interested in reading and walked out into the sunny, yet brisk, day. There was a faint breeze in the air, nothing compared to the windstorm we were experiencing though, but the dark clouds above me hinted that the wind was only the harbinger to what could possible be an oncoming storm. I didn’t mind rain, as long as I wasn’t out in it, we didn’t get much of it in the Fallocaust but when we did I stayed inside and admired it from the comfort of my warm bedroom.
And it seems my hunch was right, as I looked up at the steel-grey skies, the cloud resembling old cotton, a raindrop fell onto my cheek. My eyes travelled down to the road and I saw the dark spots on the pavement begin to appear as the heavens opened up. Even the water was irradiated in the Fallocaust, not bad enough to kill someone with a Geigerchip, but the radiation was potent enough to poison any plant that hadn’t evolved to endure it.
“Elish…” Julian called behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw him standing in the middle of the road. His assault rifle was on his back and he was wearing a sheriff’s hat, complete with those tassel things that hung off of the rim. “It’s starting to rain… want to go back inside?”
The rain had already picked up, even though it just started. More dark spots were appearing on the pavement, and the daylight had already seemed to darken. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it storms tonight,” I said as Julian jogged up to me. “Is your house…” I stopped talking when Julian took his hat off of his head and put it on mine.
I cocked an eyebrow, and received a smile in return. “I can’t have you getting wet,” he said. There was hesitancy in his voice; he was testing the waters with me, trying to figure out if I was still cold towards him after last night. “Even though my best memory of you is when you were soaked to the bone.”
The night we’d been intimate. The first and only time we’d taken our physical intimacy all the way.
I tried to ignore the recollections touching upon that memory brought, but as we walked home and I began to smell the strangely pleasant aroma of rain falling on dry pavement, I found that the smell added new colours to the images of that night.
I decided not to return back to the house right away; I wouldn’t melt in the rain and I knew once I was inside of the house, I wouldn’t be going out until the storm had passed. I needed some fresh air and a chance to stretch my legs.
“Why did you decide to keep your hair short?” Julian asked. When I was fifteen it had been touching my chin, but Silas had shaved it down to the scalp when he’d performed the surgery on me.
“I didn’t really care to keep it long,” I replied. “I didn’t care in general. Nero, for some reason, loves cutting our hair and he usually requested I let him cut it once it became long.” I glanced over at him. “Why did you decide to grow a beard?”
Julian chuckled and shrugged a shoulder. “I guess it’s just a greywaster thing,” he said. “In the beginning, I just didn’t have any razors, and once I did and I shaved it off, I realized just how boyish I looked. Boyish doesn’t survive long in the greywastes so I’ve been keeping a beard for quite a number of years now.” He scratched it then rubbed it. “I can shave it off if you want. I guess it would be a determent to look like a greywaster in Skyfall.”
In Skyfall?
I hadn’t even thought of what would happen to Julian once I returned to Skyfall. My mind had been analyzing that winding river I would soon be at the mercy of, and not at all with Julian or anything that concerned him.
“You’re coming to Skyfall, are you?” I said flippantly. “That’s rather presumptuous of you.”
The smile, born from Julian’s previous chuckle, grew old and died on his face. “Well, I thought since I’d be welcomed back…”
“Welcomed back? I don’t remember saying anything to that effect.” We reached an intersection, two smashed cars intertwined in the center of the cracked pavement, both cannibalised with rust and almost indiscernible from each other. They were twisted together in such a complete manner; it was as if they were a featured sculpture at some sophisticated art show.
Julian gave me a sideways glance before saying, “It wasn’t you who said it.” We walked around the car crash art show, then between a tipped over shopping cart, one oddly only beginning to show the freckles of rust, and a lamp post that had the middle of it eaten away, as if some great monster had picked it up like corn on the cob and bitten a chunk out of it.
“Silas… remember?”
I stopped in my tracks, and Julian’s question was answered when I gave him a puzzled look.
Silas had said that?
Then I remembered what Julian had said. “Indeed, he told you–”
“–He told me that if I survived the journey back to Skyfall… I would’ve proved that I was strong enough and could return.” Julian licked his lips, obviously not wanting to say what he was about to say. “He said I’d have proven I was worthy to be your boyfriend again.”
Just as I scoffed loudly Julian held up his hands in his defense. “I know that’s not going to hap
pen, Elish. I’m not an idiot,” he said. He wiped the rain from his eyes, the sprinkling was quickly turning into a downpour and the wind was picking up. The darkening world around us hinted to it being late evening, but in reality, it wasn’t even noon yet. “That’s just what he said to me. I can go back to Skyfall and…”
When Julian’s words trailed and nothing more was said, I glanced at him and saw that his eyes were taking in the city we were walking through. I did the same and took in, for a moment, the lonely skyscrapers reaching up to the darkening sky, stretching up tall before being consumed by the steel-grey sky.
Then, as the rain filled the air with its soft lullaby, he spoke to me, his tone a low whisper. “I don’t want to live in the greywastes anymore, Elish.” He wiped the rain from his face, but with how a redness was coming to his eyes, I wondered if it was all water. “I’ve… I’ve paid my dues. I’ve suffered for my sins… now I just want to go back home. I miss… I miss peace.”
“Nothing like living in a grey hell to make you realize how meaningless your obsessive need for my attention was,” I said. We were walking back towards the house now, Julian soaked and dripping wet, and me with only my head and hair dry. “I bet none of that mattered when you were running from ravers and activating slave collars.”
“When I was worse than the monsters I’d seen on TV,” Julian said quietly. It was interesting to me; this grief I could see on his face. My mind was always on guard when it came to these emotions that he freely expressed. So many times he’d been putting on a show, a wannabe actor using me as his audience. He performed his act and was rewarded a thousand-fold with my genuine reactions of horror and protectiveness.
Even though he’d had me well-fooled when we were teenagers, there was an honesty to him that I couldn’t ignore, no matter how much my heart screamed to do just that. I found, as we walked back to his home, flickers of empathy ignite inside that mummified heart that had been left to die in the cold world.