by Quil Carter
“Sit down, Elias.”
“But apparently to you–”
“SIT DOWN, ELIAS!”
My words died in my mouth. I sat down, quickly, and stared at my unfinished food. My throat was tight and my mouth dry, but there were no tears and my eyes weren’t burning. I wasn’t going to cry, I was going to be a teenager in a few months and my crying days were long over. Especially if I was going to go to school.
The leather book moved out of my vision. I looked and saw Silas holding it open with his hand and scanning through it. I didn’t really want him to read the entire thing, but at least I was smart enough to leave Todd out of it.
Though truthfully, he was the main reason I wanted to go to school… ever since Friday’s party I’d been feeling like I was on a cloud. My body kept getting that electric shivery feeling whenever I’d think of Todd and the things he’d said to me. He was just so nice. He’d asked me questions and wanted to get to know me…
The feeling flooded me again, and like a drug addict, I wanted to feel it again. Yes, that’s exactly what it felt like, like he was a drug and I’d taken my first hit.
For a long time, I’d made it so I wouldn’t experience any emotions, at least not unplanned ones. I didn’t like emotions because of how they made me feel. I disliked not being in control, and even more so, I disliked being miserable, distressed, insane from grief, or losing my mind because of the mental abuse Silas had inflicted on me. It was easier to just keep your life as calm and predictable as possible. It was easier on me and my head, and for years I was quite fine with living that way. Silas was too. Hell, Silas seemed happy living this way also. When he was concentrating on keeping me as calm as possible, he himself was more calm and nice. The environment in the house was tranquil and positive; I think it had worked out well for the family.
And I still wanted to live that way… it was just…
Fuck, last night… talking to an older boy… and someone as handsome and cool as Todd…
Todd had made me feel good. I wanted more of that.
Badly.
“Garrett, Ellis, and Nero,” Silas said, his eyes flickering up from the leather book he was reading. “Go downstairs and let me talk to Elish alone.”
Three chairs skidded on the hardwood floors of the dining room, and with a tinkling of dishes and whispered exchanges, my siblings all ran off downstairs, leaving me with Silas.
Silence descended onto the room like someone had draped a black veil down onto it. It wasn’t awkward, but it was so heavy my shoulders sunk and I slunk in my chair.
“Tell me calmly what this is about and what triggered it?” Silas asked. “The others I can see wanting to go to Skyland High. But you?”
I took in a deep breath to keep myself calm. I collected my words, leaving out Todd of course, and plead my case.
“You know how much I hate social gatherings,” I said to him quietly. I didn’t even wait for the nod from Silas, nor did I look up to receive it, I only continued. “You know how much I… hate…”
“… feeling anything?”
My words halted in my mouth, and this time, I did look up at him. I was shocked to hear him say that. I’d never openly discussed that with him. I personally knew, but that had come with years of careful self-analyzing and meditation.
“Don’t look so shocked, Elish,” Silas said. “You don’t think I know you inside and out? You’re the closest descendant I have, love. Closer to me than your brothers and sister.” Silas rose and nodded at me to follow him. I got up, and when he sat on the couch, he patted the cushion beside him. Surprised but compliant, I sat down and was further shocked when Silas put his arm around me.
“You’re scared of feeling things, because when you feel them with the intensity that my boy does, you don’t feel in control, do you? You’re a control freak, little love.” When I scowled Silas laughed and kissed my cheek. “Look at your room, where you spend so much of your time. That’s your palace and you have complete control of everything in there. You have control over the environment around you, and you’ve obsessed over having control of yourself internally. One of the things that you can’t control however… is emotions, especially emotions that other people make you feel.”
I stared at Silas and suddenly felt naked in front of him. Completely stripped down to my bones with every part of me put on display in front of his shining green eyes.
How could he know what was going on inside of me? He’d… nailed it.
Then I felt a flush of embarrassment come to me. Because perhaps I hadn’t even realized that that was the reason until he’d spoken. Silas had pulled back from his microscope and had let me look at myself through his eyes, and suddenly every strange action that I’d spent years questioning, or degrading myself for feeling… suddenly made sense.
I was a control freak. Inside and out. I had to be in control of as much as I could, and if I didn’t get that control, I retreated back to my bedroom oasis until I either got control, or it just went away.
Surely I was insane… for this is just not normal.
But then again, how many people had this much self-awareness? My philosophy had always been that if I knew everything about myself, I could polish and refine myself until I became perfection.
Which is why I was doing this in the first place.
“Why are you embarrassed, love?” Silas asked. He withdrew his arm that was wrapped around my side and adjusted himself on the couch so he was facing me. “You think I don’t know my first born?”
I shook my head; the prickles of heat were rising to my face. But instead of hating this feeling being drawn from me, I decided to embrace it and reject the negativity that I’d usually associate with it. “It’s just surprising hearing you… be so right.” I shrugged a shoulder. “Since you already know me so well… you know that I also like… I used to like to challenge myself when it came to something I didn’t like to do. I liked to… play a game almost.”
Silas’s eyes brightened and a smile followed. “I understand, love. I do the same.” Then his shining eyes became sad, but the smile still remained. “Oh, Eli… you’re challenging yourself, aren’t you? I was hoping you’d eventually find yourself again. I was afraid you’d remain broken forever.”
I frowned at the use of words, but found nothing false in them. I was broken, and had been broken since the incident.
I was a fraud though… because I wasn’t doing this to challenge myself… I was doing it because I wanted to see more of Todd. I wanted to chase that feeling he’d filled me with.
No, that’ll not be my truth. Todd’s influence was the push I needed to make a change. Because it was obvious from how I crafted my life that it would’ve taken something extreme to break me from my comfortable routine. I won’t let a boy be the sole reason I was making this huge change; he was merely that first domino.
Yes. That will be my truth.
I permanently branded that in my brain, and made it canon.
“I knew you’d come back after I’d given you time,” Silas said. “You’ll be my golden boy again soon. I missed you.” He kissed my cheek again, and I scrunched my face.
“I wasn’t always your golden boy?” I asked. I was hurt by that comment.
And that hurt increased when Silas shook his head. “I’m not that type of person, love. I’m not going to lie to save your feelings. Not everyone gets a trophy in the Fallocaust. You have to earn my respect and my pride. I was patient with you while you found your own inner strength and recovered from your mental breakdown, but I’d be lying if I said that I was proud to call you my heir during the last four years.”
My heart fell to my feet so hard my body physically slumped. It was as if Silas’s words had surrounded me in garbage. All at once, with just that one statement, he’d reduced me to dirt at the bottom of a compost heap.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Silas put a hand on my shoulder. “You’re going to make me so proud now, aren’t you, Elish? We’re done wit
h this silly breakdown, and my heir is going to prove to me he’s worthy of being my second.” He patted my shoulder and when I looked up at him, he had another smile for me.
But in that smile, I saw the king I knew all too well. I saw the man who never sugar-coated things, who didn’t care for hurt feelings or making someone feel good about themselves. Silas was honest, brutally honest… however that also meant that when he did give you praise, when he did say he was proud of you… he meant it.
I suddenly felt an overpowering compulsion to make him proud of me again. Swiftly my comfortable life in my bedroom, the tranquility I’d enjoyed for four years, made my stomach churn. I now felt lazy, complacent, weak of mind. There was so much shame that I wanted to change right this second so I could start making him proud of me again. Fuck, I wanted to run down to the school and enroll now, make a thousand friends, get all good grades, just to get that pride from him again.
I felt starved for it, just as much as I starved for that feeling Todd had given me. What was wrong with me? These emotions were springing up out of nowhere and they were barraging me one after the other. I hated it, and I just wanted them to go away and leave me at peace. Why was this happening?
Then Silas chuckled, and as he reached up and touched my chin, he answered my own question. “Look at that!” he said gleefully. “I see a facial hair. My little boy is going to become a little man in no time. No wonder you’re feeling this swell of bravery, you’ve started adolescence.”
Embarrassment roasted my face, but I also jumped to my feet and ran to the nearest mirror. “Where?!” I exclaimed, excited as hell to see my first facial hair. “Show me where you saw it!” Silas laughed behind me, looking content and happy. He stood behind me and pointed to the bottom of my chin. “Nero went from a few sprouts, to a bad teenage moustache, to a full beard in six months as you saw. His voice, thankfully, only cracked for two months.” I remember that because we all made fun of him. “You and Garrett aren’t brute chimeras so I’m not sure what to expect but… there it is.” Silas sighed and suddenly he looked sad. “I can’t believe my little loves won’t be so little soon.”
I brought my face right up to the mirror and tilted my chin up, and when I saw the long blond hair sticking out of my chin, darker than the hair on my head, I grinned wide and pulled on it. “I think I see another one behind it!” I said. I jumped up and down until I remembered myself and halted the juvenile display. I was a man now, I needed to prove that I was, and that I was ready for my newest challenge. My newest game to be won. “So…” I turned from the mirror to Silas. “Will you allow me to go to Skyland High, Master Silas?”
Silas crossed his arms and his mouth pursed before moving to the side. “A prince in public school? I’m not sure about that… if you went and didn’t like it, I’d demand for you to finish the semester. I won’t allow you to quit.”
“I’d never quit!” I said aghast. At that moment, as I drowned in this flood of emotion, the thought of quitting appalled me. “Dekker’s won’t quit, neither do princes.”
Silas appeared deep in thought, deep enough that I was now worried he wouldn’t let me. There had been so much energy bouncing around us, the mood between me and Silas charged and electrified, I hadn’t even considered him not allowing me to go.
“I’m wary about sending you off alone…” And like Silas’s words were harpies sent to retrieve this heart flying around with happiness, I was brought crashing back down to earth.
“Please… I don’t want my brothers or Ellis there…” I said anxiously. On top of the thousands of things that may go wrong, they’d find out about Todd and tell Silas. If he found out that all of this started because of a boy, he’d never let me do anything. And he’d never trust my reasons again either. “I just want this to be me. My own personal challenge.” Then my eyes brightened, and as soon as Silas saw that shine, his own became suspicious of the sudden change. “This would be like… me conquering my first world. I’ll conquer high school.”
And just like that, my thirst to go to school became a compulsion. A drive that was so strong that I knew if he didn’t allow me that I would be devastated, absolutely devastated.
Everything hung on what King Silas was going to say to me next, my entire future. This man in front of me, who I’d felt just about every feeling there was to feel about him, every emotion from love to hate, fear to devotion, controlled my future in the palm of his hand.
Of course that was my life in general. Silas would always control me, because he’d created me and my siblings. When I was younger, I was okay with that, but the older I got, and the more hairline fractures I saw in his visage, the more I became worried about the power this immortal king had over me. Not just for my own safety, but for times like this when I wanted something so very badly.
My chest filled with a breath of excitement when I saw a smile cross Silas’s face. He then outstretched his hand and gently slid it underneath my jaw to cradle my cheek.
“I’ve missed you, Elish,” Silas said. He rubbed my cheek with his thumb, but all I had in return for this caring gesture and his strangely emotional words, was a puzzled look. “It’s nice to see you smile, and I do look forward to seeing you make up for these wasted four years.” Then he leaned down and kissed my cheek. The contact from this didn’t leave me retracting, on the contrary it made my heart jump. “But I’ll not just be letting you loose in a public school, even if, by post Fallocaust standards, it’s small, protected, and safe.” As he said this, King Silas pulled away and peered down at me his eyes quickly growing serious. “Your safety is my utmost concern and I’ll be stationing bodyguards…” I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, suppressing the groan. But Silas didn’t care. “I’ll be stationing bodyguards at each exit. You’ll not whine about it, nor will I hear a voice of complaint. I’m proud of you for finally stepping out of your cave and making a commitment to stop being a hermit, but you’re going to do this my way, Elish Sebastian.”
“Yes, Master,” I said with an embellished sigh. There was no hiding the smile on my face. I wanted to show how mature and in control I was, but I just couldn’t contain it.
Silas was letting me go to public school.
The school Todd attended! I was going to see Todd there. I was going to befriend him too, and who knows, he might just be my first boyfriend.
Silas seemed to be enjoying my happiness. His eyes never left my face and neither did the true smile that he held. I wanted to hug Silas then, throw my arms around him from the sheer happiness and excitement. It had been a long time since I’d felt this type of happiness, a real happiness, not mild contentment from passing a test, or a warm contentment like when Hugh first started showing me affection, but one made out of fireworks and adrenaline. I felt spoiled, absolutely spoiled right now, and for the first time, I was excited for my future. The world was my oyster, and I knew that the best was yet to come.
And I could do it. I could do it! I had my challenge in front of me, one that I knew I could conquer, master, and make my slave. In a single evening I’d decided to take hold of my life, and now I was determined to grasp it by the balls.
“There’s something else.”
Brakes were put on my happiness. Silas had said this in a tone that made me wary, it was too low, his words spoken too slowly.
I looked up at him, caution threatening to replace the happiness.
“This is not up for debate and I’ll tolerate no whining,” Silas said sternly.
I swallowed hard and nodded at him.
“You won’t be attending until you’re thirteen. You can begin attendance after Skyday.”
My jaw dropped open about the same time as my eyes opened wide. Skyday? That was the end of March! That… that was months away!
It took everything – Oh, it took every ounce of restraint and control I had over my emotions not to dissolve over this information, not to plead, protest, get down on my hands and knees and beg. This was entirely not fair. He’d brought me up into th
e sky only to drop me down onto my head.
I bet he’d done this on purpose!
But if he did it on purpose… that means this could very well be a test.
Quickly, I snatched the resolve that had scattered all around me from Silas’s admission. I wiped my face of expression and squared my shoulders.
And though inside I was screaming and yelling my protests, negotiating and pleading for it to be sooner, on the outside I gave Silas a smile and nodded my head. “Thank you, Master Silas. The day after Skyday it is then.”
There was a flicker of something in Silas’s eye. Was it pride? Surprise? Or could I be so bold as to think that perhaps it was annoyance over how well I’d handled the first curve ball he’d thrown at me in years. Either way, that flicker was there, but like most raw, uncontrolled emotions that came from Silas, it disappeared as quickly as it came.
It didn’t matter in the end; I’d passed this test. And not only that, I’d come out the other end of this conversation with exactly what I wanted. Who knows, if I saw Todd when I was thirteen, perhaps I would be old enough then for him. He had said to me… if only I was older…
Then something occurred to me, something that made a brightness come to me. Like one studies for a test, I could study for my future at Skyland High. Know your enemy, right? If I was going to conquer high school, I wanted to know everything about it.
Suddenly waiting until after Skyday didn’t seem that bad. I was going to utilize this time and make it work for me.
Once I was old enough to attend, I’d strut in there like the prince I was, and I was going to conquer school like I was Alexander the Great.
Sit tight, Todd. You’re going to see a new and improved Elish Dekker once I stepped foot inside of Skyland High.
CHAPTER 13