Sever

by Jesse Grey

  “Alex,” Stepping closer to his slightly shorter boyfriend, Abram tilted his head, angling his blue spheres evenly. “We’re not breaking into Arclan...again.”

  “Aren’t you tired of waiting, Abe?” He looked from Abram to the rest of his friends. “Aren’t we all tired? This is our chance to get one of the only answers we have access to. Paige has amnesia and we think we might have missed our chance with the enigma of Emmy Walker, but we still have a chance with Frankie Ellery.”

  “You’re crazy.” Bridge yelled. “How are we supposed to accom-plish that? I’m sure the solitary block has way more security than a regular patient’s hallway.”

  “We still have an Arclan expert.” Alex used his head to gesture in his boyfriend’s proximity. “We can do it tomorrow.”

  “Um, hello? Someone becomes a birthday boy tomorrow.”

  “Bridge, Frankie could have something that we could take to Dagger while he waits for Paige’s release from the hospital.”

  “And what about simply getting into Arclan Asylum?” Mercer’s words mimicked Bridge’s disposition, the group evenly divided.

  “They never demolished the passage connecting Arclan and Shadows Manor, just blocked it from the asylum’s end,” Alex’s eyes were sparkling with perfectly finessed cognition. “They lifted surveillance at both ages ago. We can sneak off during the party and make this happen.”

  “I can get us in.” Abram nodded. “I think I can get us in through Shadows Manor.”

  “Okay, now you’re both crazy.” Bridge chuckled. “Are we sup-posed to just knock on the door and say ‘What’s up, Hendrick? Celia asleep? Because we really need to hit up your son’s bedroom and prance through the passage to your asylum’. He’ll get Dagger to throw us in a room in Arclan in milliseconds.”

  “We can do this, you guys.” Abram’s adamancy was a rapturous neon sign capsizing over his face. “One last raid at Arclan before we turn everything over to Dagger and the entire Armor Falls Police Department.”

  “You guys agreed,” Bridge’s perfectly plucked eyebrows formed a straight line of apprehension. “Full skeleton makeup for the party. How is it going to look when four specters with Día de los Muertos sugar skulls for faces start roaming an asylum’s halls?”

  “They’ll think we’re ghosts, it’ll be fine. And if not, who’s going to believe anyone about seeing something like that on Halloween, especially at a place where things aren’t exactly as they seem?” Alex swore, making sure to use his eyes to give Bridge and Mercer some unshakable reassurance.

  A bell brought them down from their high hopes of further breaking and entering charges, manifesting the completion of first period, students pouring out of their classrooms and filling other areas of travel.

  “We’ll meet at my party.” Bridge sighed. “Be at the farmhouse at seven. Don’t be late.”

  He went to strut away, in a locale other than with them to their shared second period class.

  “B, we have calc, remember?”

  An easy sneer touched down on Bridge’s face when he looked at Mercer and the remaining pair making up his best friends.

  “I know. Cover for me?”

  He spun back, having bigger affairs to attend to than turning in his butchered, contrived calculus homework. And he had to confront said affairs now before it jeopardized his extremely vital birthday shenanigans.

  Bridge found his way into Armor Falls Memorial Hospital, walk-ing hurriedly to a nurse’s station. Once blessed with the precise knowledge, he got off the elevator on the third floor, seeing the bee-line straight for the room of Paige Honeycombe. Only he hadn’t ex-actly anticipated being thwarted by the likes of his ex-boyfriend.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Ben’s choice of tone was sizzling and sinful, a quick slap that burned an invisible handprint on Bridge’s face. He ushered the al-most legal adult down the hall, cutting a corner away from the room where Paige was still recovering.

  “Jesus, Ben—”

  “No, why are you here?”

  Bridge shook his head. “Dagger said she didn’t remember, I want-ed to see if it was true for myself. I didn’t even think you would be here.”

  “You have to go.” he determined.

  “Why are you here, Ben? You and Paige broke up in a pretty big way if I recall.”

  “She doesn’t remember, Bridge. Paige needs someone right now!”

  “You told me you were in love with me!”

  Ben closed his eyes, holding back the true tendencies that were squirming underneath his tanned skin. Hands firmly locked to his hips, the older of the two rocked his head, saying, “Bridge, this is complicated, okay? The cops, they’re saying…” His eyes were sudden-ly slick with the shaky tears thriving on top of the warm and wel-coming brown pools where his eyes lived. “They think that Paige might have done this, crashed her car, on purpose.”

  Sympathy washed any and all other emotions Bridge felt away like the tide. The thought of Paige purposefully attempting to terminate her life was so heinous, even despite what she had put Bridge and his friends through. He wanted justice, sure, but he certainly didn’t want Paige to kill herself.

  “Shit.”

  “All she remembers is me,” Ben went on. “So that’s what I’m giv-ing her because I at least owe her that much, after what I did.” He matched his eyes on Bridge’s frequency. “After what we did. I know she’s the main suspect as your stalker, but—”

  “No, I get it.” Bridge said, exasperated breaths beating out of him like a snare drum being played with lazy hands. “I just...needed to know for myself, I guess.” He looked off, in the direction of Paige’s room, a conflicting contrast of standing on how he felt about his in-cessant stalker burrowing in his skull. “I should go, so I can make it in time for the lunch bell.”

  “Bridge,” He felt a hand as Ben’s fingers intertwined with his own. “I still am, in love with you. And you have every right to hate me for wanting to help Paige, but I have to. I just do.”

  “I know.” Bridge smirked, sloppy and unrefined as his eyebrows rose in a maneuver to accompany his departure. “I gotta go. Good luck.”

  He left Ben and then hospital, not knowing how he was sup-posed to feel about the headache inducing conundrum concerning the current health status of Paige Honeycombe.

  Pacing the floor wasn’t working, though it never really did for any-one who decided to take up pacing as a means to try and alleviate their mental woes. And it definitely wasn’t aiding the anguish of Adelaide Llewellyn. Since it was Halloween, she was dressed as Piper Halliwell, her favorite fictional character. Her husband was donning a Rick Grimes inspired outfit, both parents representing their enter-tainment niches.

  “Addie, please sit down.”

  “How can I sit?” Adelaide stressed, her syllables slothily spilling out of her. “We have to tell them, Ethan. It’s eating me alive.”

  “Honey, we talked about this.”

  Adelaide eliminated her previous pacing, settling in front of her loving husband with a wisp of another battle on her lips. “Ethan, please. Isn’t this killing you like it’s killing me?”

  “This isn’t just some simple conversation with our kids. This is something that could change our lives, our kids’ lives.” He huffed in heavy, concrete breaths. “Can’t we just pass out candy to the neigh-borhood kids like we’d planned? Faith and Alex are still upstairs, so you need to keep your voice down.”

  “I’m sorry. Your reasons are conclusive and justifiable, but this is killing me from the inside out. We have to tell our children the truth.”

  “Which is what?”

  Both of them suddenly facing the stairs, Alex and Faith were staring at them fixedly in spite of their skeleton makeup for Bridge’s birthday party. Alex had on a tuxedo made to look like it was decay-ing, with tattered seams and fraying ends. Faith’s dress was giving the effect that it had been on fire at one point. And their faces were scary perfect, exact immaculate portrayals of the
extraordinary Día de los Muertos traditions.

  “Dad?” Faith’s voice wobbled with consummate uneasiness.

  Ethan received a glimpse from his wife, a grand prayer for the green light to unravel the biggest Llewellyn family secret. Ultimately, Ethan nodded and said, “Come sit down.”

  “Is it really that serious?” Alex sighed. “We’re going to be late for Bridge’s party.”

  Catching the swap betwixt their parents, Faith tensed up like eve-ry one of her nerve endings had just been simultaneously struck like the chord of a violin. “Alex, it’s serious.”

  “Please sit.” Ethan said again.

  The twins sat across from their father in the living room, Ade-laide warily taking her descent next to her husband.

  “There’s something you need to know, something you deserve to know.” Adelaide stated, slithering a hand around her husband’s for tactile support.

  “Okay.” Alex said.

  Faith added, “Go on.”

  “Your father,” Adelaide faltered, her grievances overruling her precogitated speech.

  “I’ve always known.” Ethan stated, verbally stepping in. “So we don’t want you to think I’ve been in the dark about this, because I haven’t.” He grinned extensively. “I’ve always wanted this.”

  “This hasn’t been easy, is what we want you to comprehend.” Mama Llewellyn intervened, love tapping Ethan’s hand tenderly. “But it’s been too long, too much has happened to keep this a secret any longer.”

  “Mom, what is it?”

  Ethan answered his son’s question with a fully improvised elocu-tion. Their kids abided on sighs of preambles and pauses comprised of long forgotten tales of reticence. Adelaide wiped the cold sweat shimmer from her face with her elongated forearm, the seconds that passed feeling like centuries for all entangled.

  “You know that your mother and I met in college. And that we got married a few months after we graduated.”

  “Is that not true or something?”

  “No, Faith.” Adelaide smiled casually. “All of that is true, but your father and I made our connection while I was still dating another guy.”

  “Oh my God.” Faith howled, sheltering her mouth in object pro-test.

  “What?” Alex turned to his sister, wondering why he wasn’t grasping what she so noticeably had mentally seized.

  “Alex, your mother and I—”

  “I was pregnant, when I met your father.”

  “You what? But—”

  “And it’s him!? Why, Mom?” Faith shrilled her voice. “Why would you both keep this from us?”

  “What’s going on?” Alex pleaded.

  “Alex, open your eyes.” Faith stood up, her posture an indication of her vehemence as she slanted in her moderate heels. “We already know someone Mom dated before Dad, and he’s in town!”

  Foggy pictures of authenticity parted for Alex, everything he had been missing abruptly crisp and abundant with rigor. He looked into the eyes of his parents and it was in the reflection of their corneas that the cloudy revelation started to seep to the surface of Alex’s mind.

  “But wait, that would mean that…” During his beat of reassur-ance, both of his parents nodded in synchronization. “...that our bio-logical father is Alston Dagger.”

  At the earth shattering epiphany, Faith fled from the house, fall-ing into her malice laced trample to the car she shared with her brother.

  “No.”

  “Alex—”

  “No!”

  He stood up, much like his sister before him, blinded by the mol-ten malevolence swimming around the blood that glided throughout his irate anatomy. Ethan and Adelaide soared from their seats as well, tears stinging their souls to match their eyes.

  “Why would you keep this up?” He stared at his father. No. At ‘Ethan Llewellyn’. Alston Dagger was his father. This was way too much to deal with, especially with what he and his friends had going on tonight. “Why would you agree to it?”

  “Because I love you and your sister more than anything, and I’ve been so happy for so many years, Alex.” Ethan concluded. “You kids and your mother mean everything to me. I wanted this. I still do.”

  “So, he knew this whole time? Dagger knew about us and didn’t think to mention it during the multitude of hours we’ve been spending together?”

  Silence met him, lapping at his face with as much control as an adolescent Labrador. Faith honked the car’s horn from its parking space just outside, adding to the anxiety of the emotionally fragile parents.

  “Dagger doesn’t know?” His nostrils flared, his blood slowing and thudding to the beat of negligence. Alex screeched his following words, his vocabulary overruling any residual parental respect. “How could you do this to us? Dagger doesn’t even know we’re his!?”

  “He didn’t want you!” Adelaide leapt forward in anger, develop-ing an immediate infuriation over being badgered by her teenage son in the realm of right and wrong. “Alston told me way before I got pregnant that he never wanted the ‘unruly burden of siring eventual mistakes’.”

  “But you’ll never know, Mom! Because you were too selfish to tell him he had two kids!”

  “Alex—”

  He ignored his father’s outburst, looking forlorn at the front door. “I’m going to be late.”

  “Alex!”

  His mother’s outcry fell on unresponsive ears, Alex fuming as he left the now unfamiliar Llewellyn household. He felt like a phantom in his own skin, something he’d only felt once before when he was living as Lissa. It scared him to think of himself as someone he didn’t recognize anymore. And he couldn’t help but again see a stranger when he glimpsed through the window of Alex Llewellyn’s life.

  “Heading home, sir?”

  Glancing up from his desk, pouring things into his bag, Dagger smirked at the ever diligent Officer North. “Yeah, here in a bit. Eve-rything good at the Mathison farmhouse?”

  He had ordered extra, unmarked police presence at the vast loca-tion for Bridge’s Halloween birthday bash. It never hurt to be a dash overly cautious, notably when it came to the unpredictable deviance of Sumner Shadows. Bridge’s birthday conveyed the exact affair that would inspire another jolt encounter with the elusive corsair.

  “Yes, sir.” North responded. “Looks like most of Westbrooke emerged for the occasion.”

  “They would,” he commented with a scoff curled under his breath, latching his bag to secure his array of belongings. “Sumner’s friends are infamous.”

  “Halloween patrol is a go as well.”

  “Good, good.”

  North smiled at the respected detective ardently before drum-ming his fingertips along his crossed arm. Dagger swung his bag over his shoulder as the officer changed the axis of his head and said, “Plans with Athena tonight?”

  It was known at the precinct that Alston and Athena were quick-ly becoming a severely serious item. Normally, Dagger didn’t discuss his personal life at the station, but North was harmless and he’d actu-ally been one of the few people around Armor Falls Police Station that Dagger trusted to do even more than what was expected of him, soaring performance his vital key in winning him over. An answer pulsed on his lips but his cell phone’s blaring of Michael Jackson’s ‘Smooth Criminal’ halted any resolution. Swiftly scanning his screen, Dagger gestured at it with a booming beam.

  “That’s her now.”

  North let his eyebrows do a suggestive wave. “Have a good night, detective.”

  “You too, Aaron. Say hi to Cindra and the kids.”

  Dagger was left alone in his office then, free to answer the phone to his heart’s desire.

  “I was just talking about you.” He purred into the cellular device.

  “Alston.”

  Her voice shook with palatable fear, oozing with penetrating pet-rification. It stunned him to where a few excess moments transpired, putting his reply on a flaky hold. They hadn't been dating a handful of years, but he could already sense that somet
hing wasn’t right.

  “Athena, what’s wrong?”

  “You have to get here.” Her seemingly feeble tone trembled on. “Now.”

  “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

  He was an immobile hyena, crazed to know what information she had, but too scared to move toward the truth’s surface

  “I figured it out.” The dread temporarily vanished from her, a gasp slipping between her strained breaths. “I know what Blanche Baxxen knew, why she was killed. I found out why Sumner started all of this.”

  Dagger felt like his response time had been tuned to half speed. Like a sloth lathered in molasses had invaded his senses, a tortoise tittering dangerously on his brain. He finally felt the gravity of his girlfriend’s words, a massive ship of understanding sinking into the forming pit in his stomach.

  “So tell me.”

  “I can’t, not over the phone.” Like the snapping of fingers, Athe-na’s tone was restored to one of fright. “I think someone’s here, Al-ston. Someone knows that I know and they’re watching me.”

  “I’m coming to you, right now.” Dagger insisted, already storm-ing out of the station and running to his car as their call progressed. “Lock your doors and stay upstairs until I get there, okay?”

  “Alston?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hurry.”

  She hung up, cutting off their supplementary communication. Dagger got on his walkie as he drove out of the station’s parking lot, telling an officer to follow him out to the Wheaton residence in case Sumner Shadows was trying to terrorize his girlfriend with the likes of murder.

  Straton and Hugo were doubtlessly late for Bridge’s party. But that was mainly because Hugo was busy with a support group. Ever since he had revealed to Straton, and the rest of their friends, that he had seen Sumner over the summer, he’d vowed to stop drinking. After all, it was the dark suitor of alcohol that had kept the vital infor-mation from Hugo’s most primal of memories. So, here they were, running late because Hugo was doing the right thing for himself.

  The support group was a smaller scale of what Straton assumed Alcoholics Anonymous would consist of, and was hosted at the youth center just across from Armor Falls Memorial Hospital. Hugo had begged and begged Straton to come as a show of support, and being the good best friend that he was, he had finally agreed. The meeting was just wrapping up when Hugo disbanded from group of well-wishers and approached Straton. He had been partaking in the free food the entire time Hugo had been pouring out his heart and soul to the surrounding strangers, and their sweet tea was sweet se-renity.