by Jamie Knight
I thought she was being incredibly risky and irresponsible. But in a way, it was nice to have something to distract myself. I did my best to do a Jane Eyre and not judge or pity her. Just listen to her and her concerns and give her the best advice I could.
It was weird. She was at least two years older than me, and I was trying to advise her as I saw it. Despite the fact that I hadn’t really lived yet. And with the way this pandemic was going, and having to hide in my own dorm room, not just from the outside world but also from my own roommate, I had a feeling I wouldn’t get to experience real life any time soon.
Chapter Eight - Augustus
The best laid plans soon turned to shit. That wasn’t quite how the saying was supposed to go but it certainly seemed to be the trend in my case. Which was part of why I stopped making plans when I was still in elementary school.
There was really no point in it. Not in the least because it bought into the ideas of success and how it could be achieved. We hardly did anything the ‘expected’ way but still got stuff done. That’s why we still had so many enemies. As another old, rusty saw goes, if you’re making enemies, it means that you’re doing something right.
The whole encounter of seeing Rachel half naked, with only her little towel, lasted less than a minute, but it stayed etched in my head. She looked so beautiful. Her healthy skin glistened as the sunlight from the curtainless window glowed in her bright red hair, making it look as though it were aflame, even while it was wet. I tried to imagine what she looked like under her towel.
I saw sex as a good and wonderful thing. Essential for maintaining health and continuing the species, as well as one of the things that made earthly existence worth it.
The human body was a thing of both function and beauty. Like a finely crafted earthenware bowl hand painted before it went into the kiln. I wanted Rachel so much I could taste it.
That was something I had never felt, which was how I knew it was real and not just some passing lust. It was up to her to decide if she was open to it or not. In the meantime, all I could do was wait. But it sure didn’t seem like she was interested or would be any time soon.
There was a long pause after the door slammed. The silence was pregnant with potential. I half expected to see her running past the window, making a break for it. It came as quite a relief when she didn’t.
There was some thumping from her bedroom I didn’t like the sound of, but I did my best to ignore it and focus on my book. It wasn't the first time I’d read it, but it was the first time I’d almost gotten all the way through, and I figured that being forced into quarantine was the perfect excuse to finally finish it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Rachel long enough to dive back into the book, though.
There was obviously something very wrong.
Who bursts into tears at the sight of someone who never hurt them?
Granted, I was in her apartment at the time and that might have been shocking, but I was also doing my very best to explain my presence, in the most calm and logical terms. I even had visual aids, trying to hold up my keys and my student badge from my wallet to explain the circumstances.
And I knew she must have gotten the campus-wide alert on her phone stating what was going on. So, it was rather crazy of her to run away like that.
To be fair, I should have known there was something different about her, possibly in the way that there was something different about me, when I saw the burns on her body as she was only wearing her towel. Especially the cross.
Not that I was one to judge, with my tattoos, and the not insubstantially sized pentacle scarred into my back. The main difference, so far as I could tell, was that my markings were all completely inspired by things that formed my worldview and I didn’t regret a single one of them. In my admittedly limited experience, regret was generally reserved for those who cared what other people thought, and I never did.
I didn’t know what it was, but I got the feeling that Rachel’s marks had been forced on her. Something to do with the location and the slight waviness of the lines. Like she had been struggling at the time.
Shit, she was probably only eighteen years old and just barely legal enough to get such alterations now, and the ones she had looked older than that. The healing was far too deep. Meaning she had been even younger when they were done, probably in no position to legally consent even if she wanted to, which somehow, I doubted.
I just couldn’t let it go. Particularly if there was potential child abuse going on. My own religion got a lot of shit about such crap, even though there had yet to be a single verified case of it happening anywhere, ever. Which was a hell of a lot more than could be said other religions.
Slapping on my sleuth cap, in the metaphorical sense, of course, I got out my laptop and held my breath in preparation to do some deep diving.
There tended to be an assumption that because I didn’t grow up in the middle class, my childhood must have somehow been deprived. We didn’t have everything. That was for damn sure. It was also to be expected with five kids in the house and my dad working construction.
It got a bit better when my brother, and then I, became old enough to work as well. We were able to put more money in the family pot at that point. It was part of why I almost thought of Amelia more as my daughter than my sister—I had been helping to take care of her financially for a long time.
While we didn’t have everything, we still had enough and certainly always had what we needed. My parents always believed that should include computers like the laptop I was using now. They were almost always hand-me-downs, straddling the line of what the companies swore up and down was bordering on ‘obsolescence,’ but we had them.
I didn’t have skills in a whole lot of areas, which I would be the first to tell you. The one thing I always seemed to be wonderful at, though, was research. Which was how I made the grades to let me get into a top university. Money was a different matter, but we managed to work it out, thanks to a generous scholarship.
Rachel wasn’t an exceedingly rare name, so it was going to take some doing to track down this particular Rachel. For all its drawbacks, and there were many, one thing Facebook had going for it was a streamlined search process.
I looked for Rachels in our state, assuming we were children of the same generation, who had grown up with the fact that having a Facebook account seemed as essential as having a warm sweater in the fall months. There were still way too many Rachels that came up. To narrow things down a bit, I added the university as a factor, getting the number of results down to an even forty, which was much more manageable.
Most of the profiles didn’t have pics. I’d noticed that some girls had become somewhat camera shy, their Friend counts similarly vacant, despite the ‘pictures or it didn’t happen’ ethos stalking our beleaguered generation like a specter.
Within minutes, I was clicking to open the public profile of the mysterious cutie sequestered in the room beside me, who was locked away as though she were in protective custody. At least whomever had hurt her couldn’t get to her anymore.
There wasn’t anything too unusual. Or there at all really, much of the page having been left blank, at least in terms of text. There were photos, though. Albums of them. Most of them included the same two people, who I took to be her parents.
Then I had a shock of sick recognition. Those eyes, smiling but vacant. That smile, stilted and humorless except in the most macabre way.
Yes, I knew the bastard. The one Rachel probably still called ‘daddy’ because he had her in such a fucking age regression. Mentally if not physically.
I had seen it so many times, my family having made it a habit of taking in kids rejected from ‘civil society.’ Sometimes just for dinner, others for the night until their pious parents had a chance to sober up.
I didn’t laugh when Amelia once asked me how many brothers and sisters we had. Honestly, I had lost track myself for a while.
I could feel the rage rising inside me. The fe
eling I had been taught to repress. Certain people had the philosophy that others were going to hate us anyway. No need to give them more ammunition or reason to think that they were right.
If we did, what would be the point? Our opposition became gang rivalry and ‘fuck that stupid bullshit.’
It wasn’t what they did to me that I minded. O’Flanagan and his flock of Jesus stalkers, that is. That, I could take it. It was when they went after the younger kids, calling them ‘vile spawns of Satan’ that really got my hackles up.
They were kids and names like that could really mess them up mentally. Though not nearly as much as the rocks the bullies would routinely huck at us, Old Testament style.
The computer lost power so hard the desk rattled. Taking a moment for several long, deep breaths, I tried to calm down.
The chair rolled back so hard it bounced off the opposing wall. Dropping to my knees before the shire of vinyl I made my selection, and put on some of the most brutal Black Metal known to humanity.
I’d long considered starting a band called All Gods Are Bastards, or AGAB. Our first and likely last, record would be called Songs for Exorcisms.
“The power of Satan compels you!” I bellowed, surprising even myself.
The first song came to an end, along with my gusto.
Then I collapsed onto the carpet, exhausted and shocked by what I had found out my actual connection to Rachel was.
No wonder she had looked so pale and scared.
Chapter Nine - Rachel
As the rooster crows. It wasn’t actually a saying, but it should have been. Though indeed that wouldn’t express how early I woke up the next morning after I had decided to lock myself away from Augustus in our shared dorm. Even nature's alarm clock was still fast asleep in its coop when my eyes eased open to the dim blue dawn.
I had to get up this early, to be able to make my way around the kitchen and bathroom without running into Augustus.
I listened for a moment, but there were no sounds forthcoming. Not even the low rumble of fresh morning traffic. I checked the clock. Five in the morning. Late enough to be morning but early enough that most of the world would still be deep in slumber. Perfect.
Tossing my blankets aside, I touched down as light as you please. My bare feet made not a sound. I all but tip-toed through the early morning light to the ghostly looking door, taking customary stops to look under the bed and check in the closet, just in case.
The chair was still in place under the doorknob, so it didn’t seem likely that anything would be amiss. Though my dad had well and true put the fear of God into me.
It was odd, seeing the apartment that early in the morning. It looked the same as it did in the daylight, only with a slightly surreal edge. Empty and slightly other-worldly. Like the furniture hadn’t quite woken up yet.
Keeping things on the downlow, I whipped up a hearty but low-cal breakfast, using only the stove, since the toaster or the blender were a bit too noisy to risk trying.
I couldn’t believe I was roomed with him. Let alone that we were in lockdown. Forced to share a space in a form of imposed house arrest unseen since the Russian Revolution.
I was suddenly reminded of the book I’d read about the boy who got stuck in a lifeboat with an adult tiger. Dad threw it in the fire, saying it promoted heathenistic beliefs because it was set in India, but I had managed to finish it first.
I wasn’t afraid that Augustus might eat me or even that he would hurt me. At least not in the corporeal sense. It was my soul for which I was most concerned. From what I could remember, though, his religion never really fought back. At least not against us.
Dad and his friends would pelt them with all manner of horrible things, from tomatoes to rocks, and yet they stood firm. Loathe as I was to admit it, I could really admire their conviction as well as their passive resistance. It was as if they were practicing the teachings of Jesus much more than we were. Although they claimed to worship Satan.
Augustus really didn’t seem like a bad person. No matter what his beliefs might be. Other than his outburst the night before, I’d never actually experienced him acting out aggressively. Even if his shout of ‘the power of Satan compels you’ did keep me from sleeping.
I liked him a lot when we had first met, and I didn’t know who he was. I hoped we might be able to get back to that. Particularly if he didn’t find out who I was. Though there was a lot from the past and a thick cloud of doubts that made me skeptical that this could happen.
The Bible said to love your enemy, but it was easier said than done. Especially when it was the world’s eternal fate at stake.
The sound of a click shook me back to reality, as if a door was being opened.
Oh, no!
He was coming out of his room?
How was that possible?
I could still hear him when I went to sleep the night before.
Did he really just wake up after no more than three hours sleep?
Oh, my Lord, he was a machine!
Before I had time to fully contemplate the full implications of this new information, I was already running. Flying as fast as I could back into my room. The door clicked firmly.
Fumbling in the mostly dark, I grabbed the chair and put it back in the position, not really knowing why. It was like the people who had to open and close the door three times before leaving a room.
There was no real reason to it, but I felt compelled, just the same. I had to protect myself. Though from what, I honestly had no idea.
Chapter Ten - Augustus
A storm cloud hung. Not only the one over the campus but another, smaller one, directly over my head. It blasted thunderbolts at my barely waking head, like in an old cartoon.
The night hadn’t been good. The tricky muses decided to take up arms and I, subsequently, took up my pen, metaphorically, anyway, composing an album’s worth of lyrics which, at that moment, looked like poetry. I still had yet to buy or learn to play a guitar, but that was just a technicality.
My hilariously out-of-date laptop was only one element in the total rebellion taking place. When the spirit called, I knew enough to answer. The only real question being exactly whose spirit it was.
As so often happened in such instances, the triumph of creation was soon replaced by the terror of fear. I’d been having nightmares for a while. An embarrassing fact that I’d tried to keep secret because only kids were supposed to have nightmares. Or so I thought at the time.
It was Amelia who’d figure it out, hearing me thrash as she snuck to the kitchen for a midnight snack. Sweetheart that she was, she did her best to help. Even though she was only twelve at the time.
Talking actually helped. Not only did it make me feel less alone, but it also helped give me a better idea of what was causing the trouble in my skull.
Life hadn’t been easy then and there were a lot of things that happened despite my parents’ best efforts. There is only so much shit you could see before it started having an effect when you’re young.
I started working on my head, trying to deal with everything. I told Jax, a priestess in my church, what I was thinking and feeling, and she did her best to help and things got better. Right up until it happened.
Since then the only thing I saw when I closed my eyes was her falling. The warm, vivid blood splashing on me, Jax trying to speak despite the damage to her lungs.
It was the angriest shower in history. Everything I’d been holding came out in a first full wave. Aggression rechanneled into what could only be considered self-harm. Rinsing the blood from the tiles, I bandaged my knuckles and dried off.
The apartment stood empty and quiet. Rachel must have still been asleep, leaving me functionally alone in the apartment. It was one of the few advantages to getting up as early as I did, despite the lack of sleep the night before. I worked it out once and on a good night I got maybe five hours of sleep. Three hours was more of my norm.
I generally liked being around people, but it was also nice
to be alone. Not only in the crowd, but seemingly in the world. The apocalyptic, last person in the world feeling held a certain appeal for me.
Most of what I knew would be gone, yes. There were lots of people I would miss, but there was also great potential, at least at the beginning.
I couldn’t deny I enjoyed being alone thanks to the quarantine. With us being locked down and Rachel avoiding me like I was already infected, I was getting the chance to live the dream. Albeit in a limited and controlled environment. Like people who enjoy pain during sex but only do it with a trusted partner in the context of a scene. Where they know everything is safe and there are painkillers, ointments and cuddly blankets close by.
The pan was still on the stove when I got there. Subtle evidence of cooking was present in the lovely kitchen. Either Rachel had the same penchant for nighttime snacking as Amelia did, or she was doing her best to avoid me, waking up before most sane people would and dashing away like a fawn at the first sign of potential trouble. Either way, it was kind of cute.
Trying to keep things quiet, in case the princess had returned to slumber land, I pulled together my closest approximation of a full English breakfast. I’d had people ask how I stayed so lean. Few of them fully comprehended the full effects of stress.
Filling up on fried and toasted goodness, I washed my dishes as well as the pan and set my mind to more immediate matters. I returned to my quarters, to begin work on the labors of the day.
The administration had made good on their promise to put most of the classes online. The more practical ones like Chemistry and Landscaping had to be done with limited class-time. Everyone had to be at least six feet apart and wearing a mask or face-shield the second they were out of their dorms. Cameras had been installed at the end of each corridor to enforce the issue.