by L.C. Barlow
* * *
I am told that my reward is one free kill any time I return to the club. Any person I choose at any time.
I stand at the balcony, watching the pulsing crowds, feeling disgust crawl through my bones and muscles. The music is going again, but it does not move me. They have hung Julian's body from a post within the hallowed space, and as I see it dangle, I feel sorry for him. This is not the reverence due to death. This is pandemonium.
I realize now that were it not for the things I fear, these Cyrus years, their boss may not have kept me. It is these things he wants to know. It is for these things, at least in part, that he has kept me alive.
But now, something catches my eye. It seems as though there is a show on stage, where a young man with platinum hair sits in a chair, bound, and another man croons over him, touching him here and there, massaging him, pushing his gloved thumbs into the boy's mouth, and there is someone I do not know beside me telling me how much he admires my gall. He asks if I enjoy watching the show with the young man as much as he does, and then he touches my hand. In anger, I lash out. Before I can blink, Asher is there fending him off, and like a vulture, the stranger swoops away.
Asher hands me a drink and says, "They flock to power because they don't have any of their own." Then, "This is not where we normally work. Just so you know, we're better than this. Professional. Quiet. Hidden."
I tell him I understand, but I barely do, I am so tired.
"Come," he says. "It's time to go."
Chapter 31
TRUTH
I stand outside Patrick's loft as he unlocks the door. I am dressed to the nines.
It is still cold outside, but we have decided to speed this process along, and by we, I mean I have.
We're back from a banquet, and Patrick is in his glistening tux. He smiles at me secretly, and then opens the door. We both step inside from the cold, into the warm, hot living room. The curtains are red now, and they stand like gorgeous giants at the far end, catching my eye. I slip off my jacket, lay it on the couch.
He approaches me tenderly and kisses me, running his hands along my silk dress. My gown is dark green with specks of gold, and he counts those specks in some foreign language, kissing them as he goes along.
He steps away from me, still holding my hand, and on the couch we sit.
I smile at him and my eyes graze over his red hair, dimples, his tall, thin frame. I take a deep breath. I take two.
Is tonight the night?
Yes.
Tonight is the night.
I love him. I have loved him ever since the night I met him - that night so long ago - one that I know Patrick does not remember entirely. I think back to that first party with the fireworks and the stripping and the dancing and the pills - after which he had invited me to his loft and, being too drunk to drive, let me take the wheel.
I reminisce on how, when we arrived at his loft, he mixed pills with alcohol, and then meth with heroin, and how, when I had woken in the morning on only the second day that I knew him, Patrick's heart was stopped, his body cold, and the rigor had set in.
I had been forced into the decision before I ever really knew him or could have appropriately judged what my choice should be. I had sat beside his body in the very same room that we are now, thinking, questioning, wondering, and feeling so weary of all the corpses in my life, all the death, all the pain, all the terrible things that invaded my world. And in this hatred of death and coldness, I looked at his face and knew.
My desire for love overrode me. My want of laughter, happiness, and human kindness - everything I had seen in him in just one day - drove me to my decision. I had knelt close to his collapsed form. I had touched him gingerly and kissed his cheek. Then, I brought him back to life.
I remove my hand from Patrick's, and I know I must tell him the truth. Not of resurrecting him, no. He will never know that tale. It is rather of the other things, the Cyrus years, the stories the court and online articles can tell him. He must hear it from me before he hears it from anyone else. It was never a question of if, but rather when and from whom.
I tell him outright, "I have murdered." I begin to say it all, from beginning to end. Then, I realize it's too long, and so I hit the high points and the lows, leaving out all the magic, all the curses, all the impossible figures that he would never believe. I reduce it all to what's normal. I keep it sterile.
I see his smile, how it drifts down. I see his sparkling eyes, how they dull. I see his warm face cool to stone. I see his open frame close tight. He does not look at me anymore, but he listens.
He listens.