by Martin Rose
Gratitude.
Because he’s a better father than you ever were.
Oh, dear god. The conversation from the car on our way back from the basement came back to me full force, every memory burning with new meaning, his veiled questions in his quiet voice, lulling me into answers I would never have given under different circumstances.
He felt he had owed me something. To pay for what his father had done. He gave his life to set right to a thousand and one wrongs, and the sacrifice of that decision made me want to cave into myself and cry until the crying itself killed me, stopped my heart like a broken clock and let me live to feel this no more. It seemed impossible while I slumped against the kitchen cabinets with my useless legs folded up, trembling as Niko struggled to hold me, that I should ever get up again, that I should continue to live, that anyone should have given me such a precious gift. Shame, hurt, love, bitterness, all these things and more swept through me like fire in the pines. Reduced all my ideas of self-worth into ashes.
And from deep inside, my old friend, my Id, had words to share:
This is a gift, he assented with urgency. What do you intend to do with it, now that he has given so much in return?
I turned and looked at Niko. Her eyes were dewy and threatened to spill over with tears. Perhaps it was the devastation on my face that moved her so, or the reasons were more elemental, the memories of that time and the murder itself.
“Niko,” I whispered, and reinforced her embrace by lifting my own arms to clutch her close to me. She relaxed in my grip, all supple lines and soft flesh yielding to me. It aroused me to think I could take her again, here on the kitchen floor, and I had to suppress the desire. It still didn’t help, and I hardened instantly, my mind touch-starved for ten long years and this body newly minted.
Click.
She stiffened as I locked the handcuff around her slight wrist.
“Vitus—” she began, and before she could struggle, I had her wrist enclosed in the second cuff like a bracelet, linked over the exposed plumbing pipes beneath the kitchen sink, leaving her other hand free as she protested with a cry. I didn’t care.
“Vitus? What are you doing?”
I didn’t answer, but left her on the floor as I rose, dust feathering patterns up her black dress as she curled against the cabinets, staring up at me with wide eyes, ossifying into marcasite. She did not waste her breath to beg or plead, to appeal to my better nature, or manipulate me with promises of love and devotion. Her tears were drying quickly.
She was no femme fatale. She didn’t deserve this. But I was pissed, and hey—all relationships need work. And she could start by working on the handcuffs.
“Where are you going?” she asked, yanking at the cuff and busily examining the plumbing. I didn’t answer her, turning on my bare feet and collecting my discarded undershirt, locating a button-down stuffed hastily in the closet from years ago. It was wrinkled and moth-eaten, but it would do. I slipped it on, found my shoes. In moments, I was dressed, and as I pulled my sleeve through my coat, I knocked over something on the end table.
The orange pill bottle. She had left it there for me. Niko’s voice faded into the background as she cursed my name, and the bottle buzzed in return. It was the bottle Owen had given me as we were leaving the basement, a faint memory of the monster I used to be.
I’m human now, I realized. But I did not feel human.
Inside the pill bottle, the last reminder of a knight and his loyal son buzzed at the orange structure, defiantly beating his wings and his black, hairy body. He looked angry from the outside, desperate to get to me, to taste me, to tell his friends and make more friends inside the warmth of my flesh.
“I’ve got someone you can start on,” I spoke to the fly, and shoved the bottle into my pocket. “His name is Jamie.”
And I left Niko there on the floor, with a fly in my pocket and a loaded gun in my hand.