by Quil Carter
But no more… no more.
Kiki walked to me, and for the first time since seeing him, the cicaro himself smiled when he saw Nero’s hand being held firmly in mine.
“He’s alive?” Kiki whispered. He grasped Nero’s hand too and when Nero gripped it firmly the shy smile turned into an excited grin. Just like that, the nervousness I had been seeing on the young chimera disappeared. The reality of what was about to happen seemed to be hitting him.
If only he knew we would be doing so much more by the day’s end.
“How do we do it, Master Sanguine?” Kiki asked eagerly. “How – how can we get him out?”
I patted Nero’s hand and let go of it. I walked to what used to be Garrett’s bedroom and Kiki followed behind me. I opened the door and heard the young chimera gasp when he saw what was inside.
“How did you get a sledgehammer in here?” Kiki exclaimed, his facial features quite animated.
The young chimera ran into the bedroom, covered in boxes and old furniture draped with dust-covered sheets. The room was dark, though the light from the living room had leaked in to cast some sunlight into the darkness.
“No one cares what I do, little one,” I said, with a hint of acid in my words. “They’re too busy chasing dark chimeras who hate them, and trying to prevent the northern greywastes from exploding. It has become quite easy to sneak around and a sledgehammer and several metal spikes are simple to hide in a storage room.”
Kiki picked up the sledgehammer, but even though a stealth chimera had good muscles on them, he was unable to lift it higher than his waist. The hammer fell to the carpet with a low clunk and I took it from him.
“How – how long have you been planning this?” Kiki asked curiously. “As soon as Master Nero was encased?”
I shook my head and motioned for Kiki to pick up the metal spikes I had underneath the sledgehammer. “I have been taking care of the living dead for thirty years. Ever since Nero’s husband was condemned to live in his confining madness.” I sauntered back into the sunlight-bathed living room, walking through millions of little dust motes that were floating through the air. Though I was instructed to clean this floor once a month, the only chimera allowed to come and go as I pleased, it still attracted dust almost as much as the greywastes did. To my own inner amusement, I found myself chastising myself for letting it get so dusty. Even though I wasn’t born a slave, old habits die hard, especially when they were still alive inside of me.
“Ceph?” Kiki said in a small voice. His eyes became troubled as he walked back to the square of concrete that held Nero. “I asked Nero about him once after Sid had mentioned him… Nero hit me and I flew across the room.”
I walked over to a different concrete tomb. This one was old and worn and had been there for decades. I swung the sledgehammer and gently tapped it as I practiced my aim. “You would’ve been a cicaro to a much different man if Ceph wasn’t encased in concrete only several feet from him.” I nodded to my left and Kiki looked at the tomb that always held little red heart stickers. “He would’ve been… like he used to be.”
A whimsical, almost longing smile crossed my face before I shook myself free of it. I licked my finger and touched the wet digit to the old tomb, making a mark. Then, with my tongue sticking out of the side of my mouth, I swung the hammer, with a little more force this time, and hit the exact location. The tomb didn’t break through but it did make a loud thunk.
I smiled and nodded to myself, happy with my aim. “Well, little one… I think Nero has waited long enough.” Then I walked over to Nero’s tomb and touched it gently. “Nero? Close your eyes.”
Nero, of course, didn’t answer, but his free hand balled into a fist. I held the sledgehammer in both hands and addressed Kiki. “Put the spike in that small hairline crack,” I instructed, motioning to a slight split in the concrete about three quarters of the way up it. “And hold the metal spike. Do not drop it.”
Kiki paled at these instructions. He looked nervously at the long and rusted spike in his hand, the top of it flattened from being hammered before, then he found his bravery. He placed the spike in the concrete and held it firm.
“Now… close your eyes as well. If you flinch I will hit your hand, and unlike Nero and I… you will not grow one back,” I said as my tongue stuck out of the corner of my mouth. I tightened my grip on the sledgehammer and spread my hands to get a better hold on it.
When Kiki’s eyes were closed and his hand as far down on the spike as he possibly could get it, I mumbled a silent prayer to the universe and swung the sledgehammer towards the spike.
Vibrating pain rippled up my hands almost making me drop the hammer, but I managed to hang onto it and, to my surprise, Kiki did as well.
I grinned and nodded when I saw the spike embedded an inch into the concrete with two fissures now forming in three different directions. Kiki pulled his hand away and grabbed Nero’s which was still being clenched hard into a fist.
“Master Nero… is the spike anywhere near your body?” Kiki asked loudly. “Can you–”
“One question at a time, little one,” I said. “Is the spike near your body, love?”
The hand unclenched, there was white on his palm from the tightness of it. Nero shook his hand back and forth, which I knew meant no.
“Let’s do this then,” I said, not hiding the excitement in my voice. I raised the sledgehammer a second time and swung it against the spike. This time there was a loud crack and a large piece of concrete fell to the floor, exposing Nero’s blue jeans, putrid-smelling and damp, but shifting with excitement.
And that same excitement was now ripping up and down my body like I had been struck by lightning. Using Kiki’s excited cries as fuel, I raised the sledgehammer and did a sideways swing towards a large crack to the right of the broken off piece. This one ripped off a larger chunk and exposed a grey button-down and a nylon jacket.
“Fuck!” Nero gasped. A burly arm raised and with a bellow Nero pushed it against the concrete. With a quiver shaking my chest I swung the hammer, with less force this time, and helped him break it off.
Nero’s sweaty, grey-stained face was exposed, his eyes squinting under the sunlight and his body trembling from the adrenaline. I watched him look around, seemingly in a daze, and quickly jumped out of the rest of the concrete prison. But as soon as his foot hit the ground, he fell to his knees with a strangled groan. My Nero looked like he was literally being born again, spilling onto the floor from a concrete mother to face a new world around him.
Kiki gave out a cry and motioned to run to him, but I raised a hand and gave him a sharp look, a look glaring enough to make the young chimera stop in his tracks. To barrel towards a chimera who had been locked up, even for a short time, wasn’t a wise idea and that boy was no immortal.
Instead I knelt down in front of Nero and put a hand on his shoulder. “How is your mental state, my love? Are you okay?”
Nero took in several gasping breaths. “I… I just woke up a few hours ago. I’m okay,” he said through his laboured breathing. He looked up as I started wiping his flushed red face with the sleeve of my blazer. “How…? W-why, Sangy? Silas… Silas will…”
I gave him a warm smile and shook my head, gently clearing away the concrete dust from his nose and mouth. “Because fifty-two years ago you pulled me from my own hell, after spending almost a decade looking for me. You know how much I love you, Nuky. You know I couldn’t let him keep you there forever.”
Nero’s face dissolved; he threw his arms around me and held me tight. “Thank you, puppy. Fuck… thank you.”
I put my arms around him as well and we embraced each other. Nero’s hands so tight around my torso I could feel the breath being constricted inside of my chest cavity. “If… if only you knew what else I have been doing for you. If only you…” Then my eyes travelled to Kiki. He was still standing beside the dusty mess of concrete, the remaining shell now kneeling in its own broken innards. “Kiki played an important role in
this, love. He was unwavering in his devotion to you. We have Silas, Elish, Jack, Garrett, Caligula, Nico, and Reno stranded near the plaguelands because of your little racoon. Let him give you a hug.”
Nero looked over at Kiki and gave him a faint smile. He raised a dusty and sweaty hand and waved his cicaro over. “I smell like piss, vomit, and sweat, peaches, but if you want a hug…” Before the last words could come out of Nero’s mouth, Kiki ran over to him and threw his arms around Nero. There was a muffled cry and Kiki buried his face into the crook of his master’s neck.
“I love you,” Kiki sniffed. “We need to get out of here. I got us a lot of money. We’re going to run away far from here, so they won’t get you.”
“I don’t think we have a choice…” Nero rubbed Kiki’s head and kissed it, then looked back to me. “You really stranded all of them in the plaguelands?” Nero shakily got to his feet and started limping towards the door. “Sanguine… you’re coming with me, right? Kingy, fuck… baby.” Nero shook his head and a look of pain crossed his face. I felt my own throat go tight. “Kingy’s going to concrete you, just like me.”
I got up also and swallowed down the restriction threatening to shorten my breath, “I have a lot to catch you up on, love. We have a plan… I didn’t do this without a bit of a plan in place. Sort of…” But when I saw Nero heading towards the door I stopped talking and crossed my arms. “Where are you going?”
Nero rested a hand on the door frame to steady himself. “I need to get the fuck out of here and shower, eat, and you need to tell me just what our plan is. Kiki… I need you to order a lot of–”
“Aren’t you forgetting someone?”
Nero froze; his shoulders tightened and his hand on the door frame clenched.
“He’s dead…” Nero’s voice was a hushed whisper, a whisper that would’ve been inaudible if it wasn’t for chimera hearing. “Let’s… let’s go.”
“He’s dead?” I smirked. I flicked a stray lock of hair from my eyes and tilted my head to the side as if my smirk was physically weighing my head. “Lovely, he’s immortal. He’s but–”
“He’s dead!” Nero whirled around and cried, anguish flooding his face. His indigo eyes briefly travelled to the concrete tomb covered in heart stickers but he looked away, as if the sight physically burned him. “He’s dead. He’s dead, Sanguine. He’s been in there for thirty years. He’s c-c-claustrophobic, and he’s insane by now.” Nero ran a hand down his face as it crumpled. “Why you gotta bring him up, Sangy? You know he’s gone. You know he wouldn’t be my Cephy anymore. Why you need to – why you need…”
I quickly walked to him as Nero let out a strangled, devastated sob, but as I approached he turned around and started walking down the hallway.
I put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Follow me, love. I have something to show you.”
“N-no, let me go,” Nero choked. But I only shook my head and grabbed his hand.
I squeezed it. “It’s only one floor down. Follow me. You’ll want to see this.”
Nero sniffed and shook his head no, but he followed me anyway. I walked my Nero down the dark hallway, only a streak of light from the apartment we’d just left lighting the way. Kiki followed us, and when I glanced at him from over my shoulder, I saw a curious, yet worried, look on his face.
We carried on down the stairs, Nero’s sniffs echoing off of the stairwell, until we were in the hallway of what used to be Nero and Ceph’s own apartment.
“Floor twenty-four. Where I lived with him during the beginning of our relationship,” Nero said in a broken voice several octaves higher than his normal deep tones. “Why the fuck are you doing this to me, Sangy? I just… I just want to eat and get clean. I can’t do this right now.”
I shook my head and pushed the door open. I headed towards what had once been the living room. “You’ll want to see–”
“See what!” Nero suddenly cried, his body tense and his fists once again clenched from his anguish. He stalked up to me and opened his mouth to unleash more of his agony, but then he paused to watch me grab a black linen sheet covering an object almost as tall as him.
I withdrew the sheet with a smile, revealing underneath it a metal IV drip, which still held in it a bag half-full of fluid.
And as Nero took a step back, I pointed to a thin tube that led up to the ceiling and disappeared into a small hole the size of a baseball, then underneath it where a small machine was hooked up and connected to the IV. I looked back to him and smiled proudly when I saw the flabbergasted look on his face. I had been imagining this scene for decades and I couldn’t help but drink in his expression.
It was quite the expression too.
“What… what the fuck…?” Nero whispered. He took a step back and looked around the dark storage room but there was nothing out of place, nothing that gave suggestion as to what I had been hiding for thirty years. I had been careful to conceal everything as well as I could, and thankfully this was one room that everyone avoided, Silas included.
I took advantage of Nero’s shocked state, and walked over to one of the cardboard boxes that were stacked on top of one another. I opened it and tipped it for Nero to see.
Inside were stacks of empty IV bags and small needles tipped with blood.
“S-Sanguine?” Nero said in a hushed voice. He walked on shaky feet to the box and picked up one of the empty bags, then his eyes travelled back to the IV drip and the small whirring machine. “What did you do?”
I smiled sadly. “I didn’t just become his sengil thirty years ago because I knew Silas needed me, love. I did it to save Ceph from the insanity-inducing monotony I knew would claim him. For thirty years I’ve had him in a coma. Not even our white flames of death which can, at times, be maddening themselves, but asleep. Once a week I set up the IV, a slow drip that would last the entire week, and on Sunday, sometimes Monday, I would change it for him.” Then I pointed to the machine. “This little thing pushes the fluid up since gravity would work against the IV. I made it myself.”
A look of pure awe crossed Nero’s face. He stared up at the ceiling, his mouth open and his head shaking back and forth. Never had I seen my Nero look so amazed, it warmed my heart and already my cheeks were hurting from smiling.
All of this, everything I have suffered through, it was all worth it just for this moment.
“For thirty years?” Nero whispered.
I nodded and rested a hand on his shoulder. “There were times I was resurrecting that he was without, but for the most part… your husband has been asleep, waiting for his prince to kiss him awake.” I removed my hand from Nero’s shoulder and grabbed onto the clear plastic tube. I gave it a yank and out popped a needle, the same kind in the cardboard box.
I let it fall to the ground. “What are you waiting for, love?”
Nero was still staring at the ceiling, seemingly stuck inside of my words and the emotions that were charging through him like an advancing army. “What am I waiting for?” Nero whispered. Then he shook his head rapidly, as if shaking away the overabundance of new information. “What am I waiting for?” A smile banished the shock on his face. He threw his arms around me and crushed me to his chest.
Then as quickly as he grabbed me, I was dropped, and with a hand on Kiki’s head to give it a shake, he ran out of the apartment and into the hallway.
I laughed and walked past Kiki. “Let’s go. He won’t wait for us.”
I followed Nero as my brother ran up the stairs, what weakness his body had from being trapped inside of his own tomb had vanished with the news he had just received.
He got to the twenty-fifth floor and ran down the hallway, Kiki and I both trailing behind. Then he sped into the still sun-filled room.
Nero grabbed the hammer and turned around with a grin on his face. “Okay, how do I do this without killing him?” he said with a laugh.
I grabbed the metal spike and gave it a flip in my hand. “The concrete will be brittle from it being so long. Don’t use you
r full force or you’ll crush my hands and I will have to kill you.” I winked and put the spike into a crack in the concrete. “Swing, lovely.”
Nero nodded, and he bit down on his lower lip. With his face creased in concentration, he swung the hammer sideways and hit the spike with a loud clang that echoed throughout the room.
The concrete split right down the middle, a putrid smell coming from inside of it like a broken rotten egg. But Nero didn’t care. He slammed the sledgehammer, end first, into the crack like a battering ram to crack it open further. It must’ve been good-enough for him, because he gave the sledgehammer a violent throw and grabbed both ends of the split.
I winced when I heard the sledgehammer smash into something, but my eyes were too fixed on the scene in front of me. Nero, his teeth clenched and his face red, pried the two ends apart with all of his genetically engineered strength. A low cracking sound sounded and the shifting of rock, before a large slab of concrete fell to the ground, revealing inside of its center someone who looked nothing like the auburn-haired brute chimera who had been put into it.
Ceph’s hair was stringy and stuck to his face, what had once been a short buzz cut was now down past his shoulders, framing a gaunt, hollow face that held a greasy but long reddy-brown beard.
“Cephy?” Nero choked. He put his hand up to Ceph’s face; his own crumpling under the emotion he was feeling as he touched his husband’s face for the first time in thirty years. “Cephy?” Nero leaned his forehead against Ceph’s own. He sniffed and raised his head, then started patting his cheek. “Cephy? Look at me.”
Ceph’s eyes fluttered, then looked around in sleepy confusion.
And when they focused on Nero, Nero inhaled a shuddering breath and smiled. He framed Ceph’s face and shook it gently. “Wake up, baby boy. Can you speak?” As the last chunk of concrete crumbled to the now dusty grey floor, Nero grabbed Ceph’s underarms and pulled him from the shattered shell. He lowered Ceph onto the ground as Ceph’s arm weakly rose to hold onto Nero’s arm.