by Quil Carter
Elish looked to his side and carefully analysed several houses that were off in the distance. This had once been a residential street, but almost all of the houses had been reduced to charred support beams from some fire long ago. They all looked like broken skeletons now, even more so with the intact houses in the distance. It was like the broken houses were lingering in limbo, forced to gaze upon their living comrades to be reminded of what they used to be.
And now they were nothing but useless ruins, though in all reality the houses with their intact roofs and four walls were just as doomed and just as dead; appearances were deceiving and never again would these buildings be brought to their former glory. Everything built before the Fallocaust was dead, the radiation just kept nature from consuming their corpses.
Much like King Silas, Elish said to himself darkly, but he sighed internally. Now stop with your head in the clouds, you have things you must figure out. You have to have a plan when you come back to Skyfall. You must know what you’re going to do once you’re home. Your garden is in shambles, your strings in a snare, and your seeds dying… you must fix this.
I will. I will.
Was it worth it? Reno’s agonized voice rang inside of Elish’s head.
And for a moment Elish closed his eyes and took in a deep inhale of warm greywaste air, then he opened them and continued walking towards Kessler’s ground zero.
That night he made camp in a townhouse that was in a cluster of over thirty of them. They had been scavenged before but whoever had been here had left years ago. They had left behind an old barbeque grate leaning up against the exterior wall however, and a lighter, but the lighter’s wheel was rusted. Elish didn’t need lighters thanks to his own thermal abilities, but he pocketed it all the same. It still had fuel in it and he could make a poor man’s stove if desperation called for it. Reaver had shown him how to make it with nothing but a soda can, a knife, and some tape.
That boy had taught me a lot, Elish said to himself. He was laying on a mattress he had covered with several musty blankets found in a closet, the cleanest one he had draped over himself. He had his green knapsack beside him and his handgun on top of it. Reaver had also taught him to break a window or light bulbs inside of a pillow case and then spread the shards on the stairs or in front of the window. It was a way to alert you if someone was trying to get the jump on you.
Elish closed his eyes and carefully went over everything the boy had taught him and filed it in its necessary locations inside of his mind. He had always thought of his own brain as being a large tower filled with rooms that held different files and he enjoyed going over each one when he had the spare time to refresh himself on the knowledge.
Though as quickly as he’d decided to touch upon his knowledge, he found himself recoiling from the memory of Reaver. It brought up an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach, so he decided to steer away from it in favour of other thoughts.
And as was his default comforting thought, he brought up the face of his cicaro, but the same feeling trailed behind him as well. Elish once again banished their faces from his mind, and refused to admit to himself it was rather his heart that was filling him with the discomfort.
Elish fell into a troubled sleep after that, his ears always open and his hand only inches away from his handgun.
“Tonight was nice,” the boy whispered to me on a night almost a year ago. We were lying in bed together, naked and with the light grey top sheet a scrunched pile at our feet and the comforter on the floor forgotten. “This was the best birthday I’ve ever had.”
I was laying on my side, my head propped up by my hand and my elbow resting on the pillow. The boy was staring at me with an expression that always made me stare back just a fraction longer than I would deem okay for myself. It was a look of devotion, of intense love and worship. This look on his face only intensified after I had made love to him. But only after making love, never after our intense marathons of sex, or our trysts of fervid and violent fucking. It was when I held that boy’s quivering body against mine and drank in every moan, every shuddered gasp. It was when I let him hear my own vocalizations of pleasure; something I know he treasured.
The corner of my lips rose. I reached a hand out and brushed back a lock of his hair, as black as the depths of the universe, and tucked it behind his ears, small ears with a slight point to them, and three hooped earrings in each with different coloured gems.
One purple, one white, one black.
“Next you will be asking me to move your real birthday to this day,” I said to him with a smirk. Since his actual birthday, when he had turned seventeen, had been quite the chaotic disaster, I had promised him a birthday to make up for it, any day he chose. Once our lives had calmed down, a month after Silas’s game had come to an end and we had been married, he had requested for me to plan a day for him.
It had taken another month but I had decided my cicaro had been through enough and deserved a special day. So I had done what he would deem out of character, and I had cleared my schedule for him. I had taken the day off and had brought him to the Dead Islands to see Joaquin’s brand-new leopard cubs and his other felines and exotic animals. Then we had gone for a pleasant walk on the beach which ended with a dinner laid out by Joaquin’s partner, and Jade’s friend, Jem. I had outdone myself, and had made Joaquin and Jem swear on their lives they would tell no one I had done this for Jade.
The boy had been worshipping me with his eyes the entire time, and never had I received so many kisses and smiles from him. On our way back to the plane he had slipped his hand into mine, and since this area of the island was deserted, I had let us walk hand in hand. However, once the animal sanctuary came into view and the thien guards could be seen, I had removed my hand from his and he was smart enough not to voice complaint.
When we got back to the apartment, Luca dismissed for the evening, we had both showered separately and I had come into my bedroom to him waiting for me on the bed. He was wearing nothing but a pair of leather briefs that hugged his hips tightly, and showed off the v-shaped curve that framed a faint trail of short black strands that ran from his navel down. I removed those from him quickly and made love to him for the next four hours.
And now the long day had ended with us here. The boy gazing up at me, and me gently tracing my fingers along his jawline, then slowly trailing to his lips which I caressed.
His yellow eyes stared into mine. “I love you.”
Elish opened his eyes to the cold and empty bedroom of the townhouse. He looked around to see that everything was the tone of slate from the grey sun that rose up over the horizon. There was no colour here. The only colour in his existence now was from his cicaro’s bright and mischievous eyes, and they were now faded as reality chased away his vivid daydream.
He sighed, and when he inhaled, the smell of musty blankets and sour wood greeted him.
No smell of mint and spice from my cicaro, or the hot muggy aroma of the shower if he had woken before me.
Just the smell of decades old death and a house slowly decaying.
Elish got up and tightly folded the blanket he had been using, then secured it with a telephone cord and tied it to the knapsack. Then he walked down the waning and bowing stairs, his boots crunching against the shards of window from an alarm system that, in the end, wasn’t needed, then exited the townhouse.
He walked to the street, identical houses in almost identical states of decay all around him in what looked like a horseshoe shape, and started heading in the direction he knew would lead him to the highway. He passed a park with a playground several feet from a fallen chain-link fence, the green grass a memory but the yellow greywastes grass sprouting in random patches, then reached a long stretch of industrial buildings. But all on this particular road were collapsed and just heaping piles of debris and ash.
While he walked through this dull grey world, the eyes inside of his mind had him walking along his garden. A garden that had once been a sight of intense beauty, even if
it was but an image drawn up from his own imagination.
It was a vast stretch of emerald green surrounded by a white fence that glistened with new paint. On top of this trimmed grass were raised beds made of untreated cedar, that held in their rectangular frames, black soil. Inside of this soil were little shoots of green and small flowers of various species, some extinct, some not.
Elish would walk along this garden during his quiet moments, or when he wished to bring calm and tranquility to a situation that caused him stress. And as he walked, he would think of each mental seed he had planted and dwell on them.
How old was Reaver now? How was his training going? When was Lycos supposed to call again? Once these questions were answered he would move onto his next seed and go over whatever list he had for that one. Every brother had his own raised bed and his own colour code, and on Elish’s encrypted laptop, they had their own code names as well.
Before all of this happened, before I had found out that King Silas had been in Aras for the last few months, I had been working on bringing Grant to my side. Jade had read his aura and had confirmed what I had already known: that it was Theo, a younger brother he was obsessed with, who was the key to him aligning with me. Jade and I had been discussing using Sanguine to manipulate Theo, and how we could do it. I had found myself enjoying discussing this with Jade. Never had I had someone I trusted enough to disclose all of this information, let alone lay in bed at night and plot with him.
Elish’s jaw locked as his mind brought up the last image he had of his cicaro conscious. The powerful creature standing crooked with blood running down his head, face, and neck. His yellow eyes turning black as he exercised a mental power that only he and Silas had. Then Kessler and his legionaries dropped to the ground, dead. Not only could Jade end their lives without touching them, he had the power to avoid killing his friends and husband.
Then he saw the boy lying in the white hospital bed, wires and tubes going in and out of him, all connected to beeping and humming machines that were all that was sustaining his life. He remembered when Lyle had told him that his brain activity was greatly diminished.
“Will he be able to walk? Talk?”
“Master Elish… we’ll be lucky if he can even raise his head.”
A jolt of pain ripped up Elish’s mouth and he realized he had bitten a small chunk of his tongue. He spat the chunk on the ground, and with a deep breath, he went back to his garden. There would be no mental admission to the reality but his mind quickly re-checking what seeds remained was a window itself into what those memories had done to him.
I will check the hard drives, and I will comb through everything on there. Perish may have been a man of many odd quirks but he was obsessive when it came to logging and documenting all of his work, stemming from before I was even born. Those hard drives are the most valuable things in the world right now and, thankfully, I have them in my possession. None of this will be in vain, all will be fixed.
The day passed quickly with only the thoughts inside of Elish’s head to keep him company. A lot of seeds were looked over and tended to in that time though his mind was always travelling back to the ruins of his previous plans. Reaver’s seeds, Killian’s seeds, the hope of finding out just how to kill an immortal. Which had been the only reason why he had sent Reaver and his small group into the greywastes.
The secret died with Perish. Elish wondered to himself just how long Perish had known. Or how long Sky had known rather. For all Elish knew he’d known in Kreig and all of this was just Sky’s O.L.S telling Perish to go to the lab to kill himself.
Elish didn’t know. Every person who would be able to fill him in on what happened… was dead or burning.
What now? How will I kill King Silas once and for all? Did Silas see Perish do it? Will he know when he wakes? If he does, it is foolish to think he will ever tell me? Most likely he himself will use it to kill the immortals who are alive against his will.
Elish reached into his pocket and pulled out a stale pack of cigarettes he had found. He lit one and absentmindedly found himself rubbing his upper left forearm. He had Jade’s old collar wrapped around his arm and now his arm felt odd without the leather band.
And what of you, cicaro? What are my plans for you…?
You’re only eighteen years old. You’re my husband but still just a boy.
Suddenly Elish found himself turning around. He had heard a noise inside of one of the buildings he was passing. It sounded like something dropping, a clang of silverware on a kitchen floor, or perhaps dropped on a plate.
Elish’s eyes scanned the building carefully. He was walking up a small hill, in the middle of a double-lane road with two faded yellow stripes splitting the lanes. On one side of him was a concrete barrier with a drooping chain-link fence, and to his left where the noise was, was a house and behind it a parking lot for several attached shops.
The noise was coming from that house… an attached single-storey house with a Remax sign in the front. It was a light grey with the wooden siding puffed out and swollen. Elish could see insulation inside of it too; a washed-out pink that was visible through the siding like cotton trying to escape from a torn jacket.
His eyes fixed on each of the broken windows, plastic hanging down in shreds which told him this place had been occupied at some point after the Fallocaust. It seemed to be empty, perhaps it was just a radrat.
Elish continued on, his ears now strained and on the alert for anyone else who may be occupying this road he was walking on. It looked like he was walking into a small highway-side town. The buildings were not close together though, so besides the increase in roads and black trees, this place was no different than the other areas he had been walking through.
Or was it…
Elish turned around again, his eyes narrowing. There was that noise again and this time there would be no ignoring it.
“I can hear you,” Elish said in a casual manner and he continued to walk. “I would advise you to make yourself known or stop causing that racket. I am on a grueling schedule and have no time for greywaster games.”
Then a great roar sounded from behind him, the sound of an engine motor being started and given too much throttle. Elish turned back around and saw a plume of ashy dust fly up from behind the Remax house he had passed, and the sound of sheet metal crashing to the ground. Another sound followed suit soon after, then a third. And in a matter of moments, Elish could see three dirt bikes coming barreling towards him in three different directions, kicking up clouds of ash in their wake. There was one behind him, one coming from the second noise he had heard, which was another stand-alone house, and the third half a block down.
When they approached and were close enough to be identified, Elish could see each dirt bike was carrying identically dressed riders. They wore greasy hats on their heads and biker goggles on their faces; they rode with open, grinning mouths and hooted and hollered so loudly the noise carried over the high octave motor.
Elish stood in the middle of the road as the three circled him on their bikes, laughing and making an annoying racket that grated against Elish’s ears like nails scraping a chalkboard. There was no part of him that felt like humouring these three idiots or their obvious and pathetic attempts to strike fear into his heart.
So as they circled, kicking up an ungodly amount of grey ash that irritated his throat and eyes, Elish crossed his arms over his grey overcoat and watched, looking unimpressed and rather bored.
The three stopped, and revved their engines with fingerless gloves, their fingers so blackened and filthy the gloves were almost invisible. The smell as well was horrendous and made Elish’s nose curl. And when their scabby lips peeled back to laugh and taunt through sneers, he could see their teeth matched the colour of their grimy hands; what few remained inside of their diseased mouths.
“What you doin’ all alone, mah friend?” one of them shouted. He had a rusted assault rifle on his back and several nicked and tarnished knives on a belt of cracked
leather. They were all wearing many layers of greasy clothing, all with holes to show what shade of brown or grey the next layer was.
“Hey, look,” another one exclaimed. His eyes widened and Elish almost found himself mouthing what he knew he was going to say next.
He has purple eyes.
“He got funky eyes!”
Close enough.
Elish sighed and reached into his pocket. As he did there was the sound of shifting as the three struggled to get their own guns, but Elish was faster.
He took out the handgun and shot the first one right between the eyes, the filthy and pungent greywaster falling to the ground in a heap. Then he pointed the gun to the second just as he himself was raising his assault rifle, and pulled the trigger.
But as that one’s head snapped back, and the sound of gunfire broke the cooled greywaste air, Elish himself felt a hard impact on his chest. He turned to shoot the third one, but as he made eye contact with the shocked and surprised man, he saw sparks and smoke erupt from the barrel of his assault rifle, followed by more hard blows to his chest and stomach. Elish didn’t care though, bullet wounds healed quickly and the several hours he would waste resurrecting would be made up when he stole one of these fools’ dirt bikes.
The third screamed and stumbled back as Elish shot him in the cheek, and again in the neck as he fell backwards. He still had his finger on the assault rifle as he lost his balance though, but besides feeling their sharp wind against his cheek, no more bullets hit him.
Annoyance quickly consumed any pain Elish was feeling in that moment. He looked down at the three dead greywasters but his attention was drawn to his blood-soaked shirt and overcoat. He had several bullet holes in his chest and stomach, and blood was trickling down each one and falling soundlessly onto the grey ground like rain.
Elish managed to put his handgun back into his overcoat pocket, and he turned around. His vision started to become blurry, but he focused his energy and stumbled towards a house with a partially ajar door. He would be dying inside of it.