The Suicide King Volume 1 (The Fallocaust Series Book 3)

by Quil Carter

  “It’s Killian. Reaver. It’s Killian. You’re not there anymore. You’re here with me. Reaver, baby, look at me.” The borders of my vision were shining and off-colour but in the center I started seeing his face, it was taking shape. Large blue eyes, eyebrows slightly darker than his blond hair had once been, pink lips, high cheek bones and the softest, whitest skin.

  “Killian?” I croaked. The volume of the television playing against my will turned down and the image distorted. I could now make out his face and what he was saying was registering in my mind.

  But I still found myself unable to take deep breaths, every time I inhaled my lungs rejected the air and pushed it back out. My brain was starting to panic and I realized I was trembling.

  No, not just trembling – it felt like someone was grabbing my shoulders and shaking me.

  “I’m here, you’re safe with me,” Killian said calmly. Even though my world was spinning like I was on a carnival ride, I felt surprise over how level his voice was, how – deep. He… he sounded like a man, not my little boy. “Reaver, listen to me, okay?” He framed my face again and made me look at him. And with my brain punishing me with anxiety for failing to fill my lungs with air, I looked back at him with desperation.

  No… don’t show Killian you’re weak. You’re the strong one.

  I’m the strong one… not him… fucking not him.

  But in this moment, I wasn’t. I was standing on the tip of a knife, and I had been for months. I had been standing still with the razor-sharp edge underneath my boots, balancing my body carefully. I felt in that moment that Killian was grabbing me and steadying me, and setting my feet on solid ground.

  “You’re having an anxiety attack, Reaver,” Killian said calmly, gently rubbing the sides of my face. “You’re going to feel anxious and helpless and like you can’t breathe but you can. I want you to close your eyes and concentrate on my voice.” He unzipped his satchel and I watched him, until my eyes slowly closed.

  “Everything will be okay, just try and take deep breaths.” I winced as I felt him stick a needle into my arm. He was injecting me with heroin. “One after another. Try, even though I know it’s hard, try to take in deep breaths.”

  To my surprise, I felt another needle get pushed into my skin. The heroin was already starting to take me, starting to coat me in warm, but he was looking for another vein. “Just calm down, it’ll be over in a moment.” I started to feel a darkness come to me, a black blanket as thick and weighted as lead, crushing me, and the red in my vision started to drip away.

  “Shhh, there we go, baby, close your eyes.”

  Killian’s voice started to fade.

  I felt myself become limp, and then Killian catching me. I opened my eyes and saw everything around me start to dim, his voice getting farther and farther away.

  And I realized… he’d overdosed me.

  He was killing me.

  “There we go…” Killian brushed my hair back, and as his face started to get consumed by the darkness I saw him smile. “Sleep well, corvus. I love you.”

  I died feeling his lips kiss the corner of my mouth.

  When I shed myself of the white flames and took in my first conscious breath, I felt warmth around me, and comfort. I opened my eyes to see the green curtains of our bedroom drawn and the covers right up to my chin.

  I was covered in a fleecy red blanket, and as I slowly sat up and squinted the crusty sleep from my eyes, I realized I was dressed in black cloth pants and a green t-shirt. It looked like he had made me as comfortable as I could possibly be, I was even wearing clean socks.

  I rubbed my eyes and took in a deep breath. My lungs felt good as they expanded, like stretching after a drug-induced sleep.

  And at that mention I did stretch, and as expected, an orchestra of bones popped and cracked.

  “Hey, baby.”

  My head looked to the right and then down. Killian had been lying beside me, I hadn’t even noticed that he was there. He was wearing identical black pants and a grey shirt with red stripes and he had a book in front of him.

  But when he smiled at me all I could do was stare back feeling uneasy, and when the events of me winding up in this bedroom came to my mind, the embarrassment hit me like a cold smack in the face.

  My heart dropped and I tried to get up. Killian put a hand on my arm but when I attempted to pull it away I found it was firm, almost forceful. “Stay,” he said. And though his tones held a gentle ease, I heard sharp edges. He moved and I saw him with a glass of something red. It smelled like cherry Kool-Aid. “Drink and take a moment.”

  I yanked my arm away and refused the offer of the Kool-Aid. My mind was converting his attentiveness as taking care of me, which translated to my chimera mind as me being too weak to take care of myself. After what had just happened, I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t continue to let him see me in this state. I’d already shown him so much weakness already. I’d already humiliated myself and erased years of establishing myself as the alpha male, the dominant beast who was shaken by nothing, and an unmoveable force. The fact that he was seeing me breakdown like this was too much to bear. Not him, not Killian. I was the one who supported and soothed him. I was his rock. Not the other way around – it just wasn’t that kind of relationship.

  Right?

  I didn’t think so but… I had never felt broken like this before. It never had to be tested.

  “Drink,” Killian said again. “I’m going to prepare you some heroin…”

  “No,” I said to him; my tone coming out with a thin layer of ice, one I hadn’t even realized I’d put on it. “Stop taking care of me. I’m not a fucking kid.”

  I expected a hurt look and maybe even a glisten of a tear, but Killian remained stoic. He didn’t look like Killian. He was collected and together; his eyes relaxed, his movements fluid and confident. He… he reminded me of…

  … of someone else.

  “I’m not treating you like a kid,” Killian replied in a solid but gentle tone. “I’m taking care of you which is what partners do. Just relax and drink. I’ve been reading Perish’s notes on immortal healing and the first thing your body needs is water. Drink.”

  Grudgingly I took it and downed the sweetened Kool-Aid in one long drink. I handed the glass back, and when I saw him pinch off a piece of the heroin brick I shook my head. “No. I don’t want heroin. I don’t want to be a sedated idiot; that’s how you cope with shit, not me. And I’m not you and you’re not me.” I got up and walked out of the bedroom, and I heard Killian follow me to the living room.

  He had yellow lines of powder laid out on the coffee table, half of them gone. A generator was on too, he must’ve set up the one we’d bought in Melchai.

  I sat down in front of the coffee table, feeling pissed off with how well he’d set everything up here. We had lights now, a vacuumed floor – he’d done all of this shit in the small amount of time it took me to wake up from a heroin overdose.

  My teeth gritted and I felt like throwing the coffee table across the room. I felt like taking the quad and going to Melchai and killing the entire city just to show Killian I was still the bloodthirsty beast he knew me as. I had to prove to him – the world – I was still the Reaper, not the mess I was now.

  Not Nero’s victim. Not Elish, Lycos, and Greyson’s failed saviour. Not the sissy bitch who had an anxiety attack in front of his boyfriend.

  “Some drugs will make you feel better,” Killian said behind me, and he squeezed my shoulder.

  I watched him walk to the living room. This… this weird calm way he was acting was making me uneasy.

  Killian handed me the sniffer and went back into the kitchen.

  I leaned down and took the remaining four lines of drugs. Then, unable to help myself, I threw the sniffer, and like that had flipped a switch, I picked up an ashtray in the middle of the coffee table and flung it. It flew across the room, hit one of the paintings we’d hung up, and went crashing to the ground behind a credenza. Running on th
e adrenaline that had filled me with, I picked up the lamp resting to my right and threw that too. Then, to top off my frustrated state, an angry scream bursting through my lips.

  I had to get out of here. I turned around to grab my M16 to leave when I caught Killian’s eye.

  He was standing there, a neutral expression on his face. No tears, no fear. When shit like this happened it usually scared him to frantic crying, but he was… he was standing like nothing was happening.

  “Sit down, love, and I’ll get you some food,” he said calmly.

  For one frightening moment I wanted to put my hands on him. I wanted to take him and smack him across the face. I wanted to scare him. I wanted to make him scream and cry. All because my mind, my pride, commanded me to do anything possible to get back to our normal. A normal that was Killian crying and needing saving, and me being emotionally dead and strong as nails, saving him and comforting him.

  Now everything was off-kilter, everything was different. I was the crazed one. I was the one losing control, and he was the one standing there calmly. What the fuck was going on? What the hell had happened to us?

  “Why are you acting like this? BE NORMAL!” I suddenly screamed. The glaring reality that I was only showing him just how unstable I was, lost on me. I walked up to him and grabbed his shoulders and crushed them in my grip. “Stop acting so different!” I shouted right in his face.

  My mind ignored the frightened look he now had, and I roughly shoved him against the wall and he hit it hard. “Stop it! Just act normal, act like everything is okay! EVERYTHING IS OKAY, THERE’S NO REASON TO ACT THIS WAY!” I grabbed him again and slammed him against the wall a second time; this time his neck snapped back and I heard his skull crack against the gyprock.

  Killian cried out and tried to push me away. I slammed him again, my teeth clenched and bared through peeled back lips, and my face burning with the emotions running rampant inside of me. My crazed mind was telling me this was good, this was good. Killian’s normal was scared. Killian’s normal was scared. This was good. This was good.

  “Reaver… Reaver, it’s okay. Let me go. It’s Killian!” Killian suddenly cried. He thought I was hallucinating again. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t.

  Killian held the back of his head and I saw a tear run down his cheek as he started to cry.

  “YES!” I screamed. My face felt like it was breaking out in a heat rash, my eyebrow was twitching. “Be scared. Be scared.”

  “I am scared,” Killian whimpered, a trickle of blood ran down his nose and joined with the tears to make pink. “I’m scared, Reaver.”

  I dropped him and he fell to the floor with a cry. I nodded and turned from him. I walked to the edge of the living room and circled back. “And I’m not,” I told him harshly. “I’m not scared. I am the clone of the man who ended the world. I am not scared; I am not a fucking coward. I am not a sissy. I don’t care what the fuck he did to me. This isn’t me, and what is happening to me isn’t happening. Because it can’t happen to me. Got it? So JUST – BE – NORMAL!” I screamed the last part; I screamed it so loudly my eyes were bulging out of their sockets.

  Killian stared at me. He put a hand to his mouth and more tears rolled down his cheeks. I nodded my approval of this and sat down by the couch.

  “We’re going to play Mario now,” I told him and I turned on the television and then a game system he must’ve bought in Melchai. He’d set everything up for me, good. “We’ll do drugs, then have sex.” When Killian didn’t move I whirled around. “WE’RE PLAYING MARIO!” I screamed at him.

  Killian quickly got up and ran over. He took the purple game controller with shaking hands and I nodded again. I kept nodding and watched the television as the game loaded.

  The television’s sound was low, so low I could hear Killian’s frightened breathing and the rapid beats of his scared heart. I found myself staring blankly at the television screen with the controller in my hand. Time continued to tick on but it was continuing on without me, leaving me with my emotions scattered all around, and me so used to standing tall I hadn’t been able to bend over to pick them up.

  Killian had tried to pick them up for me, and tried to bear the heavy burden they put on his shoulders; shoulders trying so hard to carry everything, even though his back was breaking under his own.

  I stared at the television screen and slowly closed my eyes. My hearing strengthened and I heard Killian’s heartbeat even clearer… and my own. Mine was faster than his.

  I inhaled a raspy breath that broke from the shaking in my chest.

  “How did you handle being raped?” I asked in a quiet voice.

  I slowly opened my eyes and stared down at the GameCube controller. I went over every button and its colour, the joystick, the curves and shapes. I had to tune out my hearing because the thumping of my heart was pounding against my ears, but the room was so quiet there was no escaping it.

  Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. I could hear the squishing of my blood as my heart contracted around it, like squeezing the last of something out of a bottle.

  “I had someone strong for me,” he said after a long silence. “Someone who was kind and caring, patient and attentive. Someone who didn’t judge me when I went crazy for a while.”

  I nodded and continued to stare at the controller, and then my hands.

  “Kessler gave me back to Nero when I refused to tell him where Perish was, and when torturing me and Chally didn’t work –” I began to say, my voice dead on my lips, “– Nero chained me to his bed in his bedroom in Cardinalhall. The first day he had me he fucked me; he laughed the entire time. As he came he bit my neck and killed me. He killed me many times.” The words were coming from my mouth, from me, but I didn’t recognize the person speaking. “He did things to me I don’t think I can… can ever tell you. He had me there for weeks and he fucked me at least five times every day. Even if I was dead. If he was tired… he made me do things to his cicaro.” My brow knitted and the controller slipped from my hands and landed on the floor with a loud clunk. “He…” I looked over at Killian, and saw a look of such unimaginable horror on his face it stole the words from my mouth. He was staring at me, his mouth slightly open, his eyes wide. He’d had looks of horror on his face before, but never one like this. I don’t think this one had a name. “He drugged me with ressin and made me fuck his cicaro. I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

  Killian just stared. I turned from him and looked back down at my hands. “I had never felt such desperation, such… helplessness. I’d never been so beaten down, so broken. I thought I couldn’t be broken. Eventually, I chewed my hand off… to escape from the cuffs. He found me, pinned me, fucked me… but… but Reno came, Caligula and Nico too; Elish was flying the plane. I went into rages once I was free from him, but when I was with Elish, he helped me through it.” I pursed my lips tight and felt a flicker of pain. I missed Elish. “Elish and me… we bonded a lot. He… shared shit with me and I stopped going into those rage trances and… and being so worried about you helped distract it, but…” I looked around our house. “I think now that we’re at peace and everything is calm… this shit is coming back. I thought I was okay but… but I’m not. I’m not okay.”

  I felt a hand rest on mine and I let him hold my hand in his. “No one can walk away from that unscathed, Reaver,” Killian said to me. “No one.”

  “I know,” I whispered back. I looked down at his hand and felt a jolt of unease. I tried to push it down but I started to feel uncomfortable. I had shared a lot with him and there was only so far I could go. I didn’t think… I don’t think I wanted to talk about this anymore. I had told him, that was enough.

  I got up.

  “Baby…” Killian whispered.

  “I need to go patrolling,” I said to him, my words coming out quickly and without pause. “Don’t… don’t mention this. You know what’s going on but… that’s enough, okay? Don’t ever bring this up again.” I grabbed my jacket and my M16, and before he could say anything back to me I opene
d the front door and walked out into the night.

  Chapter 10

  Elish

  The terrain in front of him was rolling, but the roads were in good enough condition for the dirt bike to keep an acceptable speed. In some places the ash had coated the road, and the sparse rains had pounded it down so the wind would no longer blow it away. But eventually there would be an overpass or a row of medians, one in front of the other like slaves chained together, so he never lost the highway.

  Elish didn’t stop, and because of that he had to eat sparingly. Every time he passed a building or a gas station with its colourful sign broken and stained, he kept on going down the road. The prospect of making another mile before dark overshadowed the rumbling in his stomach, and the fatigue that was continuously pouring sand onto his eyelids. There had even been an incident the night before when three ravers had found him and gave chase, but he kept on driving forward, the headlight off and only his night vision giving shapes to the greywastes in front of him. Eventually he lost them, and didn’t stop until morning when the heat gauge on the dirt bike started to walk amongst the red.

  And even then he had slept only two hours in a fast food restaurant. He slept amongst metal and plastic chairs and benches, and colourful balls strewn amongst the rubble and dust; their old home a child’s ball pit in a separate area. For reasons unknown to him, he picked up a yellow ball and carried it with him. Perhaps it reminded him of the cicaro’s eyes, or perhaps he was just sleep deprived and acting odd.

  That afternoon, after pushing the dirt bike the entire morning, Elish noticed something that made him stop. He stopped the dirt bike and left it idling and jumped off to check it out.

  There was no outward expression of relief, but inside a flicker of light flared. He was looking at disturbed greywaste ground beside a row of medians that separated the road from a steep incline. When he looked closer he saw brown blood stains, smears, and…