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

by Quil Carter

  I thought it would be over after that, but it wasn’t.

  I couldn’t stop watching him. I enlisted Sanguine to gather all the information I could and I poured over it, and when I got that Mp3 player in his possession it became an unhealthy obsession.

  And I hated him for making me feel this frenzied, just as much as I hated myself.

  I was foolish and blind for not seeing he was a chimera, but it was what it was.

  Elish lowered the bottle and tried to hide the despair on his face, the memories of Jade leaving another painful laceration on his heart. He wanted to stop himself from thinking of the boy, but yet he treasured every memory he had of him.

  Perhaps it was he who was the masochist now.

  “So do you?”

  “Hm?”

  Max snorted in amusement. “I thought you were off in lala land. You didn’t hear a word I was saying.”

  “You obviously weren’t saying anything important,” Elish responded dryly, and at this, the amused snort from Max turned into a laugh. It was a common occurrence for people to mistake Elish’s bluntness for sarcasm.

  “I was asking if you wanted an energy bar. Try and soak up all that liquor you’re having for breakfast, or lunch, I guess,” Max said, and he offered him a Dek’ko Speedbar. Elish took it. He wasn’t hungry, he no longer had an appetite, but he received it anyway and took a bite. It was apple and cinnamon… Elish washed it down with more wine.

  That evening they made camp in what had once been a mechanic’s shop. Elish sat away from the group with his own fire. There were two things that he had requested when he’d paid Robyn to take him to their destination. One: The amount he was paying would mean he was free to do whatever he wanted without anyone bothering him to contribute, even if it was nothing but sleeping and drinking. And two: No one would harass him into being social. So far it had worked out well, it was the evenings that seemed to be the hardest, even when he was drunk.

  Elish watched the flames burn the boards they had stripped from a house nearby. A metal rack with a half-eaten deer steak was beside him, cut up to pieces for him to slowly pick at. He also had the Cilo guitar near, but he hadn’t been playing anything on it.

  But if there was one positive thing about alcohol, it was that it stripped one of their inhibitions, and that coupled with the fact that Elish no longer cared about anything, found him watching the flames, and debating drawing a mournful song out of what had been the guitar he had given Killian; found by Caligula and Nico a month before. Elish had told them about the resort town and the massacre he and Reaver had found. While out searching for Kessler they’d scavenged it, and had returned several items that had belonged to the two.

  Caligula had handed it to him with his own look of sadness on his face. Sadness for a father who was still missing, and a second father who was driving himself into neurotic insanity with worry. Elish, of course, hadn’t told Caligula that Reaver had taken Kessler’s head with him.

  If it wasn’t for Kessler, Jade would’ve never suffered such mental damage from his empath abilities, and further physical damage from the bullet that scorched his skull. Elish hoped he was burning with Reaver. If he could be without that bull-headed man for twenty years he would be just fine with that. Caligula as well. He loved his father but there were no getting away from the benefits of his absence. Caligula was practically running the Legion with his boyfriend Nico.

  “Where’s Jade, Uncle?” Caligula had asked him, looking confused. He knew Elish wouldn’t go anywhere without Jade, not after his time being stranded in the greywastes.

  “Jade’s dead,” Elish replied simply, his words dying before they even left his lips. He then walked past Caligula, Sid, and Theo who had come to the hangar to greet him, and went directly into Kessler’s room to gather what he would need for his departure.

  “Jade… died?” Caligula said behind him. He sounded shocked. “I’m… I’m sorry, Uncle Elish.”

  Not as sorry as I.

  Elish’s mind continued to swirl inside of his head, and his world did as well every time he broke his gaze from the flames. He had been drinking all day and all evening, and it was only nipping pieces of Intoxone that was keeping him from becoming a slobbering mess. The greywasters he was travelling with were in awe of how much he could drink and still remain standing, and how he never suffered from a hangover the next morning. Skytech was good for many things, and one of those things was inventing the cure for the hangover.

  He heard footsteps behind him and ignored them; even when they came closer and the person they belonged to sat down beside him, he continued to stare at the flames with his bottle of wine in his hands.

  “I gotta say… I’ve never seen someone as sad as you,” a voice he recognized as Max said. He sounded tipsy but not drunk. “What’s your story, man?”

  Elish reached down and grabbed a piece of siding and laid it on top of the fire. “I paid your mother a lot of money to not have to answer such questions.”

  Max made an amused noise. “Yeah, I know.” There was a sound of rustling and a paper bag full of assorted candies was put on his lap. “Something from our stash. I have a huge sweet tooth, and I always crave sugary stuff when I’m drinking too.”

  Elish looked down at the candies and shook his head, but found himself picking out a gummy green mint in the shape of a leaf and biting it in half.

  “Yeah, those are my favourite too. Mint survives really good in the Fallocaust,” Max said, further attempting to push conversation. “Mom says we’ll be in Mariano by tomorrow early evening. Are you sticking with us all the way until Mantis?”

  “I am,” Elish responded and ate the last piece of candy.

  “What’s for you there?”

  Elish was silent and Max’s words faded into the darkness, but the night had its own noise: the snapping and crackling of the fire, the hoppers chirping in the yellow grass that surrounded them, and once his chimera hearing automatically tuned itself thanks to the quiet, he could hear Max’s heartbeat as well. The strong heartbeat of a young man just entering adulthood, one that beat blood into muscles just twitching to show their strength, and a brain that seemed overly eager to make every mistake imaginable.

  “More bad memories,” Elish finally responded, his tone barely above a whisper. He took out another opiate cigarette and lit it with his lighter. Then, for reasons he didn’t know, he offered one to the boy, and handed him the lighter as well.

  “If you’re running from something… why are you running back to the bad memories?” Max asked. Elish felt a twinge of surprise at his words; they were more sage-like than he would peg on a boy his age.

  “Because right now memories are all I have,” Elish found himself saying back. “The good and the bad. I find myself wanting to be in the places I last felt happy, and this is one of the only ones that were not incinerated.” He took a long drag of his cigarette and heard a flick of the lighter, followed by a blue ember flaring like a one-eyed beast staring at him in the darkness.

  After more silence, Elish took the cigarette out of his mouth and drank another mouthful of wine. He hadn’t had any Intoxone since they had made camp, and the warmth that was making his head swim was lubricating his tongue. The only comfort he had was that at least these greywasters had no idea who he was. James the greywaster may have been Elish with a panama hat on for many years, but it looked like he was developing a personality outside of Elish’s own.

  Or who Elish had once been.

  “You… you’re wearing a wedding ring.” Elish’s jaw tightened as those words hit his ears. “Did you lose her… him?” A probing question that grazed on so many raw wounds if Elish was half the man he used to be he would’ve backhanded the idiot greywaster across the garage.

  But tonight, he felt an odd need to speak of the boy. Jade had been a constant presence inside of his head and yet unknown to everyone around him. It felt like he’d only ever existed inside of Elish’s own mind. It seemed a shame that the rest of the world did
n’t know just what a diamond he had uncovered. Every living person should be weeping for the loss of that boy; it was an injustice that they didn’t know him, didn’t miss him.

  “Him,” Elish responded. “His name was Jade. He died last week.”

  Max lowered his cigarette and Elish saw smoke blow out of his mouth. “Shit,” Max mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too,” Elish said. “I’m sorry for a lot of things.”

  “Well… you should be careful with all the drinking you’re doing,” Max said. “My mom lost my dad when I was ten and she drank and almost died. You shouldn’t die, cause…” Max let out a dry laugh. “I don’t know you so I can’t give you any reasons. You have cool eyes, so there’s that.”

  “Yes. Wouldn’t that just be the cruellest of jokes?” Elish murmured to himself and he took another drink. “I lose everything because I was so determined to kill a man who scorned me, and the story ends with me being the one to wish death.” Elish ran a hand down his face and shook his head. “These memories I go over… things I thought I would be able to blame on others, my brothers, my master, my husband, or my dark assassin and his lover, even the scientist. I see that shining string attached to it, and when I follow the strand of silk… it leads me to my own spider web.”

  Elish inhaled from his cigarette and paused, before slowly blowing it out of his mouth. “Every seed I had planted in this garden, I connected them together through little silk threads of silver. I grew my seeds, my plans, some extending decades, and as they grew I connected each seed to strengthen my final product. I united Sanguine and Jack, and connected Jack to me to secure both of them. Then Nero and Ceph, Grant and Theo. And when I was able to, I wrapped my thread around seeds not even planted: I gave Lycos to Greyson to grow Reaver. An empty shell to Jeff and Kristin to grow his lover, and during all of this, I planted more seeds, wrapped around their shoots more strings, and I was the spider looming over them, content in my web, forever weaving and planting… weaving and planting.” Elish looked down at the burning ember of his cigarette. “I looked down on my subjects and tended to them. I manipulated their growth and made sure they grew in the direction I wanted, with the strength I wanted… and I watched the green break the black soil and reach to the heavens… and I waited for my garden to bloom, so I could not only kill the other spider, but live my life in the paradise I constructed.

  “Then… I met Jade.” Elish closed his eyes, seeing the red of the fire through his eyelids. “And because I was in my web above them, they were able to witness me fall from grace, onto the ground below, and every time I tried to climb back to my web that boy called me to him and I could not help but walk into his cupped palm.” Elish opened his eyes and the flames lit the violet rubies inside. “I stayed with him and tried to tend to both. I tried to be with him and continue to nurture a decades old hate, an obsession, and I tried until I unknowingly set my own garden on fire with him too broken to save himself. And now I am here, and in those ashes I have only a dead husband and a garden reduced to nothing but smoke and ash, and an infestation of new spiders, wanting what remains of my garden for themselves.

  “And since I was the one pulling the silver strings… I was the one who built and grew this tinderbox in the first place… I only have myself to blame, just like the greywaster said. In the end, I am the architect of my own destruction, and all I have now… is a garden of spiders.”

  “Wow,” Max said after there had been silence between the two of them. “I have no idea what you just said, but you should seriously write poetry, or a book, or something.”

  Elish stared into his bottle and took a drink. “I was never one to speak aloud my feelings, let alone put them on something tangible for people to read and judge me on.”

  Max shrugged and reached over to take a handful of candy. “I guess, but it helps to get it all out, doesn’t it? I write songs but I can’t play music; maybe on the road we can make music for my songs. That might be fun.”

  “I guarantee you that will never happen,” Elish said coolly. “The guitar belonged to… a boy I once knew.”

  “Your husband?”

  Elish shook his head. “No. He was someone I created for someone else. Both of them are dead now, also my fault.”

  Max whistled. “Sorry, man, but it really sounds like you fucked up.”

  Elish was quiet, but he took another drink. The world around him continued to get blurry with the more alcohol he consumed, but it helped with the boy’s prying voice. He wondered to himself just why he hadn’t told him to piss off yet, but at least it could be blamed on the alcohol.

  “You shouldn’t come out here to die though,” Max continued. “And it looks like that’s what you’re trying to do. You know… it’s really fucking dangerous here, up north. We’re near the plaguelands, and not only that, the ravers are starting to learn guns after they got taught to put in Geigerchips. I’d like to meet the asshole who taught them that.”

  Elish didn’t show it on his face, but inside he smiled just slightly.

  “I couldn’t die even if I wanted to, Max,” Elish said, and he handed him another cigarette. “I’m the immortal prince of the dead world, who fled my home and my position of power to wander the greywastes in my own self-made misery.”

  Max laughed, and to Elish’s distaste, the boy patted his knee in a friendly manner. “See. You need to write a book, or travel from town to town to tell stories. You’re an interesting guy to listen to, James. I bet you have a lot of stories.”

  “You have no idea,” Elish mumbled. Then he handed the candy back and took back his lighter. “I’m going to sleep now. Go bother someone else.”

  The next afternoon found Elish sitting in the bosen-pulled cart. It was a hot day outside, and a second thick canvas had been draped over the first one in an effort to provide some shade. It was sweltering however and Elish found himself sitting up against the back of the cart wearing nothing but a pair of airy cloth pants he’d bought off of Robyn’s stock of clothing she was selling, and a pair of Adidas sandals. He’d even paid the woman a dollar to cut his hair even shorter than it had been previously, and with an electric razor she used on her son’s hair she had been able to do just that. Elish’s new haircut resembled Reaver’s now which he was okay with. The back of it was cut short but he’d left his bangs long, long enough for him to tuck them behind his ears when they got annoying. His hair had never been this short, at least not since he was pulled from his steel mother.

  He no longer recognized the ghost staring back at him when Robyn had given him a mirror to check out his haircut. He looked tired and defeated, his face holding many lines and his lids lavender like they’d been bruised. The only thing that was himself were his purple eyes, and the most he did for cleanliness now was brushing his teeth. Water was rare in the summer, and he had been too drunk and low to bathe when they did come across the occasional river.

  Elish ran his hand over the back of his head; it was a weird feeling to have the air on his neck. If Jade saw him now his jaw would’ve hit the floor. Hell, if anyone saw him now their jaws would hit the floor.

  Elish sighed and looked towards his bottle of vodka. He had taken some Intoxone an hour ago after he had started to lose his mobility, but after revealing too much to the greywaster boy the previous night he was feeling a new low. The boy had been by to visit him several times in the morning and afternoon, and now seemed to think they were friends. Elish wanted to be left alone and the boy’s smiling face only made him feel worse. Even though he looked nothing like Jade, his face was round, his eyebrows ungroomed and thick, and his short hair showed off a lumpy skull, he was still a young man, and right now that was enough to make Elish fall deeper into the chasms of darkness.

  So on this note, Elish did something he debated every morning but always ended up grabbing the liquor bottle instead. Since he had the haircut to go with it, he decided to channel more of the boy who was now burning for twenty years, and unlocked his metal box to reveal, not only b
undles of one hundred dollar bills wrapped in blue elastics, but Ziploc bags bulging with drugs, and even syringes and heroin. The latter had surprised Elish, and on shifting feet Caligula had revealed Kessler’s secret relapse on heroin after losing Timothy.

  His life was already a mess, and the opiates had always taken the edge off of things. Elish crushed up some yellow Dilaudid pills with the help of the vodka bottle and the top of the metal box, and used a hundred dollar bill to inhale them. He then made himself comfortable, and hoped that they would, at least temporarily, take the edge off of what was now his life.

  Right now I would be feeding Jade. Mixing up the powdered meal supplement with milk and putting it into a large plastic cylinder to be pushed directly into his stomach.

  And if it was before I found out that King Silas was in Aras, we would be sitting down for lunch at the table. If he got to decide the food, which I let him if I was busy with work, he’d usually choose hamburgers and potato fries. If it was me, I’d order soup and a sandwich, and if I was busy, a wrap I could eat while I worked.

  At dinner I was more apt to force him to try something new, something his Morosian nature would make him cock his head to the side at. I had turned him onto coconut curry, and chicken alfredo, or white spaghetti as he called it.

  Elish felt a sad smile come to his lips. I remember the first time he tried sushi. He ate one bite of it and his eyes lit up; he declared it the best thing he’d ever tasted. Even for a chimera it was a treat, since fish were rare and the seaweed paper needed to be scavenged. But every time I came home with it he danced around me like a cat when you shook the bag of treats.

  Seeing Jade discover just how good it could be to be a chimera had been an unexpected joy in Elish life. Elish had been raised a prince and had enjoyed the benefits of being one his entire life. Jade stepping into his own as a chimera, and as Elish’s cicaro had given him a new appreciation for a world and a life he had grown accustom to.