by Quil Carter
Then I met Jade, and I discovered my passion for it again, to the point where it was like composing a symphony making love to him. Our bodies and our minds became one living and breathing entity, and I no longer knew where I ended and he began.
And when we fucked it felt like I was becoming a god inside of him. I took that sadistic joy I felt making him suffer, and the frustration my feelings for him had filled me with, then I turned it around to transform it into the best sex I had ever had. I ravaged that body again and again, unable to quench my thirst even when he was pleading at me to stop, and each thrust I made drew more droplets of blood onto our sheets. The smell of his blood parched my throat and his screaming pleas were like oil to my hips. I had to draw out every bit of him until he was nothing but a crumpled heap of tender flesh, blood, and my own semen.
Elish’s teeth clenched, and he threw the vodka bottle across the room. It shattered against the cold fireplace and sprayed the apartment with shattered glass.
Max got up, his eyes wide and terrified, and he ran towards the door.
“No, stay,” Elish barked, his chest heaving and his heart racing. He clenched his hands to fists, and when he felt a stinging pain rip up his jaw he realized he was clenching that as well. “Do you know how to prepare heroin?”
He could feel the boy’s eyes staring at him.
“Y-yeah.”
“Then do it.”
And it was in the heroin that Elish finally found himself plunging so deep inside of the rabbit hole that he no longer knew what time was, let alone how many days had passed. His life now revolved around Max sticking him with needles and bringing small bits of food for him to eat. Then sometime in the black shroud that covered all of his memories like a thick film, Robyn came as well. He remembered little of when she first arrived, only her talking angrily to her son before she tried to rouse Elish off of the bed that he rarely left.
When he got up off of it, he saw that it was covered in orange caps; the caps that you broke off of the disposable needle and usually discarded. They had built up and surrounded his sour unwashed body like flowers being tossed over a gravestone. He remembered hearing the pitter-patter as several fell onto the wooden floor.
Half of the payment now, half when we get to Mantis, Elish had told her, and he knew it was for that reason that Robyn and Vince the mercenary were helping him down the stairs. He was almost too weak to even make it to the caravan, but he was with it enough to clutch his knapsack, which still held the metal box of his money and drugs safely inside.
When Elish was laying in the back of the bosen cart, he closed his eyes and called for Max to prepare himself more heroin, but the boy wouldn’t come. So instead he let the drugs already in his system take him away on their path of warmth and numbness. The drugs themselves felt like a coating of wax on his heart and his brain, a thick layer that repelled all the haunting thoughts that wished to pick at him.
But, in turn, he was so disconnected from the world around him that nothing mattered anymore. He didn’t eat or drink unless it was to get Robyn or the boy to stop bothering him and let him slip back into his half-conscious stupor; and it took all of his efforts to get off of the cart to relieve himself. No longer did he brush his teeth, or even change his clothes, he lay in the back of the cart with nothing but the haunting image of Jade to keep him company, and the accusing voices of those who had died because of his stubborn dream.
Sometimes the old Elish would come out, slamming his fists against his mind and roaring at him to get up and do something about the situation. The old him would fix his violet eyes on him and glare with a face thick with disdain and hatred. He would tell Elish that there was still hope.
There’s still Adler! he’d shout, a snarl rimming his lips. There is still one more!
Go with the original plan, before Mantis took him. Find Adler now, train him and correct his thinking. Send him to Silas with renewed hatred and get Silas into your hands. And while Adler is distracting Silas, find a way to quell the flames that Reaver burns inside of – and take Reaver for yourself. Temper his agony and rage over losing Killian, use it to your advantage and make him love you. You two will be unstoppable.
“Just stop it,” Elish said out loud, and inside the voice of his former self bellowed with an inhuman and frustrated rage, calling him weak, calling him a quitter, calling him worthless.
“You already lost everything,” Elish told him, and he picked up a needle full of brown liquid and tied off his arm with a telephone cord. “It’s over.”
It doesn’t have to be! You can still win this. You’ve planted so many seeds, you have backups for your backups. You have another born immortal, and you have two other Killians!
“None of this matters without Jade,” Elish whispered.
Then he dropped his hand from his arm and let out a slow breath. He shut his eyes tight, feeling the sadness inside of him start to break through the coating the drugs had covered him in. The haze was thinning, and there was only one cure for that.
Elish opened his eyes and picked up the needle, then looked down at his arm. All up his forearm were small red pocks, some of them swollen, and one even an open sore which Robyn had been treating for him. Only this arm had been cleaned, the rest of him was tanned now, grey and brown from the dirt and ash covering his skin. He hadn’t seen what he looked like, but he knew not even his brothers would recognize him now.
“Stop doing this to yourself…”
Elish froze, the needle sticking into his arm. He stared at it, his mouth closing tight over the sound of his voice. Sometimes he thought he’d forgotten it already, but when his husband spoke to him all of the memories came rushing back, and Jade’s young voice, that softened just for his master, came back to Elish with such clarity it was like listening to an old treasured song and realizing you still remembered the lyrics.
“Master… please stop.”
Elish felt his eyes burn, and this time he didn’t close them. He let them sting and sear his eyelids until a tear slipped down his cheek. Slowly he looked up and saw Jade looking back at him, sitting only a foot away with his legs crossed, an expression of intense sadness on his face.
“I can’t,” Elish whispered, his voice broke.
“But you can do anything,” Jade said back to him. “You’re my master, you’re unbreakable. You’re the strongest man I know, a figure of strength and power… what happened, Master?”
Elish blinked away another tear, and smiled at Jade sadly.
“You happened, maritus.”
Then the image of Jade, the one that looked so crystal clear inside of Elish’s mind, would disappear, and in his wake the pain would hit Elish like he’d slammed into a wall at full speed. And after looking into the boy’s eyes, and seeing that haunting look on his face, there wasn’t enough heroin, opiate pills, or alcohol in the world to dull the despair so organic inside of him.
“I think he wants to die, Mom…” Max whimpered. Elish felt a cold cloth on his head. He could hear a river rushing in the distance and the cart was tilted forward. The bosen must be unhitched to drink from the river and rest themselves.
How long until they reached Mantis? Not like it mattered. He was only exchanging one bed for the other, just this time he wouldn’t have Max to make him his heroin.
“There are many people in the greywastes wanting to live, hunny,” Robyn’s voice said. “And the world has no patience for those not willing to fight for their right to do so. You can’t help him if he’s done. All we can do is just get him to Mantis, so the two of us can keep surviving.”
Elish felt another hand on his head. “He’s lucky he came to me instead of some of the others. They’d eat him and break open that lock box he has. I hope he appreciates my honestly, your father never did. Jesus… you could fry an egg on that forehead.” He heard shifting around, and as his eyes drew themselves away from a memory soon lost in the black veiled haze, he could see Robyn kneeling over him, and Max beside her. “I wish your father love
d me as much as he loved his husband. I wonder what he was before he lost him? I heard from a merchant once they have mutants in Skyfall, but I’d never think one would wind up here. Or be so… normal.”
Normal? I was never normal…
“I think he’s an angel, Mom.”
Robyn laughed lightly. “There aren’t any angels in this world, Maxi. Mutants maybe, not no angels; I taught you better than that. Don’t give him any more of the heroin. James…” Robyn raised her voice. “James. I have some meat in a container for you.”
“Okay,” Elish answered. To their surprise, he shifted himself to the sitting position and saw a green container holding pieces of cooked meat with a sprinkling of salt. “How long until we arrive in Mantis?”
“Just one more day. I hope you didn’t blow my other half of the payment on all those drugs,” Robyn said as she crawled out of the cart. Behind her Elish could see thick yellow grass, a sloping hill, then a river that cut through the road. The road picked up again, but chunks had been taken out and deposited into the river bed, making artificial rocks that he could see several of the mercenaries perching on as they scrubbed their clothes. The smell of water was a break from his own rancid stink, but not enough for him to leave what had become his enclosed comfort.
“No,” Elish responded. “I was in possession of them before I departed.”
Max put a hand on his shoulder. “Come outside to the fire,” he said and shook it. “Please?”
Elish could see a look of sadness on the boy’s face, and when Elish shook his head, Max’s deep frown was added to it.
“I wrote a new song… I thought maybe we could try and put music to it,” Max said in a low voice. “I’ll make you a fire away from everyone else…”
Elish shook his head again. “No.”
Max gave a disenchanted sigh, he crawled backwards until he was out of the cart. “If you change your mind…” He let that hang in the air before he turned around and disappeared out of sight.
Elish didn’t feel like he wanted to, but his mouth was parched and his lips raw and peeling from lack of water and the dry heat they’d been experiencing. So after an hour of nodding off from the drugs, he finally left the oasis in the back of the cart, to the surprise of everyone and the smiling delight of Max. As Elish wordlessly walked past the camp to the river, he saw the boy get up and start gathering firewood.
He drank deeply from the river and washed his face and limbs. He unwound the bandage that was now on his arm and took a bottle of antiseptic from Robyn to douse it. It hadn’t gotten any better, but also it was no worse. It looked like a small pink crater halfway between his wrist and his elbow, with the edges white from the gathering pus and a ring of blood from when he’d disturbed it.
There was no want in him to bathe himself, he felt almost comforted by the dirt he was covered in, almost as if it was a protective barrier like the intangible one the drugs provided. So once his arms and face were washed, and his teeth brushed, he walked to his fire which had been made beside a shabby shed, and sat down on a liquor crate in front of the boy.
Max looked at him, but then he blushed and looked away. He was holding a spiral-bound notebook that was well-worn and there was a bottle of beer and his bag of candies on either side of him.
Max offered him the bag, a coy smile on his face. Elish gave him a questionable look, wishing in many ways he hadn’t decided to leave the back of the caravan.
“What is that look for?” Elish asked, and took a drink of water from a plastic bottle he’d filled.
“I don’t want you to think I’m stupid,” Max said. He busied himself thumbing through pages in what Elish realized was his music book. “I always get embarrassed when I show people my songs. Hey, I always wondered… if a song doesn’t have music, does that make it a poem?”
Elish shook his head no. “Music usually has a chorus, poems can but it is not necessary.”
“Oh, alright. Do songs have to have music?”
“No, but they should be sung.”
“Oh, alright,” Max said again. He folded the book in half and Elish could see the tips of his ears, ones that stuck out a lot over his buzz cut, redden.
“I don’t care enough to laugh at you,” Elish stated dully, and he decided to pull out a regular tobacco cigarette from inside of his jacket. It was wrinkled and bent to one side; he didn’t smoke these ones as often. “You might as well just do what you wanted to do so I can go back to the caravan.” He brought his lighter out and flicked it, but the butane had run out. Instead he leaned over and lit it on the flames before taking an inhale.
Max’s dirty sneaks, with grey laces knotted in several places, scraped the dirt as he shifted them. “Okay… just go back to the caravan if you don’t like it. Don’t get mad at me or anything…” The boy’s nose scrunched in nervousness and he looked behind Elish as if to make sure no one else was listening.
“Max…?”
Elish looked behind him and saw that all four mercenaries and Robyn were standing up in front of the fire. And as soon as he saw that they were on alert, he heard the sounds of a motor. He turned and walked to the front of the shed, and saw headlights on the road they’d been travelling on, and the silhouette of a vehicle.
As if he had been unceremoniously awakened from a deep slumber, the black fog that had surrounded him for what could’ve possibly been weeks, dissolved into the air like it had been nothing but a manifested phantom; and in its place an intense feeling of dread took him. He didn’t know if it were the reminders of the recollection of how Kessler and his legionaries had ambushed him, or just that he was no longer used to feeling dread or other anxious emotions, but he found himself acutely aware of his reality.
“Get the boy to safety,” Elish commanded. And all heads turned to him, looks of surprise on their faces like when he’d first stepped off of the caravan.
“The boy is fifteen, he’s not a child,” Vince said irritably. He walked to Max and handed him an assault rifle. “Cover my ass, alright?”
Elish’s teeth gritted when Max nodded. He glanced to Elish and the corners of his mouth rose.
“I told you, James. I’m not as nice as I look.” He walked past Elish, his notebook still in his hand, but Elish grabbed his shoulder.
“Hide, that’s an–” Elish stopped himself; the realization that he was no second-in-command, no prince of Skyfall, sat in his mouth like a bitter pill. “–do this for me.”
“Max!” Robyn called. “I need everyone here to make an impression on them. Everyone get your guns out and get to your places.”
Max winked at Elish and sprinted towards the campfire. He tossed his notebook into the back of the caravan as he did, and then he stood behind Vince. Elish watched him puff out his chest and hold the assault rifle to it, the sounds of the vehicle’s engine getting louder.
And behind the vehicle were two other single headlights – Elish realized with grimness that they were legion vehicles.
Did I not just have this scene play out? Elish debated his options, but felt like he was between a rock and a hard place. He didn’t want to hide like a coward, but everyone in the Legion would recognize him just by his purple eyes.
Then he almost gave out a cry of relief, but instead stifled it to a tense breath. He walked to the caravan, the vehicles approaching now changing tone as they went from the cracked and dirty pavement to the bumpy greywastes, and got a pair of sunglasses out from his backpack. He put them on, slipped a pistol into his pants and buttoned up the first three buttons on his jacket.
When he took his place beside Max, the headlights were now bathing all seven of them, and the engines were slaying the humid air and filling it with a tenseness that made Elish’s blood rise in temperature.
The lights turned off, all but one, and that brought another uncomfortable recollection to Elish. He found himself shifting his weight, then crossing his arms. Subtle signs of anxiousness that anyone who knew him would pick up on. If Silas were here to witness these mo
vements, he would’ve eaten them up with his eyes before pouncing like a lion would after picking out the sickest wildebeest in the heard.
But there was no one around him with such an ability to read physical signs of stress, and even if there were, all eyes had become fixed on the jeep that had stopped in front of them, and the four-wheelers idling on each side.
“Good evening,” a deep voice called. A man stepped out, dark skinned with a uniform that suggested he was a middle-ranking officer. Elish didn’t recognize him, but he had the authoritative air on him that made it obvious he had worked for his role. “I’m Senior Officer George Lowell of the Legion.” He smiled thinly before nodding to their weapons. “Please put away your weapons and gather all those in your group so we can address everyone.”
Elish had to restrain himself from automatically demanding the officer to tell them why he was here, why he was in the northern greywastes. Legionaries were rarely seen this far north, and the greywasters clustered to these northern towns for just that reason. Men and women hiding from legion recruitment, deserters, or wanting to dodge the census; there were many reasons to migrate towards settlements far out of the Legion’s hands. The monarchy had laid down laws for the greywastes, no slaving for one, but unless you were in a block or had a mayor who believed the same, it was only the Legion who upheld that law and killed those who broke it. That was why slaving was quite accepted here, and other things not allowed in any place that there was a legion presence.
“What’s this about?” Robyn asked.
Then the jeep’s engine cut out, and everything fell to an uncomfortable and heavy silence. The kind of unsettling silence that one heard when in the dark, but yet knew they were in a room teeming with people.
And when the senior officer spoke, it broke the muted air with such an unexpected ferocity that Elish jolted, his heart following suit. He had to shut his eyes, and when Elish wiped his head he realized he was sweating.