by Quil Carter
So I closed it, and rooted through the cupboards until I found some Dek’ko fruit rollups and sandwich cookies, basically Oreos. I knew there were no health benefits in the flavoured wax or chemical cookies, so I used the dial-a-sengil phone and asked them to go to the restaurant and get us some pasta.
I put the phone down and turned to go back to the hallway, but then I saw Garrett leaving the bedroom with a pained look on his face.
“He… wants me to leave,” Garrett said slowly.
I shrugged and started walking towards the exit.
“No, Reno… he requested you stay with him.” Garrett’s left cheek sunk in and I knew he was chewing on it. “If you…” He glanced behind him and grabbed my hand. “Let’s go,” he whispered.
I pulled my hand away and shook my head. “No,” I said blandly. “If he wants to talk to me that’s fine. I don’t care either way.”
Garrett looked at me like I’d just broken off our engagement, but then the horror turned to intense worry, and finally, acceptance. “You’re sure?” He glanced to the coffee table and I did too. I saw Silas’s remote phone resting beside drug residue and an empty glass pipe. “If you need me just call. I’m going to visit Elliot, Nero’s sengil. He’s living several floors down. I’ll… I’ll come running, okay?”
I nodded, a part of me wanting Silas to just kill me and end it. “Okay, Gare.”
Garrett kissed my cheek and hugged me tightly. “I’ll be close. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I said, my tone hollow. “Talk to you soon.”
The door closed behind him and I stood in the living room wondering what to do next. Eventually I cracked open one of the fruit rollups and walked to Silas’s door.
“Hey… so here I am,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. I took a bite from the flavoured candy and poked my head in.
Silas was curled up on the bed with… aww, man, he had Perish’s stuffed Pokémon in his arms, the charmander. He was laying on his side with the orange thing clutched to him, that haunted look on his face.
All I got was a blink. I continued to eat, leaning against the frame of the door and just standing there like an idiot. I don’t know if it was awkward for him, but it was to me. I didn’t want to be here. I still remember the anger twisting his burnt face when he told me, in the cruellest fashion, that Reaver and Killian were dead, that if Reaver did have a moment of consciousness before he suffocated or burned, he’d see Killian’s scorched bones.
Because Silas had made the lab explode.
You would think that even these memories would draw up some despair, but I just swallowed the sugary goop and fished out a Dek’ko Oreo out of the bag.
Then I heard the faintest, feathery knock on the door, no doubt our pasta. I turned without a word and left.
“Don’t leave me,” a weak voice whimpered behind me.
I paused, and realized a lump was forming in my throat. I shook my head and pushed it down, remembering just who this monster was, and walked back to the doorway. “I ordered us some food,” I said to him awkwardly. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” the little mouse holding the charmander said. I nodded and greeted the sengil, one who I’m guessing pulled the shortest straw from the terrified look on his face, and grabbed us some forks and poured us two glasses of ChiCola. I put it all on a serving tray and walked into his bedroom.
“Can I turn a light on?” I asked. He not only had the blinds drawn but two large canvases were covering the floor to ceiling window on the right, and the regular, but still big, window on the left.
“Okay,” Silas said. He closed his eyes from the glare of the light, so I threw a dirty t-shirt over it to reduce the brightness.
I walked to a white fabric chair and dragged it over to the bed, but when I motioned to sit on it Silas raised his head. “Sit on the bed?” he said. Not in a demanding way, he said bed in a higher tone, like he was asking if I could.
I had already taken off my shoes on entry so I sat on the bed, smelling heavily of stale sweat and holding a few darkened patches which I suspected were blood stains. I crossed my legs and was surprised when Silas started moving. He sat up, put the charmander beside a stuffed leopard and a stuffed grey cat and slumped over, his elbows resting on his knees.
This was just bizarre, but I think it might’ve been less bizarre for me than it would’ve been for someone else, even some of his family. I’d woken up next to this man several times when he was living in Aras. I’d made him oatmeal for breakfast, but he called it mush, saying it was just what his family called it. I’d even started saying mush after he left.
I handed him a fork and opened up the container of spaghetti. There were two but I’d only brought one into the room. I wasn’t expecting Silas to eat, and if we finished it we’d break open the other one. There were also two pieces of garlic toast. I’m guessing they must’ve known it was for the king, because it was loaded with garlic and dripping with butter. There was an overabundance of ground bosen in the sauce too, and it was covered in parmesan cheese so thick it was like we’d just had our first snowfall.
Silas stared at the food as I began to eat. I didn’t have an appetite; I only ate when Garrett was with me and that was because if I didn’t his eyes would start to well. I didn’t want to spread my misery, so I’d eat for him.
Now… now I was eating in hopes of encouraging this living, breathing monster to eat as well. The man who released the sestic radiation that killed Killian, and sentenced Reaver to a fate just as bad. Not to mention the terror he’d been spreading amongst the family for fuck knows how long.
I should be smug and enjoying seeing the king fall from grace. He had caused so much misery to the family who loved and worshipped him. Who still protected him and took care of him, even after he’d murdered their partners, and tortured them at times. Just like I should’ve been happy to see Elish lose the love of his life through his own selfishness, his own inability to just let things go, and to stop this plan of his that was deteriorating in his hands. It was because of him, and his obsession with figuring out how to kill immortals, that sent Reaver and Killian on that mission to Krieg and eventually Falkvalley.
But that just wasn’t me. Unlike Reaver and so many other chimeras, I didn’t take joy in other’s misery. I just felt sad all around. I knew Silas was a monster but I didn’t have it in me to feel satisfaction over their pain.
So maybe that was why I twirled noodles and sauce on my fork and handed it to him. “If I have to eat, you gotta,” I said simply. “I’m not hungry either, and I’m making an effort.”
Silas, surprisingly, took the fork of food and put it into his mouth. He even chewed sadly, gazing at the food with green eyes full of melancholy, and swallowed.
“You’ve lost a lot of weight,” Silas said, his voice still a fragile shadow. He picked up his fork and slowly speared a chunk of ground bosen with cheese on it. He stared at it in a way that made it seem like he was being asked to run a marathon in ten seconds, not take a bite of food.
“Yeah, you have too,” I said. I started to make a spaghetti sandwich out of the garlic bread. “I’ve kind of lost the will to live, to be honest.”
Silas only nodded at this and forced himself to take another bite. The conversation died after that, and the room returned to its original silence. It wasn’t one of awkwardness though, not like it had been before. It seemed like a natural state for the two of us. We were each drowning in our own misery, a slow drowning that had spanned months, and we had just floated past each other and had decided to drown together for the evening.
I had once hated silences. Reaver had loved sitting in silence with me but it would drive me nuts. I always felt like I had to entertain him, make him laugh since that had originally been the only reason he’d hung out with me as a toddler. I could make him laugh and I felt special because Leo said I was the only one. So when he wasn’t laughing it felt like I wasn’t doing my job, and there was no reason for me to be there.
When I had eaten as much as I could convince myself to eat, and Silas had finished pecking at the food, I put the lid on the container and decided it was cold enough in this room to just put the food and the forks onto his dresser. Then I sat back down on the bed and wondered just what was supposed to happen next.
Silas picked up the charmander, held it to his chest, and stared at the blue comforter of the bed. I just watched him. There was nothing else to do. The television in the corner of the room was off, and the only thing that changed in this dark, sweat-smelling room was the burl clock on the wall.
When I had been there for a solid hour, Silas’s eyes started to droop, but every time his head nodded he jolted himself awake and opened his eyes wide like he was trying to prevent sleep from taking him.
I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t just letting himself sleep. But then I became aware again of the black circles under his eyes, and the dead look, and decided to ask him. “Hey, how long have you been up for?”
Silas didn’t react to my voice, even though it shattered the dome of silence we’d both been sitting in for quite a long time now.
“Off and on,” Silas replied quietly. “Nightmares… you know… I see them.”
I nodded. I could relate to that. I found my reply was more honest than I wanted it to be, but it was what it was. “I wake up and for a moment I forget, and I feel okay… then…”
“… then you remember,” Silas whispered.
I nodded again, the lump coming back. “And I just fucking… cry.” I swallowed the lump to try and prevent it from rising up. “Or I used to. I think I’m broken now… I don’t cry anymore.”
Silas looked up and made direct eye contact with me, and at this, the rock in my throat got bigger and it started to hurt. I didn’t like looking into his eyes, it was making me feel things I no longer thought I could feel. He was just radiating despair, a kind of anguish I don’t think a normal man could project. Like his immortality had given him this new level of emotion that us mortals, or even young immortals, didn’t know were possible to feel.
I had to look away, it was too much for me to handle. How was it humanly possible for someone to be this sad? How had the fabric of the universe not collapsed from this intensity? He ended the world because of his sadness, and now I was worried that he was going to end the universe.
“I cried in the beginning,” Silas said to me. “Now, like you, I don’t. I find myself… scared, Reno. I’m terrified.”
Caught off-guard, I glanced at him again; this time trying to look more at his lips and short beard than his eyes. “Scared? Why?”
A small exhale sounded, and he hugged the Pokémon to him. “Because I have no escape. I can’t kill myself like any man feeling this hopelessness would do. I’m forced to live this life I no longer wish to live. I realized, Reno… I want to die, and I can’t. I’m stuck in this deep sepulchre of loneliness, of isolation. There is no way out.”
His words struck me, the silence and ambience of the room making each syllable amplify and sink into me more than they ever would during normal conversation. Not only did I hear them, I felt them, and the despair that chased the tones like wild dogs.
And when they had permeated me, saturated my skin to my heart, I felt an overwhelming swell of sadness. I… felt something.
But this new influx of feelings was nothing to celebrate. I wanted to continue my walking death; I had swallowed enough anguish. I only wanted to feel nothing.
This new wave of empathy had me thinking of a solution for this broken king. “Can’t you just get them to cut off your head or something?” I asked. “Make it so you’re dead for a long time?”
Silas shook his head. “That’s worse. The white flames are no sanctuary. I have died enough times that it is like being in a dream. It would be worse… it would be the nightmares I already experience but I’d be unable to escape them. I wish for… nothing, for a reprieve of this miserable existence.”
“Wow,” I whispered. I made a move and put a hand on his crossed pant leg, and when he didn’t shift it away, I rubbed it. “Doesn’t that mean you just need to do everything you can to make your life better?”
Silas looked down at my hand. “There’s no point. All who I have loved are dead, or will emerge decades from now with a blackness in his heart that I will never be able to extinguish. Sky is dead; Sky isn’t coming back.” His face twisted and his eyes shut tight. “His clone did not come and save me like I had created him for… he came and took what shreds of Sky I had left. He… he… destroyed me one last time.” My jaw locked; the lump in my throat tightened and burned, and travelled up in the form of throbbing heat. I tried to swallow. I tried to force it down, but I found myself on the verge of begging him not to mention Reaver and Killian. I couldn’t hear it; I didn’t want to feel more pain.
Silas opened his eyes and looked at me. “You’re in anguish,” he whispered.
I held a hand over my mouth and choked. “Don’t talk about him,” I begged, my voice several octaves higher than normal from my own grief. “Please don’t do this to me. I… I know you hate him, but I can’t hear it. Please, Silas.”
Silas’s green eyes, like a patch of grass in the middle of a coal bed, looked not just at me, but into me, deep into my heart and soul. I could feel him probing, seeking and sifting, slowly stripping off what little armour remained to render me emotionally naked. An intense feeling of vulnerability hit me, and a single tear rolled down my face.
“I must tell you,” Silas whispered, his tone dead, absolutely dead. He raised a hand, and with those intense eyes still drinking me in, snatching me from the caves that I’d used to hide myself, he rested it on the side of my head, and cradled it. “When we entered the lab, he went to Killian, I went to Perish. I was overwhelmed with grief when I saw him. And when Reaver walked in and kneeled down and saw he was dead, I crawled into Reaver’s arms, and begged him to hold me. And he did.” I didn’t hide the surprise at this but I didn’t speak, there was nothing in me to form the words. “I noticed Sky’s O.L.S was gone and I panicked; I was terrified. That O.L.S was my key to implanting the clone with Sky’s personality.” He was telling me these things in such an empty tone. You would think this recollection would draw out some sort of emotion, but it was like he’d completely separated himself from the person and people he was talking about. “I looked up and I saw Killian, beaten and bruised, hair missing from the plaguelands’ radiation, he was holding the O.L.S.”
Another pause.
“He ate it in front of me, Reno, and when I lunged at him… Reaver held me back, whispering taunts in my ear as he kissed my neck, and he made me watch Killian destroy it.”
Was he… telling the truth?
When I looked back into Silas’s eyes, I knew he was. Because as he stripped me down to nothing, I realized he was doing the same to himself. He was taking off the metal coating that had covered him like a reinforced fort, and baring himself to me without strings, without alternate motives.
I was… I think I was seeing Silas.
The real Silas. Why was he showing me this side of him? Why me?
“I was in such grief, Reno,” Silas continued. “I just remember screaming and screaming, and I realized when it was too late that I was releasing radiation. The next thing I knew there was an explosion, from the concentrated radiation. It didn’t affect me, but when the building started to burn with orange flames, they seared my skin like anyone else’s.” His hand dropped, and his distant, lost gaze appeared again. “Please believe me… I didn’t mean to do it. I never meant to kill them. It was an accident. I was mad from grief… as you saw when I found you and my family. I… I didn’t want them to die.” Silas’s
lower lip stiffened for a brief moment before, like he was physically exhausted, he slowly laid down and stared blankly at the wall. He said nothing else, but I still felt this thick connection between us, like he’d planted tendrils inside of my mind and they had rooted into the grey matter of my brain. I could mentally feel him inside of me, and with that, the continuous rush of despair.
But what he had said… when I had replayed that interaction with Silas in the plaguelands, it had driven hatred into my heart; one that doused all other feelings in gasoline, including my rage towards Elish. I had honestly thought he’d done it on purpose. I’d even flirted with the idea that he had trapped them inside.
As I looked at this fallen king, his sad state overshadowed all the wrong that he’d done, all the pain he’d caused; and if only for a fleeting moment, I wondered if everything that he’d ever done, was drawn from this same inner pain that he couldn’t escape. That no one in this world was perfect; as Elish had shown me from the anguish I’d seen on him from losing a teenage cicaro he’d only known for several years. This man openly judged and despised a king who’d been dealing with the loss of a boyfriend he’d been bound to for decades and decades; a man he’d experienced the end of the world with, and had rebuilt it with too.
Yeah. Silas had done terrible things. But once you stripped away every piece of armour he’d nailed to himself, and saw the naked huddled mass with that haunted stare… you realized that deep down inside, he was just a profoundly sad man.
“Silas?” I whispered. I swallowed to try and push down the tightness in my throat, but the burning behind my eyes was making them sting.
“Yeah?” Silas whispered back.
I sniffed. “You wanna cry with me for a while?”
Silas looked at me and I saw those green emeralds start to drown in their pools.