by Mason Sabre
Whatever the boy’s touch had done, it calmed Stephen enough he could let himself flop on the ground and just breathe. The pounding of his heart had stopped at least although the shadows of it echoed in his chest. He put his hand up. “I’m good.”
With a gentle touch, the boy took Stephen’s arm in his and then ran his fingers down the grooves of the tattoo. Stephen let him, mostly out of curiosity and some out of the fact he was too tired to ask him to stop. “What?”
Still no words, but the boy raised a hand and pointed at the Other Stephen had watched before.
“He isn’t dead.”
With no warning, the kid pushed a hand against Stephen's chest, and he choked out a gasp as his body spasmed. He coughed and had to roll to his side as his body heaved and he retched, but there was nothing to bring up. His insides didn’t stop though. They twisted and contracted and brought new waves of pain that stole his breath, and when he tried to scramble away to land in a panting mess on the ground, the boy let go and stood.
All Stephen could do was lie on the ground and attempt to regain some form of dismal control on his body and not lose himself to the pain that was pushing at the edges of his existence.
When the boy got to the Other, he turned to Stephen with an expectant expression.
“You expect me to get up?”
Even if the kid had said yes, it would have been tough shit. Stephen could no more get up than he could crawl his arse away from it all and leave. But it wasn’t what the boy wanted. Stephen’s fascination soon became horror as the boy went to a Human and tapped him on the shoulder. The Human spun, and for a moment, he seemed like he would see the boy, but what he looked at instead, was the Other. The one who was supposed to be working and wasn’t. He was kicking trash with his boot.
Fixating on him with a deep scowl, hatred burnt like it was something real, something tangible—an alarm system catching the bad guy, and instant anger flashed across his face and made him stiffen. The air grew too thick to breathe, and it pressed against Stephen. The Other backed up, and the boy moved back to where Stephen was.
“What did you do?”
Somehow, Stephen had forgotten the pain in his chest, and he let the child take his hand and bring him to stand.
There was a claw hammer on the ground, and the Human picked it up. It was the hammer the Other was supposed to have been using to break apart the trash. The Other moved again. Even he could see the intent on the Human’s face. Humans were bloodthirsty. They tried to portray themselves otherwise, but it was a lie, a facade. They needed only one reason to kill an Other, and it never mattered what that reason was. No questions. No hesitations.
This Human only needed to see the Other kick at the trash.
“No …” Stephen went to stop him, forgetting no one could see him. He clenched his fist.
Without warning, the boy yanked Stephen toward the Human and the Other. He tugged his hand, but just before they made it all the way, the Human raised the hammer and the Other only stared.
“Move … run …”
The Human smiled at the Other who wasn’t moving … he’d given up, but that didn’t stop the Human from smiling and feeling victorious.
As the hammer came down, the boy lunged and just before the hammer hit the Other in the face, the boy slammed his hand into the Other’s chest and yanked out a puff of fog.
Death came before the hammer even struck the Other’s face.
Chapter 15
The boy had been so young and vulnerable just a moment before, but it was amazing how fast that changed, Stephen thought to himself. Now, instead of that youth and the innocence he'd held, there was confidence and something else … something more precious and deeper emanated from him. Maybe it had been there before, and Stephen just hadn't noticed. His mind was too fragile, too focused on everything that had gone wrong, he couldn't see what was in front of him.
“What did you do?
The boy held the Other like a trapt creature who didn’t know he was trapt. His gaze darted around the place, but he didn’t give himself time to stop on any one thing to take it in. He hadn’t seen his body, and maybe that was good. The Human who had struck him hadn’t been content with just hitting him once. He’d smashed the claw side of the hammer into the Other’s head enough times that brain spewed out like scrambled egg in a pool of dark, wet blood. But even that hadn’t been enough. He’d had to spit on the Other, and when he had finished, anyone who had been watching him, went back to their jobs, pretending not to have seen.
Cowards. Everyone.
Segregation was the most excellent tool the Humans had … that and the majority existence, but their time would come. It would come hard and fast, and Stephen would stand over them and make sure he witnessed every ounce of pain they got back. It would be marvellous. Maybe one day they would stop being so afraid of Others, and they would realise it was just evolution at work, or perhaps they wouldn't, but they'd not be able to stop it.
The boy stood before Stephen with the Other as an offering.
“What do you expect me to do?” With no substance to him, Stephen could wish to help all he wanted, but wishes were as useless as good intentions without action.
The boy pushed the Other toward Stephen, and despite the fact he knew it was useless, he grabbed the man’s arm and directed him away from the mess on the ground. It was one thing to realise death had come knocking, but it was another to see it in its entirety and fully understand it. The face of the Other was beyond recognisable, but the Human was still parading his victory. Cruelty ran rife through him, so embedded that it was all he did to function. Dark pits of smoke swirled around him like clouds flowing with the tilt of the world, but that was the corruption, the disease known as evil.
The Human waved to the Others close by and signalled for them to come to him. They did. They moved together, synchronised in their obedience. They didn’t even need orders to know what to do, and while that alarmed Stephen, he realised that this must have occurred so many times it was just a well-rehearsed dance for them. Two Others grabbed the arms of their fallen friend, and another grabbed his feet. They dragged him across the yard to an already charred corner and pushed him into a ditch.
One man, a stocky man with dark hair, came away and wiped his hands down his ill-fitted vest. His hair was longer, tatty, but that mouth. He was from the bus two years ago. He’d sat a row up from Stephen on the other side. Stephen recognised him now and pieced together the image he remembered and the one in front of him. Prisoners, all of them. Their clothes matched but didn’t fit many of them. Vests and jogging pants and tatty shoes that not even the homeless would care for. “And I thought I got the shitty end of the deal.”
Maybe the last two years of Stephen's life had been a torturous hell, but those two years had also given him more to live for than his entire life so far. He'd found Helena. In all, they'd suffered and all the pain that had been brought to them, he would never go back. Not even with a question. She was made for him.
“Who are—” The Other before Stephen blinked and then tried to shake off the dizziness of death. Stephen gave him a moment to gather himself. His old life was nothing more than a cloak around him now, and it would take an effort to shake that off.
The man was thin in a way that wasn’t healthy, emaciated almost. He was the kind of man people would see at the side of the road and walk by, as he picked up scraps from the gutter just to get himself through. Even his own kind would walk past. What a terrible thought that was. Society … the very essence of the creation was to protect their own. They were meant to be a side that had the backs of all Others, but even greed and power had corrupted them and made it so only those who could afford to be part of them, would be worthy of protection and life.
What a different world it would be if it really were Others against Humans. It seemed to Stephen that the only real understanding came from those both sides cast away, strays and half-breeds.
“I’ll take it from here,” Stephen
said to the boy, for him more than anything and the need to feel like he was Stephen and not losing himself in this abyss of strangeness. “Come with me.”
He offered his hand out in a handshake gesture, but that wasn’t his intention. It was his need to pull the Other further away and get him to a distance where he could … he wasn’t sure, reap wasn’t the right word. He didn’t have a ball, maybe leave him to wander?
As their hands connected, a large pop burst in Stephen’s ear. “Jesus.” He slammed a hand against the side of his head and bowed, but he didn’t let go of the man. He screwed up his face in response to the crackles that spread through his head, then he feigned a yawn to make his ear pop back, but nothing happened. When he settled enough so he could stand himself straight again, the Human was in front of him. Stephen jolted at the sight. “You.” But the Human wasn’t looking at him. Not properly.
There was a Human on the ground by his feet. This was like the Other’s last moment, the moment before the Human hit him, but then it wasn’t quite. He'd never been in the soul's last moment before. Usually, when he reaped them and connected, what he saw was a defining moment or a snippet. Something that would sum up their lives and how they had lived. Of course, death was significant, but usually, it happened so fast that there was never enough time for it to imprint on the person's memories.
Darkness closed in like a creeping death that filled the alleyway where he stood. There was a house, but he didn’t recognise it, and his hands were wet and covered with blood … the blood he knew had come from the Human. He’d not taken that Human's life with any weapon, but the ones given to him at birth and he lifted his murderous hands in front of his face. The blood glistened and ran in drips down his wrist in dark red lines.
A light blasted him in the face, and in reflex, he put a hand up to shield his eyes.
“Stay where you are,” a deep voice bellowed, but he couldn’t see the owner beyond the glare, but he could feel their hatred coming through. It was a solid wall that pushed against him.
Humans.
Something hard and solid slammed into the backs of Stephen's knees, and before he landed on the ground, there was another solid hit to the back of his head, and he could do nothing to stop the momentum of his fall and the angle in which he landed on the Human.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in a small room. It was dark, and he huddled in the corner, angled just right so he could peer out through the slats of the door. Sleeves and trouser legs brushed at the top of his hair as he moved, and the metal clang of a hanger above him almost gave him away. He froze and let the sound dissipate before he moved again, but even then, his movements were slow, and he pressed his hand, palm flat, against the door and pushed it only slightly.
There was a woman in the actual room, on the other side of the door. She was young and pretty and oddly familiar, although Stephen knew he’d never laid eyes on her before. This was the Other, his memories. He pressed his face into the gap to get a better view. The wood obscured her, and by the angle, she stood in the room, but he needed to see her. He needed to see for himself.
The stench of the Human in the room with her was an acrid waft, and every part of Stephen clenched as he recognised the Human from the alleyway. Flashes of a wedding jumped into Stephen’s head, just glimpses of a happier time with the same woman. The Other’s wife, but now …
She spoke of money and freedom, and as Stephen dug into the mind of the Other he was blending with, stark realisation grew in his gut like a knife with ten blades. His wife … the other half of himself had fallen from the wagon, and god, she’d come out smelling of the Human shit and believing their lies. “When he is dead, we can leave?”
A curt nod from the Human and then a smile. He slipped his hand around hers and pulled her to him. “Not long now.”
Stephen’s heart cracked with every comment the pair made … every plan, every plot.
The Other had loved her; he’d believed in her.
When the Human left the room, Stephen emerged from the closet, and he almost smiled at the pathetic expression of his wife's understanding; he had heard everything.
“It’s not what you think,” she said. She put her hands up as he got closer, and the fear coming off her was both glorious and heart-breaking. “Please. You don’t understand.” A long pause, and then a softness changing the features of her face. “I love you.”
Her mouth said she loved him, but her eyes, her gaze, they lied. He caught it, just a fraction of a second where her eyes flicked to the left and past him, and her attention was not on him. Any love he felt for her twisted and changed with a ball of pulsating fire. He was cold. He was a monster. He was the very thing she had created with all the venom of her affection. “Love?”
She nodded.
He had nothing else to say. If he let her speak, she would just spill more deceit from her lips, so he did the only thing he could think of. He kissed her. He reached behind her, pulled her to his body and pressed his lips firmly against hers. Possessive, hard, a memory of all the kisses he had given her before this one, and she melted.
“Thank you.”
He opened his eyes at the words she spoke with their lips still together. "I hate you." She tried to yank herself back, but his hand slid into her chest, and he gripped her beating heart and pulled.
He dropped her heart onto the soft blue carpet at the same time Stephen was yanked from the room and thrown back into the work yard again. He was still holding the hand of the Other, but this time, he had the ball, and it was in his other hand. It cracked and popped with the anticipation of being filled. "You are not worthy," Stephen said as he met the eyes of the Other. “But you are not unworthy, either. Just unfortunate.” He pushed the ball out and pressed it into the palm of the Other's hand. Then he was gone, a vapour caught in the breeze.
Stephen had the ball in his hand again, and he turned it over to peer inside. The boy held his hand out to take it. "A second chance?"
The kid nodded and took it from him, then he swirled a thumb over it the same way Stephen had seen Aiden do, and it dissolved into sand and dust, and slipped through his fingers into nothing.
Chapter 16
Stephen always neglected time, especially when he was a child, but then that was the curse of the young, wasn’t it? His mother told him that saying, about youth being wasted on the young. He was beginning to understand it, but perhaps only because time was ticking in such an odd way for him now.
The day was calm and eerie all at the same time. There was a promise of something coming with each new horizon. As Stephen stood in the work yard, amidst the working day, he couldn't tune into himself to listen to his circadian rhythms. Perhaps the half-dead didn't need that. Maybe in the afterlife, when people went on to wherever it was, they didn't need time any longer.
He supposed that would at least make sense. Even if death wasn’t eternal, surely being able to monitor and feel the length of time death was present, would send some into a spiral.
The boy stood in silence beside him as they watched the Humans and the Others. Nothing had changed, and Stephen knew nothing ever would if the world just buried its head in the sand, as it had for so many years. The death of the Other had not ruined their day. It had not sickened them to the depths of their stomachs. Even later, when they slept, Stephen couldn’t imagine it would bother them. It was a sad world indeed when people, Humans and Others, had become so desensitised to death. They had moved on already. Even the blood on the ground was a splatter of footprints and scuffs. Someone had also pushed a wheelbarrow through it, and the single track ended at a pile of rubbish close by.
The small fire just far enough away that the smoke from it caught on the breeze and filtered out across the fence and away so everyone could ignore it with levels of denial Stephen couldn’t even comprehend. How could they do that? Not the Humans. He knew how they could do it. They were just callous bastards who couldn’t see the ends of their noses, but the Others? One of their friends was dead,
beaten, murdered, and they what? Went back to work?
Stephen had smelt his fair share of burning bodies in his life, and he was thankful just then he couldn’t smell that one. It was something hard to describe, almost like meat burning on a barbecue, but the waste and decay inside the person made an underlying stench that somehow wormed its way into every pore, as vital organs turned into nothing more than a dark tar. Even more surprising was the amount of smoke that rose into the air in constant plumes of thick grey fog.
“We should go.” There was nothing left to see at the site. What was the point in standing and watching what the Humans could do to the Others all day, and what the Others would allow. He’d seen enough of that already in his life, and hell, this was a place they could do it ever more freely.
The small boy could move faster than Stephen across the rubbish, even though it didn’t really exist in a way Stephen could touch or feel, but still, his mind held him prisoner to the confines of what his body should and shouldn’t do. What would happen if he realised he couldn’t stand on the trash? He’d probably fall through it the same way he had with the bed.
The boy didn’t look back as he made his way back across the heap. Stephen let out a sigh and rubbed his chest. There was a little throb still when he pressed his knuckles into his sternum, and his pulse raced. He’d have not been surprised if there were bruises inside his body with the way his heart kept hammering. He could feel the edges of it now as if it was about to erupt with wildness. It wasn't even an ache for the Other's death. No. It was something more profound, something on a fundamental level he couldn't understand yet, but it was growing … growing with need and hunger. Maybe this was his find himself thing. Whatever it was, he wished it would stop.
There were Others on the other side of the rubbish, and Stephen moved closer to them to feed his curiosity. While he knew nothing in them would change, he’d never had such a chance to witness them so freely. They were a mix of species: fae, a witch, a shifter. A necromancer with a gaunt face and sunken eyes slumped against the shackles that held him to a pole. Necromancers were rare, which was good, Stephen supposed. They’d not want a whole tribe of the raised dead doing someone’s bidding.
