by Quil Carter
“There you go, your fucking Disney happy ending. They can continue to make each other miserable,” Reaver said with a chuckle. He got up and opened the patio door. Leo and Greyson were still kissing.
“You two go up and have a make-up fuck, I’m sick of waiting for my steak.” Reaver grabbed the stack of meat and walked back into the living room. Greyson and Leo pulled away, flushed with embarrassment.
“Come on, Killian. Let’s eat.”
I practically skipped home that night. Though my feelings towards Leo were still sore and my curiosity out of control, I ignored it for tonight and just savoured that everyone was talking and getting along again. I loved West Aras and what Reaver had made of it, but I missed having the little family back together. I missed Greyson and I missed old Leo.
All during dinner, Leo seemed to treat me normally. I didn’t get any angry glares or threatening glances the entire time.
I hoped that Greyson had quelled Leo’s murderous feelings towards me when they had talked about Reaver. But I still didn’t know what they had agreed on on the other side of that patio door. I just knew they both looked happy, so I wasn’t sure.
Maybe those two had decided to leave well enough alone. Would Reaver bring it up to Greyson? Probably not… but the conversation he’d had with Greyson that night after the ravers had seemed to affect him. So perhaps he would.
Either way, I was okay with it. I wouldn’t say a word and I would leave it up to them. I was content with that, and in my head, that was all there was to say.
That night Reaver and I made love, and then he left me to do his short patrols. I hoped that would end soon and West Aras could rejoin with Old Aras. Then he could work on the walls like he had always loved and maybe I could go back to working at Doc’s.
Everything could go back to normal.
Three weeks later I invited everyone to our house for dinner. Leo and Greyson still had frozen Mickey steaks so I fried them with onions and garlic and finished it off with canned spaghetti. Reaver also made waffles for dessert that we had with honey. He had finally fixed his waffle maker; he had been having them for every meal.
It was during that night that West Aras officially joined Aras again. Which kind of meant nothing was going to change except we had to pay taxes again and we got rations. Since Reaver and Asher had supplied Aras with thirty-six ravers and seven arians, we decided that all our taxes would be paid up.
To sweeten the deal Greyson even gave us a crate of rum to share which I didn’t find too great but Reaver and Asher were over the moon.
Reaver would also be starting his old sentry job again. Matt was still recovering and would be out of work for another two weeks. He was learning how to use his sniper rifle with only three fingers on his left hand and a foot of intestine missing but he was managing. Apparently the raver had disembowelled him but thanks to Doc, and all the antibiotics we had gotten from Donnely, he was going to recover. He even got to take the dried piece of intestine home. His wife wasn’t that happy about it.
I would be returning to Doc’s soon too, part time during the day. I missed learning from him, and I wanted to make up for not working there during the whole West Aras thing. Doc had even tempted me with paying for me to work there. Usually apprentices had to volunteer for at least a year full-time before they got reasonable pay.
Asher was well… Asher, though he had been hiding out in his house more than he normally would. He had been invited to Reaver’s barbecue but he complained of a headache. I suspected he might have a concussion like Reaver had. I hoped so, I wanted to see him have a seizure and pass out. I would enjoy it.
To my irritation Reaver had decided to put up a little tank bell too for Asher. He had rigged a small tinkly bell up to a piece of string, and drilled a hole through his ceiling and out the wall of the main floor. All Asher had to do was tug on a piece of string and it would make it tinkle. Reaver defended his decision saying if one of us accidently locked the other out, and they didn’t have keys, it would help. I smelled bullshit but whatever, as long as it made Reaver happy.
I had to tell myself that so often it was like a recording. Every day: as long as it makes Reaver happy. As long as it makes Reaver happy.
I hoped Asher would die in his sleep.
We could eat Asher steaks. Now that is someone I would enjoy eating. Or maybe I’d feed him to the deacons just to prove how worthless he was.
I guess Reaver was rubbing off on me.
I perked up as I heard a whistle, I looked over at Reaver.
My boyfriend was motioning me over. He was leaning up against the raised beds of our little greenhouse. We had just come in to turn the hose off before nightfall. Every night before Reaver went to bed we turned the hose on just a little bit, so the plants got a continuous trickle of water, and every night before we settled in for the night we turned it off.
I walked over and leaned to where he was pointing. I squealed happily.
“We’re growing something!” My voice was several octaves higher than usual. From the door you couldn’t see it, even with the bright lights on, but up close you could see a thin mist of green where our carrots were growing.
Reaver smiled and looked at the other beds. “We got some in the blackberry and strawberry patches too. Look.” He pointed.
I jumped up and down feeling so proud of us. We had managed to grow something! Hopefully something that would grow big and plentiful like the plants Perish had grown. Oh, I wished he was here to see this. He would have been proud of me.
“I’m going to cook you so much good food, and bake too! I’m going to sell some more of those tetanus shots and buy some flour!” I clenched my hands, I was still kind of jumping around.
Reaver started adjusting the lamps. It was cold tonight and we wanted to keep the shoots as warm as possible.
“I want things to put on the waffles,” Reaver said, dipping his hands into our rain barrel outside to wash his hands. “Like the berries, and that stuff… the shit that Perish put on it, what was that?”
“Strawberry sauce, we can make it with strawberries and sugar in a pot,” I said, “and the blackberries too. Really any fruit, and probably meat too.”
Reaver perked up, he looked at me with a glint in his eye. “Meat on waffles? With gravy too. Holy shit, I never thought of making that a savoury food. Well, our waffle diet would continue I suppose. I better talk to the caravan that makes trips to Anvil, we should probably get a laying chicken. Our pancake mix will run out soon.”
Gosh, I was glad Perish hadn’t had a deep fryer, Reaver’s mind might explode. We’d had one in Skyfall that Dad had gotten after he had pleased Elish. I remember he had sent it with frozen French fries and battered fish. We ended up eating that for Christmas dinner, I’ll never forget how happy that time in our lives was. It was before Dad got addicted to drugs and got fired from his job.
“You know what you can also do, hun?” We finished up our plant maintenance and made our way back home. “Use the waffles as bread. You can make sandwiches now.”
The expression on my boyfriend’s face was that of a man who had found the Holy Grail, but it quickly turned to a rather flat look. “I swear your goal in life is to get me so fat I don’t fit through the tunnel anymore. Then you can keep me inside, near you for all eternity. Making me fatter and fatter.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” I said with a smirk. “We’ll call you Rolly Polly Reaver.”
That would make Asher not attracted to him anymore…
I felt a push and soon he was chasing me around like we were a couple of kids, howling and laughing as he pinched and prodded me every time he managed to grab a piece of flesh.
“Oh, look at that, it’s Asher. He must want his rum.” I slowed down, leaning my hands against my knees for breath. I immediately felt my mood sour like it so often did when my eyes beheld the asshole who was trying to steal my boyfriend.
Asher strolled towards us like he was cock of the walk. He was dressed in tight jeans
, and a tight black mesh t-shirt that made him look like a whore. To top it all off he was strutting a leather jacket and sunglasses (even though it was a fucking hour from nightfall and the sun hadn’t been seen in a week). He got all his new clothes from his cache. Apparently, his family had bought them cheap before leaving Skyfall, and had planned on reselling them in Greendale, a block well-known for housing vacationing elites.
I smelled so much bullshit in that story my nose curled, but Reaver had paid no mind; he had gotten presents so he couldn’t care less. Asher had given him brand-new wool socks, and his own mesh shirt to so he could whore it up just like Asher. That had been a fun day.
“Jeez, you look like the slut of Moros, are you going on a date?” Reaver teased.
Asher eyed us both and smiled. His smile always reminded me of the look a cat got when it spotted the mouse it’s been looking for. “No, I am not, thank you. I just don’t find it necessary to dress like a waster when I am inundated with such fancy clothes.” Asher smugly pulled on his leather jacket collar. I could smell the fresh leather. “I was just looking for you. Are you going for your patrol tonight?”
“Of course I am.” Reaver answered. I growled in my mind but reminded my face to stay placid.
“Come pick me up, I’ll go with you,” Asher said. I saw a flick of a lighter and a puff as he lit a joint. I could smell the pure weed from here. It stank more than the quils.
Reaver nodded. I wished I saw some hesitancy in his face, because I knew he loved to walk alone but to my dismay he looked happy. “Alright, I will.”
I sighed as we continued home. He never drank on his patrols. Should I bother slipping him a voice recorder?
Maybe I just had to bide my time… at least I knew Reaver would be safe. No staying up all night worried Asher would try and get with him. I would take what I could get. I was a man of few virtues but one I did have… I was damn patient.
Chapter 42
Reaver
I left with a victorious cackle, still tasting the semen in my mouth. Killian was in bed, snoring lightly, a mixture of Xanax and oral sex had conked him out in record time.
What was even more amusing was the fact that he insisted on making me cum first. I, of course, had no qualms, every blow job from him was getting better and better. That kid had found every single sensitive area on my body and had the greatest time exploiting them.
What I found funny though was the fact I knew he wanted to satiate my sex drive before I hung out with Asher.
It was a stupid thing for him to even feel like he needed to do, but it wasn’t like I was going to tell him no.
I waited for Asher in our usual spot, in the movie theatre I used to hide out in as a teen, in an area of the theatre that was missing a chunk of roof and wall.
I would wait for him as I scanned the northern area of the former West Aras. He told me he could see me perched there if he stood on his roof. Perhaps that’s how he always managed to find me.
I jumped down onto the pavement when I saw Asher walking down the main road, a dark shadow against the abandoned houses, glowing under the moonlight above us. It was a clear but mild. Though some nights I could see my cold breath in my exhales, tonight it was too warm. I made sure to enjoy this mild break in the weather before we got more rain.
Asher handed me a bottle of vodka. I took a swig and passed it back to him. “Only one. I technically am patrolling.”
Asher waved me off and took a long drink. “Fuck it, you’re fired. Come to my house. I wanna get stoned.”
I laughed and started walking him along our usual route. “I guess patrolling this place is pretty useless now, it’s back to being normal Aras. Alright, I’ll have a couple drinks with you, but we’re still doing the usual routes.”
“I’ll drink to that. I’ve been cooped up inside all day anyway. Head has been killing me.” Asher tucked the bottle into his jeans and we started walking deeper west into Aras. There was nothing back here but piles of crap, barely functional roads and lots of abandoned homes but I loved walking around it. It was so quiet, dark, and spooky. Killian hated this patrol, he still got jumpy, but that kid had seen a lot of shit so I didn’t tease him.
We shared a cigarette and walked side by side down the long winding road. Ranchers were on either side of us, with bushes growing out of sidewalk cracks, twisted black trees, and fallen electricity poles. These houses had long since been cleaned of anything of value and now sat in various states of decay, waiting to either collapse or be dismantled for firewood.
“Do you ever think the greywastes will go back to how it was?” I asked out of the blue, the liquor and the quil starting to make me talkative. Killian and I’d had some philosophical talks when we both got high together.
“Like all the people, technology and all that?” Asher asked.
I nodded. “And no radiation.”
“No, King Silas would never allow it.” Asher laughed and blew smoke out of the corner of his mouth. He looked at me with the cigarette clenched between his teeth. “He controls the greywastes, and he wants us to be as miserable as he is.”
“He didn’t sound too miserable from how Perish spoke about him.” I took the smoke from him and inhaled a puff. “He had Perish. Whose life goal was for his master to give him a second glance, then he has Nero who probably fucks like a steam engine, and all those other chimera disciple fucks ready to lick his cock and take his cum. Not to mention an island full of luxuries I could never imagine, and a society that worships him like a god. Yeah, hard life… oh, scratch that, hard eternal life.”
Two fingers came into my vision to grab the smoke already on my lips. He pulled it away and stole my drag. “Show me where Perish is.”
I glanced behind my shoulder, the road was straight and narrow behind us, covered in the skeletons of cars and trucks. The moon gave them the illusion of being solid again. “We’re not far from it actually. Why? You wanna pay your respects?”
“I want to piss on him.”
I coughed on the smoke and exhaled it as quickly as I could before I choked some more. “Better drink some more vodka then.” I turned and started cutting through one of the rancher yards, moving towards Killian’s hidden little cemetery.
“That was rather nice of your boyfriend to bury him like that. I’m surprised you didn’t insist on eating him,” Asher said as we started to climb over the piles of debris that enclosed the first streets leading to the cemetery.
“Leo wanted to poke and prod at him, he’s always been fascinated with science and all that. I guess since Perish is a chimera, he’s like genetically special or some bullshit like that, right?”
Asher shook his head. "I’m not sure.”
“I wonder why he got the short end of the stick. Nero seemed to be being treated rather well. Man, did you see the muscles on that guy? He’s a tank.”
I saw him shake his head out of the corner of my eye. “The only chimeras we got was the law enforcer bitch Ellis when she needed information. Though a few times we did have Garrett. He would come in, distribute more booze, drugs, and smokes to make the slummers happy and high. Then leave. I guess it kept us from forming revolts.”
“Sounds like a shitty dependent life.” I shrugged. “No wonder you got out. I would hate to depend on anyone for anything, especially some shit sorry excuse for a government. It’s stupid.”
“It’s safe.”
“I’d rather risk the greywastes than have a bunch of hacks breathing down my neck who think they’re better than me just because they were bred by some pathetic control freak.”
I helped Asher up onto a long slab of pavement. He walked in front of me and jumped onto a roof and partial chimney, before leaning against an old refrigerator. “We can’t all be fearless and free like you.” Asher crossed his arms and gave me a wink. He pressed the bottle up against his lips again and took a drink.
“You are,” I said, the alcohol succeeding in numbing my mind and my lips. “You barely flinched while we were running
from the ravers. Killian –” I scoffed trying to shut myself up. I walked past Asher and started descending to the abandoned house below us. The entrance led to the backyard cemetery. “Killian would have frozen up, no matter if he was in my role or yours. I don’t know… do you think he’ll ever… toughen up?”
“Do you want him to?”
My drunken mind never considered that. The answer surprised me. “No, I don’t, but I wish… there was a middle ground. I wish I could go raver hunting with him, but I just can’t put him in harm’s way. If you die, it’s whatever… but if he dies, I’ll be lost.”
Thankfully Asher’s own tipsy mind found my horrible comment amusing. I heard the gravel and junk behind him shift as he jumped down beside me. I walked into the abandoned home and made my way through the living room, seeing the moonlit gravestones through the blown-out wall.
I walked into the clearing, and as I did I heard Asher digging through his pockets. I looked over at Perish’s grave marker and chuckled quietly as I read it. I guess Asher was reading it behind me.
“Saw Killian and lost his head?” Asher said bemused. I felt him beside me. He placed a baggy with a cut up straw in it into my hand. “Do some.”
“I can’t. I’ve had liquor, it can kill you if it mixes.”
Asher shook his head. “It’s MDMA, it will make you feel good. Give you some energy. It’s twenty bucks for that much powder so enjoy it. It’s come a long way.”
I was intrigued. I had read about this stuff in books. I took a bit into each of my nostrils and handed it back. I walked up to Perish’s gravestone and unzipped my pants.
I heard a snort as Asher inhaled. “Hey, tuck it back in, hotshot. I didn’t mean on his grave. Grab the shovel. I said I want to piss on him.”
I tucked my dick back in and zipped it up. I grabbed the shovel leaning up against a pile of brick and shook my head in disbelief. “You are one twisted fucking psycho, has anyone ever told you that?”
