by Quil Carter
Greyson hit that state. He looked at me like a radrat in a flashlight. I don’t think he believed me. I hadn’t believed myself, but as soon as I realized they had given us a fake body to pass off as Perish. I knew. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to put the pieces together. Perish disappeared, Silas came and decided to pass himself off as a waster to find out where his pet went. Ta da, he’s in Aras.
Then Killian killed him, lucky him he killed the immortal king and that king had been tormenting Killian ever since. There was no other explanation to explain what had been happening to Killian. This was the only answer that made sense.
Fucking Greyson and Leo not only stole a chimera, they lured his master right to our home. I bet he would massacre us all now, especially since Killian had killed both of them.
Greyson was staring forward, when suddenly his mind snapped back to reality. He got to his feet. “I need to fucking check the bunker…” he groaned, his voice strained. “I have to make sure Perish is still in there.”
The bunker, of course. Where Leo had been spending his days when he had moved out of the house. Another piece fits into the fucking puzzle.
“I’m not going with you. I need to take care of Killian. I can only rely on the fact Asher still thinks we don’t know.” I turned my back on Greyson and walked towards the bathroom. “I’m not doing anything about this until Killian is stable.”
“Reaver…” Greyson said. “You need to leave Aras and quickly. Get him stable and both of you… both of you disappear for a few weeks.”
I looked at him like he was crazy. “Fuck off, I’m not leaving, not in this season, with that kid, in this weather. He’ll get sick and die.”
Greyson got his jacket on. “We’ll… I’ll… I’ll talk to you about it later. I have to check on Perish… if Silas… fuck.” Greyson disappeared into the darkness.
I grabbed the heroin out of my pocket and the several syringes I had snatched as well. I got the rest of the supplies from the kitchen and brought a chair into the bathroom.
Killian still had his head above the water so that was a plus, and the earphones on his head. Since he didn’t stroke out, I assumed he hadn’t heard anything.
I sat down beside him and started preparing him a dose.
“I’m sorry,” Killian said after I had taken the earphones off his head. He sounded more alert. “For not telling you.”
“Not telling me what? There are so many things you haven’t been telling me lately.” I grabbed a body brush and gave it to him so he could scrape his skin. At least a bit of time soaking had softened the muck he had on him. Fuck, did he ever smell. I could see the point in digging Perish up, but did he have to dance around in Fake Perish’s rotting body?
“Everything…” Killian whispered. He eyed the needle. “Reaver… do you love me?”
I gave him the best smile I could muster. “More than anything.”
“I’m not crazy.”
I snorted, only because at this point I would have rather him been crazy and hallucinating. I couldn’t tell him right now that everything he had seen was real. With the possible exception of Perish. But knowing Asher Silas and his nature of fucking with people, who really knew?
“I know you’re not. I’m handling it. Don’t worry.” I started burning the heroin and the water together. “Don’t think about it. Not right this second.”
I tapped the now full needle and tied off his arm. He looked surprised, as if he just realized what I was doing. “What… you’re letting me have heroin?”
I slipped the needle in and started feeling around for a vein. I slowly injected the tar into his bloodstream. I heard him suck in a breath, before letting out a soft sigh.
“I just want you calm,” I said. “One thing at a time, and the most important thing in my life is you. I have to make sure you’re okay.”
“Asher’s fucking with me.”
“He’s fucking with both of us…” I could smell the peroxide in the water, but at least the smell of rot was dissipating. I scrubbed Killian hard for a few more minutes before I got a towel and helped him get up. He smelled a world better. I wrapped the towel around him, and then put a blanket over him.
I walked out and whistled for the dog. It didn’t take me long to hear the familiar padded feet behind me.
“Deek, guard,” I said to him and hoisted Killian up higher in my arms. There was only one thing allowed in my mind right now and that was getting Killian home safely. It was fortified and locked up for a reason; for times like these. It would be our bomb shelter while Greyson dealt with our little problem.
He caused it, he could fucking fix it.
It was the longest walk home I had ever had. My eyes were in all directions, and so were the dog’s. He seemed to sense that this was important; his nose was back in the air and he was sniffing everywhere.
Asher was somewhere in Aras, possibly with Perish, the two immortal wasteland fucks, and I had been lucky enough to have a boyfriend that had tried to kill them both.
I heard a soft sigh. I looked down and saw the glassy eyes of Killian again. I envied him. I wanted to get high, but he needed it more than I did. I couldn’t hide the reality from him for much longer, not just Perish and Silas being in Aras but… the fact that we were going to have to leave and soon.
Where would we go? The bunker was out of the question, but where was safe? Each abandoned town and partially collapsed house was the same in the greywastes, unless I lucked out and found an old army base but most, if not all, of those were marked off by the Legion.
I hoped Greyson had some ideas. I had to make Killian safe. He needed a nice quiet place where I could help him get his head back. We both did.
I stationed the deacdog outside my tank hatch and held Killian close to me as we slid down the tunnel. As I crawled back up to lock both hatches, I realized how much I had changed over the past five months.
If I hadn’t had Killian to worry about, I would have ran to that bunker guns blazing, ready to jump in and take on any chimera fuck who threatened my life. I would have gone there and gutted Silas like a fish, king or not.
Now though, I still wanted to do all of those things and I would… but I had to be patient. I had to make sure the kid was okay first and right now he didn’t need me running off fixing a problem I didn’t cause in the first place. Fuck Greyson and Leo; they brought that headless fuck to our town. Of course his master was going to come back for his property. Especially if he was immortal.
It was their fault that Asher had even got into Aras, and in turn it was their god damn doing that my boyfriend got raped.
I placed Killian down on the couch and sat beside him. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes just trying to gather myself for a minute. I felt like a walking version of what Greyson was, stunned, in disbelief, and wondering what the hell was supposed to happen next.
I was confused, exhausted and scared for Killian. Asher had tried to get into my pants and control me, but he had never hurt me. He would hurt Killian, he hated him, that much I could see. If Asher was Silas he wasn’t going to let something like that go.
“You locked everything, right?” Killian’s small, weak voice sounded beside me.
I nodded. “Locked tight.” I got up and started absentmindedly grabbing all the explosives and ammo I could find. I even dug out an old bag that somewhat resembled Killian’s satchel, though it was black. I started loading it up with grenades, C4, mines, ammo, handguns…
“He is alive isn’t he?” Killian whispered.
I threw in every single one of my M16 clips and nodded. I could tell him that at least. “You’re not crazy, he’s alive.”
“How?”
My mouth pursed. What was I supposed to tell him?
“He was cold.”
I let out a breath. I walked over to him. His eyes, glassy but focused, looked at me. I bent down and brushed his still wet blond hair from his face. “Killian, we’re going to have to leave Aras for a while. Just the two of us.
Think of it like… a honeymoon or something.”
His chin tightened and he pursed his lips. I forced a smile for him. “But you’re not crazy, that’s great, right?”
My blond boy’s eyes fixed on me. I watched the exact moment he put the pieces together.
“I killed King Silas, didn’t I?”
I looked at that soft little face, those drug-induced sparkly eyes, my sweet, sweet innocent boy… and I had to stifle a laugh. I turned away from him, holding my hand over my mouth.
Killian, my Killian, killed King Silas. The immortal prick of the greywastes. Who I had befriended! Who I had hung around with, gotten plastered with, and even gone raver-hunting with.
Silas! Silas!!
I laughed, and I think that was my own way of snapping.
Killian cried of course, not a lot of tears mostly just choking whimpers. Wait until he heard the other kicker, about his lovely little Perrypie. He would have a stroke.
Thanks, Greyson, thanks a lot. For all of this.
I walked into the bathroom, in no state to deal with my own laughter. I shut the door, and laughed and laughed until for the first time in my entire greywaste life, I started to feel the anxiety get to a crippling point.
I sat in my bathtub and put my hands over my mouth to stifle myself, feeling my world crash around me. Every time I tried to make sense of what was going on, I felt it collapse on itself. Asher being Silas, and Perish being immortal answered way too many questions for me. New realizations were flooding my head. So many things clicked together like some fucked up puzzle. Asher had been using us to get to Leo and Greyson; that was the only thing that made sense.
But that being said, I knew that Asher had befriended me. We’d had some good drunken talks before he drugged me. That hadn’t been fake, had it?
Asher… my friend Asher… I had been friends with an immortal being. The ruler of all of us. I had gotten drugged by him, touched by him… Killian had gotten raped by a king. I guessed that wasn’t as bad as being raped by a raticater.
I had to laugh at my own absurd thought. I think my own mind was slipping under the stress.
And he had impressed me. I had always thought of the king as some pampered little shit fuck with a control problem, but no… he was an impressive specimen.
I saw the past couple of months with new eyes. He was a force to be reckoned with; he was tough and fast, also sneaky as fuck. I wouldn’t underestimate him when I saw him again. I was glad to have learned that before we became enemies. Since I had befriended him, I knew him and I knew what his weaknesses were. Or at least some of them.
Like drinking and drugs for example. Killian had gotten the best of him once, so he was fallible. He wasn’t perfect even though he had been playing games for a long time. I’d be ready for him if it came to blows again.
But how was he able to pull this off without someone recognizing him? I had heard he had blond hair; I wondered if he made many public appearances in Skyfall.
And once he was in the greywastes, well, we didn’t have cameras here except a few Polaroids. And with West Aras in my pocket, he barely left the area. Give him dyed hair and our ignorance, and he could pass off as any dumb waster.
I leaned back in the empty tub and stared at the water-stained ceiling. Asher Fallon had played us all for fools, myself included.
All we could do was give Perish back and hope that was enough. Though I didn’t know if it would be that easy.
I got up, feeling slightly more with it after my anxiety-induced laughter, and walked back into the main area of the house.
I sighed as I saw Killian preparing another dose of heroin.
“No, you little smack addict, no more…” I started walking towards him.
“It’s for you,” Killian said, his voice kind of slurred. He flicked the needle. God, that stuff looked like poison. Nice small pills looked so much healthier… less junkyish. “I’ve been with you for months, when you start laughing it means you’re about to go crazy.”
“It does not,” I said flatly, but I sat down beside him.
Killian tied off my arm with the cord of my radio charger, the needle between his teeth.
“Reaver, I need to tell you everything that happened.” Killian rubbed the crook of my arm with his finger before he pierced the needle into my skin. “You won’t like it, you might be mad, but you have to know everything I saw. You have to know what he did to you.”
I winced as I felt the metal in my skin, a fleck of my blood rising up in the needle. “I’m doping you up first for a reason.”
Killian injected the heroin into my bloodstream, I felt the bitter, sour tar coat the inside of my body in ice. It was like frozen opiates, just as intense as pills… more of a body high than a head high.
I took in a deep breath as Killian rubbed my shoulders.
“Lay on your side. You might throw up at first.”
I felt my mind swim. I laid down on the couch and heard the scrape of a bucket. Sure enough, a few moments later the chill turned into nausea. I puked. I didn’t mind though; this feeling was amazing.
My eyes blurred. I think they were rolling back into my head. I felt Killian’s hands rub my thigh and arms in a soothing motion. I threw up again and fell back onto the couch.
I don’t know where I went, but it was dark and it was warm. A swirling spectrum of every colour of a black and grey rainbow, peculiar in a way. So many colours but each one was more colourless than the last. Like I was in the fifth dimension.
But I couldn’t see Asher. I didn’t feel the stress clenching and twisting my gut. I was far away, flying.
I was gone for quite a while, until my mind started to grip onto the edges of my consciousness. Killian must’ve known; he tilted my face towards him.
“Can you listen?”
“Yeah… I’m awake enough,” I slurred. Holy shit, this was harsh stuff. Not for everyday use like the opiates; this wiped me out. But for an evening where I could stay inside, this was my new friend.
“Good.” Killian’s lips pressed against my cheek. “You’ll be able to take this a lot easier now. Please… don’t talk if you can help it. This is really hard to admit.”
“I couldn’t talk if I wanted… hun.”
My mouth was mush; all I wanted to do was slip back into zombieland and gaze up at the ceiling in a liquid daze. This is what he had planned. Clever boy.
Though my inner beast wanted me to feel worried, the drugs were making me feel rather confident about things. I started to look forward to seeing how many different ways I could kill Asher. Now that I knew who he was, it might be fun.
“Okay, the first thing. As you know, I was jealous of your relationship with Asher,” Killian began.
I felt my head nod as the drugs continued to swim through my body. He touched my face and stroked it; oddly, I liked it. Good drugs.
“I… had been following you when you were looking for me, and I peeked in the window and saw him touching you. He had been stuffing cotton up his nose when he was feeding you the ressin and the scopa.” He took a deep breath. “I panicked and pretended I was looking for you. To get you away from him. I heard him command you to rape me.”
“What!” I sat up. I felt myself go cold; even the drugs couldn’t mask the horror I felt. “I… oh god, I did that to you?”
“No! No!” Killian said hastily. “You chased me home and I tricked you into thinking I was in the basement. You didn’t touch me, it was him.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, though I didn’t know why. He had still gotten raped.
“I went to his house, and decided the only way to end it was to get him to rape me. I’d record it and show you and you would kill him like you did Bridley.”
“Wait.” I looked at him. “How did you get the recorders then? You were already planning on setting him up beforehand.”
He looked a bit caught, but I didn’t push it. “So he raped you though, where did it go wrong? How did you kill him?”
“I
guess it makes sense now. He’s two hundred and fifty years old, he’s smart. He managed to drug me, dragged me to the bedroom and proceeded to humiliate the fuck out of me,” Killian said, his voice dropped and I could see his hand tense around my hair as he stroked it. “I out-smarted him though. I shoved pain killers up his ass when he wanted me to use the dildo on him. To overdose him. Then he said he wanted to show me something in the graveyard.”
The fact that the skull wasn’t Perish’s… he knew of course. He had probably been looking for where Greyson and Leo had been keeping him.
“When we got there he started to get queasy and stumbly… I finished him off with the plastic bag that’d had Perish’s skull in it, and I buried him.”
As his hand stroked my head, I took it into my own and kissed it, before placing it back on my head. “I can’t believe people think you’re less psychotic than me.”
I held back a chuckle as I heard him sniff, then he said in a wobbly voice, “I didn’t know what else to do, you wouldn’t believe me. I kept telling you something was wrong with him.”
“I know, love, I know,” I said. I was really trying to turn on the affection for him. It was an effort, but well… he was finally talking and finally opening up. I had missed him, and if I had to sacrifice some of my dignity by acting all squishy, well, I didn’t mind. “That’s why I believed you when you were digging around the graveyard. I never make the same mistake twice. Now I’ll believe all the crazy ramblings of a heroin addict.”
He scowled at me then pinched my neck. I glared at him as I rubbed my wound.
“I’ve been making an effort to cry less,” Killian said flatly.
“So you’re just going to start beating me instead?” I said, still rubbing.
Killian nodded. I could see he was hiding a smile.
“Get your face over here and kiss me.” I put my arm behind his head and pulled him to me.
I hadn’t felt those soft lips against mine for weeks. I took him in, and held him close. My mouth sucking on his bottom lip. The heroin made the kiss even better. I would do that stuff again, that I knew.
