by Quil Carter
SILENT GROUND
Part 1
By Quil Carter
© 2017 Quil Carter
All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or in any means – by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without prior written permission.
This book is dedicated to seventeen-year-old Quil. This is the last book I (partially) wrote before Fallocaust and the first book I decided to write for me, without worrying what everyone would think of me. Luckily, since publishing Fallocaust I learned you all are just as twisted as I am. So here you go, the first book where I decided to say ‘Fuck it, I’m writing it how I want.” And I did!
Enjoy, you beautiful sick bastards.
Side Note
I also want to make a note about names. This book contains characters named Kheva and Kel, whose names resemble the demigod in my book The Gods’ Games. There is no relation to the two. The story goes, I created Silent Ground and needed names for my two nightcrawlers, for some reason, my dumb teenage brain loved the names Kel and Kheva. Funny thing, I knew that one day, if I was ever to get published, I’d have to change the names of either the demigod, or the nightcrawlers, and accepted that.
Well, the time came, and I decided to say ‘Fuck it’ and keep the names I’ve been calling Kel and Kheva for the last 12 years. If all it takes is an explanation, why change the characters I love so much. So, there you go, Kel and Kheva have no relation to the Kelakheva the demigod. It was merely teenage Quil fucking his future self over. Teenage me just loves doing that apparently.
“I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
CHAPTER 1
Sasha scanned the aisle in front of him and mentally counted how many people were in it. There were four of them, two ladies, one child, and an old man. That was manageable, Sasha feared teenagers the most, they were so unpredictable and more inclined to stare at him or make conversation. However, anyone near Sasha’s age kind of freaked him out.
But no, it looked safe.
Or as safe as it possibly could be.
Usually, Sasha wouldn’t be caught dead outside of his house, unless Jobe was there with him. Unfortunately though, he was out of frozen pizza, chips, salsa, and Diet Dr. Pepper, which meant, in all respects, that he was out of food and would soon just starve to death.
Sasha lowered his head and began walking down the aisle. He glanced at his list, the entire thing categorized and numbered from Most Important to Luxury, and grabbed a bag of nachos, a bag of kettle chips, and turned around and looked for his Dr. Pepper.
Diet Dr. Pepper. Couldn’t be the sugary stuff. It wasn’t like Sasha was on a diet, but his uncle had only consumed diet drinks when Sasha was young, and he’d developed a taste towards good ol’ aspartame.
It seemed like luck was on the side of the socially-anxious introvert. No one spoke to Sasha, no one made eye contact, and no employee selling the store’s credit card stalked his heels. But that didn’t mean that Sasha was in the clear. No, the worse was yet to come.
The damn cashier.
He always went to the self-checkout, but you then risked a chance of the stupid computer asking for you to go talk to the teller who loomed over the self-checkout like a sultan on her throne. There was little worse than that during solitary store trips, except, of course, if one of his many coupons wouldn’t scan properly.
Worse yet, if it was his fault, like he’d forgotten the expire date.
Or if he’d picked up the wrong size product for the coupon.
Oh god. What if that happened this time?
Sasha’s eyes widened at the mere thought, and his heart scrunched up like the organ itself was trying to get away from such a potentially embarrassing situation.
“It’s like you expect them to yell at you for getting groceries,” Jobe had said to Sasha when he’d expressed his anxiety over shopping by himself. “They’re not going to chuck shit at you and call you names just because there was an unexpected item in the baggage area. I’m pretty sure you’ll be fine.”
Jobe didn’t understand, and he never would. He was a social butterfly who got along with everyone, and Sasha… well…
…wasn’t.
Sasha leaned down and picked up a case of Diet Dr. Pepper. That would be it, besides swinging by frozen foods for the pizza, and maybe a couple of those cheap burritos.
And then… and then it was the moment of reckoning – the dreaded checkout.
No, I’ll be okay, just remember what Jobe said. These tellers checkout hundreds of people a day, thousands a month. They don’t care.
But no matter how many times Sasha told himself this, no matter how many times Jobe and Sasha’s Uncle Lex drilled it into him, he still got butterflies in his stomach when he began the process of checking out his groceries.
Jobe and Lex both called it social anxiety, but whenever Sasha thought about having that label affixed to him, he felt like some sort of crazy invalid. What was so bad about preferring to be by yourself, or with only two people? Why did that have to make him weird?
Then, that inner voice inside of him decided to fling his barbed comments towards Sasha. He could never be quiet; the voice was always the quiet spectator just waiting to stand up and jeer at Sasha.
‘It’s not only wanting to be alone,’ the voice said, ‘You are scared to be around people. You’re some weak-minded idiot who gets anxiety the moment someone enters his protective bubble. And let’s not even mention those migraines.’
Sasha ignored the sting that those words brought. His inner voice was a cruel creature, and to miss an opportunity to make Sasha feel like shit, was unheard of. Always fucking waiting to poke a few needles in any balloons of happiness that had been blown up.
With a grunt, Sasha hoisted up the shopping basket and put it onto the metal slab. He began scanning the items, not even realizing he was glaring daggers into the food he was unloading. If there was one thing to be said about Sasha Zakharin, it was that he couldn’t hide his own facial expressions.
‘Which is why everyone watching you right now… thinks you’re a serial killer with how you’re looking at those Tostitos.’
Well, it wasn’t something that could be helped. Sasha lived inside of his own head and it was there he stayed most of the time. The world inside of his head could be just as terrifying as the outside he dreaded so much, but at least it was the devil he knew.
A mind that was like a hive. Always on, always watching, listening, waiting…
“Hey, Sasha!”
Sasha’s heart lurched and centered itself inside of his throat. He turned around, halfway done scanning his groceries, and looked to see who had called his name.
Oh, it was just one of Jobe’s friends. Or acquaintance, rather––Sasha liked to think of himself as Jobe’s only real friend.
Yeah, Sasha had seen this guy before. Brown hair with frosted tips, always sporting a puka shell necklace, and he liked wearing shorts, even in the dead of winter. The dude was strange, from what Sasha could remember; he laughed at everything his friends said, like he was front stage at a comedy club.
Sasha stared as the man approached, and tried to hide the cringe when Jobe’s friend breached the protective barrier of personal space by getting much too close.
Get the fuck away from me. Jesus, this isn’t India.
“Hey…” Sasha began. He absentmindedly leaned back and put his hands into his pockets. “Jobe’s… Jobe’s at work.”
Just as Sasha had thought, the man laughed at this. Every person he’d met seemed to have their o
wn personal way of breaking tension during unfamiliar conversation. Sasha just hid and avoided it all, but this guy, like others, just laughed the awkwardness away. Laughter may be the best medicine but this guy was going to need a doctor if he got one inch closer.
Oh, who am I kidding? I’ll just feel stressed out about it, then relive the interaction in my mind over and over until eventually it gets crowded out by other awkward incidences.
“Jobe’s at work and he actually let you out? That’s a surprise,” the friend said, still chuckling. Then he crossed his arms over his grey and red t-shirt and smirked. “I got a message for Jobe. Tell him I’m having the party we’ve been planning this weekend. The last time I talked to Jobe, I hadn’t set a date, but there you have it. Saturday night, after nine.”
Sasha stared back at him, hoping that this meant the dude would leave soon, but upon saying those last words, a grin then appeared on the guy’s face, and eyes that held too much inquisitiveness dropped, then travelled up and down Sasha’s body.
Sasha recoiled at this and deflected his gaze, but not before he felt his ears go hot.
“Are you going to be there too?” the man asked. “I don’t know if Jobe told you, but we invited every pride boy we know. Just as a way for us to be introduced to each other since it’s kind of hard to find people like us in our shitty town. You should come.”
The voice inside of Sasha’s head laughed hysterically at the idea. Sasha go to a party? You’d have more luck training a dog to speak words.
‘Awkward fucking idiot,’ barked the dog.
Sasha stared at the floor of the grocery store. His mind tried desperately to scan for a response to this, anything besides silence and glaring at the checkered linoleum, but the more he wanted something to say, the more his brain panicked and stalled.
Why the hell did I decide to go out in the first place? I could’ve eaten the damn can of tomato soup I had in the cupboard. Oh, fuck, he’s going to think I’m an idiot. No, no, he already thinks I’m an idiot.
I wish Jobe was here.
Fuck, I still have to say something.
“Thanks… m-maybe,” Sasha mumbled while he stared at the floor as if it had suddenly increased in importance. “I’ll tell him… I saw you.”
Thankfully, Jobe’s friend seemed to take the hint. “Thanks, bro. I hope to see you there. We don’t bite, you know.” And with a laugh, he turned around and left.
In record-setting time, Sasha scanned the rest of his items and paid for the food on his debit card.
The gods apparently were shining down him, they seemed to have decided that they’d tortured Sasha enough that day, and the self-checkout didn’t force him to talk to the human teller. Soon, he was outside of the store, the day cool but the sun shining. He walked to the bus stop, and got out one of his pre-paid bus tickets.
And because Sasha’s mind was always spinning in circles, he replayed the conversation he’d had with Jobe’s friend over and over in his head. As usual, by the time he was stepping into his basement suite apartment, Sasha’s overactive imagination had twisted Jobe’s friend’s words and tone until he sounded condescending and sarcastic, which just made Sasha feel even more shitty about himself.
A simple trip to the store and I can’t even manage that without it all going to hell… Sasha thought to himself. He walked to the side of his couch, to where a side table lay, and slid open a drawer. He dug through it and found a bottle of Xanax and took one of them.
It was one of the few perks of having a pharmacist uncle who was friends with a lot of doctors. Uncle Lex had the connections needed to get Sasha a prescription for Xanax, and an ongoing one as well. It wasn’t like Sasha didn’t need it, which was Lex’s justification for pulling the strings, it was just that getting Sasha to go to a doctor was like pulling teeth with tweezers.
“Hey, handsome cat,” Sasha said when Lex’s brown tabby, Friskie, stuck his paw under the door that separated Lex’s house from Sasha’s apartment. Sasha lived in his own self-contained suite in Lex’s five-bedroom house, and because cats knew no bounds, they often asked to be let in to hangout with Sasha.
Sasha opened the door and the fat tabby cat waltzed in, and when he spotted the groceries on the floor his tail flew up into the air and he walked over for a sniff. Sasha closed the door with a smile and popped the Xanax into his mouth as he gave the cat a pet.
Lex wasn’t home from the sounds of it. Sasha’s uncle was a pharmacist at London Drugs and sometimes he was gone all day. But when Lex returned, he always came down at least once to bug Sasha, and usually invited him up for dinner.
Lex was… well, Lex was Lex. He’d been taking care of Sasha since he was six. Sasha’s father and Lex were both in a terrible car accident, it killed Sasha’s father and left Lex critically injured and with several visible scars on his body, including the one on his cheek. Thankfully, Sasha hadn’t been with them at the time, and the moment Lex was released from the hospital, Sasha was his. With no mother in the picture, it was either Lex taking guardianship of Sasha, or foster care.
There was only a twelve-and-a-half-year difference between the two. Sasha was nineteen and Lex was thirty-two, but they shared a close relationship. Though that being said, Lex was more than a little… overprotective.
That was a nice way of putting it.
Half an hour later, Sasha sat down with his pizza and turned on the television. He bundled himself up in an electric blanket and channel-surfed until he found The Simpsons. It was a rerun, but since The Simpsons had been on for about twelve seasons now, every episode was pretty much a rerun.
“Sasha?”
Sasha looked to his living room window, the blinds closed, as usual, and saw a shadow pass by. Usually, seeing that shadow struck fear into Sasha’s heart, he hated unexpected visitors just as much as he hated phone calls from numbers he didn’t know. But he’d recognize Jobe’s voice in a crowd of thousands, and Jobe always stopped by once he’d decompressed from work.
There was a jingling of keys and the door opened, Jobe strolled in with a beaming smile, holding a cloth bag in one hand and his set of keys in the other.
If you looked at Sasha and Jobe side by side, you’d never think that they were best friends. Sasha did everything he could to make himself blend into the crowd, and he disliked anything that would make him stand out. He wore dark clothes, kept his black hair short and his face shaved, and rarely spoke unless spoken to.
Jobe on the other hand…
Sasha smiled when Jobe reached into the cloth bag and pulled out what appeared to be a clock made out of burl. His dark brown eyes gleamed with pride, framed by black eyeliner and shrouded with grey eye shadow. “I was dicking around the Salvation Army and I found it. Isn’t it fucking beautiful? It was only ten bucks too!” He beamed at his find, the black lipstick on his lips stretched out like two pieces of liquorish. “I got it for you, since your clock is kind of boring.” Taking it upon himself, Jobe kicked off his shiny silver-buckled leather boots, and walked towards Sasha’s wall clock.
Today he was wearing a white shirt with black stripes, and a red tie. For pants it was tight leather, and a leather belt with a silver buckle to match his boots. Everyone labelled Jobe as being more goth, but Jobe just had his own style. He dressed how he felt like dressing, and he had the charisma to back it up.
“I like that clock. It’s not the clock’s fault its not pretty,” Sasha said, feeling badly for his poor red wall clock. Sure, it might not be made out of burl wood and it had only cost him about five bucks at Winners, but it had still done its job.
Jobe snorted and rolled his eyes. He jumped onto Sasha’s grey couch and took down the red clock. “Inanimate objects don’t have feelings. My god, you’re so weird!” Then he reached a hand down and ruffled Sasha’s hair. “But I wouldn’t have you any other way.” Jobe began switching the clocks, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth.
Sasha picked up the red clock and felt a flicker of sadness for it. He knew it was stup
id to have feelings towards the clock but he’d never been able to shake that sense of empathy. He still kept his stuffed animals from when he was little, and all five of them sat on shelves in his bedroom.
It wasn’t their fault that he’d grown up and stopped playing with them.
“Aw, Sash,” Jobe chuckled. He stepped off of the couch and ran a finger over the clock, there was a rim of dust on the crimson plastic. “You’re so full of feelies. You care too much.”
Sasha’s shoulders slumped. He got up with the clock and walked into his bedroom. “It’s better than being heartless…” he mumbled.
Jobe followed behind him and Sasha heard him open one of his junk drawers. He turned around and Jobe handed him a thumbtack. “Yeah, but if you stopped caring what everyone thought of you, and stopped feeling so much… it would be easier for you to go out without worrying about everything.” Jobe paused, and his lips pursed together. Sasha knew those signs, they meant Jobe was about to say something he wouldn’t like.
Sure enough. “How long has it been since you’ve been outside?”
Sasha bristled. He turned from Jobe, a scowl clear on his face, and pushed the tack into the beige drywall. “I was out today,” he said, ice glistening off of every word. “I went to the store and fucking got groceries. So thanks, today I guess I’m not as pathetic as usual.” Sasha hung up the clock and turned around, then he pushed past Jobe and stalked into the living room.
“You must’ve been starving,” Jobe said with a chuckle that Sasha took as condescending. “And it went okay? No one yelled at you for wanting groceries? No one called you out on the loudspeaker for wanting to use coupons?” Then he stopped, and the jovial look vanished from his face. “Was it for Tylenol? Did you have another migraine?”
The heat began to rise up Sasha’s face. He didn’t like talking about the debilitating headaches he’d been getting for the past two years.
