Silent Ground: Part 1

by Quil Carter

  “No, of course you don’t,” Rob said. He took the cigarette from Sasha and dashed it. “Well, my new friend, you were able to pluck a rather valuable memory from Kheva’s mind. He doesn’t take your abilities nearly as seriously as he takes mine. He made the mistake of leaving himself open… and you were lucky enough to find a damaging memory. A memory Kheva so dearly detests.”

  The string of words coming from Rob’s mouth were bizarre, but somehow, they made sense to him. “He’s hiding under the bed,” Sasha said under his breath. “I think…” He paused, before deciding against telling Rob what he’d seen. It wasn’t his information to share, it was too personal. “So, what you’re saying is… that spot can somehow hide things from him?”

  “Indeed,” Rob said. “You’ve been hiding more than a few things from him, I suspect.” Then Rob reached into his jacket, and drew out a long silver knife. A knife Sasha knew well. “I think you’re about as tired of this tyrant as I am. I want to go home, back to my family and my boyfriend. And you want to go home too.”

  Sasha swallowed. His knee-jerk reaction was to agree with Rob, but he had this strong pull inside of him that was drawing him to Kheva. There was a loyalty there that Sasha couldn’t explain, nor did he like.

  So, in defiance of his true feelings, Sasha nodded. “Y-yeah, I do,” he said. And when Rob nodded, Sasha wondered to himself if he was able to hide things from him too. Or if perhaps his abilities weren’t as advanced as the Master’s.

  A billow of smoke blew from Rob’s smiling lips. He lowered the knife to his arm and dug the tip into his flesh. “I want you to keep trying to get memories from Kheva. They’re valuable to me. Get me those memories, Sasha.” Rob twisted the knife until blood was dripping down his pale, scarred arm, and held it in front of Sasha’s face.

  “Will you do that for me?” Rob asked.

  Sasha’s eyes were fixed on the arm, the fragrance of the blood already creeping up his nostrils. Like Pavlov’s dog, Sasha’s mouth filled, and his brain screamed at him to take it, to take one of the only things that would give him relief of this migraine.

  “Yeah,” Sasha replied.

  Rob nodded towards the arm and Sasha took it. He put the bleeding wound to his mouth and began to draw blood out of it.

  Rob put a hand on Sasha’s head and patted it. “There’s a good lad. I think the two of us are going to be friends,” the man said, and back and forth his hand went. “Relax, let your mind drift. I’ll leave you soon, but this will not be the last time we talk.”

  The touch was unwelcome, and it made Sasha’s skin goose bump, but the blood he was drawing easily pushed away all discomfort. It tasted like ambrosia, like a literal life force was sliding down his throat. There could be a bulldozer taking down the house and he wouldn’t move from this position.

  And while he was in his own head, taking in Rob’s blood, Sasha’s mind did indeed begin to wander. He started to see fleeting images in his head, just snatches of random pictures that would only stay if Sasha concentrated on them.

  They were things he recognized: The lake, the house, Jye, but Kheva’s face was the clearest image. He was an overbearing presence in Kel’s mind, something that showed pride in being a bright light in the swirl of chaotic images.

  There was one image of the Master that stood out more than the others, and when Sasha realized that Kheva was wearing the same clothes that he had been when he’d locked Sasha in the shed, he decided to concentrate on that one, disregarding the others.

  It was Kheva, and he was holding a grey screwdriver with a blue cap in his hand.

  Sasha leaned up against the wall of the shed and stared at the door. Even though his body still ached and protested from pain, the headache that had been a constant gnawing discomfort was now gone. He’d drank his fill from Rob, and within minutes the magical concoction had banished the pain and had given him enough energy to sit upright.

  Rob, not Kel.

  What the hell had just happened?

  The air around Sasha was heavy with confusion and confliction. The things that Rob had said… could he really hide a part of him from Kheva? It seemed to be so considering the evidence that he was already faced with. Kheva would’ve ruined him if he knew that he’d seen the incident between him and Rob, when the two of them were sitting on the couch. There was no way he wouldn’t.

  It was there, plain as day, right in front of him. He could do something that, apparently, was really valuable to Rob.

  Because it looked like he wanted to escape. He wanted to go home.

  Then the confliction came, and nestled in that feeling, were strands of loyalty that bound him to the Master. They were feelings that Sasha knew he shouldn’t have, but denying them would be fooling no one. Kheva had been teaching him, and in truth, he deserved to get whipped.

  And he deserved almost everything else that happened to him too. Kheva might be an asshole, but… who the fuck knew who this Rob guy was?

  No, he did know.

  If he was who Kel had used to be… he was some sort of former drug addict hooker that his family had supposedly hated.

  Then Sasha’s eyes widened.

  Or maybe that’s what Kheva had let him think. That’s… what Kheva had planted inside of his mind. The man in Walmart who’d recognized Kel, was that his boyfriend? Or possibly a brother? Well, one thing was obvious, clear as day, Kel’s family had been looking for him

  Just like mine…

  Except Sasha’s family thought he was some mentally ill masochistic freak show. But then again, they could possibly think the same thing about Kel.

  He needed more information. This was a lot to take in. There was no clear path to doing the right thing, or doing anything, really. Rob giving him this strange and alarming task…

  Was this the way to escape?

  “Do I even want to escape anymore?” Sasha whispered to himself. He sniffed and buried his face into his knees. Right now, he just didn’t want to do anything but get out of here. It was hard thinking about the future when your life was a ten-by-ten dirty shed with nothing inside of it but old tools, dirt, and stinking buckets. He wanted to get out of here, go outside, be back in their little family…

  Sasha’s eyes began to burn. He wiped them with his blanket and stood up on shaking feet. Despite knowing it was futile, he tried the metal door and lightly knocked on it. “Anyone out there?” he called, his voice scratchy and weak.

  He sighed and looked around the shed, his eyes sweeping past old cobwebs full of dust and the rusty tools hanging on old corkboard.

  A wrench, a tightener, and…

  …and a screwdriver. A grey one with a blue cap on the end. It was resting on two rusty nails about a foot up from the other tools.

  It was the same one that Sasha had seen Kheva holding in his hand. Well, not seen… but he’d seen it in Kel’s memories.

  Sasha picked up the screwdriver. It was one of the ones that had a lid to hold all of the different drill bits. Maybe he could take the door off the hinges?

  Yeah, that would make Kheva happy with him again, destroying the fucking door. Sasha shook the screwdriver and leaned against the wall of the shed. The sound of the bits rattling around made Sasha flinch. He’d been so used to silence it was an uncomfortable sound.

  Sasha slid down to the floor and shook the screwdriver up and down. He then closed his eyes and tried to explore the territory around him, seeing if he could pick up any stray thoughts that had wandered away from their master’s minds.

  Immediately he found one that he knew didn’t belong. It was out-of-place, exuding a different kind of momentum than the other thoughts did, almost like it had a unique aroma and sense. It was one of Kel’s memories, but it was as if… he’d turned up the brightness on it.

  Sasha drew it to him, and like he was plunging himself into cold water, he dove in to see what he could find.

  Wow. It was recent. Kheva was wearing the same clothes that he was during the image of him holding the screwdriver. Kel
was watching him unscrew the blue top, Sasha himself nowhere to be seen. They were both outside.

  Actually…

  They were outside of the shed, the door ajar.

  Kheva took the lid off of the screwdriver and slipped something into it, then handed it to Kel. The Master turned around after that, and walked back into the house.

  Sasha, seeing through Kel’s eyes, looked down at the screwdriver and rattled it like Sasha had been rattling it just moments before.

  Then he walked into the shed, and laid it down on top of the rusted nails.

  Weird.

  Sasha’s brow wrinkled at this, and just as he was pulling out of the memory, he saw Kel look down at a blanket-covered heap before shaking his head back and forth. There was guilt and sadness inside of Kel as he looked down at Sasha, but like the crazed man himself, it was twisted, wrapped tightly around the other emotions like an added accessory.

  Sasha withdrew himself from the memory, a confused look on his face. He squinted his eyes and held up the screwdriver.

  “What’s inside of you?” he mumbled. Curiosity outweighed any sort of reservations Sasha had, and he unscrewed the lid from the small tool, then dumped the contents out on his hand.

  And out slipped a small silver key.

  “No way,” Sasha whispered. He gawked at the key and blinked. “Are you fucking serious?” His eyes slowly rose and they focused on the door, the small keyhole almost taunting him with the thoughts of freedom.

  Kheva had put the key there… but why? To test him? This was just another fucking game he was playing. But how the hell was Sasha supposed to play?

  Sasha got up, rubbing the jagged ridges of the key over the tips of his fingers. His mouth pursed and he contemplated the intelligence of unlocking that shed door. The prospect of opening it was downright terrifying, it would be blatantly disobeying Kheva. But…

  The hesitation was apparent, not only on Sasha’s face but he could feel his heart beating in his throat. A part of him wished he hadn’t even found that key, because now freedom outside of this stuffy, miserable shed was literally in his hand.

  But Kheva… the Master, the man that held in his palm Sasha’s misery and happiness. Kheva had been so angry with Sasha’s attempted escape, the punishment for unlocking that shed could be dire.

  The last thing he wanted to do was to make Kheva angry. His body was still sore and stiff from his previous discipline.

  Sasha closed his eyes and plunged himself into his own mind. He looked around and found that oddly dark corner of his mind, the same one he’d been able to access when he was putting Kel to sleep, and also the same one that seemed to conjure up those crystal-clear memories he’d been able to access. It was strange, this place, the more time Sasha spent there, the more it seemed like a separate area inside of his head.

  His own little dark corner.

  Once Sasha got to that dark corner, he sought out the nightcrawler he was looking for. He already knew how Kel and Kheva smelled, and now Rob, and once he found their scent he could dive deeper and find all sorts of information about them. Or at least what information they wanted to put forth. Once you dug out what you were looking for, you could pull it into the light and view the memory like you were watching a television.

  Before Sasha had learned this control, these memories had been forced upon him. Like the horrific childhood memory that Sasha had inadvertently found, but now he could summon them once he got their scent.

  But how about contacting someone? Not just digging through their memories? Sasha dove into that barren darkness and began searching for Kheva.

  There was a lot of Kel. Kel’s mind was just as disorganized as one would expect. There were stray memories and feelings strewn around like a kid’s messy bedroom, exposed and out there for one to pick apart and analyze. The only thing organized in that brain, was the area where Rob still lived.

  Rob… the man that Kel had once been.

  Kheva’s mind on the other hand… Kheva was obsessively clean. He had a presence to him that radiated a bright and powerful light, but it was cold and distant. It was only there to let you know just how advanced he was, how super human, it was the epitome of ‘look but don’t touch.’ To force your presence on Kheva, to pull on that string to try and find a memory, well it would be like going to a museum and jumping on the displays––something you just didn’t do.

  Sasha wasn’t trying to uproot memories though, he was trying to contact him. Sasha searched through Kheva’s presence and tried to put forth the wish of speaking with him. He even went as far as to show him that he’d found the key.

  Just two weeks ago… he’d been on the fringes of having to go to a mental institution. And now he was learning how to use telepathy, mind control. What had been a source of suffering for him for years, apparently was a strength inside of him that could literally bring people to their knees.

  It was unreal. And Sasha would be lying if he didn’t wish he could show Jobe. He loved Jobe and he fucking missed him. Wouldn’t it be something to be able to show Jobe that he wasn’t crazy? That he was actually special?

  A pang went through Sasha’s heart. His emotions towards Jobe and Lex bounced around like a rubber bouncy ball being thrown into a closet. Sometimes he never wanted to see them again, solely because of their betrayal and the intense hurt he still felt when he thought about them. But other times… especially since he’d been locked up in this shed, he just wanted to hear Jobe’s voice, maybe let him hold him at night like he used to.

  He really loved Jobe. That guy had been his best friend for so long, and not just that, Sasha had a probably unhealthy dependence on him.

  And I just left him… left him when he was driving himself crazy worrying about me.

  ‘No, he betrayed you,’ the voice that Sasha now knew as Rob, whispered. ‘You can’t trust them. Every damn person seems to want something from us, or to take something away.’

  Sasha sighed. “Kheva I can see, but I’ll always trust Jobe and Lex.”

  ‘I won’t tell you otherwise, only to keep both eyes open.’

  And then he was gone. Sasha let out a breath and wrapped his blanket around himself. He closed his eyes and went back into his head, the grasshoppers chirping and the birds singing all around him. Without knowing he was brushing the edges of unconscious, Sasha fell asleep.

  Sometime later, a bright warm light shone onto Sasha’s face, and when he opened his eyes, he saw a dark silhouette in front of the open door.

  “You have the key yet you remain a shed dweller? Interesting,” Kheva said. His voice was low, it was obvious that he still wasn’t happy with Sasha. That alone made a shiver go up his spine, like the Master’s voice itself was a trickle of cave water.

  Sasha sat up, then rose on legs that were already starting to tremble. “I… didn’t want to get into any more trouble,” Sasha said simply. He absentmindedly rubbed his shoulders, his hand grazing over rough scabbed skin from the whip marks. “I wasn’t sure if you’d planted that information for me to find, decided to err on the side of caution.”

  Kheva’s oddly-coloured eyes narrowed, but even when they became small slits, that didn’t reduce their intensity. “All the more interesting,” he said back. “Indeed, finding that key was important. I had no plans on letting you out until you did. It took you five days, nightcrawler. I’d say I expected more from you, but after the stunt you pulled, I half-expected you to die in there.” Kheva turned around and walked out of the shed.

  Sasha followed behind him, his eyes squinting from the sun that had warmed up the outside world. It was just as beautiful of a day as he’d imagined, summer really was coming back to Vancouver Island. He’d never cared about the seasons before, it was always the same season indoors, but now he was looking forward to summer. Kel had told him with much excitement about the garden he’d get to see grow and his berry patches, not to mention fishing in the lake and swimming. Kel had even promised him a hike up one of the mountains so they could watch a me
teor shower.

  “You found your room then?” Kheva said, always remaining a step ahead of Sasha. Even his walk was confident, his stance like a man who had the world watching him.

  “My room?” Sasha said. But then he realized that he knew what Kheva was talking about. “The section in my mind, that dark corner that I go to connect to you two?”

  Kheva nodded. “It is your own area, create and decorate it as you will. You can make it into a room, or a quiet patch of grass beside a moonlit brook, it’s up to you. That’s your pathway to us, and eventually… to whoever you wish to command,” he explained. “It is like a sixth sense. I once had someone say that it was like a muscle you never knew you had, but once you have control over it, you can never lose it.”

  Sasha thought of this, and realized Kheva was right. That’s exactly what it felt like. “Like how some people can roll their tongue, right?”

  Kheva nodded again. “That’s correct.” There was a noise, and Sasha looked ahead to see Jye slipping through his cat door. The serval sat down, his bat-like ears, black with a white spot on the back, turning like little radar dishes to pick up the voice of his master. It was amazing how much that cat looked like a miniature cheetah. “Soon, that dark corner will be familiar enough for you to customize it. The more you use the muscle, the stronger it will be.”

  Kel appeared in the sliding glass door behind Jye. A lightness came to Sasha when he saw Kel smile wide. A smile that was Kel’s and Kel’s alone, not Rob’s.

  “It wouldn’t make sense to me if I hadn’t seen it myself but… I understand now,” Sasha said. He jammed his hands into his pockets and bit the corner of his cheek. “I’m… sorry about what I did.”

  Kheva stopped and turned around slowly. Sasha froze in his tracks, nervous about his sudden halt.

  “You will have to earn my forgiveness over that stupid act,” Kheva said darkly. “You violated a trust I had put in you, and I will not forget it.”

  Sasha winced, expecting at any moment to be hit. He wanted to explain to Kheva that he was scared, that he just didn’t want to be beaten on anymore, he didn’t want to be raped. But what was the point? Kheva already knew, he already knew the thoughts inside of Sasha’s head.