by L C Barlow
Patrick started forward, and I followed. We were now looking for a stairway or some other incline that would allow us out from the low concrete walkway bordering the river. But as I looked for that way out, I also turned back to glance again at Roland, and when I turned, so did he. Our eyes met for a heavy second, and he nodded to me. He turned back around, and so did I, continuing to follow Patrick.
"Should I ask what that was about or just chalk it up to being life?" Patrick asked me congenially.
"He reminded me of someone," I said.
"Oh, yeah? Who?" he asked.
I didn't answer for a while. I didn't know what to say. Finally, I replied as we stepped on firm ground leading up and away from the river. "Someone I truly owe."
Chapter 14
THE MAN WITH STARS IN HIS BODY
If you didn't walk there, you would miss him. That is what Cyrus explained when he handed me the knife.
No car could take me to him, nor could Cyrus. I would be treading alone. "That is when he will come out," Cyrus said. "When you're alone.
"And you couldn't kill him, understand. You never could have, Jack, until now. I have faith that your gifts are from the box, and if they are from the box, you can carry them to him. I would join you, if I could." I knew this was true, that he was handing me a job that he could not do on his own. For once, I was not unafraid.
I understood very aptly that, just because I wasn't willing to use this strange force that had overcome my kills and taken them from me - that is, flooded my kills with a power beyond me or my own cause - didn't mean that Cyrus wasn't going to use it to his advantage. Though I wanted to, I couldn't deny him. I never could.
I may not have wanted my Mother dead, but Cyrus had someone like my Mother - someone he couldn't quite kill himself, and in a way, despite the fear, I enjoyed the idea of being there for him. I liked being capable in ways that he was not, even if it was not my own doing.
I slipped like a snake in milk through the forest that led to the man; I went there in the sunshine. Cyrus said it wouldn't matter what time or what day I went, but I left immediately while the sun was still shining, after the stranger was assigned to me.
I was already so nervous that I didn't want the night to surround me, even if the night was safe and obscuring. It was too quiet at night, I thought. It was too dead.
But this time, I was wrong. There was no noise but my own, and the woods in the light were even deader than the world at night. The slim trees that surrounded me were haunting - they were so slim and plentiful that anything might be lurking in them, anything but the natural, that is.
And I noticed that the leaves never tumbled in the direction I was going. The trees never leaned that way. The quiet waters never flowed to follow me. Compared to the rest of the world, I was walking backwards.
I felt in the grips of a faint magnetism that pulled at my jacket and hair to stop walking, turn around, go back. Some of my shirt buttons even unhooked themselves. One popped off, like the world was disrobing me, and as I was sewing it back on, I saw it.
A mix between a church and a Victorian home, rotten all the way through, like some sad forgotten fairy tale. The rot had closed the home's eyes for good, and when I stepped inside its mouth, the rooms were perfectly empty, the paint peeling like so many post-it notes and butterflies canvassing its walls. The sublimity of this peeling made me swoon, it was so geometrical. It did not help that everything, even the peeling paint, from cover to core was white.
As I explored the rooms, I did not expect to easily find him - this man that Cyrus so hungered for - but he was, to my utter surprise, in the den, reclining in a worn chair, as though tired. As I approached, I saw that he was staring at a few tiny flames in the black fireplace, and there was a brown blanket pulled over him. But in this blanket I saw something glow, and then suddenly, he gazed at me.
I drew my knife.
The man had black hair that tumbled over his face, and his eyes were so ebon that they stood out against his pale skin like holographs. His cheekbones were tall, and he seemed slightly gaunt. "Hello Jack," he said, and that stopped me from lunging towards him.
I tapped the knife against one of my fingers lightly, feeling the sharp tip.
The man gazed at the knife. "Has Cyrus come for another piece of me?" he asked, and as he whispered this question, he brought his hands down, and the blanket slipped from him.
I took a nimble step back.
The man's chest was bare, and there were cracks in him like an old piece of pottery. These fractures were giant, though, expansive, the width of a sword or knife. What stunned me, corked my throat, chained me to the floor was the glow in those cracks. The man's body was a furnace, and his breath stoked the flame.
Of all things, this in particular was not the kind of being I imagined meeting on Cyrus's orders. For one, he was visually stunning - bright and dark simultaneously. For another, he was weak, it seemed, as he lolled in the chair like an ancient being in need of resurrection - weak enough that Cyrus should have been able to kill him, I thought. But then... as I looked closer, the weakness seemed to fade away, and there was something immense and gold inside him, a brilliant shine filtered by what looked like stoking coals. He seemed so organic.
"Do you know who I am?" he asked.
"No," I replied. "Nor do I care."
"You've come without a thought, then, in that head of yours, to kill me? Even if I'm something you've never seen before?... Ready to thoughtlessly murder a miracle. Just like a machine?"
"Yes."
He smiled. "It must be marvelous - to do so much and feel so little. You get credit for being wholly alive at the cost of only half of that." As he spoke, the light in the giant cracks of his body fluoresced with every sentence, and when he stopped speaking, they died lower.
"I've seen many people in my life I've never encountered the likes of before or since. In a way, you're nothing different. Besides, I simply do what I'm asked to do," I said. I flicked out the knife to my side in a half-shrug.
"I have a feeling, Jack, that one wouldn't be required to ask you anymore." He paused and we caught each other's eyes for a moment, hovering over his gleaming and glowing flesh. "You won't succeed, though. Not tonight. Not even..." he raised a hand with a lightning strike buried in it and motioned toward me, "with the powers that the box supposedly gave you. No, not even with that."
That was when I began to feel something inside me turn. I thought it was my imagination until suddenly I could no longer stand, and I heard my knife drop to the floor. When my hands hit the wood and an overwhelming nausea invaded me, that was when the terror hit. I knew something was about to go horribly wrong.
Like a helium balloon turning to lead, I fell to the floor. I tried to shake away the blackness deluging me, but it would not relent until I was completely down like a patient in a hospital bed.
I began very much to fear what this man was. If I had been weaker, as he approached, I would have screamed.
The next think I knew, his form standing above me, blanket thrust off, his body glowing through his black pants and up through his chest and arms like tribal hellfire. His darkness was shining brilliantly.
"Cyrus has his plans, and I have mine," he whispered.
Though I tried to squirm, to crawl, to turn, I could only lay and breathe. I was paralyzed.
"Don't you realize, Jack, that you are not part of the only team playing in these games? That you have never been. No. No, I don't think you've ever realized. You are so... what's the word? Inbred."
The man, who had seemed so sickly before was now as thick with life than I had ever seen.
He bent to me and undid the buttons of my shirt so that I could feel my stomach and chest bare. His eyes searched me and finally settled on my face. I tried again to sit up, to crawl away like a wounded mouse, but I could do nothing, and this helplessness angered me all the more.
"Did you know that Roland was sent here to kill me once, too?" he asked. For a second time,
this man shocked me.
I tried to speak and found, in surprise, that I could. "No." This was true.
The man with black eyes and black hair smiled. "I have been waiting for you, Jack. I have been waiting for years. Cyrus plans and strategizes, and he is very good, yes. He owns his part of the world, just like he planned. But he is not everything, and though he tries, he will never be." He traced his hand along my stomach. "I do apologize for this, but trust me, it is for the best. Things for you could have turned out far, far worse."
"What do you mean?" I asked quickly. Every fiber of me, for the first time in my life, was screaming in fear. "What are you going to do?"
I saw him clasp the knife from off the floor, and he dragged it along the wood till it was next to my arm. I tried to yell to him to stop, but my vocal chords refused to thrum. I did not know if he had blocked my voice, or if my body knew just how futile such a scream would be.
"I won't let you feel the pain," he whispered. "That's not what I'm about." He was looking at my stomach, and I watched his eyes narrow, felt the blade against my skin. "You would be smart, though, to never tell Cyrus this happened."
I gasped in panic and said, "What are you doing?!"
Again he slid the knife across my naked belly. "If I were you, I would tell him that you could not find me, or simply that you failed to kill me. Either one would do. But never tell him about... this."
I gasped at him, as though in a special hell where I could only ask the one question in the world that would never be answered. But finally, right before he plunged the knife into me, he granted me a response.
"I am giving you what you want even more than killing. I am granting you the ability to take what you need." I didn't know what this meant, but before I could say anything, I felt the knife slide into me,
It was slow, gentle, but firm, and with no pain. It was as though I were suddenly a cake to gut, not a human, and though the knife was cold, there was nothing else physically horrific. I felt him working inside the deadened me like I was a machine.
I felt pressure and then something very warm was inside me. It moved into my center, almost against the base of my spine, and I thought it was his hand, until, finally, he told me he was done, and I could feel the warmth still there.
I saw him wiping my blood from his hands, and then I could move again.
I moved my hand gingerly, testing the air to see if I was yet allowed to move, and finally could. I clutched my bare stomach and pulled myself up to my knees. I peered down and eyed blood smeared against me, but there was no cut, no gash, no anything. Whatever he had done, there was no evidence on the outside. Nevertheless, I could feel something there, in me, heating me. It made me want to vomit.
"It won't do you any good coming after me," he said. "Given enough time, I don't think you would want to, anyway. Not once you see."
"See what?" I hissed at him. I reached for the knife, but it slid across the floor and into the fireplace, buried itself amongst the wood. "Fuck," I whispered.
"The truth of what Cyrus is. What I've placed inside you will help with that, but not only that. Look at me," he said, and without a second's thought, I glared at him.
"What did Cyrus teach you? Think back to the very beginning, when it all started. What did he say to you the first night you saw Roland return? In that white room. Yes, you remember. You've chanted it your whole life."
The fact that he knew of my life and its subtle details stalled my cognitive process until I flashed again to the dark night when it had all began, in the white room, with the resurrected man. "That I'm not really killing them," I replied, hesitant to share anything with this man. "I'm just not bringing them back."
"Well..." The man with coal in his veins motioned with his hand towards me. "Now, Jack, you can."
Chapter 15
SEX
"You are too young to realize, but Cyrus sent you here for me to kill you. I am too strong for him, and the idea that he would send you here to do what he cannot is simply... laughable. It's slaughter.
"Since I chose not to kill you, he will know..."
"Know what?"
"That I saw something in you worth saving and more akin to what I stand for. He won't like it."
The man had slid his hand across mine briefly, almost reassuring. I shivered when he touched me and stepped away, edging towards the door. He continued talking, gazing at me as I retreated. "But you have something now to put you on equal footing. And besides, his knowing that there was something in you averse to him doesn't truly matter. All that matters is he does not realize what I have given you." He held his glowing hand to his lips. "So, shh. In your world, wolves only turn to lambs when they howl their secrets. No howling. Ever. Or he will eat you."
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, feeling that seed of warmth in my stomach. I pushed my hand against my belly-button, wishing I could squelch it. "Cyrus and I are one. I would do anything for him, and he would do anything for me."
The man gazed up and rubbed his chin with his hand, as though considering my point heavily. "Perhaps at one time, but things have changed, Jack. Cyrus was not wrong; the box has singled you out. It has taken your kills from you for a reason. It deals with traitors, and it has claimed you as such. It does not like you.
"But that is fine," he whispered. "There are others that do."
It was night by the time I returned to Cyrus's, sick and nauseous, wondering what the fuck the man had put inside me.
Inside the house was a masquerade, filled to the brim with outsiders, and to suddenly be in the company of so many people filled me even more fully with nausea. Even in the first few minutes of being in that house, the trauma of what had just happened to me doubled in size.
When I entered, there were streamers and rose petals and dry ice and masks hanging about the corridors so that a million smiling faces greeted me, and an irritating array of noises thrummed my ears. There were colors of cobalt and maroon and black and Clementine exploding like spiders around me, and even the white rooms were filled with bolting colors. I walked amongst women with ball gowns the color of pastel cupcakes. Others were in ebons and greys. Some wore slim silk. All wore masks. The men were in red and black and bright yellow. It was nearly impossible to guess who was who.
I stopped the nearest person. "Where's Cyrus?" I asked.
"How would I know that?" the man blissfully inquired, and he kept walking, being led by a woman pulling his tie. The entire house spoke of sex.
There was champagne everywhere, and it seemed every room I entered was filled with statues of ice, fruit, candy, and cake. One candy sculpture was a couple in the midst of oral sex; another was of Satan and Jesus kissing. In all the halls, there was big band music shouting throughout, but it did not seem as if anyone was listening to it. Rather, they were chuckling, guffawing, moaning, sighing their own symphony, and this loud human noise, mixed with my anger, enraged me all the more. I wanted to kill them all.
The cakes, bows, satin, emeralds, tiny dogs were the worst offenses imaginable. Everything seemed to keep me from healing. I felt the warmth in my stomach again, and this warmth whole-heartedly disagreed with the atmosphere.
I asked several others, "Where's Cyrus? Where's Cyrus?" None of them knew.
In one room I searched, men and women were dancing with one another like figures in a clock that had struck midnight. They turned and turned, mechanically, while three or four others darted around them savagely, their clothes barely pinned to them like wood nymphs, and they jumped on the furniture as would schoolchildren and laughed. There must be molly, I thought, in the punch bowl.
In another room, a chandelier had fallen to the floor, its crystals cracked into the marble, but it was still lit nonetheless, and the others had dimmed the remaining lights and curled themselves around it. They looked like royal campers warming themselves by the chandelier's semiprecious flame. In the dark, their masks were menacing.
I scoured one last closed room, the ballroom,
and there was a woman in the middle of it stripping. It was here that most of the people resided, and I had good reason to suspect Cyrus might be one of them. There were probably fifty or so men and women, and they sat on the floor as though picnicking at a park, creating a circle around the one stripping.
I was looking at their masked faces when she removed the top portion of her garments, and when I returned my gaze to her, only two diamond pasties covered her nipples, and a diamond belt slinked around her waist. Those in the crowd lauded her, and several of the men came and licked at her mouth, and then stomach, and then lower.
I stepped in the midst of the circle, and everybody paused, observing me. I asked all of them, "Where are you Cyrus?" I was certain he must be there. I darted about the halo of seats, ripping masks off. They cursed at me.
Quite suddenly, someone touched me from behind, and I turned. It was one of the men that had been eating at the woman's mouth, and his eyes glistened at me. I thought he might be Alex for a moment, for his hair was blonde, and he was thin. He touched my tender stomach. "Everyone who enters the circle has to strip," he said, "how I tell them to." It was not Alex. "And then round and round you'll go. And everybody gets a piece." I hit him in the nose with the palm of my hand.
The man bent over like a tree cut in two, but then he shot up again. "God, that was lovely," he said, and he seemed to slurp in the pain like bliss. The woman behind him laughed, her voice like velvet. He reached out for me.
"Not that one." Another voice cut to us like an arrow shot from the sun and destroyed whatever dreamlike quality was in the atmosphere. I saw Roland standing there, a glass of blushing wine in his hand. He had no mask on, no tux, just plain clothes, like he always wore. Blue jeans. A loose, breezy, cotton shirt.
The man reaching for me stopped mid-grasp. "But the rules," he said.
"Julian, Julian." Roland clucked. "So many rules. No mercy."
"Where's the pleasure in mercy?" the man asked. Nevertheless, he removed his claw from the area of my throat.
