by Quil Carter
Jack laughed at the ending, or as much as a five-year-old could when he was half-asleep. “If The Lost Puppy followed that logic…” he said sleepily. “It would get eated by greywasters in the end.”
“Eaten by greywasters,” I corrected. And as I closed the book gently, Jack repeated the sentence with the corrected version. “And it would, you’re right. There is a vast difference between books, television and the real world. Thankfully these tales will prepare you more than Valen’s garbage.” I rose. “That’s all for tonight. Good night.”
“Good night, Master Elish.”
I walked out of his bedroom and shut the door, then made my way to my en-suite bathroom and punched out one of the blister pack of pills that Silas had me taking three times a day. He got those blister pack sheets custom made for me every month, each one holding a colourful collection of medication that I took at the appointed times.
Since my siblings had enquired about my medication, I took a closer look at the pills in my palm. Each one had had their prints buffed off, so it was impossible for anyone to discern just what they were. I didn’t mind however, Silas had told me that they evened me out, and they did. Silas knew what was best for me, so I would obey him and take anything he put into my hands.
There was also other medication that I took occasionally. A small blister pack that contained three pills that I took when I was having a bad day. Those ones were as good as gold for me… I still had my off days; days when I didn’t even want to leave my bed.
After I was finished taking my medication, I walked out of my bedroom and to the living room.
Finn looked up at me from the couch and smiled. My sengil was twenty-five like I was, and the two of us had transitioned from teenagers to adults together. He was not only my sengil, but my friend and the man I still shared a bed with.
“I love it when you read to him, you know,” Finn said with a badly hidden smile. His curly golden blond hair fell past his ears in tight corkscrews, fragrant hair that I enjoyed smelling each night before I fell asleep. My own hair was cut short, only about three inches long. “You’ll find me leaning up against the wall so I can listen too.”
“It’s something I know he appreciates,” I said. I sat down on the couch beside him and picked up the fresh cup of tea that he’d prepared for me. “I’ll be doing it with the door closed from now on, however.”
Finn laughed lightly and picked up his own steaming mug. “I keep asking you to read to me.”
“And I keep telling you you’re delusional to suggest such things.”
“Must I beg you, Master?” Finn delivered me a smile soaked in honey, but I only rolled my eyes and reached for the remote on the television.
Everything was peaceful in my apartment for the next several hours. Finn and I did our usual routine: Finn helped me with my job as councillor, just redundant things that still needed my opinion or approval on but would’ve been needless busy work for me to do, and I did whatever Skytech project I was working on. Most of the things had to be done in labs, but paperwork and organizing today’s notes could be done here.
Right now, Silas was designing the new twin brute chimeras and he was making requests to have the twins be the strongest ones yet. He wanted them to be the family’s bodyguards and already had plans to release the twins in Moros. Silas wanted the boys to grow up strong, and had told me he was going to try a hands-off approach to the twins, similarly to what he was doing with young Sanguine in the greywastes.
I was just going over some numbers when there was a knock on my entrance door. Since thiens didn’t allow strangers inside of Alegria, I knew it must be one of my brothers. Or perhaps Silas was drunk again and looking for company in the bedroom.
I began to rise to get the door, but Finn jumped up before me. “I’ll get it, Master,” he said quietly, a caring look on his face. “You know you get a bit sleepy after your medication.”
My mouth opened to protest, but my head was suddenly consumed with a swimming feeling. I sat back down with not another complaint and squinted my eyes. This happened every night, and once it did, it was my sign to stop working and relax for the rest of the evening. So I minimized the work tabs on my laptop and brought up a game of solitaire for later.
My ears picked up the sound of Garrett. I looked over my shoulder and was suspicious when I saw both Garrett and Nero in the doorway.
“It’s late… is there something you need?” I asked. Nero and Garrett both snorted at this, and walked past Finn who was giving me a helpless look.
“Something we need? We’re your brothers. We don’t need a reason to visit you.” Nero kicked off his boots and walked to the living room with a bag in his hand. “We brought some junk food and booze. Or if you want, I brought some drugs too. You like weed, eh?” Nero threw the paper bag onto my coffee table and sat down opposite to me.
I disliked company without proper warning beforehand, especially loud company that never knew when it was time to leave.
“We were just going to have a quiet night,” I said. “I was probably going to be going to sleep soon too…”
This garnered me another groan from the both of them. Nero even threw both of his tattooed arms up into the air.
“It’s ten o’clock and you’re going to be going to bed soon? You sleep like nine hours a day and you’re a chimera. You don’t need that much sleep,” Garrett said while removing a bowler hat from his head. He took out a plastic bottle of vodka from the bag he’d been carrying and handed it to Finn. “Make us some drinks, Finny. Make one for yourself too.”
It was too hectic here. I didn’t like a lot of noise or chaos, especially late at night. Not to mention my evening drugs were kicking in and the effects of them were reminiscent of cotton being stuffed into my head.
Finn got up and obediently went to the kitchen to carry out Garrett’s request. Garrett then sat down in an overstuffed chair I had beside the couch I was on.
But as Finn passed Garrett, I saw those two exchange glances.
I didn’t like those glances, but my brain was swimming around in a thick soup. I always went to bed once this happened. If it was one of the nights I was planning on being intimate with Finn, I made sure I took my evening pills after. I wasn’t that great of a sexual partner when I was floating a foot above my bed, high and out of it.
Perhaps my brothers were looking for a little extra company this evening. I had been sleeping with those two since Silas had been generous enough to fix what was wrong with my coding, but I didn’t have that much of a sex drive, so it didn’t happen often. Besides Finn, it was only Silas that I actively slept with. It was my honour to have him for the evenings.
“I’m going to have to pass if you’re wanting this to move to the bedroom,” I said to them. “I’m much too tired to engage in such things.”
Nero sighed. I heard him rustle around in his bag, which was followed by the sound of snorting. He was taking drugs up his nose. “That’s not why we’re here. We just wanted to hang out for a bit.” He greeted Finn when my sengil came back into the living room holding drinks. “Finny! I discovered a new drink I want to show you how to make.” Nero stood up. He put a hand on Finn’s shoulder, my sengil looking quite perplexed, and led him back into the kitchen.
“I don’t usually drink after I’ve taken my nightly pills…” I said as I picked up the tumbler glass. Finn had made me vodka and ChiUp, the Dek’ko equivalent of 7-Up. “But I don’t really plan on being up much longer.” More like I needed something to calm my nerves. My brothers and sister had been acting strange today, asking me a lot of questions. This wasn’t rare, a couple times a year they started to act weird, peppering me with off questions and talking behind my back. Perish was the worst when it came to this, but all it took was reporting it to Silas and the questions ceased, at least for a few more months.
“Cheers then,” Garrett said; his face, complete with a neatly trimmed moustache above a lip ring, smiled broadly. “I have Kessler tonight. Tyler has him rig
ht now, so I’m going to need this. He’s a good baby so far, but like Ceph… he eats a lot. Any new developments with Ares and Siris?”
Those were the new brute twins’ names. I tried to think, but found the cotton stuffed in my head was preventing me from doing any deep thinking. I squinted my eyes shut, trying to come up with the answer, anything, but it was gone.
“It’s okay…” Garrett said hastily. “The alcohol must be kicking in already, huh?”
No, that wasn’t it and he knew that wasn’t it. It was a side effect from the drugs I was taking, but the benefits far outweighed the downfalls. “I guess,” I said and squinted my eyes again. “It must be the alcohol. I don’t usually drink after I’ve taken my nightly pills, but I don’t really plan on being up much longer.”
Garrett nodded. I looked up and saw that he was reaching for a black book. “We won’t harass you for too much longer.” He chuckled. “We don’t want to smother you to death with how much we see you.”
There was a noise behind him. It looked to be coming from my bedroom. I began to get up, but Garrett put his hand up and rose instead. “Finn must’ve dropped something. Just wait there.”
I was okay with that. I sipped my drink, alone in the living room now, and petted my cat Dave when he came over for attention. Hugh had lived to the impressive age of twenty-two, and after he’d passed on, I had adopted a stray kitten who was lucky enough to wander into the Skyland military base. Nero had given him to me for my birthday and he was now one and a half years old. He was a large fixed tom cat with a grey coat and white paws. A nice and calm personality too.
Nero and Finn came back, Nero in the middle of telling Finn a lewd story involving an attractive male greywaster and an alleyway, and the two of them sat down and picked up their drinks. Several minutes later, Garrett returned too, but he didn’t sit down.
“We should let Elish get some rest. He looks pretty tired,” Garrett said as he lingered in the hallway. “Want to go bug Sacario? He’ll be all over us if we bring him drugs.”
Well, that was a relief. I rose to be polite, and Nero got up as well. “I’m going to leave you some weed and some of the opiates,” he said as he walked to the entrance doors. “I’ll be taking off to Cardinalhall for a few days, doing some basic training with Cephy… Why don’t you take a vacay and visit us? Me and Ceph have been exploring the greywastes together and we’ve found some pretty neat areas. And since we’re immune to sestic radiation we can explore the plaguelands too. Everything there is deserted.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said politely. But there was a reason I’d never explored the greywastes. I’d only been to Cardinalhall, since it was the biggest greywastes military base, and the laboratories I spent time in when I was working on a project there. “Thank you for your visit. Have a good evening.”
I wasn’t sure why, but my farewell had both of their mouths down turning. “I’ll never get used to it…” Garrett said as he turned around. “I don’t know how he can be cruel enough to want him rather than our real brother.”
Real brother?
I tried not to show it on my face, but Garrett’s comments stung. I hasted them out the door and closed it quickly, then with my head lowered I walked right from the living room to the bedroom and got ready for bed.
Finn came as well, and when the lights were turned off and our bedroom had become quiet, my sengil, as he’d been doing for ten years, shifted over to me and put his arm around my chest.
“Talk to me, Ele,” he whispered. Ele was his nickname for me; whereas my nickname amongst the family was Eli, or E-lie, when we were alone he called me Ele, or E-lee. As long as he didn’t do it around other people, I was fine with it.
I let out a slow breath and looked up at the silver-hued ceiling. “Why would they rather I be miserable, Finn?” I whispered. I tried to dismiss the heaviness Garrett’s comments had made, but they were eating my heart from the inside out. “If Silas hadn’t corrected my coding… I would’ve killed myself after what Julian had done to me.”
Finn’s grip on my side tightened. He didn’t like speaking of that time in our lives either. Hell, it had taken me years just to even be able to say his name. Seven years to be exact.
“Are you happy, Master?” Finn then asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Yes,” I said, and I said that with all of my honesty. “If it wasn’t for Silas… I would’ve killed myself after what Julian did to me, and over what I let happen to you. Silas made me happy. I owe him my creation, and I owe him my life. He knows what’s best for me, more than I do.”
“Then that’s all that matters,” he said back. I felt his nose nuzzle into my shoulder. “Your brothers don’t understand, but they don’t have to. You’re happy and that’s all that should matter, right?”
“Right,” I said, but my head was still troubled by Garrett’s words, and the veiled disappointment I could hear resonating in his tones. “I just wish they liked me how I am now. They always just look at me like I’m a dog with three legs. I’m running Skyfall beside Master Silas, something I always wanted to do growing up, and yet they treat me like I’m incompetent.”
“Don’t trouble yourself by it,” Finn said and he rubbed my chest. “They’re your brothers, they’ll always worry about you. Because they love you.” Lips then pressed against my neck. “Would you like me to take your mind off of it before sleep?”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Not really, but I’ll let you have your fun. It’s my duty as your master to take care of all your needs.” Finn giggled at this, then his head vanished underneath the covers.
The next three days were spent in the usual fashion. I had my routine and I was content with it. I was running Skyfall currently because Silas was spending a lot of time in a northern lab in the greywastes monitoring the latest scientists working on cloning Sky. But Silas would be returning tonight, giving me the next week in Perish’s laboratory. Since Kessler had recently been born, and there were no new chimeras growing inside of their steel mothers, all of the focus would be on creating a way for a mortal to become an immortal.
We still didn’t know how we were going to test our hypothesis, terminally ill animals perhaps. The thought of having an immortal animal was a weird one. I can only imagine the situation that would present itself if someone was faced with an immortal rat in their home. That would be enough to drive even the sanest of them crazy.
It was what it was, and a great scientific discovery justified the risks involved. We were fortunate in a lot of ways, Silas had been telling my siblings and I since we were small that Sky had figured out how to turn a mortal into an immortal. Yes, the secret had died with him, but we knew that somehow there was a way.
We just had to find it.
And we had the best minds in Skyfall working towards our new goal: Mantis, who had graduated from Skytech at the top of his class; Perish who was, even though his mind had been altered, the smartest man in the world, me of course, and surprisingly, Sacario too. My best friend had matured and grown over the years. Instead of being just an idiot, he’d grown into a successful idiot and now had a Mad Hatter-type passion for picking apart chimera and born immortal DNA. I was proud of Sacario for making something of his life, even if half of his teeth were implants due to conflicts with his Skittle habit, and not brushing his teeth after consuming them.
“Man… I look so fly.”
I glanced over at Sacario, my friend was checking himself out in the reflection of the Stadium glass. Even though he was only several years from thirty, my friend had held onto his youth, and from how he acted and presented himself, you would think he was still a teenager. It was refreshing to be around him, and even though I chastised him for his juvenile attitude, I wouldn’t want him any other way.
“The blue does bring out your eyes,” I said. “Isn’t that Garrett’s suit and tie?”
Sacario chuckled and nodded, his large eyes reflecting the crowd of Stadium-goers below us.
I’d come to
enjoy Stadium, it no longer bothered me like it did when I was younger. My favourite part was seeing the convicts get their justice.
I enjoyed seeing things die. But what chimera didn’t?
Sacario continued to primp himself in the stadium glass, and I accepted a dessert square from Finn. We were in the skybox, looking over the buzzing crowd of Skyfallers. There was only a chain-link fence separating them from the arena, and already several men and women were grasping onto the links in anticipation for the first event.
“We have a full house tonight,” I said to Sacario. “I can’t see a single empty seat.”
“They know you guys give away the best prizes when a kid is being showed off,” Sacario said with a snort. “I’ve also heard of underground bets going on whenever Silas makes the announcement that one’s been born. Eye colour mostly, but type has become popular too. Did you know some dumb ass won a hundred thousand dollars because he bet ten bucks on Chimera E having pink eyes? One fucking dude out of thousands puts a wild card bet on pink eyes and now he’s swimming in the dough.”
I chuckled, and behind me Garrett and Nero did too. It was impossible not to listen in when Sacario was talking; he was rather… loud. “Too bad you’re so recognizable, hm? You could’ve won some money yourself.”
“Yeah, I am pretty sexy,” Sacario said as he scratched his neck. He had his fair share of piercings, just like Garrett did, but with two eyebrow rings and a lip ring on the left-hand side. Sacario also kept a trimmed beard now too, and his hair fell to his ears which he occasionally braided and put colourful beads in.
I didn’t know why, I’d stopped asking.
“I’ll never get over your short hair,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, you still look like Brad Pitt and Lee Pace had a super hot baby… but fuck you look sexily weird. Grow it long again; you’re all super model and I miss Tolkien elf. I miss old you.”
