Garden of Spiders Volume 2: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 3

by Quil Carter

  It took me grasping onto all of my remaining senses, but I managed to jerk my head away from Julian’s touch.

  And with a shaky breath, I managed to speak.

  “Re-return…” I whispered. My tongue was useless inside of my mouth, flopping around like a caught fish that had been dealt a fatal wound to its skull. But even though it was near impossible, the fear that Julian would reverse my surgery gave me the strength to make my words spoken. “Return m-me.”

  He had no right. Who was he to barge himself back into my life and do this to me? Hadn’t he already done enough? The audacity of this man made my blood boil inside of my veins, and if I was conscious, with all areas of my mind functioning, I would’ve wrapped my fingers around his neck and choked him until his spirit floated to oblivion.

  Inside I seethed when Julian shook his head. “Not until I fix what I broke.” He kissed me again and rose to standing. “Don’t worry, hun. I have a doctor here that knows everything about the surgery that was performed on you. He’s going to take those implants out of your brain.” Implants? “And… you’ll be the man you once were. The Elish I remember, not…” His jaw became tight and his face hardened. “… not a slave”

  Behind him there was a knock on the door. Julian glanced behind his shoulder. “Just a moment… he’s almost ready.” He turned back to me and smiled, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the purple tin.

  Julian opened that tin, and my disjointed mind reeled with anxiety and anger when he pulled out a syringe full of an amber liquid.

  You have no right. You have no fucking right to make me miserable again!

  I don’t want to be that man. I was fine where I was. Silas was happy where I was, and if Silas was happy… the family was happy.

  Silas is going to be livid over this. He’s going to be angry at me for letting myself get taken.

  I was an idiot. A fucking idiot. I couldn’t do anything right.

  “It’s okay,” Julian whispered. He grasped my hand and stroked it with a smile. “It’s okay, baby.”

  I saw the needle lower, then a prick of pain in my upper arm.

  You have no right… you have no fucking right!

  “Don’t,” I croaked, my voice pleading. “Don’t d-do this to me.”

  “Shh, hush, love,” Julian whispered. I began to feel the dizzying nausea again. “You’ll be better once you wake up. The world will have my prince back soon.”

  I fell back asleep to his voice, and the sound of my heart thrashing anxiously inside of my chest.

  And I said goodbye to Elish, once again.

  “Don’t you fucking touch me!”

  “Calm down. Elish, calm down. You’re too–”

  “Get the fuck away from me!”

  The first thing I became truly aware of was the monotonous beeping. It was annoying at the time; a piercing trill that disrupted the deep sleep I’d been enjoying. A sleep that was reminiscent to a thick blanket being draped over my body, one that eased all fears, and spoke to me in a soothing voice to tell me that there were no worries and everything was just fine.

  Reality brought with it anxiousness, questions I didn’t want answered, an endless dark road littered with landmines I would eventually tread over. Reality was my enemy, but deep sleep held in it secure comfort. I wanted to sleep – forever. The thought was tantalizing enough to have me attempt to dive deeper into this dark and all-consuming abyss. Deeper and deeper until my shallow breathing ceased and there was no more winding road in front of me.

  But that beeping wouldn’t allow me to nestle myself permanently into the void, every second or so it would assault my groggy senses and attempt to pull my resistant body back to the cold clutches of life.

  And eventually, the beeping won… and once again, I opened my eyes.

  The blurry world greeted me, and as if my returning vision was a trigger for my brain, I became aware of the headache that was currently ravaging my skull.

  I groaned from the pain and squinted my eyes to try and get them to focus. I realized quickly that I was in a different room than I’d originally woken up in. This one had a heavy musty aroma, but this smell was mixed in with cheap air freshener. A weak attempt to hide the nose twitching smell of old decaying buildings.

  “Take it easy.”

  I looked up when I saw movement in the pale yellow light.

  Julian was walking towards me. He leaned down in front of my bed, then his eyes flickered up. I looked to see what had caught his attention, and watched him press a button that was on a wired remote beside me.

  A remote that was attached to an electrical cord, with a transparent tube leading to… to my arm.

  Then a rush of warmth swept me, an opiate warmth that wrapped me like a tight blanket. It whisked away the headache that had been pulsing in the back of my head, but I tried to fight the drowsiness that it was attempting to subdue me with.

  However, I would not be lulled back to sleep, and as I said this to myself, I realized that had happened several times.

  “Get the fuck away from me!”

  Yes, I remember now. He’d up the dose whenever I woke up enough to become angry at his presence. It had been happening for the last several days.

  The last several– How long had I been unconscious for?

  I reached down, and just as Julian gasped and tried to grab my hand, I pulled out the IV that was sticking out of my arm and swung my foot over the bed.

  “No, Elish… you’re not strong enough yet!” Julian said hastily. He put his hands on my shoulders, but the moment he touched me I pushed him away.

  But to my humiliation, when I tried to stand my legs became jelly and I collapsed onto my knees with a teeth-clenching grunt. Julian ran and grabbed my shoulders, but even though I tried to wrench myself away from his touch, he held tightly onto me and helped me rise.

  I sat back down on the bed, inhaling hot embers and breathing out smoke. “You better start running, boy. The moment I can stand on my own two feet I’m going to rip your windpipe right out of your fucking throat!” I snarled.

  Julian stepped back from the bed. To my confusion, there was no fear on his face. On the contrary, he was looking at me with a sort of crushed joy.

  “You’re back.” He cupped both hands over his mouth, and tears rimmed the corners of his eyes. “It worked. You’re back.” He made a motion to run to me, but it seemed his natural self-preservation stopped him. Instead he took another step back, his head shaking back and forth as his hands continued to cover his mouth.

  I had no patience for whatever the fuck he was going on about. “I never left, you fucking idiot,” I snapped. “Enjoy your last…”

  I stopped. Just like that, I stopped.

  It worked.

  You’re back.

  They’d done something to my head. Just like Silas had performed that digital surgery, something had been done to me – again.

  I hastily tried to do a scan of my own mind. Who was I? I was Elish. Was I okay? I… I don’t know. Do I feel different?

  Yes.

  How?

  I’m… I’m fucking furious. I’m angrier than I’ve been in… in…

  Years.

  My heart was pounding, the muscles twitching, aching to do something, my lungs breathing in short rapid puffs of air. Adrenaline… was ripping through my veins, driving me to leap up off of this bed and clamp my teeth around Julian’s throat.

  I was angry.

  I… I was angry.

  There was no clouded film over my emotions, nothing to sand off the edges. I was no longer dull greys, I was bright reds, blues, blacks.

  Julian was right.

  I was back.

  “I’ll never forget the look I’m seeing on your face right now…” Julian whispered in front of me. “Even if you kill me in today. I’ll die happy with that shocked realization my most treasured memory.”

  I looked up at him, stunned, barely able to breath as my mind revved like it had just gotten new oil after years r
unning on sticky tar. I was overwhelmed with my feelings for him. I hated him, still in the root of my soul I fucking hated him. Enough for my hands to twitch towards his neck. The hatred I’d been fostering for over eleven years had grown into a beast with a mind of its own. I think I’d always kept a piece of my old self alive just to hold on to that hate.

  And this rejuvenation did not dampen that.

  “For this, I will not kill you today,” I said in a harsh whisper. “But if I ever see your face again, there will be no more questions in my mind whether you’re alive, because I will kill and consume you myself.”

  I was satisfied when I saw a flicker of fear cross through Julian’s face, but with a purse of his lips, it disappeared. “I know you hate me, Elish,” Julian said quietly. “I’ve spent the last eleven years hating myself.” He took a step towards me, then dropped to his knees. “Fixing what was done to you, was my first way to repent for the damage I did when I was young and stupid. The first of many.”

  My teeth ground as he spoke, I could hear the grinding echoing in my skull. “You should be dead,” I said through my locked jaw. “And fuck knows why Silas can kill everyone else I loved, and yet he failed to rid the world of your parasitic self.”

  Julian, still kneeling in front of me, looked surprised. “He… never told you? About what he did to me?”

  “He fucking destroyed my sense of self and made me into a fucking robot, Jules,” I snarled. “You were never spoken of again.” And I was happy to have that happen to me. I saw it as a relief then, a much needed escape from a mind that was hell-bent on driving me towards suicide. But now… but now…

  I felt as if I’d just woken up from an eleven-year sleep. I was only now filling my lungs with cold air, after inhaling only hot, stifling steam. The feeling was… overwhelming. How could I have lived so easily this past decade? That surgery had been strong enough to not only alter my mind, but to make me believe that it had been for my own good.

  And Silas…

  SILAS!

  A pain ripped through my jaw, his name alone poured lava down my throat. All at once, to the point where it overwhelmed me, the things that Silas had been doing to me over the past eleven years came flying towards me like an avalanche. Every instance of humiliation, degradation, submission… the hundreds upon hundreds of times that I willingly and obediently let him fuck me.

  It was too much to bear, and I realized as Julian rested a hand on mine, that I was trembling.

  “Silas… he and Nero flew me to the eastern plaguelands, between the Bone Canyons and the blacksands,” Julian said quietly. “He gave me nothing but a bottle of water… and…” Julian rose and retrieved a gun that was lying on top of a folded jacket. “And a 9mm pistol with one bullet.”

  He turned back to me, the 9mm in his hand. “He told me that I had two choices in this game of his: I can either put that bullet in my head…” I stared up at him, the rage still weaving around my bones, and watched his eyes fill with tears. “Or I can try and make it back to Skyfall, over nine hundred miles of greywastes, and give you this gun so you can be the one to shoot me.”

  Julian walked to me and got back down on his knees. Then slowly he rested the handgun on my trembling hand, and laid his own hand back down on top of it. “If you let me live…” Julian gave a pathetic chuckle. “He said we could be together.”

  “That will never–”

  Julian raised a hand and my clenched teeth prevented me from saying anything further. “He said I would be worthy of being your boyfriend, but he assured me… that you would be nothing but his mindless little whore on the shred of a chance that I did return.”

  I pulled my hand away from Julian’s, the gun coming with it. Julian retracted his own hand, and lifted his chin as if fully expecting me to raise that gun and shoot him right between the eyes.

  And why wouldn’t I?

  My fingers tightened around the grip of the handgun. The anger breeding rapidly underneath my skin was urging for me to end this right there, to kill him and be done with him forever. No leaving him to linger and come up with new plans to manipulate me, just end it… just fucking end it.

  “The last eleven years of my life… have been dedicated solely on surviving my journey here, so I can save you,” Julian whispered. He closed his eyes tightly, tears leaking through the corners. “Eleven years of regretting what I did, and hating myself for what I did to you, and what I did to Finn. The rush I got when you defended me… when you protected me… turned me into a monster. And I accept that, and I will repent until my dying day for what I did.” He sniffed, and his chin trembled. “I love you, and my love for you has only strengthened over these years. You were the reason I kept living, the reason I climbed mountains to return to Skyfall. I love you, Elish. I–”

  I couldn’t hear any more of this. This was all too much for me at that moment. I’d only just gotten these intense emotions back; I was still enraged over Silas, enraged over this man on his knees in front of me. I couldn’t think straight.

  “Stop talking,” I whispered. “I… I can’t handle all of this right now. Bring me home. I must return home.” I put weight on my feet again and tried to slowly stand. Julian jumped to his feet and hovered over me as I lifted myself up.

  “Elish… you’re no longer in Skyfall.”

  My eyes shot to Julian. “What?” I looked around the half-finished bedroom and spotted a dirty plaid blanket that had been tacked onto what appeared to be a window. I took a step towards it, my legs buckling but keeping me upright, and ripped the blanket off.

  Greywastes…

  In front of me was barren grey ground with patches of yellow grass and brambled bushes, then further on, a paved road that had huge fissures and askew medians in all directions, as if a giant had tossed the medians down onto the street like pick-up sticks. Past that crumbling road, abandoned houses coated with dust, several with their roofs sinking in and bowing, all with their windows boarded up and their doors holding several nailed two-by-fours.

  For what seemed like hours, I stared blankly out that window, overwhelmed with everything that had happened to me, and the raw emotions that had only recently gotten their colour back. I suspected that I didn’t want to turn away from that window, because I feared another bombshell that would have my emotions once again revving like an engine. And my body and mind had reached their peak of what they could handle.

  A hand rested on my shoulder. “You’ve been missing in Skyfall for over a week,” Julian said behind me. “After your surgery was performed… we moved you where I’ve been living these past six months…”

  “Irontowers,” I whispered.

  I saw Julian nod in the reflection of the glass. “I saw the plane coming… with you and Perish.” His reflection smiled. “I climbed up to the twenty-first floor with this baby.” I turned as he left, and he picked up a polished sniper rifle that was leaning up against the door. “A C14 Timberwolf, used in the Canadian army during the war. I had to…” Julian laughed lightly, though his face still held a great deal of despair. “I had to trade two slaves for it.” His dark blue eyes met mine, the corners red from the tears that kept filling them. “Imagine that? I was a slaver for a few years, and a mercenary for many more. I… I did whatever I could to get myself back to Skyfall. A lot of bad shit too.”

  I watched him quietly as he struggled to speak. It seemed this was just as overwhelming for him as it was for me.

  Did he really… cross the greywastes to save me?

  “You?” I said, severing the sprouts of emotion that were threatening to erupt in this newly recovered mind. “I couldn’t see you doing such things.” With slow steps, I walked towards the door of the bedroom. My legs continued to buckle underneath me, but each passing minute had my strength returning.

  Julian leaned down and handed me my black leather shoes. I was still dressed in the clothing I’d left Alegria with, and from their smell it appeared like they’d been laundered too… as well as one could do it in the greyw
astes I suppose.

  “Oh… the stories I’ll tell you,” Julian said with a strained chuckle. He got down on his knees and when I slipped my feet into the shoes he did the laces. I let him, but only because I didn’t trust myself to lean down quite yet. My head was swimming and I didn’t want to spill myself onto the floor.

  But after my shoes were tied, he didn’t rise. I realized while watching him that his shoulders were shaking, and soon sniffing could be heard.

  “I’ve… I’ve killed people. I’ve enslaved people… I’ve become a hardened greywaster and yet…” His hand wiped his nose. “Now that I’m in front of you… I turn back into a soft kid just… looking for any sign that you don’t want to kill me where I stand.”

  I walked past him, leaving him to cry where he lay. “You have my thanks for fixing me,” I said to him. I walked out into what appeared to be the living room of the house. The couch was covered in blankets, the carpet stained and filthy yet hastily cleaned, the windows had been cleaned too, and the broken ones had been replaced with windows from other buildings. True to the sengil nature… everything was clean, decrepit and rotting, but clean none the less. “Now I want to return home.”

  But as I said this, a bulge pressed against my throat.

  I had to return home.

  But what would I be returning to?

  Silas… Silas still thinks my brain has been altered. He’s going to expect me to be that weak, pathetic slave that grovelled at his feet and practically begged to be beaten and raped.

  If I returned home…

  … he’s going to destroy what had been fixed. Without batting an eye, Silas would put me back under and perform that surgery again.

  I… god I couldn’t let that happen.

  I realized I’d stopped walking and was now staring out the window in his living room. From this vantage point, I could see the grey shadows of Skyfall’s biggest skyscrapers, faint shadowed outlines against the horizon.