by Quil Carter
Silas sighed in defeat. “Okay. I know better than to try and sway you when you’re in a stubborn mood.” He put his finger on my nose and poked it. “If I thought the same as you, you would’ve never been born. But I decided I wanted something to love, something to raise, to help me with my duties as king. There’s nothing wrong with loving things, Elish.”
But I knew better. What I’d seen in that prison cell had scared me, and the sounds, the smells, the image, everything that surrounded that incident was replaying in my head over and over. There was something so fundamentally disturbing about what I’d witnessed. I knew that it wasn’t something I was going to forget.
I’d seen a fault in King Silas and I was determined to not have the same develop in me.
On the way home, our other plans forgotten with what had happened in the precinct, I decided to take the first steps in eliminating my attachments. I was going to get rid of what was in my power to dispose of, and begin my solemn training in becoming the best king in all of the world.
This filled me with flickers of excitement. I realized as Silas and I exited the car and headed into Alegria, that I could use Silas’s faults as my own personal education. While shadowing him, not only would I learn what he was doing right, but I’d also observe what he was doing wrong. I’d question him on it, in case I misunderstood what I’d seen, and if it was a fault… I would eliminate it.
After entering Alegria and taking the elevator to the top floor apartment, we both walked into our home. Garrett greeted us with a cheerful grin, orange Cheeto dust on his lips, and Ellis was on the balcony playing with Squish.
“I need to make some calls, love,” Silas said to me. “Have an hour to yourself, then do some schoolwork.”
I nodded but his words were barely registering in my mind. My thoughts were full of what I was about to do next, something that I felt would be my first step into becoming the king that I needed to grow up to be.
One that didn’t let love or attachments get in the way of his duties.
Automatically, as if I was a robot being controlled by a remote, I walked through the living room, down the hallway and to the stairs that led to the lower level. Once I was down there, I headed to the room that held our rodents. My hamsters Hammy and Cristo, and Garrett’s mice.
The room was painted blue with a hardwood floor. It was bright from the large windows, and since it was summer still, it was airy and open, a pleasant place to be.
There were two wooden credenzas on opposite sides of this room, each one holding two cages on top and their accessories in the drawers at the bottom, then there were bookshelves full of literature on animals, a tie-dyed beanbag chair, and a stuffed rocking chair for us to sit on with our animals. I loved spending time down here, and Garrett and I had both invested hours into making the lives of our rodents interesting and full.
I also loved those hamsters.
My feet took me to their cages and I saw the two balls of fur sleeping in their nest of shavings, shredded toilet paper, and bits of eaten food. They were nocturnal animals so they slept during the day and were awake at night, I’d learned that from a book I read.
I opened Cristo’s cage and picked him up. At first he stiffened and gave me a squinty, grumpy look, but he was nice and he let me hold him. I picked up Hammy and held him too.
No attachments to anything.
Dylan came out of our arcade room and said hello to me from the living room. “Hey, you’re back early. Did everything go okay?”
I didn’t answer him. I looked down at the hamsters in my hands, sniffing each other with their whiskers twitching around.
No weakness.
I was the future king and I couldn’t let attachment turn me into the frightening person I’d seen King Silas turn into. I wouldn’t become a black-eyed demon; I wouldn’t let myself feel the agony that had been radiating off of the king I’d loved so much.
I loved these hamsters, and I realized as I held Hammy in one hand and Cristo in the other, that loving them this much scared me. The more I loved something, the worse it was when something happened to them. I never wanted to love anything ever again.
I stared at the wall, and I squeezed both of my hands. Their muscles tensed and their warm bodies moved and shook, and when I tightened my grip, I felt a low snapping.
This is the right thing to do.
This is the right thing to do.
The voice in the back of my head screaming at me to stop, was weakness, and I wasn’t weak. I would rule without attachments, without boyfriends to make me act crazy, or animals to love and then see die like Prince. I would never have children of my own, nor would I marry. My duty was what I’d been created for: ruling Skyfall with King Silas. Since Silas was already damaged from his attachment to Sky, I’d be the voice of reason to direct him into making the right decision when he couldn’t.
This was the right thing to do.
A great pain came from my left hand but I ignored it. I knew it was Cristo biting me. I kept my hold strong and I didn’t let go, even though they were squirming hard in my grip.
More bones snapped and I felt wetness; I didn’t look down; I didn’t want to see what I’d done.
Then finally Hammy stopped squirming, and Cristo followed soon after. I didn’t move though, my eyes had been staring at the blue wall the entire time, and I felt myself swept away by some sort of trance.
It wasn’t until I heard a gasp did my gaze break from that wall.
“Silas!” Dylan screamed. “Silas!” His voice faded and I heard thumping as he ran up the stairs. The fact that I knew Silas was coming didn’t jar me out of my hypnotic state. My mind was oddly null of feelings, I had no reactions to expend over what I’d just done.
I didn’t feel anything.
It must’ve worked.
“Elish?” Silas’s voice was what finally snatched me away from this distant planet I’d found my thoughts inhabiting, and when he grabbed me by my shoulders and turned my body around so I was facing him, my eyes began their attempts to focus.
There was a lot of activity around me, anxious activity that was combined with the smell of blood and hamster urine. When my eyes decided to let me register what I was seeing, I saw Silas in front of me. He picked up my hand and groaned, then I looked down.
Hammy’s beady black eyes had popped from their sockets and they were now framed with blood; there was blood coming from his nose and mouth as well. He was dead but still warm.
Cristo’s eyes were also popped, looking more like bloated raisins than rodent eyes. He had a lot of blood on him; it was soaked into his fur and dripping from my hand. The blood was mine though, my thumb had been bitten and red was falling to the wood floor like rain.
“Get those out of his hands!” Silas barked. Cristo and Dylan each grabbed one of my hands and tried to pry the hamsters from my grasp.
“Elish, let go of them,” Cristo said, his voice strangled. “What the hell happened to him, Silas? This… fuck… this isn’t him. I know him.” He choked and tears ran down his cheeks. “Look at his eyes. He’s not even on this planet.”
“Elish?” Silas framed my face with his hands and made me look at him. I saw concern in his eyes.
“Love… why did you kill your hamsters?” he whispered. “Did one bite you? Did you do it because you were mad?”
I looked at him, then slowly I released my grip and let the rodents drop to the floor.
“They would make me weak…” I whispered to him. I looked into his eyes, eyes that held a worry inside of them that I wouldn’t fully understand until I was older. “And I will not become weak.”
CHAPTER 4
I sat with my hands folded over my lap and my eyes looking out the window. All I could see was blue sky, a tropical blue that made me half-expect to see sandy beaches and palm trees if I was to look down at the ground below. There weren’t even any clouds today, but I was treated to the occasional bird flying past, most likely bringing food for their hatchlings or perhap
s building a nest.
There were no parts of me that wished to be stuck in this room today. Though I have never been the outdoorsy-type, I did like at least having the sliding glass door open to let the sun come in to brighten up my room.
But no, I was stuck inside right now, at least until the top of the hour.
A throat cleared to in front of me. I tore my gaze away from the window and looked to Dr. Zamir.
Dr. Zamir was an ordinary man with short black hair peppered with white, a pointed nose, and grey eyes that peered at me through black-framed glasses. My brothers and I were friends with his son Uzeyer, who we nicknamed Mantis due to the weird way he held his hands to his chest, like a praying mantis. I liked Uzeyer, he was fun but also quiet. Dr. Zamir though…
Well, Dr. Zamir was, in all respects, my therapist. He was one of King Silas’s top scientists but on top of that burden of responsibility, he also had a degree in Psychology and had the proper license to practice it. He was the only person that Silas trusted to speak with me in private, since Silas knew that I’d be talking to the doctor about him most of all.
But Silas had sworn to me that these sessions would be private, and that not even he would have access to what we spoke about. I wasn’t sure if I believed him but it didn’t matter either way, I confided in no one. I didn’t trust them to not use my own words against me, or to not look down on me because of my honesty. There was a certain image that I wanted to maintain, and since my circle of trust was small, it would be easy for opinions to spread amongst them. A lot of my family spoke to each other like sorority girls and the less they knew about me, the more they jumped on any shred of information they could scavenge. Then they twisted it around their mouths until it became coated in bullshit, and spewed forth the refuse to make themselves feel better compared to me.
Which they weren’t.
“How has your schooling been going, Elish?” Zamir asked. He had a purple folder open which was full of papers, and written on those papers, were notes about me. There were a lot of papers, and I could see the writing was small. It made my stomach curl around bitter liquid to think of what things had been written on those papers, and what Silas had access to if the whim took him.
“Fine,” I answered. I didn’t see a point to this therapist. What was he expecting from me? Was I supposed to start crying like a female, lamenting about an unfair upbringing or blaming everything on my non-existent parents? This was all wasted time.
“Silas tells me you’re already taking high school classes?” Zamir asked with a smile. “That’s rather impressive for an eight-year-old.”
“I was genetically engineered to be intelligent,” I said rather aloofly. I looked down at my fingernails and flicked underneath them with my thumb. “By the time I’m ten I wish to have earned my first degree.”
I glanced up when I heard Zamir begin to write something on one of the pieces of paper. This act drew out a scowl from my face and I craned my neck up to try and see what he was writing. It was fruitless however, I couldn’t see a thing even though my eyes were sharper than his would ever be.
“Elish, why do you feel the need to achieve so much? Are you wanting to please King Silas?” Zamir asked casually. His grey eyes flickered up at me from underneath his thick eye brows, his glasses looking like they were going to fall off of his nose at any second.
My teeth pressed at this question, but like I’d been practicing for a while now, I didn’t let the variance of emotion show on my face. I kept my facial features neutral, and even though I knew Zamir couldn’t hear heartbeats, I adjusted my hearing so I could monitor my own and calm it if it spiked. Silas used heartbeats to tell if people, my siblings and I included, were lying, and for the past six months one of my top projects was controlling it, and all other visceral reactions.
I took a moment to go over my mental checklist and made sure every part of my body was responding in the ways I wished it to respond, then answered Zamir back.
“No,” I said simply.
Zamir nodded and I heard the pen scratch as he wrote more things down. “Do you feel the need to overachieve because if you don’t, you won’t meet Silas’s expectations?”
I opened my mouth to tell him no, when Zamir raised a hand. His deep set eyes zeroed in on me and the creases in his brow deepened. “I want you to wait sixty seconds before answering me.” He looked away and continued to write things down in his book. The room became silent as his words died on the air, the only noise to break up the quiet were the normal sounds one’s brain usually blocked out: the ceiling clock, the ear-itching buzz of Zamir’s electronics, and the background trickle of water and hum of a motor from a fish tank that was by a black lounger chair.
Silas had told me to answer all of Zamir’s questions and do whatever he asked, so I didn’t challenge Zamir’s instructions. I knew the reasoning behind it, he wanted me to think about the question before I answered. But I didn’t have anything to say to him.
Yes, I worried about meeting Silas’s expectations, we all did, but out of my brothers, I was the most successful. I was Silas’s favourite and his heir, without a doubt he was the proudest of me.
After sixty seconds passed, I decided to answer his question. “I’ve already met Silas’s expectations for my age. I’m several years ahead of him, he says,” I said. “I have worked hard to achieve what I have and will continue to do so under his guidance. Out of all of my brothers, I am the most successful and the most loved.”
Zamir gave me an interested look. “And how do you know this, Elish?”
Oh, that was easy. “I never give him any trouble. He’s rarely mad at me.”
I disliked the glint in his eyes at my word, and when his facial expression turned to one of challenge, I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “Yes,” Zamir said slowly. “You’re the quiet, obedient golden child. Whereas Nero is always getting disciplined, punishments… same with Garrett. They’re both much more disobedient and crafty. Giving Silas quite the run for his money with their pranks, their rough play that leaves the house in ruins, and Nero is constantly challenging Silas’s authority and pushing any limits Silas has set.”
My narrow eyes flashed. “Yes, they’re both always in trouble.”
Then Zamir smiled. He put his feet up on his desk and leaned back in his chair, then he folded his hands over his stomach. “Why would he like you more? You sound so boring, Elish.”
Boring? My mouth dropped open and a flash flood of anger hit me hard. What an audacious thing to say! How could he think such a thing of me?
His words replayed over and over in my mind, each one stabbing my brain with the enthusiasm of Jack the Ripper. I felt humiliated, and as a man who had been tempering his own emotions and systematically eliminating all weaknesses from my body, mind, and spirit, this was a horrendous blow. I hated feeling emotions and here I was near tears from Zamir’s cruel accusation.
“I – I am not,” I stammered. I rose to my feet, my body shaking. Why was I so affected by this? This was a fault in myself. I shouldn’t feel this offended over the opinions of… of…
The psychologist who studied the arian mind, and had apparently been Silas’s therapist for years.
Which meant he knew Silas… he was telling the truth. I was boring, a dull person. But would that really mean King Silas didn’t like me as much? Silas wasn’t boring at all, nor did he enjoy boring people unless he had to work with… them.
Silas had to work with me! I’d been shadowing him since I was five. Oh my god.
Tears sprung to my eyes. The smirk on Zamir’s face disappeared and he stood up. “Elish, you’re taking this much too seriously. Sit back down and tell me what you’re feeling.”
But I didn’t. Even though Silas had told me to listen to Zamir and obey him, I didn’t sit down. That would be my first step in not being boring, I was going to become something interesting to him.
To my horror, Zamir let out a chuckle. “Elish, you’re taking my words much too seriously. Look at you! Sit
down and stop overreacting. This is ridiculous.”
“I’m ridiculous now too?” I said heatedly. I walked to the door and opened it. “I’m done with this week’s session. Good day.” I stalked out of there and down the hall to the elevator, my shoulders trembling from rage.
I pressed the button on the elevator to take me up to my home, barely able to contain my anger.
Anger? I shouldn’t be feeling angry. Over the years I’d come to hate feeling emotions I couldn’t control, so I tried to control my surroundings as much as possible unless I was shadowing Silas. As long as I kept the people around me the same, the house the same, and only ventured out to familiar places, I could maintain a level of emotional predictability. Yes, there were lots of times I wasn’t in control, every time I was with King Silas, but those I saw as learning experiences so I allowed myself to feel things. Everything I learned with my king was valuable information.
I was not boring.
The elevator doors opened, but to my shock, Cristo, Dylan, Garrett, and Nero were waiting in front of the elevator. I got the impression immediately that they were anxious about something and Cristo was holding a bag that had Tangerine’s head sticking out of it.
Which could only mean one thing…
“Is Master Silas okay?” I asked hastily. I tried to push past Dylan but he stopped me.
“We’re having a sleepover at our apartment,” Cristo said with a smile I knew was forced. He got into the elevator and the others followed. Now the entire space was filled with nervous energy, so much of it the elevator felt claustrophobic.
“What happened?” I asked. I went over their faces to try and extract all of the information I could. It was obvious that something had gone on while I was at therapy. But what?
Garrett sniffed and Nero shifted around on nervous feet. Ellis was shadowing for Mr. Miasaki right now and wouldn’t be home until tomorrow and Caleb was only working part-time since he’d be retiring in a few years and was taking college classes.
