by Quil Carter
“What do you want?” I asked quietly. I sat down on my stuffed white chair, the fatigue swiftly leaving me. Here I was now sitting awkwardly in my own room, despondency as heavy as the smell of Jack Daniels. I hated being alone with him, it reminded me of what my future was soon going to hold.
Before I knew it, these nighttime visits would mean something else.
“I miss you, Elias,” Silas said. His drunken speech made him say my name like it was Eliash. “I miss you not hating me. Remember when you didn’t hate me? When you didn’t look at me with disdain in your eyes?”
“I remember,” I said dully. “I’m really tired and I have a lot to do tomorrow…” A lie. Each of my days were the same now: study, Skytech to take care of the twins, sleep, study, council work, study. “… can I sleep?”
My heart dropped when I saw the flash of anger in his eyes. I knew what I was in for now… it had happened so many times it was as expected as tomorrow’s sunrise.
Silas sat up, anger etched into every feature of his face. “You dismiss me so fucking easily?” he said in a low and hostile tone. “You really do think you’re better than me, don’t you?”
“No,” I said quietly. “I just want to go to–”
I knew it was coming, I even saw him raise his hand; but when he slapped my face it was as if he was breaking a thin membrane that had been keeping the worst of my misery contained.
“Don’t you ever fucking dismiss me,” Silas snarled. “I own this world. I own this skyscraper. I own this room…”
And you own me.
“… and I own you.”
“I know,” I whispered. Of all the things I knew… this was one that was always in the front of my mind. “You own me.”
Silas’s eyes narrowed to small slits. “Every fucking time I try to fix things with you… you throw it back in my face. You shut me out and lock yourself down.” He was spitting those words at me like he was spitting poison. However, poison would’ve been welcome. There was an antidote to poison, whereas there was no antidote for King Silas.
“Why, Elish?” Silas demanded. “Why do you treat me like this? Why do you hate me so much?”
I stared at my bare feet, wondering how long it was going to take for him to get mad enough to leave. How long it would take for him to storm off and go bother someone else.
“I don’t hate you,” I whispered, and I despised myself because it was the honest truth. “I just want to go to sleep.”
Silas grabbed my arm and yanked me forward. “Don’t fucking lie to me!” he snarled. “I can see it in your fucking eyes. I saw it when I killed that stupid sengil and I saw it when I fried your fucking teacher on the stove.” My eyes widened and the bottom dropped out of me, then my face crumpled from despair. “You fucking hate me, admit it!”
Then he scoffed and shoved my shoulder as I sat, unmoving, in the chair. “Now you’re going to fucking cry? I wonder how long you’d cry for me if I was to die? Cry from happiness more like it. You’re fucking pathetic, Elish. Just fucking pathetic and a disgrace.”
If it was a reaction that Silas wanted, that was what he got. The flood of despair broke the dams of despondency and I announced Silas’s win with a convulsed cry that shot up from my throat. “JUST LET ME SLEEP!” I screamed, my tone begging. I folded my arms around my chest and leaned forward, tears stinging my eyes and a tightness wound around my throat. “Please… just let me sleep.”
“Stop your fucking crying!” Silas yelled. A second smack hit my already throbbing face, and before I could even put a hand up in defence, Silas was slapping me repeatedly. Not just on my face, but my head, my shoulders; my eardrum even gave a horrible throb when a blow landed directly on my ear, and another on my mouth filling it with blood that dripped onto my persian rug.
When he was finished, I was kneeled on the floor holding back tears and cupping the blood that was dripping from my nose and mouth. I don’t know why I tried to catch the blood, every slap had it spraying this way and that. I had no sengil yet so I had to clean the blood myself, and still when one looked closely, you could see the sprays and splatters all over my room. My bedroom was a macabre artist’s canvas, my body the unwilling paintbrush, and my blood and saliva the paint.
“Go check on the twins…” he said behind me, his tone as cold and dead as a corpse. I could see his shadow in front of my blood-spotted knees, always enveloping me, always covering me…
I would always be in this man’s shadow.
“It’s three in the morning,” I said pleading, blood spurting from my mouth due to the continuous flow. “The building’s over two miles away. It’s winter…”
He kicked me in the back, I clenched my teeth from pain and closed my eyes tight. When I opened them he was in the doorway. “And you will not wake up our drivers. Get changed and get the fuck out of my skyscraper. Try not to have a panic attack since you’ll be leaving your room, you pathetic little hermit; I’ll leave you where you lay gasping.”
And then he turned and left, leaving me once again kneeling in my own blood.
So many nights had ended similarly to this… the only difference with this one was that he’d kicked me out of my home, the only oasis I had in this world.
Tears slipped down my face which I quickly wiped away. I was too old to cry, even if I had a lot of reasons to cry these days. I stood up, my back aching and my face and head pulsing like a strobe light was flashing inside of my brain. I got changed into my winter clothes, barely used since I only left the house for my Skytech and council work, and left through the downstairs entrance so my brothers wouldn’t hear me leave. I couldn’t hear Ceph crying so I hoped they were all asleep.
I didn’t want them to know, this was my shame and my burden to bear… and… I didn’t want to give them more reasons to feel sorry for me. It already crushed my remaining dignity knowing that they knew a lot of what was going on.
I’d once been the older brother, the one they came to for problems, the one they respected and relied on… and now I was nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The night was cold and biting, it stung my face as I walked down the marble stairs of Alegria, and in my wake I left behind vapour from my exhales. There was still some snow on the ground from a flurry we’d had several days ago, mostly piles of it pushed against buildings or alleyways. The snow glowed under the silvery moon that shone on me tonight, making it sparkle as if covered in cold diamonds.
It was dead quiet in Skyland, or at least on Sebastian Street. This was the most important street in all of Skyland for being the one that housed the king, and after ten o’clock most cars avoided it for fear of pissing off the king who stood on the highest floor. Or at the very least, the scores of thiens who guarded Alegria with bush masters in hand and menacing looks on their faces.
And those same thiens had given me a nod when I’d walked through the glass doors of Alegria. They knew better than to ask prying questions, I wasn’t even asked if I needed a vehicle to be called for me. Perhaps it was the cold blood currently drying on my face that deterred them from prying.
I wiped my nose, the change from the warm indoors to the frozen outside making it run. I looked down and saw that it was blood-streaked, and since I had no tissue, I just wiped it on my pant leg. I cared not who saw me; it wasn’t like there was anyone roaming around anyway.
Why was I even out here? I looked around the quiet city, there were tall buildings surrounding me, some lit up with shop signs or interior lights, others dark and abandoned without a single soul to add life to their dreary existence. The occasional building had scaffolding up against it, and ones that were surrounded by makeshift safety fences made out of chain link or orange netting. These buildings were being restored for whatever reason, either Silas had decided to bring them to their former glory, or an elite had made the decision to make an investment for the future.
Skyfall had changed a lot since I was a child. Every year we had new buildings being restored, new parks being seed
ed and genetically engineered trees being planted by excited scientists. And not only the exterior of Skyfall had changed, as survival became easier to these descendants of the apocalypse, culture had grown and spread its influence amongst our two districts. We had singers now, musicians, artists, and architects, talents that were useless in the greywastes but now they were renown and treasured amongst the elite of Skyfall. We weren’t just a bunch of people shoved into a town and forced to survive, Skyfall stood alone as the last vestige of sophisticated culture.
It made me wonder what it would look like in a hundred years. How much it would grow and change.
I wonder if I would still be here? I didn’t know if Silas still wanted to make me immortal. A part of me said that he would, if only to control me outright forever. But with the twins, who shared half of my DNA, coming, and Silas’s other plans for more chimeras… it made me wonder if he’d let any of the first generation survive. We were the first chimeras, I the very first, and perhaps we would be nothing more to him but physical embodiments of what not to do.
My boots echoed off of the high concrete walls as I walked down the flight of stairs leading to the laboratory door. The entrance was secured by a keycard, and only myself, Perish, and a handful of assistants even knew this place was here. Silas didn’t want the other scientists in this building to have access to his growing chimeras.
I walked in and was immediately greeted by an invisible wall of heat. I wiped my nose as it started to run again and found that it was ice cold, my fingers themselves now numb from the thin gloves I’d put on before I left Alegria. It must’ve been at least minus ten outside. No wonder I hadn’t seen a soul.
I made my way towards the room with the steel mothers. My mind was on high alert the entire time I walked there, worried I’d see someone or have to explain myself. At least the twins would be too small to remember this, but then again, I did have my own memories of when I was inside of that tube.
Memories of Silas smiling and waving, talking to me though his voice was garbled from me being underwater. I remember liking this strange man who kept staring at me with love in his eyes, and being happy when he pulled me out and held me in his arms.
I was the only chimera who didn’t cry, he always said to me. I just gazed at him, and then looked around the room in surprise, my purple eyes flickering to take in every sight I could see.
Now there was no love in his eyes. Nor was there love in mine.
The twins were awake when I entered their room, and I felt a spark of warmth in my heart when Apollo’s purple eyes widened when they fixed on me. The baby then raised a hand and pressed it against the glass, his brother sleeping beside him with his thumb inside of his mouth.
Seven months gestation and they were already so advanced. They looked exactly like a newborn now except smaller and their bodies were lithe and skinny, not an ounce of baby fat on them. However, that was just because of their age, over the next two months they’d be filling out and would be born with the normal intelligence chimera physique. They wouldn’t have nearly as many rolls as Cepherus.
“Hello, boys,” I whispered to them. I raised my hand and put two of my fingers against Apollo’s hand, still pressed against the glass. “Are you having trouble sleeping, Apollo?”
Apollo blinked at me, then another hand was added to the glass, he pressed both against them and I smiled when his brow became furrowed. So many wrinkles in that brow, it was like he hadn’t yet grown into his own skin.
I sighed. It made me feel pathetic but being in this room with the twins made me feel a little less depressed, a little less like I was invisible in a crowded room screaming at the top of my lungs for someone, anyone, to help me. I didn’t even know what they were supposed to help me with… I was broken, a broken toy, one that was so rare no one knew how to fix it.
I didn’t want to be like this. I didn’t want to be a disappointment.
Not only to Silas…
I was disappointed in myself.
How did I let myself get to this point? I knew the answer to that… it wasn’t me who let myself get to this point, every time I tried to fly Silas would reach his hand up and snatch me from the sky. Then he’d pull the feathers out of my wings, and take my bones in between his fingers and snap them one by one.
I didn’t do this to myself, Silas crippled me then threw me into a dark chasm, and now he sneered down at me as if it was I who ended the world, and it was I who wouldn’t let him clone that parasite of an ex-boyfriend.
Sky. No matter what… it all came to Sky.
Another sigh. “You have no idea what you’re in for,” I whispered. I raised my head and saw that two pairs of purple eyes were staring at me now, so wide I could see the ring of blue they had on the outsides and insides of their irises. “On the outside looking in… they will see you as princes, marvels of engineering, an elegant demigod who will glide amongst the wretched that dwells beneath us… They will see you as better than them; they will worship you, wait on you hand and foot. They will write songs about you, kill for you, they will make your birthday into a holiday and on that day they will watch specials about you on television and say to themselves… I wish I was him.” My eyes closed tight. “I wish I was him.”
I squeezed back the tears before slowly wiping them from my eyes. “Because they don’t know the truth.” My voice began to break from the emotion rising inside of me. “They don’t know that you’re nothing but his slave, his dog. They don’t know he beats on you when you’ve displeased him, that he’ll kill every person you love in the most horrific of fashions. They don’t know the loneliness, the isolation, the fear… they don’t know the control he has on us.” I sniffed and gently tapped Apollo’s hand through the glass. On my own hand I saw red raised scars, small and circular. They were from where he’d burned me with cigarettes. “You’ll learn to hide your scars. You’ll learn to make up stories in your head as to where you got them… even though no one would dare ask. You’ll learn to smile when he tells you to smile, and act like the sophisticated prince he demands you be in public… and only when you’re alone in your room will you cry and fall to pieces. Out of the public eye… far away from the inquisitive and judgemental.”
I lowered my hand, and as I stared at those to identical twins, enjoying such a peaceful, tranquil existence, I felt nothing for them but sorrow. “At least you’ll have each other,” I said to them with a faded smile. “You’ll have someone to go through this with.”
I didn’t. My relationship with my brothers and sister hadn’t really suffered during the last several years. I still loved them and they loved me. But they rarely interfered when Silas was mistreating me, and never once had they come to my rescue when Silas was drunk and looking for a fight. I didn’t begrudge them for doing it, when it was them who was invoking Silas’s wrath, I stayed quiet and the rest of them did as well. We were a close-knit family and yet we each suffered Silas in our own, and vastly different, ways.
It wasn’t just me who was getting this horrendous treatment, though I was receiving the worst of it. Nero still got beat on for being the horny, impulsive teenager he was, Garrett got beat on for being weak, cowardly, and weird. Hell, Silas’s treatment of him, and Garrett’s need to be unique, had inspired my brother’s odd gothic craze, just like Nero dealt with it by funneling his rage through army training and getting to kill things. The only one who wasn’t smacked around and demeaned was Ellis. But that was only because she was the outsider looking in, the girl chimera, and she saw Silas not mistreating her as her not being important enough to receive it. A strange thing to be troubled about, but I suppose I understood it.
I wonder what Ceph will disappoint Silas with? Or these two twins gazing at me with intrigue and wonder.
“Apollo… Artemis… stay in there for as long as you can…” I waved at the twins with two of my fingers and turned to walk back towards the door. “… there’s nothing to look forward to on the outside. Trust me.”
I flicked the ov
erhead lights off and left their room, making sure the door was closed tight and the keycard activation on. There was nothing more I needed here, even going here was unnecessary. Maybe I just wanted someone to talk to.
How pathetic was that?
The night air greeted me and stung my face. I put my gloves on and pulled my jacket closer as I walked back to Alegria. There was a lot on my mind this night, confiding in the twins had stirred up a hornet’s nest that I usually did everything in my power to avoid kicking.
Everything I love he kills. Every facet of my life he controls. I remember on several occasions telling myself I would never love anything ever again, and saying it with such conviction that I was sure I’d meant it. But then life would continue, new people would enter, and I’d find myself letting my heart be taken again.
At one point in time it was impossible for me to not have attachments to things. I fell for Todd at the drop of a hat and I’d even convinced myself I had feelings for Ryan. I was a boy desperate to receive affection and naïve enough to affix myself to any man who talked to me like I was a normal person.
Suddenly I stopped and my brows knitted. There was something in the middle of the sidewalk… something that hadn’t been there on my way to the lab. It was a colourful little tin and it was sitting upright as if it had been deliberately placed.
Before I could decide against it, I walked up to this tin and then around it. It was purple with red and blue swirls and patterns, and it was about the size of a pack of cigarettes.
Against my judgement, I picked up the tin and opened it. I wiped my nose again as it started to run and was perplexed to see it was stuffed with tissues. I removed the tissues, expecting it to be cushioning for something, only to see that… that was all there was inside.
Just tissues.
I wiped my nose with my sleeve, but stopped halfway and quickly lowered my hand. I looked down at my sleeve, now streaked many times over with blood, and then my eyes scanned the dark and deserted streets and sidewalks.
