by Quil Carter
He’s… he’s talking about when he ended the world.
“Trouble with my oldest descendant… is nothing compared to watching a planet burn, and know that you’re responsible. My issues with you… compare not to…”
I froze, my eyes fixed on his face. I was swiftly consumed by ice. There was something so very unsettling about hearing him bring me into these reminiscings, and I will admit… it felt like the lighter hovering around the dynamite, was rolling its flint.
Silas’s eyes closed.
“I’m sorry, Elish.”
I stared at him, unsure of what I should say, if there was anything to say. What… was he apologizing for?
I didn’t need to ask. He wasn’t done.
“I’m sorry for how your life has been up until now.” When Silas turned to me, my mouth was open and my eyes drying out because I’d forgotten to blink. “I should’ve handled you better, and I regret not having more patience with you.” He let out a breath, and his green eyes flickered back to his old world home. “Whereas your brothers and sister… I knew how to handle them. I knew how to control them, train them, love them. With you…” He shook his head. “You were so difficult to please, impossible to get through to. You were so unlike your siblings, so much more complicated… and out of frustration, I’d mistreat you.”
Silas stepped forward and began walking towards the house, leaving me standing there in my shock.
“I… I don’t think I was that bad,” I said quietly as I followed him, the shock of his admission making me unable to be offended by his words. He wasn’t playing me right now, and I had to listen to him. This was Silas without his mask, and there was a compulsion in me to listen to, and remember, every word that he spoke.
“I know, love,” he said, his cape swayed behind him as the king walked tall, his head held up high as if the ghosts of the past were judging him. “You were just being yourself, and that has always been difficult for me to understand.” Silas stopped in front of the doors to the entrance and traced his fingers along the tarnished handles. I sensed the hesitation on him, to the point where I wondered if he was going to turn that door handle at all.
“Do you forget how much I admired you when I was younger?” I asked as I walked up behind him. “I worshipped you…” Now it was I who hesitated. “Until that night in Stadium.”
Silas still had his hand on the handle, but as my words hit his ears, he turned it and let the door swing open; as if this standing reminder of the past was less scary than me confronting him about what he’d done to Cristo.
Silas stood in the door frame, a set of stairs in front of him, covered in carpet and cleaned thoroughly. To our right, a hallway with a room visible, and the left, was the mudroom where there were still several jackets hung up on silver coat hooks, and a pair of slippers tied together with thick spider webs.
Then Silas stepped inside of the house and began to walk down the hallway to the right. I followed, allowing the door to stay open so the sunlight behind us could light our way.
“That was the beginning of it, wasn’t it?” Silas murmured. He disappeared into the darkness and I saw that he’d turned into another room. When I got to where he was, I was surprised to see that he was now standing in front of what looked like a carved hole in the floor, a rug pushed to the side which suggested that this had been a hidden spot.
Silas got down on his knees, put his legs into the hole, then slid down and out of sight. “Follow me, love,” he called once I’d heard him land.
I did as I was asked, even though more underhanded plans entered my mind. I kept reminding myself that this was Silas, the man who had taken away everything that I had loved, and could continue to do so. That he wasn’t my friend, he didn’t want what was best for me; this was no dinner to try and fix what had went wrong between the two of us… he must have some alternative motive.
This was Silas… how could he not?
I looked down at him with suspicion. Below my feet, barely visible to me with my legs inside of the hole, was what appeared to be a hidden basement.
I shifted myself down and landed on a table four feet down. I looked around, just as Silas lit a blue lamp resting on a ratty couch, and saw that my assumption had been right. This was a basement, in incredibly poor condition.
The damp basement, with concrete walls that were cracked and water-stained, and an aroma that was saturated with stale water and dust, was about the size of my bedroom in Alegria. There was old furniture scattered around: a ratty couch with two different types of cushions, a bookshelf full of musty books, a tube TV on top of a wooden coffee table, one that rested beside three full ashtrays, and a radio that appeared to have been partially melted. I also saw blue jugs, no doubt used for water, a bucket with a tight lid but a hole cut into it, a makeshift bathroom, and a basin full of dishes that appeared to have been taken over by spiders.
I walked around this basement, my eyes everywhere. There were pinup posters on the walls, one of a map of Vancouver Island, and one of the world. Both of these maps had red marker on them, dots placed in specific areas, and also blue marker that had been used to write dates.
He’d hid down here during the war… with Perish and Sky no doubt, possibly the one named Nikolai that he’d mentioned in passing.
“Elish… I’m not well.”
I turned to him, my eyes in the middle of taking in a pile of blankets stuffed into a corner, all on top of a foam mattress. “What do you mean?” I asked cautiously.
Silas’s eyes shone as they looked around this depressing basement. “I mean that… I’m incredibly sick right now, and until I can fix myself… I’m going to ask of you, to be patient with me.”
He walked towards me, his words leaving me where I stood, and he grasped my hand. “Being left to run Skyfall alone… being left to repair this world on my own. Seeing all I loved die, and watching my perfect babies grow older every day… with no solution for mortality in sight… it’s broken me, Elish.” He squeezed my hand, and I was startled that when I looked into his eyes, I saw true emotion in them. “I’m a jealous maniac, who hurts my little love constantly.” He brushed my hair back with a caring hand. “And I have made him hate me. It kills me during the moments of lucidity… but every time I try to fix it…” His hand lowered as did his eyes. “I end up making it worse.”
“You… when did you ever try and fix it?” I asked slowly. “The only times I’ve ever heard regret in you… is when you’re falling down drunk, and that always ends up… in a fight.”
The corner of Silas’s mouth rose slightly, to show me one of the saddest partial smiles I’d seen to date. “Do you know why I come down to your room drunk like that?” he asked.
I stared at him, and slowly shook my head no.
“Because…” He took in a long breath, then slowly released it. “Because I don’t have the balls to do it when I’m sober. It takes alcohol for me to work up the confidence to talk to you.” He laughed and his eyes filled. “I’m the King of the World… and yet being rejected by you… it just breaks me.”
My words were stolen from me. I stared at Silas, my body frozen and my mind swirling too fast for me to grasp any proper reply. I knew I had my reasons to hate him, and I now understood that he knew I did as well… but what he’d just said to me… the honesty in him.
I had nothing to say back to him but…
“I know how that feels.”
Silas sniffed and he wiped his eyes while nodding. “I… know I’m a monster, love. I’m fully aware of how much of horrible person I am. I wish I could control it, but all I ask of you… is to please be patient with me until… until…”
Until what?
Until you work on yourself to become a better person? Until we’re old enough, or there are enough chimeras to help you more with Skyfall? Until…?
“… until I have my Sky back.”
Sky.
Fucking Sky.
Again.
The diseased heart of all of Silas’s
issues, the center of him that was rotted black. Where there was Silas acting jealous, being a tyrant, abusing us, hiding out in his bedroom for weeks refusing to leave his room because of his depression…
When you followed the strings that were bound tightly to Silas’s body, they all led to that one man, that dead succubus who was continually sucking the life-force of the most powerful man in the world.
Where you saw the Mad King… you also saw Sky Fallon.
I realized my teeth were clenching, hard enough for a pain to erupt in my jaw. Silas saw this, and the naivety of what that name meant to me, was confirmed.
“You would love him, golden boy,” he whispered. He walked to me and rested a hand on my cheek. “He would be like a father to you… Oh, he was something.”
Suddenly my hand flew up, and I snatched the soft hand touching my face. “Listen to me,” I said to him. Silas looked up at me with shock on his face, the tears from before still clinging to his eyelashes. “You can’t wait for Sky to come to fix your problems, Master.”
Silas’s lips pursed, then he tried to smile with them tight. “There would be no problems to fix, little love. Everything would be fine with him.” He slid his hand from my grasp. “I made my lovely chimeras… it won’t be long now. Then… there will be no jealousy, no… tyrant. If I have my Sky back… he’ll make me normal.”
“You need to work on yourself, Master,” I said as he turned from me. “You can’t wait for something that we don’t know will happen. You need–”
“No!” Silas whirled around, suddenly his eyes filled with fear, and both of them shot up to mine as if seeking safety in their embrace. “It will happen. Don’t say it won’t happen, it will. I’m immortal. You’ll be immortal soon. It’ll happen, one day. And when it does… I’ll be fine. Don’t say it won’t happen.” He was losing control, right in front of me, he was losing his composure. “Don’t say it won’t happen, Elias. You’ll be the scientist helping me… you must… you must not go into your task thinking it won’t happen. It has–”
I grabbed Silas, just as my king let out a heartwrenching wail, and I took him into my arms and held him. “It will,” I whispered reassuringly. This swift change in his attitude alarmed me. I remember the last time I’d seen him fall into this despair… the night he fought with Perish. The night Perish set the Gosselin lab to explode, with baby Lennix inside.
I didn’t like seeing him like this.
“I’ll find a way, Master. If that is my task… I’ll find a way for you to clone him.”
Silas wept quietly in my arms. “You think I’m crazy but… one day when you fall in love, Elish, you’ll understand. Love makes you do insane things, it changes you, it strips you of everything, dignity, pride, your damn identity.” He sniffed and I began rubbing his back. “I was with him… for such a long time… most relationships last a few decades at best. But Sky… I had my Sky not only for over a century, but we rebuild the world… we saved the human race, we saved animals, plants, culture… we burned the world by accident but we did our best, we made it our mission…” He stifled a sob. “He was my everything, Elish. And he killed himself.”
If he killed himself… it meant he wanted to die. Should he not be allowed to be at peace?
A question I would never ask. Because I knew if Julian killed himself and I had a way of bringing him back, I would, and our relationship was so new there were flowers in bloom older than us.
So once again, because of Julian… I understood what Silas was saying. Or as much as I could understand being only fifteen years old.
Silas was… a hundred and eighty years old. And already in my fifteen years I’d had to deal with so much shit, shit that had permanently scarred me.
Silas, like he said, had gone through a terrible war. He’d ended the world, accidently apparently, and had rebuilt it with his soul mate beside him. Sky had been with him through all of this, and… I understood why his heart hurt so much for him.
But I also knew that his obsession with cloning Sky had prevented him from progressing. It had prevented him from accepting his death and moving on. Silas’s heart was stuck in the past, and it was driving him to mistreat those he loved the most.
And he was saying for me to be patient… that once Sky was cloned and here, he’d be better. But I would much rather help him get over Sky, than help him relive the past.
However, I could never say this. But that didn’t mean that I still couldn’t do it.
“I’ll do whatever needs to be done to help you,” I said quietly to him.
Silas sniffed and pulled away from me. He looked up at me with sad eyes… then leaned forward and kissed me on the lips. “Thank you, love,” he whispered. “I know… everything will be better once Sky comes back.”
No, Silas, everything will be better… once I can show you that you no longer need him.
We walked back to the plane hand-in-hand, reminding me of when I’d walked around Skyland with Julian only the night previous. I felt in that moment, so immensely proud of myself, and also proud of Silas. I knew that it must’ve been difficult for him to come to this place, and also to speak with me about our issues, and the fact that he’d done it had me feeling… valued.
“I would walk these roads at night,” Silas said to me as we walked along a different road, taking a new path towards the Falconer that would have us cutting through the park. “Sky would get so annoyed at me for having my headphones in my ears with the music blaring on full blast.”
I chuckled. “You’re immortal… what have you to fear?”
“Exactly!” Silas laughed, my heart filled at this genuine laughter. I’d never expected this dinner date to work, not in a million years. “But he was always worrying about me. I loved being fussed over by him. He had this way of always making me laugh.”
I know that feeling. No one can make me laugh like Julian can. Real, unhinged and unrestrained laughter. I realized as we walked, that Silas was right about my nature. I was uptight, hard to please, and I rarely smiled, let alone laugh. I could see now why he’d feel rejected by me so often. Yes, I will always follow that statement with a ‘He deserved it’ and then list off all the things he’d done to me to deserve the treatment, and the things that encouraged me to be the closed off, bitter asshole I am now. But tonight I just felt like accepting my own mistakes, and making a plan on how to work on them.
After this heart-to-heart with Silas, I believe I would be ready soon to introduce him to Julian. I think if Silas knew that I’d found someone, someone that can do to me what Sky could do to him… it would make him happy. He could see the improvements in me firsthand, and welcome Julian into the family.
No more worrying about being caught. No more stressing out when I was too busy to see him. I could bring Julian into Alegria, until eventually I moved him into my own apartment.
Life… life was good.
We boarded the plane, and Silas said goodbye to the town that he had spent so many years in. Then we rose up into the air, the buildings that towered over us while we were walking, now miniscule and small underneath my feet.
And as Silas flew back to Skyfall, we both realized with laughs that we’d forgotten to eat. I dug out our picnic meal: Philly cheese steak sandwiches, potato salad, homemade chocolate peanut cookies, and two bottles of ChiCola. We ate, and while we ate we talked and laughed. Silas filled me in on what was happening with my brothers and sister in their lives, I told him what was going on with my Skyfall work and my studies. Eventually, as the Falconer hugged the coastline, we spoke about the new Chimera D’s Perish and I were working on, and plans for other future chimeras as well.
The entire trip we never stopped talking, and when the plane touched down at Skyfall base, darkness now soaked into the day like spilled ink, my cheeks hurt from smiling so much.
I never knew life could be this good. It seemed like all of the pieces in my life were falling into place. Silas and I were on good terms again; I was in love with a wonderful man; I no lo
nger wished to die; and I think the concrete lid of my tomb was finally being slid off.
“I like that name!” Silas said defensively as I rolled my eyes to the ceiling of the black car. We were now being driven back to Alegria. “Just say it out loud, you’ll see.”
“They’ll call him Sanguine the Penguin!” I said through my laughter. “You’re already making the poor child have red eyes and pointed teeth. For fuck sakes, King, name the poor boy Michael, give him a chance!”
Silas snorted at the mere suggestion. “Michael? None of my chimeras will ever have such a common name. He’s going to be a powerful bodyguard. A strong man who’ll snap his enemies in two and feast on their insides. A man of such power can’t be named Michael.” Silas’s eyes then looked past mine, and there was a flicker of curiosity in them. “I wonder what the thiens are doing there,” he asked offhandedly. “They must be cracking down on the stowaways.”
I looked out the window and saw the red and blue flashes of light. There were several thien patrol cars parked in front… parked in front…
The bottom dropped out from under me, and there my heart fell as well.
The thiens were parked outside of Julian’s skyscraper… and the board that blocked the entrance was gone.
Not only that… in the dark entrance that I’d ducked and crawled under many times, I could see a glow of a flashlight, and as the car passed by, the leather boots of the thiens, many of them, standing in the lobby of the once forgotten skyscraper.
They’d found him. The thiens had found him.
No… not the thiens.
‘They must be cracking down on the stowaways.’
You bastard.
Your heartless bastard.
Silas had found him.
This was a set up the entire time, wasn’t it? Get me out of Skyfall, far away from Julian… so you can plan your attack.
“Elish, love? What’s wrong?” His deceptive words were so cautious, but I could now see the invisible layers of deceit. How fucking stupid was I to think he actually wanted to make up with me? He wasn’t capable of it; Silas wasn’t fucking capable of doing anything but playing his fucking games and taking everyone away from me that I loved.
