Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (65 page)

It was a wonderful feeling, each gentle stroke leaving an illuminated trail of welcome sensations. I could see the bright path of his fingers even though my eyes were closed; they left an invisible trail that I could re-trace on his skin.

Everything was haze after that, beautiful thick haze. Haze that stretched on for days, weeks, or maybe only minutes. Though I think it was a long time. Eventually though I saw a break in the fog and in that break I felt a cold hand on my forehead, followed by a wet cloth.

I smiled as it slowly stroke my cheek. I opened my eyes, they felt heavy and weighted down with sand, and looked at Mouse’s face.

“Hey, Pumpkin, feeling good?” Mouse said quietly, behind him one of the girls was holding a blue plastic wash bucket. She was standing so completely still I thought she might be a statue. Her face was smooth and her eyes dark and cold, I reached out to touch them but she was too far away.

My head dropped, it hit the mattress and I could feel a loose spring digging into my neck. I winced and nodded slowly before squinting my eyes. As I came back into reality I realized they were raw and itchy. They felt like a bag of sand had been poured on them and I didn’t know why.

“Good… we’re fine now,” Mouse said to the girl. She nodded and left my vision. I squinted again and rubbed my eyes.

“Don’t rub your eyes,” Mouse said. “You have an infection… I have no idea what but it’s turned the colour parts of your eyes red. Just close your eyes. I took some of your money to find a doctor. I think you might be allergic to this stuff, I’m not sure.”

What a weird… weird infection.

Then in my drug-induced delirium my eyes opened wider. I tried to sit up but the comforting, fuzzy warmth of the drug urged me back down onto the mattress. The water-stained pillow looked welcoming, still holding the shape of my head with Barry and my satchel only a few feet away.

“No… no doctor…” I mumbled. I rubbed my eyes and squinted them and, sure enough, I could only feel one contact in my eye. The same one that was irritated and raw. I closed my natural crimson eye and looked at Mouse. “I need an apartment… I need to… rent an apartment. I’ll pay you to help me.”

Mouse gave me a concerned look but after a moment he nodded. “Okay, I can help you with that but Giuseppe will kill me if he finds out. He’s been enjoying running up your tab. Give me a couple hours to talk to some friends and I’ll come back with a shack for you. Are you fucking sure you don’t need a doctor? Seriously, blood-fucking-red, not the whites, dude, the like… the coloured parts.”

“I’m sure, I’ll be fine,” I mumbled and laid my head back down onto the pillow. I grabbed Barry and squeezed him to my chest, and in my drugged-up state, I wished for nothing more than for my old friend to talk to me again. To be alive and tell me stories like in the old days.

Old days, when I was a kid. The happy times.

Happy times when I was in the greywastes and my own person, before I found out I belonged to this stupid family. Fucking jerks… how could they think raping anyone they wanted was okay? How could they see what Jasper did to me as wrong but it was laughed about when Valen or the others stalked and fucked anyone they wanted when they were bored?

Though as I said this my eyes opened again. Oddly after several days inside of this den, the shock of what my family did seemed numbed almost. The wound still stung but it was farther away than it used to be, to the point where my brain was telling me… that perhaps I had overreacted.

Had I? I closed my eyes again and saw Nero in my head. I missed Nero, and I missed Jack even though he hated me.

I missed King Silas especially… even though it was him who’d lied to me.

Well, whatever, the opium was more appealing than thinking about my stupid family or my even stupider life in the greywastes. So I closed my eyes, got comfortable with Barry and let the opium blanket take me away.

The next time I was roused I found myself completely dazed. My head felt like it had been sliced open, then someone with a giant scoop came and scooped up my brain, then replaced it with… with fuzzy foam but not like the mattress foam but like the puffy white cotton that I picked out of the Tylenol bottle but lots of it all squished together like… like someone had come with a giant scoop and brained my head and replaced the scoop with… with white cotton.

Like that.

Mouse looked at me and chuckled. I heard Giuseppe in the background.

“Leave him there. He’s bringing a lot of money in for me.”

Mouse lifted me up and helped steady me. “His eyes are getting worse. My sister is coming to look at him. You said yourself we can’t have him die here and if he goes blind here eventually someone will kill him.”

Giuseppe said something angrily in his language as he walked me towards the door. I looked down with only one eye open and made sure I was holding Barry and my black bag. I should probably give the bag a name. I always felt bad when things didn’t have names. They were forgotten more easily that way, just like that couch that gets forgotten in the greywastes and then gets rained on and it’s sad. Remember that?

I remembered that.

My brow wrinkled when I felt the cold air on me. It was a shock to my lungs but my nose had gotten used to the smell of unwashed bodies and opium smoke. I inhaled loudly and grinned before looking at Mouse.

“Smells nice outside, eh?”

Mouse shook his head. “You’re paying me for this, just so you know. I’m charging you ten bucks a day to look after your Skyland ass.”

“I could just make you a sengil, then I wouldn’t have to pay you shit,” I slurred, stumbling down the sidewalk. Most of the buildings surrounding me were dark and unlit, and others missing entire sections of wall so only the metal beams were sticking out. I could see the plastic hanging off of those beams.

I reached out to touch it but it was too far away. Instead I rubbed my arms.

“Only chimeras get sengils,” Mouse said, laughing an amused laugh that lasted too long. “And only greywasters get slaves, though I think that’s illegal now. We have a ton of underground slavery in Cypress and Moros though, but you’ll have to enslave them first and I’m still young enough to fight you off, Pumpkin.”

“Not when I was in my prime,” I mumbled. I stepped off of the road as Mouse directed me across the street, then I stumbled on the curb but thankfully managed to keep my balance. “Hey, any news reports on me yet?”

Mouse’s head shot to me. He blinked and raised an eyebrow, he looked like he was about to comment on something but instead he clamped it shut and took my arm. “We’re almost to your new house. It’s a bit of a pit but it’s a nice size for three people.”

He led me behind a single-storey building that had white writing painted onto the door, though it was too worn to see. He then disappeared into the alleyway and I heard chain-link fence start to get moved around. I wandered to the front of the building and looked inside, but saw nothing but garbage-covered concrete and in the distance a collapsed interior ceiling. Everything looked gutted, even the walls were gone, probably copper thieves or scavengers looking for things to sell.

It reminded me of the greywastes though, I kept looking in and smiled to myself as I imagined me being seven years old again, climbing into these buildings and searching for food and shelter. I knew I was looking at my childhood with rose-coloured glasses but, damn, at least shit was simple back then.

“Okay, I have my sister inside waiting for you; you’re going to be living in our house. Her name’s Julia,” Mouse said, grabbing my arm and pulling me towards the alley. I said goodbye to the window with the faded writing and let him drag me wherever my new home was.

I sniffed and started opening my black satchel to get my opiate pipe. I grabbed it as I walked and was happy to see I could still get one more hit out of it.

“Here he is…” I heard Mouse say in a low whisper. “I don’t know which one he is… I just know he is one.”

“Then why the fuck do you have him!” a female voice hissed, another hand grabbed my arm and both of them walked me down a dirt path with flattened brown grass on either side. I looked up and saw a small home with boarded up windows, coated in chipped yellow paint and white trim along the window frame. It had a front porch too but the railing had fallen down at some point in time. It was nice though; there was even a rusted car in the yard for me to play in.

“Because Giuseppe isn’t stupid. He was going to find out sooner or later…” Mouse hissed back. “Not to mention when he gets high… he lets shit slip. He’s a bad liar when he’s on opium.”

“Who?” I said out loud. Oddly Mouse pushed the pipe into my mouth and lit the end of it. I saw a lady with long brown hair and the same eyes as Mouse; kind of buggy and with dark circles.

“Nothing, Pumpkin, take another hit,” Mouse said calmly before addressing the female again.

“What’s his name?” Julia asked. They both helped me inside the old house.

“I just call him Pumpkin and he calls me Mouse,” Mouse replied as I looked around the small but cozy house. It smelled like the must that makes your skin itch, like the itch of pink insulation when you ran your hands along it. I didn’t think a smell could itch but here I was.

I wandered into the kitchen which was a simple galley kitchen with old yellow cabinets, a checkered countertop and a worn wooden table that wobbled when I moved it with my hand. I was feeling dizzy from the opiate though so I sat down on a chair and faced the living room. The carpet was so many different shades of mustard yellow I wasn’t sure which one was the real one; the lights giving off yellow glows didn’t help either.

I think I would call this the yellow house.

“What’s wrong with his eyes? I thought you said he just had an infection,” Julia hissed to her brother as she dragged him out of the kitchen and into the dining room.

“His eyes are naturally red, he got a hold of some colour contacts,” Mouse whispered, craning his head backwards to make sure the chimera wasn’t listening. “They fell out while he was spending the last week high out of his mind.”

“Why is he here!” Julia said putting a hand on her head. “You have a chimera, why, why do you have a chimera? What are we supposed to do with him?”

“I… I haven’t thought that far ahead,” Mouse admitted. “I was thinking of ransoming him out to Elish but then I realized–”

“That was a fucking suicide mission?” Julia snapped. “You need to give him to Elish, drop him off anonymously to a thien station and pray that they don’t realize you had him. There is no good end to this, Frank. You need to separate yourself from him.”

“I can’t,” Mouse said shaking his head. “He has a fucking bag full of money. I’ve been able to feed myself and you, and rent–”

Julia groaned. She put a hand on her head and brushed back her brown hair. “That’s where you’ve been getting the money from. From him?”

Mouse nodded and pursed his lips. “The satchel is full of money, sis. More money than we make in five years.”

“Take it from him and we can leave… now.” Julia took a step towards the living room but Mouse grabbed her arm.

“He’s high, he isn’t retarded. He’ll know it’s me when he sobers up and he’ll kill both of us. He’s stupid when he’s stoned but once sober… you’ve fucking seen the chimeras as I have. Nero ripped the spine out of a convict just last Saturday,” Mouse said grimly.

Julia leaned against a wooden dresser that was missing its top drawer. She had the distinct look of a woman who would rather be anywhere than where she was right now. “You got yourself into some shit, Frank.”

But Mouse shook his head at this, though if that was from pure denial or actually disagreeing was anyone’s guess. “No, I ran into luck. Look, he knows I’m skimming some money to take care of him and he’s cool with it. So I’m not stealing from him. Why don’t I just keep taking care of him and we can eat and pay our rent with it. He’s happy and I’m happy…”

“And when they money runs out?” Julia challenged.

Mouse opened his mouth to respond but closed it. He sighed. “I told you I haven’t had that much time to think. He’ll get more, right? They have money…”

“They have black cards that can be traced which is why he has cash on him.” She glanced back into the living room and saw the chimera sitting on a wooden chair staring at the living room, a string of drool dribbling down his stubbled face. The chimera was completely out of it, looking like someone who had escaped from a mental institution with how he was gripping that dirty teddy bear.

“I wonder why he’s hiding?” Julia said slowly, feeling a small pull towards the obviously sick chimera. “I’ve never seen him on the news or in Stadium and King Silas is always showing off the new babies or brought in family members. Every Stadium for the last year has had Drake doing his little magic tricks or Kessler and Nero sword fighting.”

Mouse looked too, his face adopting a similar expression. “He’s nice… he’s really nice and friendly. If he wasn’t maybe I would have taken that money and ran. But… he’s also kinda nuts. He talks to that bear like it’s a talking person and he seems really… sad, I guess.”

They were both silent, watching the chimera with sympathetic expressions.

“Maybe the family rejected him or something?” Mouse suggested. “Or they’ve been abusing him? Fuck, sis. I’ll show you later but… his arms, legs, torso… all covered in scars, scars on top of scars. The Dekker’s are so private about their lives, how do we know what it’s like there?”