Nothing

Stork x Death Stigma PG-13

It's simple enough to live your life without feeling. If you don't feel, you can't feel happy. You can't feel sad. There's no anger, no hate, no love, no hurt. If you don't feel at all, then there's no way that you can feel empty. There's nothing, and nothing, and nothing, and nothing was all I really needed.

I sat there by myself on the sidewalk. Now and then someone walked past, but no one ever stopped to look at me. There's a woman in red skirt. Here comes a man in jeans. There goes a little girl and her mother. How was that little girl living? How could she live in this cruel world born from the aftermath of war? For that matter, how was I living? I was living with nothing. I didn't care about this, and I didn't care about that. I didn't care if my stomach growled in hunger. I didn't care if my throat screamed for water. If I died, I wouldn't care. If I lived, I wouldn't care.

I closed my eyes with these thoughts, growing tired, and let my chin drop onto my chest. I rested like that for a long while. Occasionally I heard footsteps approach. Their feet seemed to tap on the ground in rhythm with the second hand ticking on a clock. The footsteps would grow louder, and louder, and louder, until they began fading away again. But never did those footsteps stop. They didn't even slow down. No one cared for a scrawny, dirty little boy sitting on the side of the road. Everyone had their own worries troubling their mind; they didn't need one more.

Footsteps came again - different this time. They sounded on the cracked pavement slowly, as if the person they belonged to was walking for leisure, rather than to get from Point A to Point B. Curiosity pricked inside of me. This was odd. This was new. And before I could open my tired eyes - the footsteps drew to a stop.

In front of me stood a man who wore black as comfortably as his own skin. Black - all black. I gazed up at him. Gazed into his eyes. He stood tall above me, silent above me, as he looked down at me. He met my eyes, and neither of us could tear our gaze away. At long last, when I was done etching his face into my memory, my eyes slid from his face to his neck. There was a butterfly - resting. Little, beautiful wings painted onto his throat forever.

"Come," he said suddenly. His voice was smooth and deep, like it could cut through my heart in a single slice. He held out a hand to me, but I couldn't take it. This was all wrong. This was all wrong. No one stopped to look at me. No one stopped to speak to me. No one stopped to take me home. This couldn't be. This shouldn't be.

He broke out into a smile. Now that I think about it, it was more of a smirk. I only saw his true smile once. And even then, it hadn't been directed at me. It had been directed at a camera – a smile frozen in time.

We were silent for a long while, with nothing but the soft wind and the gray sky to fill the space between us. "Come," he said again. Quietly. Calmly. "Let me take you home." I should have known what he really meant, but I was too naïve back then to know the real meaning behind those words. Let me make you love me. Let me make you heartless. Let me make you kill. Let me make you mine.

I slowly reached out and put my hand in his. Warm fingers closed around my wrist. Warmer and softer and kinder than I expected them to be. He seemed so cold standing there with black flowing all around him; it was strange that he had such kind fingers. He gently pulled me up onto my feet, showing me that not only were his fingers gentle, but also strong. They would not give in. They would not let go. He held onto my hand until I stood steadily. Then, without a word, we began walking.

And suddenly, I realized, I did care.

For the first few nights, he pampered me. He let me eat anything I wanted. If I asked for roast chicken, there it was on a plate. If I desired a glass of water, it was by my side instantly. All the while he smiled at me and stroked my head and whispered sweet nothings in my ear. By the end of the seventh night, I was his, and only his, and always his. And he knew it.

He had switched the lights out that night. That seventh night. I was already lying down on the bed, waiting for him to come and join me. Waiting for him to come and sleep next to me like he had for the past six nights. "You like me, don't you?" he asked as he drew the bed sheets back. He sat down on the mattress as gently as he could manage, but the bed shifted under his weight anyway.

"Yes." One word was all that he needed.

"Will you do whatever I say?" he asked next, sliding his legs under the sheets.

"Yes."

He was silent, but by the way the butterfly on his neck smiled down at me in the darkness, I knew he was smiling too.

He lay down after another moment, his head on the pillow next to mine. He turned on his side with his back to me, but I could still hear him breathing. I could still hear the smile on his face as he exhaled and inhaled. "Good," he murmured softly with a chuckle. "Sleep well."

I lay awake for a long time after he bid me good night. He was so close, so close to me, this man who had made himself my master in a week. As I lay there with my eyes open, as I lay there with my eyes staring into black - I knew that he owned me. I knew that I would do anything for him. I knew that without him, I was already lost. I knew this, but I didn't realize or understand it. I never would be able to realize it until the black stopped making its home in my eyes and fled in fear of the sunlight.

"Wake up."

My eyes flew open at his voice.

His smile was what welcomed me when my eyes focused. "Good morning," he said quietly. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes."

"Good." He moved away from me, away from lingering above me, away from being near me. He stood up off the bed and shrugged on a white shirt. "Get ready," he told me as he pulled on his black coat before I could decide if I liked him in white. It seemed like I had imagined the white on him. "I have a favor I want you to do for me today."

At this, I sat up and looked at him, with what might have been eagerness on my face. "A favor?" Yes, this is exactly what I wanted. A chance to pay him back for all that he had given me. A chance to make him want to give me more. A chance to show him that he needed me as much as I needed him. "What do you want me to do?"

He didn't answer me right away. He was kneeling on the ground, putting on his boots, which were as black as anything else he wore. "Don't speak," he replied at length. I was deaf to the cold tone in his voice. Only now, in retrospect, can I hear it. But back then, I only heard the words. Only heard the sound. Only heard him giving me a chance to prove myself worthy to him. I stopped talking at once.

"Come with me." Again, there was his hand, held out to me. That beautiful, warm hand. "I want to show you something. When we lie in bed tonight, you'll have learned something new."

He smiled. I smiled. I took his hand.

"Don't hesitate!" He screamed at me. The anger in his voice rang in my ears. "Aim and shoot, there's nothing to think about! Do it!"

I stared from the pistol in my hand, to him, then to the cowering man hiding under the bar table. Now that I knew I cared about life - now that I knew I wanted to live and that I knew I wanted love and that I knew I wanted to feel happy and sad, and angry - I didn't know if I could pull the trigger. If he had given me a gun a week earlier, before I knew I wanted to feel… I would have shot the man without a moment's delay. But now I wanted to feel everything. I wanted to feel everything so I could love this man - this man wearing darkness. And I desperately wanted him to love me back.

"Don't feel."

I couldn't breathe.

"Just shoot."

I couldn't think.

I focused my eyes on the other man: the plain, ordinary one who was shuddering and backing away from me. "Please, don't kill me," was whispered again and again on his lips. I almost felt bad for him. Don't feel. I forced myself to wipe my heart of any pity, any remorse, any emotion I had. There. Perfect. Are you proud of me, Death?

The sound of the gunshot echoed in the empty bar. It echoed in my once-hollow heart.

Silently, swiftly, he walked up close to me. Silently, swiftly, he took the gun from my hand. "Good job," he said in a drawl, "Good boy."

He leant forward, breathing softly, causing the butterfly on his neck to flutter its wings. Before I could see his eyes, before I could realize what was happening, his lips were on mine, his heart in my mouth. This was my reward. This was it. This was what I wanted. If I got this every time I did what he told me to, then I would never question his wishes ever again. I would rid myself of a conscious. I would be his dog. I would sit if he wished it. I would roll over should he ask. The dog treat he could use to bribe me was this: a kiss, a hug, an embrace.

"Kill for me," he breathed out as he pulled away from me. His forehead touched mine, but just slightly. "Kill for me, but never kill me." He kissed me again. He weaved his hands in my hair, pulling me closer then away again. "You won't be able to kill me." He laughed a dry laugh, out of breath since I stole it when we kissed. "You can't survive without me. Remember that."

"Yes."

"I think," he began, as he looked up from flipping the green pieces of paper in his hands, "we need somewhere to put your money. I can't keep track of how much of it is yours and how much of it's mine."

I don't need money, I wanted to say. Just you. Just you and your black net that enchants and lures and captures. Just you and your arms that hold me. Your fingers that touch me. Your lips that kiss and kill.

When he said I couldn't survive without him, he was right. He was always right. I needed his voice saying, "Kill them." "Sell her." "Fuck me." The only will of my own that I had was the desire for him to accept me. By now - now that I wasn't kid anymore - I knew I could never have his love. He loved me as much as he loved the men he shot, the women he slipped money to as he locked me out of the apartment, the beer he downed in a single gulp.

Sometimes I would feel like I wanted to cry when I thought about this. I was nothing to him. Nothing but a lackey, nothing but a nuisance, nothing but a tool, nothing, and nothing, and nothing, and nothing was all he really needed. I felt the tears fall inside me, but they never made their way out. Every order he ever gave me rang clear in my ears. Don't feel. I tried to follow that direction as well as I could manage.

On some nights, I hated him for making me feel again. I wish he had left me as lifeless and apathetic as I had been as a boy on the streets. …But then I would think about how good it felt when we were together in his bed, entangled as one, my lips caressing that butterfly. A life without that lust would be worse than a life full of nothing.

He opened up the closet door, searching for something. Every now and then he'd curse, and a thump was sounded as he shoved some wayward item further back. I watched him from my seat on the bed, bare of anything but my skin. Actually - not my skin. His skin. Even the skin on my flesh felt like it belonged to him.

"Here," he finally said with a tint of triumph in his voice. A suitcase joined me on the bed, instead of his body. "This'll do for now." He lay some of the money he had been holding into the suitcase in neat, orderly rows. Once he was finished, he snapped it shut and shoved it at me. I could only look at it.

"It's yours now," he shrugged as he put a cigarette in his mouth. Still, even with this statement, I couldn't take it. I had never had anything that was my own. Could I actually own something? Was it even possible? The answer was no. I couldn't own. I shouldn't own. I was not an owner; I was the owned.

"Don't want it?" he asked with an eyebrow raised. "All right, I'll give it to you later." He handed me a cigarette and sat next to me on the bed. We drew in close, and he lit the cigarettes together.

Smoke floated up lazily, contently. As we sat there together, I understood that he couldn't love me. He couldn't love anyone. But that didn't matter. I lived for him now. I lived because of him now. He was me, I was him, and we could be one like this, forever. All I needed was him near me. He would give none of his heart, none of his love. He'd give nothing to me.

But nothing was all I really needed.