Chapter Four — Little boys are made of...
Pip started throwing up again at about noon. We decided to move into the bathroom after realizing that eventually the vomit in the carpet was going to start to smell. I sat on the toilet with one of the books I'd picked up for Pip; he was huddled at the far end of the bathtub, which I'd outfitted with both of the room's pillows and two of his sheets. The bucket was refilled with ice and as many popsicles as it could hold and was placed on the floor within arm's reach of Pip. I timed his eating and drinking by the chapters of the book. He was free to eat whenever he felt the desire to do so, but when I finished a chapter he had to drink a full cup of water. He seemed alright with the idea of not dying, so he complied.
I had started on chapter ten when he leaped up from the wall of the bathtub and crawled into a hands-and-knees position over the drain to begin another puking session. I put the book down on the counter and watched with indifferent eyes, but I wanted it to stop. The sooner he recovered, the sooner I could stop feeling sorry for him, and the sooner we could both get out of here and go our separate ways. My Sharp identity was shaping up to be severely less fun than I'd intended, and by the time all this was over I'd have to trash it. Apparently Damien Sharp no longer lived alone; he took in charity cases off the streets and watched them spew their guts in his leisure time.
"You don't have to watch," Pip choked, coughing up the remnants of his latest retch. I smiled nastily in response.
"But I get such a kick out of it." I stood up and filled the wax cup he'd been using with water. That was another part of our deal: he had to drink every time he puked. When I handed him the cup, he looked like he'd rather die. "Good boy."
"Ugh." He stared hesitantly at the cup as though it might bite. "This is fucking miserable..." He took a sip and shuddered. "You should have rescued me a day later."
I grinned at his ability to be a smart ass even while he was potentially dying. "I'm not really enjoying this either, you know. Despite all our fabulous conversation, sitting around in a bathroom for hours on end is not exactly my idea of fun." He chuckled and slid back against his pillows after draining the last bit of water from his cup. He pulled the top sheet over himself and curled into a ball so that his back was to me.
"At least you've got a book."
"Ha!" I glared at the book on the counter contemptuously. "You've practically got a bed going in that bathtub; I've been sitting on the can for seven fucking hours. I can't even feel my ass anymore."
He didn't make any noise, but I could see his shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter. "You suffer so." I glared invisibly at him, but maybe he could sense the stare, because he reversed his position then to face me. His expression was unexpectedly serious. "You don't have to stay, you know," he offered after a brief pause, bringing his hands up under his chin beneath the sheet. "I'm doing alright. I'm sure I'll be fine if you want to go out for awhile."
"No," I protested wearily. "If I go out it'll be just my luck that I come back to find you dead... thrown up your large intestine or something." He snickered appreciatively.
"And what is it exactly that you plan to do if such a thing were to happen in your presence?" I pondered the question for a moment.
"Laugh, I suppose," I answered finally, face betraying nothing. I wondered whether or not Pip thought I was kidding. "I'd shove it back down your throat afterward, of course."
"I don't think it works quite that way."
"Probably not, but it would save me the trouble of making two trips to the trash receptacle." He grinned and twisted the sheet around his hands.
"I don't know. You might be able to make a nice necklace out of it." I pulled a face.
"Eurgh. Your large intestine? Who knows how many guys have been up there?" Pip raised his eyebrows at me, and I couldn't help but laugh.
"Do you really care whether or not I die?"
"Of course I do!" I replied before I could catch myself. He shrugged and rolled onto his back, eyes on the ceiling.
"Oh."
My eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?" He smiled placidly.
"It means 'oh,' asswipe," he answered, as though it were the most obvious question in the world. "I guess I still don't really understand why you're going through all of this for me. It seems so highly out of character." I frowned.
"You think you've got me totally pinned, don't you?" I asked incredulously. "You haven't got the first clue what I'm like."
"I know that the idea of mercy makes you sick," he offered with another breezy shrug. I rolled my eyes.
"Oh, you're a fucking genius, Pip."
He shot a grin at me, and I wanted to smack him in retaliation. "Well forgive me, O Lord of Darkness, but I believe it's your pillow I'm lying on." My hands clenched in frustration at his cocky arrogance.
"This isn't mercy... you didn't do anything wrong... I haven't forgiven you for anything. Look, Pip, I don't know what I was like when you met me, but I'm no longer the kid you think you know so much about, alright? Death isn't a game to me."
"No?"
"No," I growled impatiently. "Death is something that humans warrant for themselves. I just mete it out to those who ask for it or to those who stand in my way." He looked slightly pensive, as though he were reasoning through something in his head.
"But I did stand in your way."
"No," I corrected him, voice still edgy. "You didn't. You were in that office for an answer, not an assassination."
"Not then." He looked back up at the ceiling to avoid looking at me. "When we were young. I stood in your way when we were boys." The room was silent but for the sound of my breathing. "In a lot of ways, you're still... very much the kid you were when I met you." Then a sad smile flickered across his face in addition to an expression I couldn't read. "Will you throw me away again the moment I become an obstacle?"
It was an unfair question. "I don't... what were you standing in the way of then?"
He contemplated his response, and for a moment even looked expectantly at me, as if my face were a teleprompter from which he could draw answers. "I dunno... love, I guess." I frowned, disbelief in every line on my face. Love? "You so desperately wanted the acceptance of the boys who hated you... but it wasn't something you'd ever have with me by your side. So you fucked me up to win them over, and we never spoke again until four days ago." I blinked dumbly, utterly nonplussed.
It was an answer I wasn't expecting, an answer I didn't know what to make of. "I... I can't remember any of that, but... love's not really my style, Pip. I don't think that's something you have to worry about."
"No," he sighed, closing his eyes. "I suppose I don't."
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
"By the way," he began in a completely new tone of voice, the worst attempt I'd ever seen at a subject change, "when part of your body falls asleep, just rock your head from side to side to get rid of the pins-and-needles feeling. It really works, no joke." I could only stare at the little blonde boy in the bathtub.
"Uh... right. I'm uh... gonna go refill the ice bucket. You can take a piss if you need to, just... lock the door, alright?" I didn't wait for his approval before I stood up and grabbed the bucket, striding quickly out of the door and shutting it firmly behind me. I was going stir crazy in there.
I had taken two steps forward when I heard the rustle of his sheets, and I stopped to listen in case he was about to throw up again. Frankly, there was no reason why I had to be in the room when he was vomiting. Pip was right; there was nothing I could do to help. I couldn't help my paranoia either, though. But I didn't hear him move across the bathtub to puke, or to get up and relieve himself. Deducing that he had just rolled over to make himself more comfortable, I began walking again... but then I heard him start to cry.
I almost dropped the bucket. It wasn't as though I'd never heard him cry... hell, he'd been crying last night. It was just... different, somehow, hearing it unattached to speech or vomit. It was a horrible, dry sobbing, and coming from a guy it was even worse. I gave him silent thanks for at least waiting until I'd left to do it, though. It hurt me to listen to outside, but it would've been a thousand times worse for him to see the pain on my face. There was even a small part of me that wanted to turn back around and comfort him, but that would only have humiliated us both. I decided to give him his privacy and left the room for more ice.
My reflections taunted me the entire way to the ice dispenser at the opposite end of the motel. "Love?" they teased, baring overlong canines in a smile I recognized as my own. "You fucked that little queen up for love?"
"I know," I whispered, glaring mindlessly at nothing in particular as I poured the water in the bucket off the side of the balcony. "It doesn't make sense..."
"Maybe he's mistaken," the reflections hissed. "Maybe it was his own love that stood in the way of power." That sounded significantly more likely. I slid the bucket onto the grid and filled it noisily, pondering the possibility.
"But... we were kids," I argued to myself. "How could some scrawny little kid ever be more than a nuisance to me?"
"Find out," the dark reflection in the dispenser replied. I nodded slowly and withdrew the bucket.
"Pip?" I called when I stepped back into the motel room, giving him time to compose himself and pretend that he hadn't just been crying. I walked slowly to the bathroom and waited until the rustling of his sheets had come to a complete stop before opening the door. His eyes were still red, but I was perfectly willing to ignore the fact. After all, I had more important things to worry about.
"I want to know exactly what happened between us when we were kids."
o o o
I immediately regretted not faking unconsciousness.
"Er..." It wasn't that I never thought the story would come up... I'd just assumed that I'd be the one to initiate the conversation, and then only as some means of guilt or blackmail. "Well, uh... we were eight..." Damien had set the bucket down on the floor and sat back down on the toilet with his legs crossed, waiting with an indifferent air I knew was only a front. I struggled to find words, but I didn't know how to embellish the story to his liking... after all, I had no idea whether he'd be embarrassed or proud of his performance.
"We were eight...?" His eyebrows were raised and I felt my cheeks burn.
"Uh... yeah..." I tried to clear my throat, because at the moment it didn't seem quite capable of producing sound. "You transferred to our third grade class nine years ago, and... it was a complete fiasco, really. You had no notion of subtlety." I could see it as I said it: the shattering glass, the groaning metal, the burning wood. "You were quite proud of the fact that you were the son of Satan, but no one really believed you or cared otherwise... so you thought you'd prove it to us by fucking up the classroom and about half the student body." Damien smiled, amused. "It scared the hell out of everyone, needless to say. No one really wanted to be around you."
"Except you?" he interjected, leering.
"Actually, you approached me," I corrected, my blush deepening. I wasn't sure how he'd take that, so I lowered my eyes from his face. "I wasn't about to turn you away. I was about as well liked as you were. I'm British, you know, and the other boys thought it was a great game to assert their American superiority over me by beating the living shit out of me on a daily basis and hearing me scream for mercy in my limey little accent."
"You don't have an accent," Damien pointed out stupidly. I laughed despite my efforts not to.
"Well, I've been in America most of my life. Time has a way of changing those sorts of things. You used to squeak like a little girl, but you don't anymore." He narrowed his eyes, and I decided to end the tangent. "So uh... right. I don't know... I don't know if anyone would've considered us friends, exactly, but you were the closest thing I'd ever had to one. We spent a lot of time together, and... well, you weren't exactly friendly, but it was nice to have someone around." I smiled to myself, feeling stupid for doing so. "But aside from being the two most spit-on kids at the school, we didn't have much in common. You were more interested in the vulgar, power-hungry boys, the ones who made a game out of how loud I cried. It wasn't hard to win their favor; you just had to win their game."
"How?" he asked avidly, leaning forward. The ravenous glint in his eyes made me shudder.
"You... I don't know exactly what it was you did. You... tagged me, or something... opened up a hole in the ground... to Hell, I guess. It's hard to remember," I confessed softly. "I was so scared. But something grabbed me... I... demons, maybe... and carried me into the air. And then..." I paused, because I didn't know exactly how to describe what my memory knew came next. "Then... it was like... I was exploding... like my body was ripped into a thousand pieces and scattering... but then I hit the ground, virtually unscathed. I was barely even singed. Some of the burns left scars, but most just left blisters. I don't know how I survived so perfectly intact. I thought I'd felt myself dying..."
I couldn't look up at Damien's face, but I could almost feel his smile. "Impressive..."
"Yes," I commented darkly, burrowing myself beneath the sheet and turning my back to him. "That's what the boys thought, too. It was all they talked about for nearly a week. They forgot eventually, of course. Boys forget everything eventually."
I could hear Damien shift uncomfortably behind me. "Pip..."
"Do you think it's stupid of me to hold onto memories like that?"
"... no..."
"Why did you want to know the story?" I tried not to sound bitter. Damien had shown me a level of kindness I'd never known. I was grateful to him. I didn't want my voice to imply otherwise.
"Because..." His words had a softness to them that sounded unnatural in his voice. "Because you said I chose love over you, and I... I've only got a vague guess as to what love's like, okay? But from what I gather, it's just not my kind of thing. It was never my kind of thing. But you... you cared about me... and I could never begin to understand that. You're right; men... boys... do forget everything. We're obsessed with ourselves, alright? But your stupid... heh... your stupid, faggy obsession with me... it completely defies that law of nature. Why the fuck would I ever choose love over you when you're the only one in the universe that seems to know what the hell loveis?"
I gripped my pillow to keep my hands from shaking. "I've got no idea what love is." I was grateful that I didn't have enough liquid in my body to produce tears. "How could someone God himself seems to have turned a blind eye to... know a thing about what love feels like?" Damien laughed, but it wasn't insensitive.
"Hey, if we're gonna talk about being hated by God, you're going to have to get ready to come in second place." And then... he walked over to the edge of the bathtub and placed a hand on my shoulder.
I was so surprised that I nearly jumped out of my skin. Damien snickered. "Woah, calm down. I'm not that frigid, am I?"
On the contrary, my entire body had flooded with warmth. "S-sorry..."
He got up after about a minute and flipped off the light, but he didn't leave. I guessed that was my cue to go to sleep.
o o o
I waited until he started snoring to leave the room; I rotated the ice in the bucket and the sink, then flopped down on my bed for the first rest I'd had since six that morning. I fell asleep the minute I hit the mattress, but my dreams were troubled.
He was there as my subconscious imagined him at eight years old, swinging back and forth on a rusty playground swing set and smiling, hair fluttering about his face in waves of magnificent gold. Three other boys sat on the swings beside him, laughing among themselves, grins like his on their youthful faces. I sat on the edge of the playground between the grass and mulch, my body fully seventeen. I didn't dare approach them for fear of interrupting the perfect, childish purity that settled over them like a mist. I was content to watch.
There was a subtle change in the atmosphere that I wouldn't have noticed but for the shiver it sent down my spine. I saw that a lock of his hair had tangled around the left chain of his swing, but he didn't seem to notice or care, so I said nothing. But then... then suddenly he was about to jump, and I rose to warn him. No, I meant to say, but it didn't come in time. Wait.
There was a horrible rip, a high scream, and then he was face down on the mulch. I started toward him, but the three boys got there faster.
"Are you all right?" the black-haired boy asked him.
"Can you stand?" asked the redheaded one. I thought they were going to help him, but I glanced at the third boy and immediately knew that I was mistaken. He was standing behind Pip's swing, an evil leer on his face and that lock of golden hair between his fingers. He was more than eight, I realized, and the fact terrified me for a reason I knew only when his eyes caught mine. His dark eyes smiled at me, and without ever looking away he ripped the hair out of the chain and brought it to his lips. Then he ran his tongue through the tangle, thick saliva dripping from the perfect gold, and I broke into a run.
Stop! I tried to scream, but my lips opened without noise. Stop it! He shook his head in a slow, deliberate "no" and broke eye contact at last to shoot a look lost on me at his two friends. They smiled knowingly and bent down to Pip, the black-haired boy scooping him up and the redhead giving him a kiss on the cheek.No! I wanted to yell. Cut it out!
Scared blue eyes met mine, then, and suddenly it was like I was running through water. I was only three yards away and now I could barely move. I offered an outstretched hand to him, but he was too far away. He just shook his head and opened his mouth, and I thought he might say something but only vomit came out, thick vomit the color of blood, and it was everywhere but on the boys. They just giggled as if someone had told an amusing joke and squeezed him tighter, kissed him harder. When the redhead moved from his pale cheek to his vomit-drenched lips, I managed a whisper that was supposed to be a scream and broke through the shield that impaired my movement. I was two feet away, one foot away, three inches away, and then they were gone, they were all gone, and the mulch was smooth tile the color of sour milk.
"Over here," purred a voice that had to belong to that third boy, and when I whipped around it was his dark hair and dark eyes gleaming at me over a porcelain tub dripping with and surrounded by blood. I stood up and slipped on the freezing water I suddenly realized the floor was flooded with, but there was blonde hair over the rim of the tub and I ran as fast as my legs would carry me. The brown haired boy was gone when I reached the bathtub, but it wasn't him I was worried about; I plunged my arms into the blood that filled the tub to the rim and dragged up the body at the bottom... but it wasn't Pip's. It wasn't even human. It stared up at me with empty eye sockets and a face whose skin had long been eaten away and smiled though an orange funeral shroud. I thrust the corpse away from me with a growl of disgust and stood up, dripping cold water and sticky blood.
"Where is he?!" I howled, balling my hands into fists. "Where the fuck is he?!"
"Shh, baby," a silky voice prompted me. "We're right here."
It was the black-haired boy... but he wasn't a boy anymore. He smiled up at me through full crimson lips and batted too-long eyelashes. I was uncomfortably aware of breasts pressing into my arm. He reached up as if to kiss me, but I spun away quickly, only to come face-to-face with the second half of the "we" the black-haired boy had been referring to. His breasts were smaller but his face was prettier, and his slender arms found their way expertly around my neck.
"Don't you love us?" he whispered into my ear, and all I could see was red hair, red hair in my eyes and nose and mouth and I tried to scream NO but it was all lost in that tangled mess, and the only thing I could think to do was destroy them, destroy them both. It all left me in a flaming hiss and bits of their bloody bodies hit my legs as they fell to the ground in pieces, still laughing. Stop it, I begged the grass that was suddenly beneath my feet. Let us go.
"You can't ever go."
He was standing beneath a Ferris wheel this time and – a dry sob escaped my throat – fucking Pip into the dirt. His laughter beat against my skull like a hammer and his eyes were worse. Isn't he beautiful, they hissed. Isn't he the most beautiful fucking faggot on earth?
"LEAVE HIM THE FUCK ALONE!" I screamed, spit flying from my mouth as I rushed clumsily over toward them; I slipped on a patch of grass that was slick with blood and muscle tissue and fell hard to the ground. I could taste blood and dirt and earth and it all made me sick to my stomach, but I pushed myself up, then froze. The brown-haired boy was gone. Pip was alone on the ground, his body seventeen and his shoulder-length hair unshaven and perfect. I wanted to run to him but I couldn't move. I watched and waited with tears streaming down my face as he groaned and picked himself up; when he caught my eyes, his face lit up and he ran for me, laughing like a child. He fell to his knees in front of me and threw his arms around my neck like the redhead had, but it felt almost welcome this time.
"Pip," I breathed, and I wanted to touch his hair but my arms were so stiff. "Your hair," I begged him. "I want to touch your hair."
"You want to touch... my hair?" No... no, the voice was wrong... He pulled away, teeth bared in a cruel smile, and it was him, brown hair falling over his eyes and blonde hair snared in his teeth. No... The tears against my cheeks burned against the flesh there like acid.
"Wh-where's... where's Pip?"
But I didn't have to ask, because he was at the top of the Ferris wheel and suddenly all I could see. He clutched his shoulders and whispered with a small smile, "Little higher." And that was it. There was a sudden burst of light and he was everywhere, a thousand little pieces glittering like gems in the mid-afternoon sky. It was almost pretty; in my blurry vision, the blood looked like ruby.
"Wow, that was cool, baby." The breasts against my arm were back. "You're not such a bad guy after all." The red hair in my eyes and mouth was back. "Yeah, sweetie... come on in and join the party."
Then the corpse from the bathtub was kissing me and all I could taste was death.
"Damien?"
My eyes flew open and it was over.
"I um... I'm sorry to wake you..." The dark motel room slowly came into focus... the door on the left... the counter on the far wall... "It's just... the bathroom's colder than shit. I've taken all the sheets off my bed..." The spare bed on the right, stripped of sheeting... what the fuck was Pip saying? "Normally I wouldn't ask, but you're on top of all your sheets, and..." Pip... holy shit, Pip...
"Mother fucker," I breathed, then reached up and grabbed him. He let out a startled scream and fell forward onto the bed, but I saw him fall forward into a pool of bloody mulch.
"What are you—"
I pulled him up and clutched him to me so tightly he actually choked, but I couldn't let him go, because if I did he'd be everywhere again, a bloody little fanfare in the sky. "I remember... I remember it," I whispered breathlessly into his hair. "I'm sorry... Fuck... I'm so sorry..."
"Oh, I... I... um... it's... it's okay... Damien..." He was shocked out of his mind, I could tell, and I couldn't blame him. Properly awake, I would've died before embracing him like this... but I wasn't properly awake. I was still half-asleep, and it still seemed so real, and I could still hear the screaming, and I was really, truly frightened for the first time in my life.
"It wasn't... that wasn't me," I tried to convince him, my fingernails digging into his back. "That's not... I didn't want that. Or I... I don't anymore... If that was love, I don't want anything to do with it. I'm so fucking sorry. I didn't mean to... fuck..."
Hesitantly, Pip's hands made their way to my shoulders. "It's... okay. Really, it is. I... believe you, Damien."
"I'm the son of the fucking devil," I laughed bitterly, loosening my grip at the mere mention of it. "If you trust me, you're every bit as stupid as I am."
"Well, then... at least we'll have something in common."
Against the base of my throat I felt his lips part into a smile, and I couldn't help but smile, too.