Thanks for continuing to read my story!

Thank you to Phantomgirl24, BehindTheMask31, BadPixie06, YinuoTong, Pensez-a-Erik, Just Me, MaFerviolon, Crol6425, Mominator124, FleshofMidnight, AmeliaMariee, smrb, peanutpup, Aphaea21, WolfShadow1, TheVeryOperaGhost, Child of Dreams, PhantomBove, PhantomFemme du Pantages, ValkyrieHicks, and TheTenthMuseSappho for the lovely reviews to the last chapter! I love hearing your feedback!

Sorry for the shortness of the chapter and the length of time it took. Moving is a lot more time-consuming than I thought! Hope you enjoy it regardless.

Erik

Chapter 27

The Freak

I did not sleep.

This wouldn't have been surprising even without my current circumstances. I'd been unconscious the entire day. To be quite honest, I wish I had been able to sleep that night. I would rather that than what happened instead:

I spent the entire time cooking in a stew of anxiety, the darkness like the lid of an unfamiliar and sinister pot closing in and trapping me inside.

I backed myself into the side of the cage that touched the wall. According to Javert, this space was his caravan - a tiny, moving house pulled by horse. The room was dark, lit only by the sliver of moonlight that entered through that window above the table. Javert was in his bed, snoring very lightly, and I could hear Cerberus's heavy breaths as he slept as well.

I felt on the surface that, perhaps, this wasnt real. None of it. That I'd awaken in Marie's arms from another nightmare. That morning sunshine would enter through my bedroom window. She'd kiss my forehead as my eyes opened and then ask for my help preparing breakfast.

But deeper inside me, I knew that it was real. I'd watched Marie, my mother by all accounts except blood, perish for weeks before my eyes while I could do nothing but try my absolute hardest to make her more comfortable, make sure that she was all right in what ways I could help. I'd watched the doctor declare her dead.

First Sasha. Now Marie. And I'd helped kill both of them.

I'd seemed to have exhausted my emotions by this point because, for all the grief I'd felt at the time of her passing, I felt numb. I felt so, utterly void of anything. I didn't even feel like a person.

I no longer was a person.

I was a showpiece. An attraction. A prop to bring Javert an income.

I was Le Fils d'Hades, and tomorrow evening, I would finally reveal to my village the horrors they'd whispered about, in fascination and terror, all these eight years.

But the longer the night drew on, the more I found that I simply didn't care.

I finally did fall asleep in the morning.

Javert didn't disturb me.

There were a few moments when I heard a dog - or two, or three - sniffing around the cage, a couple of times when I could hear the door to the caravan swing open and shut. I doubt he let me sleep out of politeness - I think he simply had no use for me during the day so didn't want to bother with waking me.

It was only when darkness once again fell that Javert clanked his keys against the bars of the cage, creating a jarring, metallic sound that made me start and sit up straight. He smiled and unlocked the cage.

"Out," he said simply.

I blinked. "Out?"

"I think I hear an echo." He opened the door of my little prison. "Let's go."

"Why?"

His sky-blue eyes turned stormy. "Because I said so. That's good enough reason for you, boy."

I didn't have to be told again. I scrambled out of the cage and stood, wobbly-legged after so long in such a cramped space. Cerberus was currently lying down in his own cage, above mine, watching me, noses twitching slightly.

"Now," Javert said, turning to me, "I've already taken the beast out to relieve itself. Do you need the same? Better tell me now - I'm opening up in a half an hour."

I did need to, but a quick look around the space told me there was nowhere I could go for privacy. Perhaps he'd leave the caravan while I attended to my business?

"Is there..." I said softly, "a chamber-pot somewhere?"

His eyes widened and he laughed, looking truly tickled. "Oh, there is. But it's mine, and I dare say that I'm not sharing it with the likes of you. No, we will go outside, just like Cerberus."

Outside?

Like an animal?

"Won't someone...see me?" I whispered.

"We are on the edge of the village, and lucky for you, no one is here yet. But I can't promise that it will be that way for much longer. Do you need to relieve yourself or not?"

I said that I did.

And to my shocked humiliation, Javert placed a rope leash around my neck and pulled it tight. I must have been staring at him with an expression that revealed my feelings, for he grinned again and said, "Just in case you get any ideas about running."

He'd watched me.

And when he did, I felt that it was the most invasive breach of privacy I could imagine.

Compared to what came next, however, it was barely worth mentioning.

From the time I was small, from the time I could remember anything at all, Marie had taught me that I was handsome, good, and deserving of love. At least, she'd tried to teach me that.

In the span of three hours, all of her work was entirely undone.

After we came back inside, he gave me some bread and water to eat and drink quickly and stuffed me back into my cage.

Then, at the stroke of seven at night, Javert opened his caravan to the villagers who were flocking to his door upon hearing that he now had the monster who had been terrorizing their town locked in a cage on his floor. Javert did his best to introduce us as a pair: that Cerberus guarded the gates of the Underworld and I was the son of the Underworld's king. Half of them had already come to visit Cerberus before I'd been sold here, but it wouldn't have mattered even if they hadn't. Barely anyone paid the dog any mind.

Cerberus wasn't what they came to see.

In groups of four, he let people in, just to charge them an admission fee to stare at my bare face.

The first time, I'd been so upset by the scream the woman let out, the curses of disgust that the men with her emitted, that I'd hidden my head in my elbows and curled into a ball. Javert had escorted the guests out and asked the next party to wait, just so that he could tie my wrists, spread far apart, to the front corner bars of the cage - forcing me to my knees and making my face impossible to hide.

I let out a sob.

Javert sneered, disgusted and impatient at having his show interrupted by my childlike emotions.

"Oh," he snarled, "cry, cry, cry! And cry some more! See how much I care, little freak. You'd do well to choose a different tactic. Tears will get you absolutely nowhere with me."

And so I closed my eyes and went away from this world as the hours dragged on, my knees aching from the constant kneeling and my wrists burning where the too-tight rope was cutting into my skin. I ignored the jeers, whispered comments, curses, shrieks, and occasional laughter. I ignored, too, the words of gratitude some of the men and women expressed toward Javert for ridding their town of the cursed demon child. Instead, I went to where home was. I went to where Marie was. Where Sasha was. I imagined them alive, safe, happy, in the parlor. I imagined myself playing piano with her again, with Sasha on the floor. I imagined that nothing had changed, except perhaps my mother was walking for two hours rather than one. Better yet, my mother went and found the doctor, and the two of them went far, far off to another city, another country, another continent, leaving me alone with my favorite people. The only two people who loved me. Marie and Sasha. Sasha and Marie.

But then someone would scream, and it would remind me of where I was.

Who I was.

Because I wasn't handsome. I was ugly.

I wasn't good. I was a monster.

I wasn't deserving of love.

I wasn't.