Indwelling

George

A car bomb killed his mother. The war killed his father. All he and his sister had left was his grandmother. It took her three days to tell him what happened to his mother. It took his mother much longer than that to tell him about his father. Much longer. Now all three of them were gone.

Eating his dinner, the boy of 10 watched his sister sputter and play with the peas on her tray. He pondered the fact that she would never know his mother's face, his father's apart from the pictures stuffed in his sleeve. He would show her one day. Someone had to tell her. He was the only one left who could.

Well almost. His shifty eyes, his untrusting eyes, his knife sharp mildly accusing eyes slanted towards the man on his left, the one who said he'd known his father. Obed picked him up from the orphanage the day after his grandmother had kicked the bucket. He said he also knew his mother, said he helped out a little when his father died from the war, said he knew from the papers that he had been with her the day the bomb went off. It took his grandmother three days to tell him his mother had saved him, that she didn't make it but he did. It took the man twenty seconds, then three hours to bring him home to a new life, a new house and a new family. Except, this wasn't his family. They weren't his parents.

And yet, they took care of him. This he couldn't deny, George.

They had been there a year now and the boy had learned many things about his parents. They were kind and patient though they argued a lot. They were Edomites and Obed was an ex-Israeli soldier in spite his heritage. Grendel was a nurse and had attended to the wounded during the war. Now she was a stay at home mom, him an adviser to the king. They were a happy couple though lonely.

Obed mentioned many times his wife's condition. How she couldn't conceive. How much she—him—them longed for children of their own to spread his family's name, to further his own seed, to fill their home with love and laughter.

"Maybe you are a god send," Grendel told him one night as she put him to bed… well murmured really. It's what they did since they knew he would never answer them—not verbally anyway. "You needed parents and we wanted children. God put us together. And I am certain that He means for us to grow in love." Here, she tilted her head, watched as his hardened eyes stared into her much softer darker pupils. They reminded him of candles and wood burning in a soft fire place, of his mother's home cooking and his father talking quietly in the background. He liked that in spite everything. He liked her eyes.

She must have saw something, or he must have gave something away for instantly, Grendel's smile widened as she kissed him goodnight. "We will get there one day and until then and after then, we will take care of you and protect you as God would have us do. We promise."

Such a promise, the boy thought. And it took one year and one unthoughtful action to break it. Obed brought that… thing home.

It angered his wife. It made Obed himself worried. She hadn't stopped complaining and he hadn't stopped pacing, twitching, nodding along to her chatter in silence and uncertainty. Even the boy could see that he regretted his decision and that regret, that anger only fueled the child's own.

He knew what that thing was. Everyone did. He knew what it was capable. His new mother had said, indicated blatantly, detailed to the exact extent of how dangerous it was and that made him mad—worse fearful.

They had promised to protect them and what do they do? Stepping out of the bathroom, the child glared at the door across from it, inched severely with his back against the wall until he was at least two doors away from its own. He was about to cross the hall to reach for the door knob to his room when he heard his mother's voice suddenly sprint from the common room, the living—dining—kitchen at the end of the hall.

"Young lady, I told you to stop it!"

George turned eyeballing the light flittering into the hallway from the TV. Obed was still working. It was just his mother, his sister and him. He knew what happened.

Grendel grunted as she bent to pick up his sister. "I said 'no,' " she scolded.

The child only sputtered and laughed, at which Grendel exasperatedly sighed. "I told you once, I've told you a hundred times, no going to the closet. It is dangerous."

George shook his head as he entered his bedroom.

Out of everyone, his sister was the only one unfazed by the Arc. On every turn her every step, reach, flutter of an eye was pinpointed on that door. She was obsessed with it. Still this, like his parents, he had learned to shrug off. What did a baby know of its dangers? Laying on his bed, the child put a hand across his eyes. She didn't know the difference, but his parents did. If they knew how dangerous the Arc was, if they promised to keep them safe why would they bring it here? Didn't they care?

- Calla