They stopped at a church that night, slipping in through a side door that had been left unlocked. The front doors of churches were usually left unlocked for the sinners of the night, but Maurice didn't exactly want to have to climb up the steps to get inside. No, he was glad that the side door had been unlocked.
"Are you sure this is a good place?" Roger asked. He looked a little nervous – Maurice didn't quite know why, he wasn't actually a demon. "What if someone comes in?"
"Then we're homeless," Maurice said, grinning. Roger still looked nervous. To be honest, Maurice was nervous, too, but it had more to do with the fact that he totally hadn't just murdered five people and wasn't on the run because he'd done so many illegal things in the past few months and less to do with sleeping in the basement of a church. "But we're sleeping in the boiler room, anyway."
Roger looked like he wanted to know why, but didn't ask. Funny, he'd seemed a lot more normal since Maurice had… since they'd left the house. Maybe it was just Maurice's perception changing. To other people, Roger probably still seemed like a mentally unstable demon. Or maybe Roger was just having a good day. That happened, right? Mental patients could have 'good' days? He thought his father had said something about that once.
"I'm going to go see if there are some things we can use for bedding," Maurice said, managing to keep his smile on his face, as he left Roger in the boiler room. Roger nodded and began to dig through Maurice's backpack. Satisfied that Roger wouldn't go anywhere, Maurice began to explore the church.
In a back room there were what looked like costumes for Christmas things and also sheets to cover up the altars. He filled his arms with the cloth and headed back down to the boiler room. There were two reasons he'd chosen the boiler room to stay in – first of all, it was in the back of the basement of the church, so they probably would not be found, and secondly, the boiler produced heat, so the closer he was to it, the warmer he'd be, right?
Right. Theoretically.
When he got back to the boiler room, Roger was gone and the contents of his backpack were strewn everywhere. Maurice sighed and dropped the sheets and costumes. Scratch the 'good day' idea. Roger was just talking more.
He would have to go find Roger. He'd not killed for the boy, he couldn't let him get away that easily. After a brief hesitation, he grabbed the chain, snapping one side over his wrist and getting the other side ready to snap around Roger's. He'd get Roger to stay with him if he had to force him to stay.
Oh God, insanity was contagious.
But, no. He wasn't insane. He was just… he just wanted to keep Roger safe from others, and others safe from Roger. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that. He was… he was making the world a better place.
But none of that would matter if he didn't find Roger.
He was about to just choose a random room to look in when he heard a crash a few rooms over. He hurried there, making sure that the chain didn't rattle too much – he didn't really know how Roger would react and didn't want him getting scared – and wondering what the hell Roger could be doing.
Roger was smashing bottles of communion wine. Maurice watched, wide-eyed, as he took bottles off of the shelves and flung them across the room, flung them into the floor, completely destroyed the bottles and soaked the room in dark purple. Maurice winced as a piece of glass flew very near to his face, very nearly cutting him. "Roger," he said. His voice sounded choked; forced, almost. "A-are you okay?"
Roger looked up at him. He was calm. "Yes," he said. "Yes. I am doing quite well, actually. Thank you for asking." There was a slight tug at the corners of Roger's mouth, like he was having to fight bursting into laughter.
"What are you doing?"
Roger looked around as if seeing all of it for the first time. "Well," he said. "It appears that I am smashing bottles of communion wine."
"Well- yeah, but why?" Maurice asked, picking his way through the broken glass. While Roger was distracted, he snapped the manacle around his wrist. Roger jumped at the sound and looked down at his hand. The two of them were now chained together with about six feet of leeway. It was a long chain – Maurice had had to make sure of that because Roger had been using it while exploring Maurice's room. "C'mon, let's go sleep."
Roger shook his head, reaching for one of the last bottles left. "I need to- I need to finish," he said. Maurice used the chain and his strength to his advantage, grabbing the bit nearest to Roger's hand and yanking, hard. Roger fell against him, slipping on the wine-covered floor. "No-"
"Roger," Maurice said. "Come with me."
"No!" Roger said, yanking the chain back. Maurice, who was holding the majority of the chain, used it to his advantage and wrapped it around Roger, dragging him kicking and screaming to the boiler room, the two of them making purple tracks on the near-perfectly clean floor. Once they got back into the boiler room, Maurice locked the door and unwrapped the chain. Roger sat as far away from him as the chain would allow and glared.
Maurice opened up a can of fruit and approached Roger. "You need to eat," he said. Seeing that Roger probably wasn't going to eat any time soon, he set the can down and retreated to get his own food – not mixed fruit like Roger's, but just pears. They would have to make finding food a priority – perhaps the church had some cookies or something stashed in some room for the littleuns – little ones.
Roger seemed like he needed some cookies.
Wow. Big paragraphs instead of loads of dialogue. I never use big paragraphs.
i'm evolving
