author's note warning this chapter gets into some very dark subjects and might be triggering to some people please read at your own discretion
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Harry knew now what he had to do, and he would have to be both Alastor and Harry to do it. He just knew it - the realization of what he would have to be to thrive in this harsh world rushing into him as smoothly as the water poured over his knuckles and washed out the blood that had been pooling on them.
Here, he would have to be Alastor, and he would have to be the charming man. He would have to escalate, one-up these people, and to do that, he would have to lower himself to their level, to be with them so he could understand how to trample all over them, to become their rug so he could sweep them up and stab them as they landed on the floor. He thought it over calmly as he watched the water turn pink under his hands, his face a mask of serenity and nothingness.
If anyone were to walk in on him at that moment, they would think it was just a boy with a surprisingly aged face washing his hands. He cleaned up the little splatters around the sink and looked at the damage done to his knuckles. For the most part, they weren't too badly cut - hands bled easily, so most of the blood had come from tiny scrapes, and there weren't any mirror fragments in his flesh. Still, it didn't seem like the drenched state they had been in before was very proportional to the damage done, almost as if he had had blood on him that wasn't his own.
He shook off the thought as he toweled off. How would he explain it to Carmelita? To anyone he saw? He would have to keep his hand out of sight and pray it wouldn't start bleeding again. He took a deep breath and then blew it out hard to steady himself. He would be fine. He was Alastor, and Alastor knew what to do. Alastor knew how to deal with people. He could work them into whatever he wanted them to be, to do. He looked at himself in the mirror, smoothed his hair back in the way he found most flattering, straightened his tie, and gave a wide, toothy smile that was bordering on maniacal. Ok, too much. He lessened it, but he still seemed a little… off.
It didn't matter - the smile would become part of the Alastor charm, he knew. He turned off the light and walked out of the bathroom, not considering when the mirror cracked behind him. His return to the party was smooth and uncomplicated, and he took his dessert as if nothing had happened, tried to eat mostly with his left hand, and was grateful when most people filed out to go to the smoking room for the post-meal cigarette. Carmelita was a little flustered when he swayed away from her and joined Joes' conversation with Mr. Lundelville. Still, he knew that a part of her was also happy that he was incorporating himself well, and she wanted people to be impressed with him like some sick, doting mother.
The thought sent a shiver through him, but all he did was smile as he accepted a small glass of port. They all listened as Mr. Lundelville made a speech congratulating Carmelita on a spectacular evening, and he cheered wholeheartedly, even winked at Carmelita as he drank from his glass. He felt sick. Don't get sick, don't get sick. Remember Mrs. Cormier apologizing to the red lady, remember Carmelita touching you. Play here, play them. You will own them soon enough, a voice within him told him. He gave a sloppy side-grin as Carmelita became flustered by his wink.
As they made eyes at each other, he imagined a chunk of the flesh of her skull being ripped out as he pulled on her hair. He met a whole deal of people as the night progressed and took his leave when he thought it appropriate - not too early, but not after the party had turned boring. He didn't know how he was innately calculating it so well, but maybe he had always had a knack for this. He had just never allowed himself to beg. Heat it.
He even allowed himself to be led into a dance by Carmelita, and though his skin crawled wherever she touched him, he found it wasn't too bad to move around. Alastor liked it. He bid his new 'friends' goodbye, the night already almost behind him, and just as he was leaving, Mr. Montenegro stopped him and pulled him said right at the entrance. Alastor tried not to let his persona waver as he was deeply unsettled, now able to properly look into Montenegro's eyes, which were the exact shade of bubblegum pink as the boy's in his vision. "Listen, Alastor, and it was great to meet you. Can I share something with you?" "Yes, of course, Mr. Montenegro," he sputtered, immediately reprimanding himself. He had to play it cool, had to play it well. "You're sharp, and I like your charm, kid.
You got a lot of it, and it's hard to come by. Staying here, in this little town…" he looked around him with a look Alastor hadn't seen before, but that looked genuine. A look of contempt. "Well, this little town is going to become too small for you, fast. You got something. When you're ready for it," he said, pulling something out of his jacket's inner pocket, "you come to New Orleans, you join me. There's always a place for a bright kid like you, eh?" He handed Alastor a card and then patted him on the chest. "Thank you so much, sir. I'm flattered." "I'll see you around. I'mhhear from you," he said, putting on his hat and walking out by himself. Alastor hadn't realized that he had come alone, but he did realize Montenegro had said join me as opposed to 'join my company' or 'join my instead of anything else.
He was shady for sure, but the fact that a man like that, a man who so clearly commanded respect around the people they had been with tonight, should be interested in taking Alastor on was quite a compliment. It meant that he had been doing things right. He was playing them just the right way. He realized he hadn't seen Mrs. Cormier again that evening on the walk back home - maybe she had been assigned to another job after the wine fiasco. It was better that way: seeing her would've broken his conviction, his coldness. He allowed the cool night air to whip his face, to vulnerate him.
He had to be Alastor with those god-awful people, but he couldn't allow that part of himself, that falsity, that cunning and calculating person to exist with the Cormiers. They were too genuine, too wise, and hearty to endure living with him, and he would feel ridiculous, anyway. That type of persona could only thrive among the lesser people in life. He breathed slow and steady and walked at his leisure, and by the time he got back home, it was almost hard to remember what had happened that night. But he wouldn't forget. He wouldn't forget the mirror, and he wouldn't forget the man, the demon, and what he had made him feel, the realization that he had made him come through.
He couldn't remove the stain of wine Mrs. Cormier had spilled from his mind, couldn't forget the blood pooling on his hand. It was bleeding again, he knew, so he went to the bathroom and wrapped it in toilet paper as soon as he arrived. It was quite late, so Guidry was thankfully asleep, and Harry was allowed to go about his business without interruption and go to sleep without any explanations or questions of how the night had gone - because how it had gone? Good? Bad? Both and neither? He would have to think of what to say the following day, how he would even look at Mrs. Cormier in the face without remembering how she had almost cried apologizing to that wretched woman.
Harry gently took off his suit and laid it out on the table, just like Mrs. Cormier had left it for him before the party. It seemed like centuries ago. He had gone to the party feeling like a scared little boy, and in a certain sense, he still was a little boy, but he was also someone else, someone that he was afraid of, but also powerful, someone that could take charge of a situation and wasn't afraid of anything. A manipulator. A good one - and that was something to be valued in this world that he lived in.
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He headed over to Carmelita's the following Monday. Presumably, she had met her quota of social interaction and had spent the rest of the weekend reveling in the utter success of her party. Harry found that ignoring Mrs. Cormier's late-night job - that was, being ordered around and cleaning up white people's messes - was easier than he had initially thought it would be.
She didn't say anything about it, and neither would he. He only wondered why she hadn't told him beforehand and saved them both the shock and awkwardness. He thought he might be able to attribute it to shame.
And that was another reason not to bring it up - what would he even want the conversation to be about? Who and what exactly she cleaned up? How much it degraded her to be doing that and to be doubtlessly treated like the scum of the earth as she did it? No, it was saving Harry from embarrassment, but it was saving her even more.
Still, he feared she would mistake his silence as shame towards her, but he couldn't help it - he only hoped she knew he would never feel ashamed of her. Guidry, for his part, didn't notice that something was off, and Harry suspected Mrs. Cormier hadn't even told him.
It was, somehow, their own dirty little secret. The fear of shame was mostly his, and he blushed to think that she might have seen him peacocking around with those people. Still, since she failed to make any comment about it, the whole night was swept under the rug, and they were all more than eager to pretend it had never happened, the only memory of it coming from the neatly folded clothes in the corner of Harry's small room. As he headed over to Carmelita's, he could observe a change coming over him even without his consent or consciousness. He suddenly stood straighter, felt more relaxed, felt more in power, felt less Harry.
It was an odd thing, but he allowed it to completely arrest him, to open the door wide open to whatever manipulative ghost it was that was possessing him, allowing him to take the reins for as long as Carmelita would subject him to her company.
Maybe this way, it would be easier to endure - perhaps even fun. The thought would've grossed him out if he had allowed it to, but Alastor had a stronger stomach than Harry. He patted down the card that Montenegro had given him, as if it would make him courageous, almost to remind himself that he had managed just fine the other night, had charmed what he assumed to be a mafia boss so that Carmelita would melt like butter in his palm. He hoped. When he arrived, he was surprised to find that the servants led him to a more private room, the house completely quiet and restored from the party, not a soul in sight - quite a contrast to what it had been the last time he was there. There wasn't even a small group of people there for tea, which unsettled him a little and made him think that Carmelita had something different planned for bringing him here.
He gulped at the thought, but he was Alastor, and he was worse than she was. Or he would be. Whatever she had planned couldn't be over his head, and he wouldn't allow it to be. He found the young spawn of satan lying dreamily on a lounging chair, and her long, layered pink skirts splayed out like the toppling parts of a massive, frosted cake. She pretended to be unflustered when he arrived, barely giving her curls a little pat as he entered. She slowly turned her head to the side and smiled slowly while he approached.
It was odd: now that he wanted to be calculating, now that he thought of the moves he made, the power plays, and was more keenly aware of the dynamics of any situation, he could see how deliberately she acted. There was not a single genuine gesture in that girl.
Not one. But he told himself he would only be frightened if he allowed himself to. "Oh, Alastor, how wonderful of you to come," she drawled. As if I had a choice. He went over closer to her and sat at the armchair by her side, leaning towards her. She, too, sat up a little bit so she could face him. "You know, I was so impressed by the way you acted at the party! Everyone was charmed by you," she said, blinking far too rapidly.
She stood up and began pacing around the chairs. "You know, I have a secret." "Oh?" Alastor replied, leaning back in his chair and trying to slow down his heart rate. "Mhm. I think you might have guessed it by now… I think you may have a secret of the same kind," she said as she stroked the back of the lounging chair with a fat finger. "I may be guessing wrong, though. I am just such a silly girl, after all," she said with a little giggle.
But when she said that and gave her little laugh, she didn't sound young at all - on the contrary, by now, Alastor was certain she was far older, and her thick perfume and fake face confirmed it. "Why don't you tell me?" Alastor asked, his voice completely relaxed despite being horribly tense, waiting for something terrible to happen. "Well…" she said, now at the back of his chair. She suddenly dug her fingers into his hair in a gesture that he was sure was meant to be gentle but only felt rough and foreign, her long fingernails scraping against his skull. "I like you very much, Ally," she confessed, her tone soft. "And I think…" she continued, one her hands trailing from his head down to his neck, then to his chest, beneath his loose shirt.
The feeling of her hands on his skin revolted him, and he wanted nothing more than to flee. In fact, Harry would've jumped, fled, run back to Mrs. Cormier and cry on her lap, but he was Alastor, and the touch was only disgusting. He would endure it. He had to endure it. "And I think you like me too," she whispered right in his ear, her hot breath fanning across his face, the smell sickeningly sweet and somehow also meaty.
She stroked his chest, her nails digging into it a little, and Alastor held his breath. So this is what she had planned, and this was the way that she wanted things to go. "Say something," she moaned as if she were desperate for an answer, but any and all signs of vulnerability from her were completely false. "You're right," Alastor breathed, and he was surprised by how easily the lie came to him despite the fact that she was wrong, so wrong, so wrong, so wrong, so wrong he wanted to shrivel up, wanted to burn his skin where she had touched him, wanted to bring her head down into the chair and smash it into pulpy bits. "You've been such a good friend to me," he gasped as she wound her hand down further to his stomach. This can't be happening, and this can't be happening. God, make it stop, make it stop, make it stop, make it. "Such a good friend," he repeated, and he shut his eyes to stop a tear from falling as she wound her hands down into his trousers.
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After she had her way with him, he broke character. He excused himself to the bathroom as Carmelita lounged on the chair, her lipstick smeared, but when he was finally alone, he couldn't even cry. He still sobbed, somehow, the noises coming out of him sounding more like they belonged to some wounded animal, some dry animal living in a desert that couldn't even cry. Maybe he couldn't cry because he actually wanted to scream, wanted to scream himself hoarse, maybe to the point where he would be mute all his life.
He chastised himself for breaking character, but he was looking forward to when it would end, to when he would… when he would finish, which was hard because he didn't want her, he didn't want her hands on him, and he was grateful for his body's natural teenage reactions because he was freed from her quickly, and she was certain she had somehow pleased him. Pleased him. And yet the only tears he shed were the ones he had stifled when she'd started and couldn't yet see his face. When he gripped the edge of the sink to steady himself, he found that he was shaking, shaking hard.
That wouldn't do. He would have to go back out there, and god only knew what she would want to do with him once she had him all to himself. He looked up at the bathroom mirror and had a peculiar urge to smash it to bits, but he couldn't this time: it would be too obvious that it had been him. He even had to stifle that urge. He didn't feel like himself. None of this felt like anything that Harry would do.
But he couldn't be Harry, and he convinced himself that what he was becoming was right, as wielding him into a stronger person. Instead of breaking something, he took to washing his hands, just to spend some energy, have something to do, gain some time so he could stop shaking. He wished he could wash his whole person, every last bit of himself, inside and out. It felt like he had spiders crawling on his pelvis, his legs, his stomach, even his hair.
He looked back at the mirror and almost thought, for a split second, that the man was back. Who was he? Why did he keep seeing him? He realized that in all the insanity that had been happening lately, he had barely even questioned it, only taken it as a part of what was happening to him, part of who he was and who terrorized him now. But it was almost like he had grown accustomed to him, and now… and now he almost wished he was here.
That man had laughed in the face of his weakness, that man was as cold and fiery as he had to be to survive, that man had made him Alastor. Maybe that man was Alastor, somehow. He suddenly realized that he was grateful - if it hadn't been for that man's taunting, serrating laugh, he might have never realized what he had to realize in order not to break here.
It didn't even occur to him that he was already breaking, but only thinking he was becoming strong. He looked hard at the mirror, wanting to summon the man, wanting to question him, ask him how to do it, how to look at himself from afar and do the things he had to do - how could he manipulate Carmelita, control her with her desire for him when every time she touched him he became weak with resistance and disgust? That man had been through hell and back - a woman touching him without his consent was probably the least painful thing he had gone through. "Please," Harry muttered to the mirror, begging softly. "Please come," he asked, gripping the edge harder. The man never came, but he realized he had stopped shaking just when Carmelita called his name. He had been taking too long. He splashed his face with water and went over to her like a lapdog, and Harry expelled to some depth of his shame.
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As one would imagine, it wasn't the last time Carmelita did something of the sort, and it wasn't even the worst. She would touch him lightly at any occasion now, liberally and without constraint as long as nobody was around to see them. She was very strict about it being 'their little secret.' The following times, when she called him over, and she was alone, she would force him to touch her, and those weren't the worst of times because then at least he was in control, and he wasn't really expected to receive any sort of good feeling from her. After the second, third, fourth, fifth, and innumerable times had passed, he learned how to reel the situation so that she would minimally touch him.
The shock of it all wore off, and he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but it was the best that he could do, and he found that it wasn't easier each time, but every moment he seemed farther and farther from himself, farther from his skin, from his own self, and that made it feel like he was barely even there.
As he grew more confident that he wouldn't be upsetting her, he took over the reins. After a while, he was the one determining when and how it all happened - and he didn't decide to partake in those actions because he wanted them, but rather because he knew it would eventually happen. It was better to take control, better so at least the subtle differences that made each interaction worse could be avoided. The first time it happened, he wondered how he would be able to hide it from the Cormiers as he was Harry with them, not strong, not invulnerable.
It turned out he wasn't able to hide it from them. They commented on how ghostly and quiet he looked, and despite his best efforts to conceal it, when he was Harry, the lines of exhaust and horror showed on his face. But he pushed them away.
He denied that there was anything wrong with him or that anything had happened. At first, Mrs. Cormier especially had been quite insistent because she was horribly worried that Carmelita had done something to him - and she was right, but he couldn't ever let her know. He knew that best-case scenario, they would ban him from seeing her, which would just be trouble for the whole lot of them, and the worst-case… well, Harry didn't even want to think about how they would react to what she was doing to him.
They could never know, and there was also something deeply shameful about it that he simply couldn't share with them and likely would never be able to communicate with anyone. Somehow, and a little alarmingly, it became easier to lie to them. Every day that passed, he felt himself become better and better at distancing himself from them and from his own emotions to the point where it often felt like he was a little bit of Alastor even when he was in the comfort of his own home, where he was meant to be able to be vulnerable.
But he understood that being vulnerable even with the people that he loved was dangerous, and he could never allow it to happen again. Eventually, he grew more and more used to hiding the horrors he faced every other day, and the Cormiers let it drop so that the only thing that he truly worried about was how to keep Carmelita in check, how to keep her under his thumb when he had started out as the obvious victim. He thought over the problem time and time again, how to get the upper hand on her - it grew so predominant in his mind that by then, he was scarcely even looking at the books that Guidry gave him. The answer to his problem evidently came to him one afternoon when Carmelita had summoned him, and they were alone, which was now mostly the norm. He was putting himself atop her when she asked him to slap her.
And there it was. Carmelita liked that kind of thing, and after that, Alastor held all the cards in his hand, to the point where, though he didn't realize it, Carmelita got scared. They were in the middle of the worst act, the act that he couldn't even bring himself to be aloof about, the one that made him cry out in his sleep, the one that made him get up in the middle of the night to suddenly vomit. He was spacing out as best as he could, as he usually did when Carmelita asked him to look her in the eye. And he did. It was a big mistake.
The vulnerability and intimacy that the very act entailed made Harry break through Alastor, and he panicked. He couldn't cry now, couldn't shy away or scream or jump back, and he couldn't lose all the power and poise that he had managed to build up with her up until that point. So he choked her. At first, Carmelita seemed pleased by it - she thought it was incredibly intense: that burning look in his eyes that she mistook for passion and the initiative to do something so forward. But he started grasping her throat even tighter, tighter, and tighter. He started not to look like himself, so focused he was on the feel of her pale, flabby flash in his hands.
For a moment, it was like he was holding her entire life. This woman who had ruined him, who had taken so much from him. The thoughts that he repressed time and time again flooded into him, uncontrolled, with too much of Harry in the situation to separate himself from his emotions. There they were: all the first experiences, all the innocence, all the curiosity she had taken from him, they were all there in her flesh, and he was holding it. He was grabbing it as hard as he could.
It was enough to kill her, all of that was enough to kill her, and that was even without considering everything she had done to the Cormiers, and god knew to who else. She slapped at his hand when she began to suspect he wasn't doing it playfully when her windpipe felt a little too tight when he wouldn't relent. He could crush her. He could crush her. But before it was too late, he released her, and Alastor took the reins. Funnily enough, in that situation, it was Alastor who saved her life. He would later wonder if that had been the best decision.