Fell of Dark (18 page)

I've already known what it feels like, this kind of pain. I know what it means to want to die from pain. The pain my mother and father, Kulthat and Tillion, gave me. Plus, the Sawmen. The pain and fear from loving Candace. Kill me.

I miss my mother. I miss Tatiana. Shouldn't we all have our mothers, so long as they aren't out to kill us?

A year ago, my mother left hell. We talked for a few months. We laughed and found a way to be together. We had an understanding. We wouldn't mention Salome's name. We wouldn't talk about the violence and punishment and warfare between us. I would do this in return for dinner.

Now I feed myself. Ten months, no mother. Eight, no father. I go to high school part-time, at night. I go at night, since I work thirty-two hours a week at Only a Game. Most days and every other weekend.

Along with math and chemistry, I take a course in creative writing. We got an assignment: Six-Word Stories:

The fever broke. We finally slept.

We prayed for rain or death.

Only a Game. I mostly work with the board games, the games of strategy, and chess. I'm sort of a specialist. We're in a golden age of board games. New ones come out all the time. Some take an hour to play; others take days. Everybody's caught up in video games, but the tabletop is where it's at. For some of us. We're old-school.

The store has a whole section devoted to video games, of course. I see the kids and men, almost always boys and men, barely any girls, checking out the first-person-shooter games. I know what those games are, but I don't understand them. When you play board games, you learn about your mind and other people's minds. You find out whether or not you take risks, whether or not you're a short- or long-range thinker, whether or not you like to wager.

But in those shooter games, there's only one way to go. You can only go forward. Killing. There's nothing to learn. No thinking. It's some lower level of mind, instinct. You don't have to talk. The game gives you all the noise.

I played one of them. Once. After closing. A hired assassin. It went like a bad night's sleep. Shooting. Strangling. Stabbing. Kicking a man to death. Gunfire and grunts and wailing. Four hours gone in death. I died over and over. Other people died. Blood and broken bodies. The noise of it. When I stopped, I could barely stand up. I got sick.

Everything around me looked like a cartoon. Brighter colors. Sharper sounds. I was a five-and-a-half-foot length of live copper wire. I wanted to sleep, but I was shaking. Shuddering. Lightning. I sensed the Protector just under my skin, watching for danger, expecting a fight. I wanted to cry, so I did. I cried. I hated myself.

Is this what it's like in real life? Killing, I mean. The fear, the suspense, the sickness, the ease of it?

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a person can learn something from those games, like whether or not you think you have the stomach to kill another person.

Could I have killed my father when he was lying on the floor that day his foot nearly snapped off? He was helpless. I hated him. If I were a hit man, he would've been dead in seconds. I didn't want him dead. I wanted him to suffer. There's a difference.

Could I ever see myself killing someone? If not my father, anybody? Maybe if I had to save someone else. Maybe if I had to protect myself. Maybe if I had to protect the world against evil. Otherwise, no.

Wait. Does killing someone include killing myself? Do I count?

What am I talking about? I play chess. It's a field of battle. People die. I sacrifice my soldiers. And those strategy games? I kill all the time.

But I'm old-school. The killing I do doesn't look like killing, or even pretend to look like killing. I play quiet games. I have to think everything through.

Wow.

I'm even uglier than I thought. Just like that. I'm worse than those first-person shooters, playing assassin. Worse than almost everybody in a new way.

I plan my killings. Premeditate. Pawn, knight, bishop, rook.

“I don't know.” Candace crossed her arms and looked around my apartment for the first time. I'd never brought her here, but my parents were gone. They left everything behind. “I don't know. It feels empty.”

“Everything's here.”

“I can see that, but it feels empty.”

I tried kissing her, and she pulled away. Why would she do that?

“Something's not right.” She started looking all over the house. “Do you even have parents?”

Why would she pull away? Is this the beginning of the end? It must be. It must be. I shuddered. That same jolt of electricity. It comes when I'm somehow scared or suspicious. The Guardians, or the Architect himself, I think, prodding me, telling me to be careful, to think.

There's only one reason to pull away from a kiss. You don't want to be kissed.

“I saw that, Thorn. The spasm. It's happening more and more.”

“I know,” I growled.

“Don't get angry with me. Do you have parents, yes or no?”

“Why would you ask such a question? Of course I have parents. Kiss me.”

“No. I'm thinking.” Candace picked up my mother's iron from the board in the hall.

“Don't.”

“It's just an iron.”

“My mother would kill me if it broke.”

“Oh.” Candace put it down on the board. “Like I'll drop it.”

Why won't she kiss me?

“Why won't you kiss me?”

“Stop worrying. You always worry. Soon as you don't get what you want, you worry. Like I'm always pushing you away, right? Like I have someone else.”

“Do you?”

“You see? You always get like this.”

“Not always.”

“Always.” She wasn't even looking at me. By now, she was looking at Kermit's and Tatiana's bookshelves in their room. “I've never seen so many books on chess. Mom or dad?”

“My father.”

“What's his name?” She pulled out a book and fingered through it.

“Don't.” I was getting angry, but something in me wanted her to know everything.

“What's his name, Thorn?”

“Joseph.”

“And your mom?”

“Mary.”

“Very New Testament.”

“I can't help that.”

“So why does this book say, ‘To Kermit, Happy Anniversary, I love you. Tatiana'?”

“It's used. Why won't you kiss me?”

She brought the book over.

“Except it's signed ‘
We
love you. Tatiana, Salome, and Thorn.'”

“—”

“Salome. Your dead sister.”

“Don't say her—”

“You lied. Why would you lie?” She snapped the book shut. “And, really? Kermit, Tatiana, Salome, and Thorn?”

“Don't say her name.”

“It's all weirdly beautiful. But why lie?”

“I can't tell you that yet.”

“Yet? Why not?” She sat on the end of the bed.

“I'm not ready.”

“I know you play chess.” She flopped back on the bed.

“You're so beautiful.” Why won't she kiss me? What does she want? Who does she want? Suspicion. The Sawmen were cutting.

“Sometimes, you look at me with your hand on your face, staring at me, like you're wondering what your next move should be.”