Axel

Prologue

Axel

~ The night of the Radium Room incident... ~

For as long as I can remember, I've always been an externally calm person. I don't let my emotions show, I don't lose control, I don't care, I don't feel.

But that's on the outside.

And right now, inside, I'm screaming.

'Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.'

Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club. A great book, and one of my favourite literary quotes. Not enough people have read the book, but fucking everyone seems to have seen the movie. I must admit, they did a good job with that film. It's very book-accurate, which I have a lot of respect for. For any sheltered person that perhaps isn't familiar with Fight Club, spoiler alert: the Narrator is in fact Tyler Durden. He has a split personality disorder, and Tyler is the embodiment of the freedom he wishes he had in his own mundane life. The Narrator follows social expectations; he has a boring job, a typical sense of style, an I'm-doing-everything-society-expects-of-me lifestyle. Tyler is the complete opposite. Tyler does what he wants, he lives life the way he wants to. But, alas, the Narrator and Tyler are one in the same.

I can relate to the Narrator, really, I can. My personality so often has two sides, just like his did, but the main difference between us is control. I am wholly aware of my two sides, and I'm well-practised in controlling them and keeping them separate. There's no Jekyll and Hyde shit going on in my brain, no split personality whatsoever. I know what I'm doing at all times, and I know how to separate my good from my evil.

I just don't talk to anyone about that shit. It's all in my head.

First rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.

My head feels like a fucking Fight Club sometimes, let me tell you. But I got it.

Most of the time.

I suppose it would be fair to say I am struggling on that front just a tad tonight, especially as I stand here counting all the parts of my father's brain that are now smeared across the floors and the walls of this subterranean chaplaincy room. There's blood too, so much blood.

Daddy dearest wanted somebody to die here tonight, he just didn't count on it being him.

Go figure.

Snapping my attention off of all the mushed up brain and skull fragments at my feet, I concentrate on the barrel of the gun pointed directly at my head, and the man holding it in front of me. My cousin Penn is angry, he's out for even more blood than he's already spilled, and my controlled thoughts and emotions have reached their limit.

Jekyll, meet Hyde.

Tyler, meet the Narrator.

Breathe, Axel. Keep. Your shit. Together.

At least until you get away from these people.

"I was never gonna hurt her." I inform my cousin as I incline my head towards Scarlett 'Scar' Davis, who is currently crouched over Jacqueline 'Jax' Archibald's unconscious body. I'm no fucking doctor, but I know Jax will be fine. Scar will be too, even though I can still taste her skin on my tongue, and even though the knife in my pocket now has traces of DNA from her throat smeared along the edge. Not my finest moment, but my inner Tyler was desperately attempting to claw his way out back there.