The Ace of Spades

Chapter 12

     Many a man have been called mad: the left handed, those who dream by day, spinsters, and street wanderers. Worse for the matter, are those without reason. Similar to trees choking out foliage, the reasonless hold influence.

     I fear that Kaiden is reasonless; if only for the way the dim light gleans from his eyes, for the way the scars on his knuckles appear more decorative than any ring. There was safety in the sunrise, light bathing away whispers left unsaid. Written in braille, the goosebumps on my arms speak of the weather; the cold of the morning licking away at the soles of my shoes. For a moment I am left to fear that Stix has left us, his chest slow to rise and fall; then Mary awakens and with it her noise, causing the boy to stir.

     There were differences between this morning and the last, such as the silence that accompanies the unevenness of his breathing; his feet, swollen and humped at the ends.

     Her bones made of sugar, Mary is too spritely on a morning where the Sun is sluggish to rise. For, she is the type of person whose veins vibrate with their own caffeine. In the silence of last Night's Edge, she had awoken, to tell the twisted tale of monsters; Kaiden having risen to calm her, but you can't tell the child who faced monsters, that they were never real. Now, we sit like little ones, waiting for a teacher's instruction; only for the clouds to darken and the sky to express itself through rain. The illusion of shelter is shattered, the rhythmic dripping of water, a reminder of a roof that can only be called vintage.

     It is in these moments that I wonder if I've fallen into a noose of my own creation.

     Kaiden works for the Baker, a man as bulbous and round as an overripe plum for the picking. A man who breathes in gasps and pants, like even his lungs have given up. So, when the smoke came in, snake-like, coiling its way through the air to tickle our noses and poke at our eyes-- no one moved. With Kaiden an active absence, a boy sent away to grab stale buns from the trash, if only so Mary would stop asking about the beast that resides in her tummy; we were ants without a queen and so we scattered. There was no organization to the chaos that ensued: Mary bursting into tears as if they were the key to putting out the flames, Stix showing his age for the very first time screaming about how twelve was too young to die, but I stood unmoving.

     Split in two, the room stands as an odd mix of fire and smoke.

     Dropping his buns in the doorway, cheeks bulging around old dough, Kaiden arrives like a pig for roasting. Scrambling to him like a hermit crab switching its shell, Mary hiding in the depths of his shadow--there is a moment where nothing exists. One can not hear the popping of the fire, or the ever rising flow of Stix cries--one can not smell the smoke: it was in this moment I realized how unwilling I was to die. As the sky catches fire and our panic alights, Mary is shoved down the stairs and outside.

     Choking more on fear than smoke, Kaiden grabs Stix in his arms, and even though he was seventeen the boy never once strained, but he did throw me a look at the door.

                                                                                  Here lies Emrys, a beloved daughter, dead at sixteen.