The Boy and the Animal

Part I | Nineteen

Days trudged on from there, and each day was indistinguishable from the last as they melted together in a blur. The mornings, noons, and evenings that had separated the days into recognizable spirits were usurped by beatings, experiments, and waiting.

It seemed that the first time the woman was caught off guard by the boy's refusal to give into the animal and feast on Dark, but with the initial confusion gone she actively set on it. She had Dark beaten until he could hardly breathe with the blood spilling from his mouth or prop himself up on his elbows.

Perhaps the blood was meant to entice the boy, to drive him back to the creature that had only food on his mind, but it was to no avail. When she found her efforts in vain for that session, the woman would then begin her experiments with the tools in her metal case.

Jesiter lied helpless on the floor as metal claws probed his body, samples of his fluids were taken, and diseases were injected into his body. Dark didn't know what they were planning with his samples, nor could he do anything about it with his body paralyzed on the ground watching as the diseases coursed through his body, the boy giving a scream, and then instantly vanish.

There were times when he wished Jesiter would devour him, or the guards would go one punch too far. Such an ending, however, left a bad taste in his mouth. There was more to do. There was still too much reason to endure the stings of life, rather than succumb to the pleasures of death. Besides, he had never really been the son of his father. He was proud.

When the woman was finished with her experiments, she left without a word, and the boy, exhausted and dragging himself across the floor, would cuddle up beside the man whose labored breath was all they could hold onto. 

In the dark of the corridor of rotting corpses and plump worms, the two remaining prisoners held onto each other. The dripping in the macabre backdrop seemed to pool in their ears until they were submerged in an ocean of aching and silence; then, it became so quiet that they could hear each other's hearts beat on- hear each other think.

Every day vomited this in the same bloody mush. The lonely, forsaken cell, beneath the cold, hard earth, where no light could reach as its figure pressed its face against the ground above- Jesiter began to miss the basement. More than anything else, he began to miss...

When the cell was devoid of metal and intruders, in the cold and emptiness around them, Jesiter would cry. They weren't loud cries, nor were they ones to draw attention. He would hold the man and bury his face in his chest. And cry.

The tears were sweltering, feverish as they pooled in the man's shirt. They welled up painfully before they fell, making his eyes twitch as his throat swelled with words he couldn't find lodging inside.

He wanted to crawl back into the warmth he knew for so long. Before that warmth, there was nothing but fear and running. He was always running, and he couldn't even remember why. There was no 'home' before the warmth- no 'family', no 'happy', and no 'gentle'.

Where had that warmth gone?

"Dark?" Jesiter whispered one night, lying his head on Dark's chest and focusing on the tentative beats inside. The man brushed his bangs from his face. "Cyrus come? Help?"

It struck Dark in a way that only emotions could, from deep inside with nails that tore out to the outside. But he took it breathlessly. Shutting his eyes, he tightened his hold on the boy and shook his head.

"No," Dark muttered. "Cyrus... Cyrus can't come back. He's dead."

"Dead?"

"It's..." The man struggled to reply. That was right. What did he know about death? Before a year ago, he was just a mindless scavenger. Perhaps now he was more of a child, and, when Dark was a child, he'd wished someone had explained it to him. "It's when someone goes to sleep, and they never wake up again."

Jesiter was quiet for such a long time that Dark had thought the conversation ended, but before he could close his eyes and greet another day of torture, the boy spoke up again.

"Jessy dead Cyrus?" He asked. Dark pursed his lips and sighed. Rolling over and putting distance between them, he shook his head again.

"I'm sorry for saying that, Jess," Dark whispered. "You probably don't really know what's going on, but you're different from my brother and I. It scared me. It... Still does. But you didn't kill Cyrus. Those bad people did. They're the reason he's dead."

It was true. Jesiter was just a lost soul who happened to be a part of something he didn't even know existed. And, with his family history, he knew that the death had more to do with his family than with the son of a god.

Nothing happened that shouldn't have been expected. Blaming something like that on the boy would just be using him as a scapegoat. If anything, it was his fault. He knew something bad would come from taking in someone like Jesiter, but he said nothing. And now he had inherited the boy.

He shut his eyes and breathed through his nose. That was right. No matter how he looked at it, the circumstances only had one blame, those people outside, and he had only one responsibility: escape with Jesiter.

"We dead?" He asked. Dark's eyes flicked toward the skeleton sitting across from them, flesh still rotting. He furrowed his brows.

"No, we won't die."

And he meant it. Dark had a plan, one that he worked on every chance he had. No matter the pain that coursed through and beckoned him to lie down and die, he willed himself to work at it with everything he had until the day came.

The day of his execution.