Lunar Virus ✔️

Chapter Twenty-eight: Elie

Elie's POV:

I find myself questioning my entire childhood as I look at the man in front of me. He’s nothing like a remembered him, and I can’t help but feel betrayed. Adults, when I was young, were supposed to be all-knowing. As one of the most trusting kids anyone had ever met, I believed literally anything that came out of the mouth of someone above the age of twenty; if my older sister told me that staying in the shower for more than eleven minutes would make me swell because younger children have undeveloped skin cells, airy pores, and a higher water-storage capacity, I would have believed her. Not that that particular example actually happened, of course.

I would say that I trusted him--the man standing in front of me--the man standing, spreading over my friends like an unwanted sheath of sticky plastic wrap.

I trusted him because he was my uncle, and family is family, right? He was the one to take me to the carnival while my parents traveled far, far away into the moon and came back as different people entirely--and not in a good way. He, along with my older sister, of course, was the only one left to actually take care of me. He was the one who convinced me to leave and join the Facility in their darned masquerade even as my sister begged me not to go. I feel an immense pressure against the back of my skull as I fight against memories I’d held back for far too long.

A knife of denial presses against my throat; my sister crying in her room, bruises on her arms, fear in her eyes, and hollowness as she saw me leave. The sick crack of clarity strikes my heart in a blast.

Am I really that blind?

His rumbling voice, once a source of comfort, slices through me. “Go ahead, I know you have questions.”

“Did you . . . .” I choke on the word. My face is numb, I can’t really feel anything yet. I know it will come through. It’ll come and drown me.

He chuckles, and I vaguely feel Elodie’s nails digging into my arm. “Rape? No, I’m not a pedophile, son. Your sister was just weak. She just didn’t listen very well, a spoiled brat if you ask me. But I suppose you're not asking, are you?” he smirks amusedly.

My face isn’t numb anymore, it burns. It burns of anger and pales with fear. A sparking ball of rage tightens in my gut. How long had he been hurting her? Is she safe?

I drown in a daze as the force of a million questions being answered hit me. I’d always wondered why she refused to go to college; it must’ve been because she didn’t want to leave me alone with him.

But where was she now if not with--

“If not with me?” my uncle, no--IT, finishes my thought for me.

I try not to gape in surprise. Did he just read my mind?

“You’re surprised?” he snorts, “Quentin has been holding out on you. And your sister is fine. She fled as soon as you left. And now that we’ve cleared the air, let’s get down to business.”

He starts talking, but I can’t hear him. I hear my heart beat under my skin, beating fast and harsh against my lungs. I feel sick.

Quentin: Deep breaths.

I don’t give Quentin an inch, I simmer at him silently, hating that he kept so many secrets. “Shut the fuck up!”

Quentin: Shit, okay. You need to calm down. You just said that out loud.

“What did you just say?” IT levels his eyes at me, which artfully frame a dangerous sort of violence in them, and I refocus my eyes on him.

Quentin: Take it back, kid.