The Academy for the Ends of the World

Chapter I

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THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SINNING AND WINNING | "All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones." ~ Benjamin Franklin

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C H R I S T A I N

FOR THE LONGEST TIME, I WONDERED why Jack Daniels was such a desirable brand of whiskey, and why it always seemed to make itself visible in the middle of the dining room table every holiday like a much-favoured mid-piece held together with pine needles, cranberries, cinnamon rolls and chloroform-scented candles. It lay overused, exhausted and always half-empty. It was so sad and so solemn that the black label glued to the front looked like a blanket hiding all the broken dreams and unsaid screams bottled up inside of that glass.

            It had the same appearance as maple syrup, but it tasted toxic to the tongue. I was surprised no kid insane enough to run through the McClure household would simply take the container and smear it all over said-child's pancakes, as though it were molasses. Then again: we were never made pancakes, nor were we made to run where we weren't supposed to.

            Drinking that bourbon substance made me feel as though I was choking down charcoal, and swallowing all the memories that went down with it. It was why I preferred to breathe it in and have it fill my lungs instead; it felt foreign in my stomach, no matter how much I thought I'd gotten used to it. It still brought my brain back to life, making digestion far more agonizing in the morning when my organs would work backwards to push everything out of my system.

            Bending over the edge of Royal Providence Academy didn't feel any different than crouching over one of the school's lustrous and meandered toilet seats, (too expensive to be porcelain,) and puking the contents of Sour Puss and Rhum Clement into the bowl of despair. I let my feet dangle off the ledge, feeling the muscles in my legs grow stiff and cold, just as the night air tugged viciously on the hem of my pants like the talons of hungry gargoyles.

            Evander brought two bottles, two delicious-looking flasks of copper-tainted Jack Daniels whiskey, which wasn't enough amongst the four of us. I had one but I had already downed half of it, and I wasn't looking to share with the greedy males that held my soul captive. They were the bars to their very own bird cages, though I suppose I was also keeping my own self locked in.

            "Arariel is such a fucking joke," Evander snarled, holding the thin waist of a blunt between his bony fingers. I could see the substances of female still lining the cracks in his skin. He breathed out a puff of smoke. "They're crazy bitches. All of them. They get what they don't fucking deserve."

            If it wasn't for his virulent pot breath, I could've sworn I heard the contents of alcohol dripping like venom from his voice. It stung like acid.

            "As in, they don't deserve you?"

            Fox Van Ulam had strawberry-blonde hair, nearly red like the fur of the most cunning creature in the forest. His name matched his tone, his look, his very nature of human being. I assumed he was a different species of animal altogether. Definitely not a dog, but also not a Persian cat. He hadn't the grace of 10 Cinderellas dancing for their lives at a ball, but his silence was stronger than 50 muscle-men combined. This is probably what made the atmosphere far more abate when he spoke, because when he didn't, his wrath wreaked of death and sin.

            "Exactly. They don't deserve me. They don't deserve what I work so hard to do to them. They don't deserve any of you." Evander pointed his bony finger to each and every one of us. My head was turned, and the end of his nail stared at me like the ghostly glare of a dead corpse. "Yet what do we do? We satisfy them. We give them what they want."