Teenage Bones

New Limits

A sting in my arm wakes me and my eyes look up into dark ones. Faetus.

"You didn't eat anything last night," he says. I don't care. To show how much I don't care, I turn around and groan.

"You're still pissed off?"

Yes, of course, I am still pissed off! Why the hell would I be okay with yesterday?

"Esmé, you know you have to eat."

"Why do you care?"

"What?"

I sit up and push the covers away. His face looks surprised I even looked at him.

"Why do you care? I'm just an experiment."

His face smoothes out. "Esmé, I don't have a choice."

"Yes, you do!" I stand up with such force, the IV bag is swinging. "Everyone has a choice, Elijah! You choose to let me be a pin cushion and I choose to let you cook for me! We have choices!" He sits down and doesn't even look at me like an annoying fly.

"Esmé, sit down."

"No!" I exclaim.

"Fine," He says, leaning back into his sofa. "You sit down and talk to me like an adult and we work something out."

I sit down.

He sighs and puts his elbows on his knees. "Esmé, you are a person, okay? You have emotions, you have extremely loud opinions and you are difficult- so difficult." He pinches the bridge of his nose. "And if I could get you out of here, I would in a heartbeat, okay? But I can't, no one gets away from here. That includes you, when they decided they wanted a witch, they prepared from the stories-"

"Stories?"

"Yes, you weren't the first. There was a village in Greece which was placed by a volcano which was said to be blessed without permission by God's first son-"

"Which was Gabriel." I interrupt.

"Gabriel?" he snorts. "You think the son of god which has never gone against him, would bless a volcano against god?"

"Well, he must've come around to the idea," I explain and pull my grey legs up to my chest. "Otherwise god would've just taken it away."

"He can't do that." Mr. Clarke says.

"Well, why not? He's god, he can do whatever he likes."

"No, he can't do that. To us, he is what some people live for, some people would kill themselves just to get the chance to meet him. To the village, this was a miracle. They praised him, and it wasn't even him. Showing he didn't do this shows he wasn't in control which exposes him as weak against his own creation. The only problem was Lucifer no longer trusted his own kind so he made sure the ashes would only take to the X chromosome and if it were to be put in contact with a Y chromosome, it would destroy the host. So the women were worshipped and they ruled, which was against god's own rules as a woman should be submissive to men. God wasn't powerful because he was right, he was right because he was powerful."

My mind is so confused. "What's the difference?"

Mr. Clarke stares into my eyes. "He didn't rule from knowledge, he rules from power."

For some reason it makes me swallow involuntarily and wish I never asked. His eyes aren't daggering me but warning me against something I don't understand, which I won't let him know.

"You have the books in your room anyway, you can read all about it." Mr. Clarke says and leans back and closes his eyes, looking like he was trying to hoard peace and quiet. Adventurously, he chose to wear a polo that was white today, risky for our new life together.

I run into my dark room, switching the light on in my room, and in the corner was a large cage that stood five feet with three levels. It was full of colorful ropes and balls with hammocks that look more comfortable than my own bed. I rush out to see Mr. Clarke.

"There's a huge cage in my room." It came out dumb and obvious.

"Hmm, well you demanded a 'pet which wasn't a reptile' so you gave me a lot to choose from." He says. Mr. Clarke is still leaned back with his eyes shut.

"And what did you pick?" Asking made me feel like I was giving him something.

"Rats, babies of course but I used to breed them a while back."

Rats? Vermin? I don't want rats!

"Rats!" I exclaim, "you can't get rats! I will get the plague or something!" He laughs. He is laughing at me because I don't want to get sick- no that's not it, because I am terrified of the little shits. When I was five, I found a really big rat in the garden and it bit me. I cried for three hours and then when I got an injection, I cried for an additional four.

"Mr. Clarke!" I yell and he just laughs more, at first, he tried to cover it with a cough but then he exploded and hiding it wasn't even an option.

"Elijah!" I threw my hands behind me and he was pulled off of the sofa and onto the coffee table which surprisingly didn't break under his weight. His pale shocked face, once he heaved himself up, was priceless. We both didn't know what to say.