𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭

𝐭𝐰𝐨 | 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐩

3 years before

In his dreams, Yates only knew quiet. A different kind of quiet of quiet, not the ashamed kind or the taut kind, but the still kind. The kind you feel in death; this type of quiet was the end of everything and the coming of nothing. His dreams hold the quiet well, they cradle in him in it, a languid sea. Quiet possessed him a lovely little space in the dark of his mind, so when he was beckoned by the roaring sea- a brilliantly blue chasm in front of him- he was taken aback.

Something in him doesn't want to be quiet anymore.

There is a girl, standing in the middle of this sea. Her face is the moon, unintelligible and too bright for his eyes to decipher. The ocean comes calling at her fingertips, tamed, her docile pet, swirling around her like thick skirts. This girl turns to him, and he has to fight himself to continue looking. Her face materialized with the passing seconds, collected on her brow like a tiara, glistening. First her lips, then her nose, and then her eyes- all three of them. She is mottled and ugly and endless.

Yates knows this girl. He knows her well. He knows she tastes dulcet and smells of the wild. He knows her voice- a timbre of a thousand thunderstorms. He knows her in and out, all for one thing. He doesn't know her name.

The ocean waves split his lips and whip his face with dragging, salty trails of water. Yates tries to move towards her, his voice a soft quiver as he whispers, "please, come to me." Now, the sea turns hot, boiling and blistering as it shackles around his legs. Shooting pain bursts in his eyes and blood riddles the back of his throat. Yates's hands stretch in front of him, and he ambles like a haggard man begging for alms.

"Like attracts like, Yates. Desperation is a difficult game to play." The girl doesn't move her mouth, but it is undeniably her speaking. The words pelt him like hail, so cold it burns. It leaves him desperate and breathless. Yates is drowning in a sea of his own sins. The brine swathes him, dribbling from his lips.

"Take what you want, but ensure that you can pay its price. An eye for an eye," she says, her voice a terrible roar. They reach up, delicate and purposeful as they pluck the eye from her forehead, letting it fall into the sea. Now tears flood from his eyes. "A life for a life." Then, the ocean takes her too in a dizzying flash of light and a wave of mirrors, soaring with the roar of the universe and dying with the sobs of a starving man.

Quiet overtakes him again, a sweet sounding funeral march.

___

When Yates wakes up, he cannot see. He tries to blink, but tears have dried over his lashes in thick beige clumps, threatening to pull them off if he is too harsh. His hands, cold and stiff from the interminable stream of the hospital's AC, rake at his eyelids, popping them off. His vision finally materializes into a thick, sterile white that reminds him of what heaven might look like- though, this place is a surefire way to get there. Heart rate monitors beep and there is the constant clatter of wheels on the tiled floor. His nostrils burn with the smell of rubbing alcohol and his mother's perfume. The older viet woman sits next to him, the sound of her acrylics grating in his ear. Like a corpse, he gets up, head throbbing and bones snapping like they have just been clicked into place.

After his junior year in Juilliard, Yates had dropped out and finally gotten his record deal, partially thanks to his parent's influence, and part to his actual musical talent. His band was still in the midst of being trained and refined, the stress slowly chipping away him. It added a whole new hunch to his back and novel aches in his fingers. Yates was pulled taut, and when his mother called him about his father's latest infirmity, he had snapped in two; Yates had hopped on the latest flight to Maine with nothing but the clothes on back, spending a fitful 8 hours in the small plane seat. They were still awaiting his older brother, who, frankly, was probably off drinking himself to his own death somewhere in new york.