Post by Vespyr on Apr 22, 2013 3:51:23 GMT -8
The day of - September 14th, 2011
Ari's mother and father were practical-minded people, and as far as traditional middle class white parenting standards went, maintained a valiant effort to do only what was best for their son. Ari Stockholm never missed a day of school except for special occasions such as acquiring chicken pox (kindergarten), attending his great-grandmother's funeral (3rd grade), and catching the notorious swine flu that managed to catch the nation's--and Ari's parents'--panicked attention all while remaining relatively harmless as far as notorious diseases went. That was last year, when he was freshman at the bustling Public High School #259. This year Ari was in 10th grade and last week an announcement had been made about the threat of a terrorist attack on the school. It was recommended, but not required, that students should stay home and not attend classes while the threat still loomed overhead.
Unsurprisingly, Ari found himself seated in a nigh-empty chemistry classroom the day of the bombings, taking notes on something he would never actually need to remember later on after all, as it would turn out. The tension of trepidation hung over the silent classroom like a lingering foul odor that kept mouths shut and breath bated. Nothing could be heard aside from the hum of the projector that illuminated the pull-down screen in front of the cluttered whiteboard, the rest of the classroom lit only by the dim day-glow of the pyramidal skylight in the center of the ceiling. Dust floated fretfully through the beam of projector light. The disappearing and reappearing ethereal squiggles caught Ari's attention for the better part of the class period after he had finished his notes, and he daydreamed about being a speck of dust in the atmosphere, pushed along through barren spaces by the world's current, too microscopic to comprehend any part of the big picture. His abstractions were interrupted by a burst of gravelly noise coming from the loudspeaker at the front of the room. All eyes darted to stare expectantly at the source of the sound, though Ari's gaze had flicked instead to the door where he could have sworn he'd just seen someone running by.
*"Hey everyone, just like Asiv said. Those guys are here. They just showed up behind the school."*
The announcement had hardly ended when the distant but unmistakable racket of screams and gunfire had almost everyone in the classroom scrambling out of their desks. Ari remained frozen where he sat in the corner of the room, too startled to move; as if in a trance, his wide blue-grey eyes followed the hasty exit of the other students and he watched their bodies perforated suddenly by a spray of bullets. As blood splattered the linoleum tiles in the hallway, Ari found himself face-first with the scuffed tiles under his desk, his small body trembling like a dumbstruck mouse.
The fifteen-year-old had always thought about death with mostly indifferent attitude. He always supposed it would just happen when it happened regardless of his choices. There was never fear except for the fear of dying a slow death like his great grandmother did, a victim of nothing but pitiless age, a body breaking down of its own accord. There was nothing so terrifying about a violent death as long as it was quick.
But he'd never actually seen anyone get shot before except in movies, so of course he had assumed that the gore was an exaggeration. Such a tiny piece of metal wouldn't cause that much blood; not so much that it pooled and crept across the dirty floor, back into the classroom, across the outlets in the floor where the projector was plugged. The outlet sputtered with smoke after a moment and the projector shut off. Ari closed his eyes and tried to forget what it looked like when such a tiny piece of metal tore a hole in someone's body much larger than itself. And he was terrified of dying there, like that.
Rapid footsteps approached in the hall, and Ari stopped trembling for a moment, frozen still as he watched several sets of feet run into the classroom and crouch down. He peered in terror until he recognized them as other students, though they also had guns. One of them, a female, spotted the small black-haired boy under the desk with a look of concern and silently motioned for him to join them. After a painstaking moment, he did, crouching down behind her, trembling again. He looked to the gunslinging young man crouched beside her and tried to figure out what was happening, but the young man gave his gun to the other girl and rose to his feet, taking off before Ari had the chance to make sense of it. The girl who spotted Ari stayed put beside a wounded companion, two other students ran after the first boy, and Ari followed them without any idea of what was going on except the idea to get the fuck out.
The group of four stopped at the end of the dark blood-slicked hallway. The young man who had given away his gun was talking to someone on a radio, something about explosives and an evacuation. Ari's stomach churned as he waited without knowing what he was waiting for. His eyes were rooted to the leader of the group as he pulled a remote detonator from his pocket and clicked it. And then, explosions.
As it deafened him, Ari whirled around to see a massive spray of dust rumbling toward them like an ocean wave, emanating from the end of the long hallway they had been sprinting down. It was impossible to see any further than ten feet through the terrible miasma of soot and airborne debris as it engulfed them and darkened the already dimly lit hallway. Holding his breath as the others began to cough, Ari blinked his eyes and backed toward the wall in shock and managed to catch a glimpse of a tall figure emerging from the billowing cloud. It wrapped its hands around one of the other student's necks, wrenched it in an awful way, and dropped the dead body to the floor as it reached for the boy with the detonator, whose back was turned. Ari never saw what happened to him because his eyes were closed; his eyes were closed and he was running again, being pulled along by a firm grip on his wrist. The other student practically had to drag him to the nearest window because he couldn't keep up, he kept tripping, or maybe his legs just didn't work. Ari tried to keep his eyes open but there was dust in them. The student who saved him quickly broke the pane of window glass and hauled Ari through the window, into the chaotic daylight.
The cacophony was sudden, like someone had ripped the lid off the jar of terrible sounds coming from outside; the cracking and whizzing of the guns and bullets cut sharply through the shrieks of horror and yells of pain from students, some still fighting against monstrous-looking strangers, most running, many wounded, just as many dead, though the dead ones made no sound. Still, the silent screams of terror were caught in their wide-open staring eyes.
Ari felt like he was going to throw up, but it would have to wait. As he clambered to his feet and began to run, he realized he had lost track of the student who had thrown him through the window, but he didn't glance back. Dust clung to the tear-streams on Ari's pale cheeks and poured like smoke from his long black hair as he streaked across the campus war zone toward the open city streets. As the sound of gunfire began to fade, a thundering new sound came down from the sky to replace it. For a moment Ari was confused at the sensation of a pure blinding light lifting his feet from the pavement. He was flying. Still weightless and without feeling in the eerily silent nothingness, the teen's traumatized brain decided it had had enough and Ari fainted midair. An instant later his limp and tiny body landed safely in a bush.
There were only some minor burns, bruises, and scratches to show when Ari woke up. It had only been about an hour since the bombs fell and he had missed all of it, thankfully, though the disorienting feeling he experienced upon crawling out of the bush to see the city of Long Beach half-burnt to the ground all of a sudden was enough to make him throw up, finally.
The boy ran home.
Unsurprisingly, Ari found his house half-collapsed to rubble, but it was not empty. Inside the caved-in living room, pinned to the couch by debris and furniture from the second floor, in front of the dead TV that had played news of the bombings as they happened, were Ari's parents and his older sister Shelby.
Ari often wondered about how things may have gone differently, had he not gone to school that day.The day after...
[/color] he shrugged, something like nostalgia in the way Cain chuckled to himself for a moment.
Hardly timid as he opened the front door, Cain stepped into his house, and with sudden curiosity, found himself standing under a beam of sunlight. He furrowed his brow and glanced up at a gaping hole in the ceiling where a small missile had punched through into the living room. Now blackened with soot and scattered with the debris of a ruined family home, charred picture frames that held irreplaceable memories, photos of himself, Gunner, and their mom in morbid halloween costumes, on a weekend camping trip to the woods, at a black metal concert when the boys were eleven and ten, their grinning faces in black and white corpse paint all burnt to unrecognizable crisps on the floor amongst incinerated furniture, the faded blue faux-suede sofa where Cain gripped with tiny, groping fingers when he first learned to walk, where he'd lounged for hours on Saturday mornings in his Superman boxers watching cartoons with Gunner, where he'd cast off his virginity like a itchy sweater one quiet afternoon with a female classmate in freshman year, and where he'd been content to pass out drunk many an evening over the past couple of years, the living room no longer resembled anything etched into his twenty-five years of memory, and Cain came to the uneasy realization that things were going to be pretty different from then on. All sense of comfort and familiarity associated with the idea of home blew away like ash as a cool breeze swept quietly in through the front door, and swept out again through the newly installed sunroof.
Hot afternoon light filtered through the calmly drifting dust, straight down onto the sooty tile floor, shining on the scuffed black leather of Cain's boots and on the charred skeletal remains of a human lying sprawled across the white tile. The harsh sun highlighted bits of fleshy residue still clinging to the black skull in highly grotesque detail, and glinted off a cluster of silver earrings glued to the floor in a puddle of ooze and blood, at which Cain stared in awe for a long moment before he felt a crunch beneath his boot and realized he was standing on his mother's corpse.
"Oh jesus." the man said, stepping quickly off the skeleton's hand. He backed up into the shady kitchen, where he spent the next few minutes leaning against the counter with his arms crossed and his mouth slightly agape, staring at the lone skeleton spotlighted in sun on the warm tile floor. Her reading glasses, which she hardly ever wore, were a hardened puddle of blood and plastic next to her face. What should have been her face. The house smelled like a campfire gone wrong. There was a hole in the ceiling. A giant fucking hole in the goddamned ceiling. Irony would have it that the missile had obliterated Cain's room upstairs on its tipsy descent into the living room to murder his mom, like a drunk driver spinning out of control, crashing head-on into an innocent family caravan because fickle fate wouldn't take a second from its busy schedule to steer the idiot's truck into somebody who actually deserved it. Cain still wondered why the missiles had fallen in the first place--goddamned terrorists or summat--but this had to have been an accident, and that only made it so much more difficult to handle. It just wasn't right.
Finally, Cain uncrossed his arms and turned to face the sink, gripping the edge of the counter precariously. He had the vague feeling that he was going to be sick but then noticed that someone had beat him to it. Staring into the sink he could still make out what was left undigested of the burnt pancake breakfast that Lillian had attempted yesterday morning. She never was a very good cook, and Cain preferred the microwave dinners to her scroungy homemade meals, but he knew better than to pass up on the good-humored motherly gesture when it was made. Gunner, however, who wouldn't know the difference between fresh and spoiled milk, had been more than happy to scarf down every last one of the blackened batter-blobs yesterday morning before leaving the house.
Cain pushed back from the counter, cursing under his breath, and tread carefully toward the stairs. As he ascended the creaking carpet steps and passed what used to be his bedroom, he heard someone whimpering faintly down the hall. He gritted his teeth and pushed open the door to Gunner's room. When he found his brother sitting in the closet with his big hands pressed to his face and broad shoulders trembling, Cain sat and leaned against the wall in awkward silence. He didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything, but minute by minute uncomfortable emotions constricted pitilessly in his chest until he could no longer feel anything at all.. . .
Cain started drinking around the same time he started digging in the backyard, which was sometime in the late afternoon the next day. By the time the moon had risen, it had begun to rain, he was terribly drunk, and the muddy pit he sat in was deep enough to keep him from getting out again. Eventually he gave up tripping over himself and stabbed the shovel upright into the dirt. Cain teetered toward the ground as if he'd been shoved, and then scrambled over to the side of the pit, where he slumped forward, sweating, shirtless, his blue jeans ripped and stained with mud. Emotionless exhaustion hung on the man's gaunt, dirty face. His red eyes seemed cold and glazed in the silvery darkness, gazing spiritlessly at shadows until his heavy eyelids closed and he fell asleep.
There was no hangover. Rather, there was no feeling at all the next morning when Cain climbed out of the hole in the ground. He made a futile attempt at dusting himself off and then tromped back into the house, leaving muddy footprints in his wake. But nobody was there to give a shit about the mess anymore. It was liberating, albeit in the most unsettling way, and to Cain it was still a pretty shitty deal. They didn't keep caskets around the house so Lillian's corpse was wrapped in her cleanest sheets and had to be unceremoniously dropped into her new bed in the backyard. Then Gunner set to work with the shovel, and with his brawny arms, re-filled the hole with dirt in record time while Cain took a shower and threw spare jeans, some food, and all the remaining alcohol in the house into a backpack.
"Wher're we headed?" asked Gunner, completely monotone, returning from the backyard.
"I dunno. Don't matter I guess. Where d'ya wanna go?"
"Don't care. Could go to Canada."
"Sure then. Beer?"
"Yeah, crack me one."
On that note, Cain and Gunner Perrish stepped out of the house and trotted tentatively down the porch steps to the cracked sidewalk leading out to the silent street.
"D'ya think it'll be like this up there?" Gunner asked, observing the still-smoking remains of their neighborhood.
"I dunno. Guess we'll see."
"Fuckin' terrorists."
"Yeah."
By noon, the summer sun had already asserted its dominance, resulting in an agreement by the Perrish brothers that they were definitely going to have to hijack a car. Fortunately, either the pitiless heat or the widespread sense of alarm in the wake of the bombings had encouraged nearly everyone who wasn't already blown to bits to stay inside their homes, or what was left of them. Cain and Gunner were mostly alone, walking through the empty shell of Huntington Beach three days after the attack, still clueless as to what had really happened. They didn't bother asking anyone whom they did happen to cross paths with. The only person they wanted anything to do with was the driver of whatever was making… that noise.
"Y'hear that?" Cain stopped and lifted a hand over his brow, squinting his red eyes at the heat-distorted horizon. At first there was only a smear of white caught between the ripples of heat, that quickly materialized into a white minivan speeding recklessly in the brothers' direction.
"We got a car," Cain announced. "Comin' fast."
"Block the road?"
"Yeah, uh… let's pull those bodies outta that wreck and lay 'em out here."
"Gross."
"Yeah, whatever."
While Gunner pried open the door of the nearest wrecked vehicle, Cain kept a keen eye on the van as it swerved between all the wrecks and debris littering the road several blocks down the road. The fingers of his crafty hands twitched as they hung at his sides, waiting. A terrible smell brought his attention back to the task at hand. Gunner had shoved open the crumpled car door and grabbed the corpse of the driver by his dried blood-soaked shirt, and hauled him out of his seat. Cain dragged the body by its ankles into the street, lying it length-ways, and then darted back for the next unloaded corpse. In about thirty seconds, four of the rancid roadblocks were strewn across the width of the street such that the driver of the van would likely have to stop and move one or two to pass.
"Think he'll stop?" Gunner asked, as they crouched in the lee of the wrecked car.
"Sure he will."
Three blocks away, the van slowed to pass between two abandoned cars, then sped up desperately. Cain glared at the approaching vehicle, the tips of his fingers aflutter in their own intense little dance of devilry upon his knee.
"You wouldn't stop."
"Yer'damn right I wouldn't stop." There was no laugh, no sign of amusement from either of the boys. An uncharacteristic grimness weighed on their identical faces.The white van cleared the intersection just a couple hundred feet away.
"When he stops, you get in the front. I'll take care'a the fella." Cain ordered in a low, gravelly voice. Four seconds later the rapidly advancing engine roar was drowned out in a calamitous screech of tires. A car door opened, and slammed. Gunner and Cain jumped up from the shaded side of the wrecked vehicle and ran into the street like jackals to wounded prey. The van's driver turned with a start and darted back the door an instant too late. As he yanked it open, Cain sheered around the side of the car and caught him in a swift headlock with the crook of his elbow.
"Hey, man! What's the rush?" Cain grunted as he backpedalled a few steps, dragging the struggling man away from the door. A sudden malicious giggle erupted from his throat as the man gaped for the breath to shout, his fingernails clawing over Cain's flexed arm, his legs violently thrashing against the pavement. "Pipe down about it," Cain grunted, "there ain't nothin' you can do."
A hoarse cough broke from the man's throttled throat, his face growing red. His frightened, furious eyes glared at Gunner, as he was unable to see the man behind him. Then, suddenly, his body careened toward the pavement and the tightness around his neck slipped away, only to be replaced by the weight of someone roughly pinning him to the asphalt.
"M-motherFUCKER, GET OFF ME!" he shrieked.
"Calm the fuck down or i'll fuckin' slay ya." Cain hissed, but the man was reasonably inconsolable, struggling beneath him like a slippery fish and yelling. Either one of his arms kept breaking free from Cain's grasp, thrusting toward his pants pocket at any chance.
"What's in yer pocket, huh?" Cain growled. He swiftly shifted his crouch to stomp on the man's wrist with his boot, freeing one of his hands to dig into the pocket his victim was so desperate to reach. His fingertips grazed over cold metal, and for just a moment, he paused to let an enraptured chill run its course through his adrenalized veins. One moment too long. The man beneath him freed his arm from beneath Cain's boot and shoved off the ground. Cain's hand closed around the metal object as his hand was wrenched from the man's jeans pocket. He toppled back onto the asphalt and rolled to his feet, tackled the man again, and felt the blade dig in with hardly any resistance at all. Before he even realized that he'd stabbed the man, his hand was covered in blood and the panicked yelling came to an abrupt stop. Cain yanked his hand back and pushed the man away. He stared blankly as the body slumped to the ground, just quivering, whimpering, then finally growing still. For several seconds Cain felt his mind go empty and then fill itself again with his thoughts of the present; at first he was alarmed, at the sheer quickness of everything, but that, like all feelings, seemed to pass within fleeting moments. He held on to the knife and gave it a mere careless glance.
"Is he dead?" asked Gunner, his brow ever-so-slightly raised. Cain wiped the bloody knife on his jeans and turned to walk back toward the car.
"Move over, I'm driven'," Cain growled.
"He's dead, huh."
"What, like you never killed a man before?" he scoffed in a heartless tone, though his brow was furrowed.
"Nah. But whatever," was the indifferent response. Silence settled between them for a moment before the roar of the engine blew it away. The white van U-turned around its slain owner and sped back the way it had come, headed North.
The scars of Southern California's annihilation only got worse as the white minivan sped up the 405, mile by mile, the freeway becoming more difficult to navigate, entire chunks of road reduced to blast-size potholes, wrecked and stalled cars blocking the lanes until the road was deemed impassible.
"Gonna get off here, an' we'll see if we can get back on somewhere else." Cain sighed. Gunner just stared out the window, or perhaps he was asleep. The van ambled down the exit ramp and onto Willow street. Cain had been to Long Beach a few times before, and knew his way around vaguely. Navigating the city streets was just as slow-going and by the time they had reached the intersection at Junipero, the sheer devastation was impossible to circumnavigate. The sun dropped through the smoggy red sky and left the two men walking through the twilit remains of the city in uncomfortable silence.
"Gonna keep walking or should we find some place to stay the night?" Gunner asked, or suggested, even he couldn't tell which he would rather have done. Cain uncrossed his arms and jammed his hands in his pockets.
"Guess it would be a good idea to stake out a place, jus' for now. Things don't look good 'round here but there's no tellin' if it gets worse or not." he sighed, stopping to glance around. "Aight. Looks like a parking structure or somethin' up there, we can find a car to sleep in and it'll be outta the way 'n kinda hidden."
Gunner nodded and followed Cain across the street. His pensive russet gaze drifted along the line of the hedge and meandered down the seemingly empty street, silently cautious.
"This place has gone to hell." he noted, his deep voice devoid of emotion.. . .
"Well."
Cain's eyes blinked open as a shadow passed over them, and he stared up at the interior of the car for a moment. He thought he heard someone speak.
"Gunner?" he yawned.
"No. Gilbert. Gilbert Pike." came the prompt response, causing Cain to stiffen and flick his fiery stare toward the window. The lean figure of a man stood just outside the window, cast in dark contrast by the yellow light behind him. Cain sat up and glanced into the backseat, where Gunner was still fast asleep. He flicked his red glare back to the stranger in the window, making out a somewhat scrawny appearance.
"What the fuck d'you want?" Cain growled. The man outside frowned, a very ugly frown on his thin lips, a very ugly frown on his rather narrow, displeased-looking face. As he frowned, he parted his lips and bared his teeth in a snide grimace.
"I wanted to inform you that you are trespassing." Gilbert enunciated grimly.
"That so?" replied Cain, reaching nonchalantly toward his newly acquired knife.
"Yes." Gilbert nearly hissed, glaring the man down from the other side of the glass pane. He raised a gloved hand and flicked his wrist toward the vehicle, as if gesturing to someone behind him. Cain turned to look out the rear windshield, and noticed that there were at least two others who had been standing outside the car. His hackles raised as the thin blonde man moved away from the door, two redhead boys stepped up, and pulled on the door handle. Cain violently kicked the door as it was being opened, slamming into one of the two boys and startling the other into a moment of silent hesitation. The red-eyed man growled and sprang toward the car door upon glimpsing that the two males were not only shorter and slighter than him, but were unarmed, easy prey. He grabbed the closer boy by the collar of his black shirt and pressed the blade against his throat.
"What the fuck're you gonna do, huh?" he growled, a grin spreading across his lips. Standing a few feet away with his hands clasped behind his back, the thin man named Gilbert scowled and rolled his eyes.
"Nobody is going to do anything." declared a strangely authoritative female voice. Cain glanced beyond the thin man, at a white-haired woman he hadn't seen standing there until that moment. The first glance at her pale face and dark violet eyes gave Cain an eerie pang of familiarity although he had never seen her before. He gave her a suspicious once-over and looked her in the eye, assertively.
"Who the fuck're you?" he demanded, letting the nefarious grin play across his face as he stared at her. The woman's deathly visage remained expressionless, but the essence of something evil seemed to smile in her violet eyes.
"Let him go." she ordered.
"Or what?"
"Or nothing. Just do it."
The silence between them was like a stand-off. But finally, Cain let go of the boy's shirt and held his hands up, smiling coyly. The violet-eyed woman gave a slow nod. The corners of her black cherry lips twitched into a smirk.
"I think you're just what I'm looking for."Morning of August 27th, 2012
Cain rummaged through the kitchen drawer for a good minute but he still couldn't find the key to the apartment next door, where he kept most of the looted food and alcohol stashed in a spare refrigerator. It was only when he finally stopped looking and glanced up with a sternly furrowed brow that he noticed the faint sound of music. It was coming from down the hall.
He approached the open door of the adjacent apartment with suspiciously narrowed eyes and loomed in the doorway, peering in with a slight frown. Ari was sitting on the living room floor with a boom-box. CD cases lay half-stacked and scattered on the floor.
"Hey. You're not supposed to be in here."
"go away, Cain." Ari answered immediately. His small voice was muffled beneath the black veil of hair hanging in front of his face. The boy leaned further forward, wrapping his arms around himself, withdrawing. Cain indignantly narrowed his blood-red eyes and glared at the top of the boy's head.
"D'ya want me to drag you out?" the man growled, taking an assertive step through the door.
"Go away, Cain." the boy insisted. The urgency in Ari's voice struck Cain as unusual, and for a dumbstruck moment he forgot to be angry and he just stared. He saw how the boy's shoulders trembled ever-so-slightly and realized that Asthma was crying. Cain's frustration wilted into a cumbersome feeling of unease. He found it extremely aggravating when people cried about things unrelated to him, and he ought to have just walked out of the room without a word. But the silence had persisted just a few seconds too long.
"What's eatin' you?" he demanded, feigning a callous tone to mask his discomfort. Ari sighed, suppressing an involuntary shudder. He couldn't tell whether the man was being obliviously or intentionally intrusive, but he could tell that Cain wasn't going to give him any space regardless, and avoiding the question would only lead to more unwanted questions.
"i went home."
"What for?"
"my music."
"Yeah, so?" Cain prompted, his brow furrowed, genuinely clueless. His hands hung awkwardly idle at his sides and his fingers tapped at the air in agitation. He pocketed his hands but continued to stare down at the boy, too stubborn to back down from his distressing interrogation.
"everyone was still there."
Oh. The man tilted his head back a little, letting his deep red gaze pan up to the ceiling for a few seconds. His perplexed visage softened to a complete absence of emotion, not even a frown left on his lips. Just nothing. It hadn't occurred to him before, that when Asthma said 'home', he didn't mean here. Then, the word 'home' seemed to have a new meaning... or rather, it regained an old one.
"My mom died in the bombing," the man finally commented. The confused expression returned to his face for a moment as he wondered why he felt compelled to say that. Ari lifted his head, seemingly taken aback as well, either at the man's unprecedented sincerity or the thought of somebody like Cain even having a mother. No one had the chance to dwell on that a moment longer, though, as Cain returned his attention to the boy and then flicked his red eyes over to the stereo.
"Sounds like a less whiny version of you," he commented, gracelessly changing the subject. Ari laughed once and then wiped the back of his delicate hand across his face. Cain's bemused, devil-arched eyebrows leapt up briefly at that. It wasn't intended as a joke, but the comment seemed to have served its purpose, at least.
"I'm not that whiny. He's the whiny one. Besides, i don't even sing."
"Fair 'nough," Cain conceded, taking a casual step toward the boy and his boom box. He invited himself to sit down on the carpet and extended a curious paw toward the haphazardly arranged pile of CD cases next to the stereo. His ruby gaze skimmed over the first few albums with a vague sense of mingling disdain and amusement. Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory stuck out like a sore thumb; Cain remembered getting it for his fourteenth birthday, idolizing it for about a year, and then growing out of it all at once like a piece of clothing that was obnoxious all along, but its juvenile ridiculousness was only apparent after it didn't fit anymore.
"What is this shit, anyways?" he asked, regarding the current selection of music, which kind of sounded just as angsty, but in a different way, a way that was somehow worse.
"My Chemical Romance."
"Sounds wimpy. Tell me this ain't all you listen to," the man scoffed, sneering at the CDs in his large hand as he rummaged through them.
"It's not."
"You listen to metal?" Cain laughed, genuinely surprised at some of the albums he recognized from his more distant youth.
"Sometimes."
"You don't strike me as much of a metal kinda guy, honest."
"What do i seem like."
"I dunno, I never gave it any thought."
"Do you like metal?"
"I guess,"
"I grew up listening to black metal. My mom liked it a lot."
"Your mom liked metal?" Ari laughed.
"Yeah. She an' her sister were all about being kvlt as fuck."
"Your mom sounds awesome."
"Yeah, she was fuckin' awesome. Nobody had a cooler mom than Gunner an' me."
Ari smiled wanly but kept his listless stare fixed to the carpet. When it came to the subject of family, he had nothing to brag about. It was difficult for Ari to discern what he was really upset about; was it seeing his family dead again, or remembering the time when they weren't, and reflecting on how changed--but not necessarily for the better--things were now, than then?
He imagined the grotesque dismay on their faces if they were to know about all of the things he'd done between then and now. He imagined the feeling of injustice, the dread and frustration he would feel under their judgement, after so long spent listening to the kindly chastising remarks that were meant to be encouraging, criticizing his weaknesses by praising the strengths he he didn't have, to be told that what he'd done was disgusting, perverse, evil, despite the hypocrisy of the fact that he had survived and they had not. He was supposed to be tough, tenacious, a real go-getter, like his sister, Shelby (who was also dead). He wasn't supposed to be a doormat all his life, but he wasn't supposed to be a thug, either; not a coward, but not too forward; not a prude, but not too proud; neither afraid, nor fearless, repressed, or reckless. Not alone. Not clinging. There was a fine line separating all of those things that he was meant to walk, a tightrope, a perfectly balanced character without flaws. It wasn't enough that he was just alive despite the current odds, and the past ones.
But fuck that, Ari thought, basking in the warmth of Cain's pride when he talked about his mother. He didn't have a family to be proud of, but there was still himself, born at only 25 weeks old, and still kicking. That was enough.
"This is good." Cain remarked, his gravelly deep voice cutting through the boy's thoughts. Ari glanced up from the floor and stared at the Boys Don't Cry album in Cain's hand. He sniffed, and grinned. He liked that album a lot.
"What kind of music are you into?" he asked, staring at Cain with his brow raised. Ari half-expected the man to give him a bullshit answer or to completely evade his question in lieu of a snide remark or really just anything but something a normal person would say in a normal conversation under normal circumstances. That was just the way of things.
"Eh, I'm not too picky about music as long as it ain't shit," Cain shrugged, his burning stare still distracted by the diverse array of albums he rummaged through.
"Grew up listenin' to punk an' metal, but I like lotsa other stuff that came before my time. The eighties were good. Oingo Boingo's the shit."
"Never heard of them."
"Don't think you would've, but ya should."
"Do you have any?"
"Eh?"
"Do you have any albums?"
"Nah, left all that at home. Wasn't priority, I guess," the man sighed, on the verge of indifference. He came across a Blink-182 album and tauntingly narrowed his eyes, snickering at the boy's expense. Ari's blue-grey eyes vigilantly watched the man's hands as they ferreted through his collection, and he frequently glanced up to check Cain's distracted gaze. He felt he was being judged, but only on a shallow level, as if it were a joke that both of them would forget as soon as the subject was changed; knowing Cain, the man didn't care enough to form any real opinions of him, let alone based on something like musical taste. Ari didn't mind. It was they were having a conversation like normal adults, or something.
"Where did you live?" he continued in a sneaky, casual tone. He couldn't let the man catch on to this newfound motive or it would all be over, for sure. Cain flicked his ruby stare up to the boy's face, but Ari had strategically picked up one of the CD cases off the floor and kept his attention rooted to it, appearing vaguely preoccupied.
"Huntington."
"Surf City, hmm."
"Skinhead City, more like," Cain corrected him, with a wily grin.
"Are you a…" the boy began, letting his gaze drift upward, almost cautiously. He was greeted with a very amused look from Cain, which puzzled him for a moment because it neither confirmed nor denied.
"Tried it when I was a kid. Mom smacked the shit outta me, though, when I was like thirteen. Butthurt 'cause her sister was all pumped about White power an' it only ever got her into really deep shit. Married a bonehead and ran off, killed herself later on, buncha really unsavory stuff down that road, the man admitted, though his attention seemed devout to scrutinizing the front of a Crystal Castles album.
"Besides, Nazis discriminate. I don't. You gotta be a real degree of stupid to think people are different at all. The only people who're better are the ones who don't make bullshit excuses for takin' whatever the hell they want."
By the last few words, Cain was leering at the boy in a way that might have been slightly uncomfortable a few months ago, but was simply conventional to the boy now, as it was a well-established fact that Cain thought he was better than else. Ari stared right back and gave him an assenting look, and a light shrug.
"You wear red laces in your boots though. Isn't that like a neo-Nazi thing?" he challenged. Cain chuckled.
"I started doing that just to fuck with 'em. They're real uptight about posers, y'know? Gave me an excuse to bash some heads whenever they got cheeky. But I suppose it means the same thing to me now, bloodshed for the movement an' all."
Ari gave a casually understanding nod. He let his gaze slip away for a long moment of comfortable silence. It was nice while it lasted.
"Anyway," Cain cut in, pushing up off the floor, "lock the door when you're done."
The man pocketed his hands and sauntered into the kitchen to grab a few beers and then left without another look or word. Ari watched him go with an ebbing feeling of disappointment; the hopeful, almost pleasant kind.
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