Wired Bone: Chapter Eight (Patreon)

Chapter Eight

Consciousness arrived with no merciful transition. One moment there was the darkness of peaceful, dreamless slumber, and the next moment Lucas was awake with the sticky feeling of dry blood on his face and a certainty that he was going to go to hell when he died.

He was Catholic, so that last part was nothing unusual.

“Ugh.”

“Shuddup,” John muttered from beside him, still half-asleep.

They were both lying side-by-side on John’s mattress, his only pillow between them out of some bizarre fascination of John’s with not being perceived as gay, even when alone or accompanied by Lucas who he should know didn’t care about that.

Ignoring his best friend, Lucas rolled off the mattress and stood up, a little dizzy and with his vision still blurry on the left eye. He had fallen asleep in his clothes, shoes included, and felt uncomfortably sticky and awful.

Looking down at himself, his white tank top stuck to his body, and had a bit of blood splattered to the front.

He looked over his shoulder at John and asked, “You guys still get water?”

John made a negative grumbling noise.

“Can I take some from your rain tap?”

John made an affirmative grumbling noise.

“Thanks.”

Lucas left the bedroom.

The apartment was as barren as it was when he’d picked up John the previous day, and when he’d gotten in. Though he could barely remember the latter event. He could barely remember most of yesterday now, in fact, and the parts he did recall were vividly replaying themselves in his mind over and over and over and over and over.

Lucas closed his eyes, took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, before opening them and walking to the kitchen.

The dishes were dirty, stacked and covered in dust. Opening cabinets revealed a scurrying colony of cockroaches and a small collection of pots and pans. He took a sauce pan that had never known the touch of sauce and inspected it, finding a small trace of white dust baked into the bottom.

With the help of a threadbare rag, he wiped it as best as he could, then took it to the bathroom. The rain tap was hanging near the sink, tough to open from rare usage since John used Luke’s and John’s parents rarely drank water.

Lucas put a bit of rainwater into the pan, then swirled it around and used the rag again to get it closer to clean. Then he dumped the water down the sink and filled the sauce pan.

Once it was halfway full, he closed the tap and put the pan in the sink.

He stared down at it for a moment.

His body felt unimaginably heavy. He’d slept more than eight hours, but he was still tired.

So tired.

…

He looked up at his reflection and inspected, with clinical detachment, how the splatter decorated his face in a diagonal line over the bridge of his nose, from his left eyebrow to the right corner of his mouth.

Unconsciously, his tongue darted out and lapped at the drop nearest his lips. The coppery taste lingered even as he shook his head.

He cupped his hand and splashed some water on his face, then scrubbed at it with the rag, making sure not to get anything in his mouth just in case there was still whatever the dust had been on it.

He scrubbed his own face until the skin was red and slightly irritated, but clean, then looked down at his chest again.

There was still blood there, and now that he was looking, on his pant cuffs as well. Must’ve been from executing the chimera.

He dabbed the rag in the water, then he sat down on the bathroom floor and started rubbing at his pants. After a while, the splatter was mostly dissimulated by the dark color of his jeans, and he moved on to his formerly white tank top.

He scrubbed at it.

Then he scrubbed again.

He only seemed to be moving the stains around, so he stood up, wetted the rag again and scrubbed harder. His breathing was getting harder. He had to scrub. He had to clean it. He slammed the rag back into the pot. He hurt his hand against the edge of it, but ignored it as he scrubbed again. The stains were fainter now, but still there. Still there. He scrubbed again. His breathing was getting harder. He couldn’t get the stain off. Had to wash it. He pulled the tank top off his sweaty body like it was burning him, pulling off his hoodie in the process. He tossed the later aside and dumped the top into the pot, squeezing it and rubbing it together. There was some dust that used to be a bar of soap on the sink, he grabbed it and tossed it in the pot then rubbed harder. He kept rubbing, he had to make sure. He had to make sure it was clean. Cleaner. They were dead. They were dead and now here he was, ridiculous, rubbing a tank top in a pot because the blood splattered. The soap wasn’t making a lot of bubbles, did it even work? They were dead. He must look like an idiot. He still felt sweaty. It was a hot day. His skin felt cool. Cold, actually. He kept rubbing the top. Was it even getting cleaner?

“Luke?”

Lucas drew a sharp breath and jumped back, pulling his wet and cold hands out of the pot.

The realization that he’d been crying came at the same time as he realized that, for a while now, John had been standing on the doorway of his own bathroom.

John hated showing weakness, and for boys, emotionality was weakness.

Even then, John had an unguarded expression of concern as he looked at Lucas.

“Luke, are you… what happened?”

Lucas hiccupped slightly, snorted snot through his nose, then rubbed at his eyes with his arm when he found his hand too wet, soapy and cold. He felt like an idiot. He snorted again, swallowed heavily, and confessed.

“I think I messed up, Johnny.”

0 * + * 0

There was a different pot, slightly filled with milk and what remained of John’s cereal stores. Two spoons were inside, one standing and resting against the edge and the other lying flat, dismissed in the cold sugary lactose soup.

Luke and John sat in the latter’s bedroom, each on opposite sides of the pot, staring down at it.

John was resting his chin on his fist, deep in thought. Lucas was trying not to focus on the feeling of his cold, wet, soapy top back over his body.

He hadn’t started crying again since he was in the bathroom, but his eyes were still red and puffy, and his sinuses were still clogged.

Macabrely, the feeling of embarrassment at his meltdown overpowered the guilt of having committed triple murder, at least for the moment. He just hated when this happened, when his emotions got out of control and he acted like a big, stupid baby. It’d been bad enough when it happened every day at school when he was six or seven, but he was twelve now.

He was supposed to be older, mature.

You’re a man now, Crane’s words echoed between his ears.

Some man, he wanted to scoff. A bad start for his adulthood, in his opinion.

Like a lot of the rules that everyone seemed to swear by, Luke was finding this one stupid and nonsensical. He already wasn’t looking forward to having to fit in the role so people wouldn’t get mad at him.

John was not as pulled into his own mind as Lucas. He was carefully considering the situation from every angle he could manage, eyes lost in cereal flakes that were rapidly becoming soggy, until he came to the only logical conclusion his brilliant young mind could manifest.

“This isn’t a problem,” he said.

On the other hand, he might be an idiot.

“What?” said Luke. It’s hard to give an incredulous look when you don’t make eye contact with people, but staring just over John’s head and raising an eyebrow had the appropriate effect. “What do you mean? This is a huge problem!”

“It’s not, though,” John said. “Okay, so the guy’s dead. But he was fuckin’ with the Blackfish. If you took him out… maybe you’ll get paid for it?”

“I still killed a person, money or no money!” objected Lucas. “Johnny, that’s… I can’t come back from that.”

John winced, then said, “Yeah, but… does he matter?”

Luke frowned, then rested his head in his hands. Everyone seemed so willing to focus the rules they made, but then something came along and they decided to let them go, and Lucas never seemed to catch on to which one to drop and which one to hold on to when the moment came.

It was like everyone was practicing when he wasn’t looking, the way people seemed to agree to do stuff without talking about it.

Will, John… Crane too, even if he didn’t do it anymore. They all seemed aware of some invisible factor that determined the worth of a life, and whether it was deserving of an early end or not.

He trusted Crane, he loved Johnny, and Will was his boss, so… maybe he should trust that this was a life that needed ending?

He struggled to wrap his head around it. A lot of the unspoken rules of society seemed nonsensical, but treating people the way you wish to be treated always seemed like one of the good ones. He really didn’t like the idea of letting it go.

Lucas emitted a long, miserable groan, making John frown in empathy.

To be honest, he was also feeling a bit iffy about the fact that his best friend had committed the cardinal sin.

But… well, it’s not like it could be undone. The best thing to do, in John’s mind, would be to take advantage and move forward, trying to use this as the first step in the process of climbing the ranks of the Blackfish.

That was the dream, as far as John was concerned. To be a member of the gang was to be as a god among men. Blackfish rode expensive cars, Blackfish had girlfriends[1], Blackfish had money. More money than they could spend, logistically and realistically.

John had lived in squalor all his life. By the time he’d been ten, more than one of his friends had died of malnutrition or sickness. Just by helping Luke he’d been able to afford stuff like cereal, comics and a blanket. If he managed to be a full member, if both of them did, they could have a life they hadn’t ever dreamed of.

… it was easy to dream.

Seeing Luke now, still sniffing and looking even more downcast than his typical dour expression… the reality seemed a lot more unforgiven.

It’s easy to think that you’ll weather pain for gain. It’s harder to realize that a friend will have to go through it as well.

He licked his lips, tried to imagine how someone older would speak, then spoke.

“Look… let’s not think about it for now, alright? You did it, it’s over,” John clapped his hands and waved them, acting like he was dispelling some foul spirit. “For now, how about we just do something else?”

Luke sniffed, then shrugged.

“We could hang out with Chris and Moss?” John suggested. “Maybe see if anyone wants to play some futbol?”

Lucas shrugged again.

“… I’ve got some money saved up, you wanna hit up the bookstore?”

Lucas looked up, then back down.

Aha!

“They’ve probably got new stuff in stock.”

“Mm.”

“New magazines.”

“I said ‘Mm’.”

“So, we’re going?”

“Mm.”

“Wanna check up on Moss and Chris first?”

“… Mm.”

“Alright. Let’s finish the cereal first, though.”

“Mrm.”

“Yeah, it’s all soggy, but now we can just slurp it.”

“You slurp it.”

More syllables. That was progress.

Even if the lack of eating was alarming

[1] A concept that had only just become appealing to John, but one that he was getting enthusiastic about.