Page 8 of Genesis (Alter Arlo #2)

BURN IT ALIVE

ZADE

He looked at me like he used to look at Zan. Eyes full of want and a hunger to the heaviness of his gaze that had me guilty and uneasy.

How long had I wanted to be looked at like that?

Like I was the light of someone’s life, the most desirable thing in the world, and the object of someone’s affection.

How often had I witnessed this look aimed at my brother, coming from those blue eyes all hours of the day?

In the back of my drug-riddled mind, I knew Cadoc was still looking at Zan like that.

Because right then, I was Zan, and the drugs convinced him of that every time he blinked.

Would it be so bad to enjoy it for a fraction of a second? To pretend the high of the drugs matched the high of that look? Could I be Zan for one night, finally experiencing what it felt like to be the love of Cadoc Dire’s life?

When he licked his lips, I flushed, looking away.

I wasn’t even gay. Sexualities had nothing to do with it. It was about affection and attention. I craved the concept of being chosen, picked, and desired so strongly that the rest of the war- torn world vanished into the abyss and left open the path to cataclysmic passion.

If he touched me, he’d be touching Zan. Could I pretend?

If he kissed me, he’d be kissing Zan. Did I have the right to want it?

The only person who had ever touched me, skin to skin, without the gloves on, was my father, and his touch provoked nothing but pain and disgust. Would anyone ever strip their gloves off, reach for me, and press their skin to mine, showing me what it felt like to be touched, picked, desired?

As myself. As Zaden Enge. Had anyone ever wanted me?

I took the glasses off, hoping they’d remind Cadoc I wasn’t Zan.

As soon as I set them on the coffee table, I regretted taking them off.

As pathetic as it was, I wanted him to continue looking at me like that.

The weight of it was liberating, even if I knew it was a lie.

Lies were pretty, meant to appease, and my lack of self-respect didn’t mind being lied to.

I avoided his face, not wanting to know if the removal of the glasses changed the way he looked at me, and pinched a yellow-ish pill between my fingers.

I didn’t know what it was, but I’d taken one earlier and felt great.

I pressed it to my tongue and swallowed it down with a gulp of fruit punch from a tetra-pack hiding in the pantry.

“Careful, Enge,” Cadoc’s roguish voice husked at me from across the living room, hating himself for calling me that name. Enge. My last name, but only Zan had been worthy of it. I was just Zade. Mostly, I was just forgotten. “Those are addictive as fuck.”

I’d take a drug addiction over the pain, so bring it on. “What are they?”

“Hydromorphone. Dilaudids.”

I looked at the baggie, seeing hundreds more of them. “How do you know? Zan said you never did drugs.”

“Didn’t. Don’t. Not a fan of being… out of control.” He muttered something about being numb instead, swallowed a Dilaudid, and then he cleared his throat. “My parents sold them. They were always in high demand.”

Right. I guessed gangsters didn’t just deal in weapons. I chanced a look at him, peeking up through my lashes instead of tilting my head. Cowardly, but I’d come to terms with being a coward by this point. Cadoc was still watching me, but the look in his eyes had glazed over a bit.

We’d been here doing drugs for three days, and I didn’t know if we were waiting for them to run out, or if we were just building up the courage to move on.

We barely ate, but we kept enough in our stomachs to keep us alive, and showering became a thing of the past. What was the fucking point?

We’d both rather be dead, so maybe if we let our bodies rot for long enough, death would be called to us by our filth and decay, and we’d walk into his embrace with open arms. Maybe the promise wouldn’t be broken if we died together; we could still protect each other in the afterlife.

My body dipped into a level of relaxation I had no right to feel, the Dilaudids blanketing me in comfort I didn’t deserve.

While the drugs worked their wonders, I tried to think rationally about a future I didn’t want.

If death was the true goal, staying here would accomplish that, but if we were going to fight through our grief and attempt some form of life that kept us living, we’d need to leave this cottage in the past. It held nothing but old memories and current failures. What would the future hold?

More pain? More loss? I hated Cadoc Dire with so much of my broken heart, but would I live through the loss of him now that he was the only one I had left?

A part of me knew that if he died, I’d die with him. The needle to my arm and my cheek on his dead shoulder were proof enough of that. But we’d both failed and now we had to reassess. A strung-out trip to death or a torturous battle for the future?

“Where would you go if we didn’t go to Genesis?” I slurred, sinking into the couch and inhaling the musty ripeness of it.

Cadoc lit a cigarette and stared at the filter as if it’d contain the answer. Maybe it said death, and that’s why he sucked them down so hard and fast. “I need to… decompress.”

Typical Cadoc thing to say. “How?”

“By killing useless fuckers because I can’t kill myself.

” His skin was ashen and disgusting, coated in a layer of grime I’d gotten used to looking at.

His dark blond stubble held remnants of drug powders and peanut butter, and his lips were cracked and bleeding.

Even his nose had a dried ring of blood around his right nostril, and I knew I’d see the same darkened blood between the cracks of his teeth if he could muster a smile to show them to me.

“I need to kill my crazy out or I’ll blow up that fucking city. ”

The couch swallowed me, and I let it, hoping it’d suffocate me.

Blowing up a city enticed me, but I didn’t know why.

I wasn’t the type to harm others because of my own pain.

I’d lifted Zan into happiness to take the brunt of his suffering, but the drugs encouraged my mind to dip into Cadoc’s depravity and I didn’t hate the feel of it.

“So let’s do it,” I said. Slurred. Blurted.

Maybe just… breathed the words out. I didn’t feel them pass my lips because my whole fucking face was numb.

“We’ll hit up your parents' storehouse, get as many weapons as we can, and just start fucking killing anyone who gets in our way. Dog eat dog world now, isn’t it? ”

Sober me would hate that statement.

Cadoc used the butt of a gun to crush one of the pills I’d just taken, and then he snorted the yellow power through his bloody nostril. “When’d you turn bloodthirsty?”

This very second. Nothing appealed more to me than death, but if I couldn’t have my own, I wanted to inflict it upon others. “Maybe I need to kill away my crazy, too.”

“Kill me. I’m the cause of your crazy.”

He was. Partially. My whole fucked up life caused my crazy. Maybe Cadoc just made me comfortable enough to snap. I looked around the cottage through tear-blurred eyes and drug-hazed vision, trying to feel an attachment to the place I spent so much time at.

Amelia had been happy here. Zan met Cadoc in the lake right out the back door.

I watched them fall in love here, but I also spiralled into my own darkness at the sight of it.

My dad had taken it easy on me here, only fucking with me half as often as he would at home.

But the punishments here had been… my eyes drifted to the basement door at the end of the hall.

Cadoc noticed. He knew what went on down there. He’d always known, but he’d never done anything about it. No one had. “Want to burn this place to the fucking ground?” he asked. “Maybe it’d kill all your demons.” He shrugged like he didn’t give a shit what my decision was.

I pushed off the couch, falling to my knees on the rug of the living room. My legs didn’t want to obey, so I crawled my ass down the hall, my eyes on that fucking door. Cadoc’s hand latched under my armpit, and he pulled me to my feet.

“Don’t submit to them, idiot. Face them standing tall.” He put my hand on the knob, but he didn’t turn it for me.

Why did he care?

The knob rattled in my grip, betraying my fear.

Yes, I was terrified of a basement. I never knew what world I lived in down there, and it all depended on the mood of my dad.

Or the mood of Zan. If my twin was particularly happy, my dad liked to make me particularly unhappy, and he did it through physical pain and mental torture until I was delusional and internally screaming through my agony.

I never gave him my external screams. Never. Those only came when he left.

I opened the door, much the same way I’d opened the bedroom, unsure if I’d find Cadoc dead or alive.

It swung towards us, hitting me in the shoulder hard enough to have me stumbling.

My shoulder bumped into Cadoc’s chest, and he oomph’d as he hit the wall of the hall, staring down the dark stairs with me.

Darkness, dust, and mustiness came at me. Nothing else. No agonized screams. No repressed memories. No panic attacks. Just a basement.

“Smells familiar,” Cadoc said to himself.

It was my past. Nothing more. Nothing less. Over. Nothing left for me down there anyway, demons be damned. I snatched the cigarette from Cadoc’s lips and tossed it through the door. It sparked, tripping down the steps to glow at the bottom.

“What’re you doing?”

“Burning it.”

“One tossed cig isn’t gonna burn a whole place down.”

I wished it would. I just wanted to toss one cigarette like a badass and watch chaos ensue.

“The floor is cement.” Cadoc spun me, my unstable legs wobbling. “You really wanna burn it? This whole place?”

I wanted to burn the basement, the memories, the reminder of a past I could no longer live with my brother. “Yes.”

The grin on Cadoc’s face really did reveal cracked blood between his teeth. “Get your shit, Enge. Let’s torch this bitch.”

Flames were pretty. They licked and lapped at the air—tongues searching for taste.

I almost craved the glide of their caress over my skin.

They ate everything in their path, reducing something so physical into nothing but wisps of grey ash and thick smoke.

My memories evaporated in that smoke, and the pain from the life I’d lived dimmed each time a beam crumbled to nothing.

Cadoc became unhinged. We saved our packs, the guns, Zan’s glasses, and some food, and Cadoc saved the drugs, and now he was laughing like his tether to sanity had snapped.

The cottage burned up, and Cadoc unravelled.

He tossed his smoke butts at the fire as if they were single-handedly keeping the place burning.

If he needed to feel wholly responsible for the destruction of our childhood, he could have at it.

He got too close a few times, his skin sizzling like the raindrops were.

It was just sprinkling, but it was a nice cool balm as we burned on the inside.

I ran my thumb over the family photo in my pocket, wishing I could burn my parents’ faces off the image but too afraid to ruin the photo.

“You weren’t in there, Zan. You’re out here.” I turned my back on the fire to face the lake. “And here.” I pressed my hand to the general vicinity my heart used to sit in.

Cadoc laughed like an asshole behind me.

I left him to it, needing to feel close to my brother.

My other half. I stripped down to nothing, while Cadoc’s cackles set the ambiance, and waded into Synner’s Lake.

I had no grave to visit when it came to my sister, but at least I could drown myself in Zan’s depthless grave.

The water was cool, but I needed it to ground me.

Cadoc’s laughter muted when I dipped under the surface, eyes open to see if Zan’s body wanted to float by me.

I’d never see him again. Never get to protect him and sacrifice for him, and that, more than anything, confused me.

Did my life have a purpose anymore? If I wasn’t giving something up for Zan, what was I doing with myself?

I merged through the surface of the water but waited another few moments to inhale.

Cadoc was still laughing, and the crackle and snap of the fire fit in nicely with his insanity.

Looking up, I tried to find the moon through the thick clouds, but it hid from me just like Zan’s body did.

I peered through the darkness, trying to track my fingers skimming the surface of the lake, wondering if I could feel Zan in the water’s caress.

I wasn’t spiritual or in tune with anything energetic. I felt nothing. Just relieved that the cottage was gone and Cadoc was losing his mind. Served him right. Served both of us right. Maybe sanity was no longer in the cards for either of us.

A naked body soared over my head, and a split-second later, a cannonball splashed me in the face. I didn’t blink, letting Zan fill my eyes to drip down my cheeks with the tears. Maybe it was rain. I didn’t know how to tell the difference anymore.

“Now what?” Cadoc asked, shaking his blond hair out.

“Wanna burn your parents’ place down?” I asked, staring at his teeth. They were cleaner now, glowing orange from the reflection of our burning memories.

“Fuck yeah,” he said. “I wanna burn the whole fucking world down and die in the fire.”

He could use my body as fodder.

I sank to the bottom, pressing my ass to the slimy sand.

Water weeds floated all around me, and I let myself believe they were Zan’s fingers, encouraging me to keep going.

My brain signals were all fucked up from drugs, so Cadoc clasped my hair in his hand and yanked me to the surface.

I coughed right in his face. He wasn’t laughing anymore.

“You die, I’ll fucking fuck your corpse.”

Great threat. I almost wanted it.

“This our decision to live, Dire?” I peered at him through the darkness.

“We can try it.”

Guess that was good enough for me.