aconite

ii. aconite

When Albe was nine, his father overdosed.

It was a dull Tuesday evening glowering with mist thick enough to make him believe he was legally blind for a second. The moist air made his eyes drool. A light downpour that morning made his school blazer stink of mildew and plywood from his closet, leaving his skin cold and clammy throughout the school day. He also had to ride the train alone for the first time—his father had forgotten to come pick him up after school for the first time in their new home. It had made his already bitter day sour. The sweet part of the day was that he had gotten his first A in mathematics, a subject he started understanding regardless of his environment.

He stepped on the other side of the rotten picket fence, flaking white bits of paint like dry bits of skin after a gnarly sunburn, where the yard lacked both good irrigation and grass. The windows were all wide open, the curtains were tugged outside of the windows by the barking wind. Mist clung to his skin like ants around a piece of candy sticking to the sidewalk. His nose was beaten pink by the cool air, rapidly dropping in temperature.

There were extra keys beneath the yellow welcome mat, missing patches of yellow hair in the corners. The door was rickety and crooked in its frame, hanging by a single hinge on the bottom. The hinge itself clung to life, completely rusted over like a mountain peak covered in snow. To open the door, someone had to lift and hold it in its frame, but Albe was too short to do it comfortably. He had to prop his shoulder beneath the door handle to unjam the lock, then with his free hand, he had to unlock the door with the sticky, mouldy key. 

When he wolfed down a bowl of cornflakes that morning, he did not expect it to be the last bowl of cornflakes his father would ever pour him.

He cannot remember what exactly happened between the time he entered his mouldy house and finding his father in a pool of his own vomit behind the crevice of his bedroom door. What he can remember, is how his father's golden eyes stared out in front him, euphoric and rich with happiness. He knew he was not happy for overdosing, but rather happy for being dead.

Albe knocked on his nan's door first—she lived a few houses down the street in a shabby little cottage no bigger than a flat for two. She was not even his nan—he just liked to call her nan because he did not know who the rest of his family were and she was not shy to invite him over for dinner-and-tea every Sunday. He did not have a nan. She sat Albe down with a plate of freshly made ox-stew and bread before she dialled the police. The case was immediately overruled as unimportant the second the test results returned, sheerly since the number of opioids in his father's system alone could not have been forced. Albe could have told the police exactly the same thing—that he overdosed, because there was a needle few centimetres away from the puddle of vomit.

Albe went on to live with his biological grandmother, whom resided in a palace just outside London—Albe had never seen a house that big before. She prepared a warm bedroom and a playroom for the boy, warmly accepting him into her life. On the first evening, she sat him down at a big oak table with a feast and told him the tale of his family. That his father kept his family a secret, because they were considered royalty. They were direct blood of a nobleman—a name that spawned warriors and earls...and then his father. She only told Albe the entire truth when he was an adult—that his father was just like them, but the money got to his head. He dropped out of university when he got a girl pregnant and accepted a job as a bartender. That's where his lifeline knotted with the edge of a needle.