Aliens on Aventine Hill

A Good Kid [Part 2]

"I'm so sorry, Remy."

It was so nice to be held, but Gray pulled himself out of the embrace, trying desperately to recompose himself as he braced himself on the counter, "Oh well."

"I should've believed you."

Gray glanced over his shoulder at his father as the man shook his head, "They used to take your mother too, you know."

"What?" Is that why they keep taking me? Are they looking for her in me? Gray turned away again, "Then why did you...?"

"I thought they were just one of your mother's fancies," Martin Blakesley confessed. "You know she got those ideas sometimes... though I'm thinking rather differently about them these days. She didn't have scars, not the way you do. Just a couple here and there...'

"She never did tell me though," he slowly shook his head, "what it was they did that left marks like those..."

Gray held the gaze warily.

"...though it isn't hard to figure out," his father stepped closer, head cocked off to one side, "Cut you open, rummage around, piece you back together, and dump you in the river."

Gray winced, a current of fear vibrating in his chest. He drew the afghan closer around himself, trying to hide the maze of sutures from his father's blazing eyes, but the man just scowled and gestured, "That scar, there on your abdomen, the one you've been favoring this whole time—"

Gray's hand rose involuntarily to the gash.

"—that's from last night, isn't it?"

"It's a little more complicated than that," the young man gritted his teeth. The stormy expression on his father's face only deepened:

"Why're you defending them?"

"I'm not d..."

"Your mother would do that too," he growled. "She would wake up some mornings unable to move, hardly able to speak, but she always insisted they weren't bad. They were just trying to understand, that was what she said, no matter what they put her through, they were never bad."

Gray stared at his father.

"Don't tell me you think the same," his father's nose wrinkled with disgust. "That you're willingly letting yourself be vivisected too."

"No!" he shook his head. "I just meant that the..." his hand drifted again to the ghost of the wound, "It's from two nights ago. They just botched it and had to come back to fix it."

Catching just a glimpse of the emotions in Gray's eyes, Martin balled his hands into fists, but Gray tried his best not to look at his father. That anger wasn't worth anything to him now; he was too far past the point of righteous indignation.

His father softened, leaning against the counter beside his son, "And you've been dealing with it all this time?"

"Ever since they first took me the night of Mom's funeral," Gray looked away, hating the pity in his father's eyes. I wasn't alone. I had people who could better understand me than you could ever pretend to. A shiver wracked his spine, and Gray pulled the knitted blanket closer around his shoulders, "and every couple of weeks they come back. Though it feels like it's every night now..."

His father bristled. Gray thought for a moment that it was because of what he'd said, but when he looked up, he found Roman peering around the edge of the doorway. The little boy's face was pale and drawn. His eyes were the size of dinner plates.

"Hey there, Kiddo," their father said awkwardly, hurriedly turning back to the stove, "You hungry?"

Roman looked worriedly up at Gray and then down again, stepping timidly into the kitchen with a small nod. Their father turned away to hunt for clean plates, and Gray knelt down in front of his brother, the afghan threatening to slip from his shoulders, "Is something wrong?"