"Sister, sister, please know that I'm sorry, I wish you could've stopped me from falling off the hill. Only sweet until it all goes sour but life is what you make it. Until it gets too real."
Chapter Theme Song: 'Alive' by Khalid.
Warning: Chapter contains gore. May be disturbing to some readers. None of which is condoned by me and all for the purpose of fiction.
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Khalil
I got home when the air grew more moist, and the sun was slowly slipping behind its bluish-green duvet, and my mother greeted me at the door with only a little blood left in her face as though a minute over and she'd be as pale as a ghost. I wasn't in for the rebuke and she must have noticed since she only sent me off to my room with a: Hurry and get dressed, the guests will arrive shortly.
And I was growing wear and tear of the constant facade of us being healthy people in a healthy family, but half the people who laid their 'precious' time aside to dine with us on late weekend evenings, was, in fact, the same thing. But I was growing weakish of watching men and women with their pinkies stuck out and their backs broad and stiff, littering my household like ants crawling to spilled honey, but oh, there was no honey here, nothing sweet at all, but raw, stinking blood and bitter-salt tears.
I went to my room with trembling fingers. I had been close to squeezing the air from the girl's throat who had loved me since I first had a wet dream, and though it could have made me more uneasy, I still felt a prick of something. Guilt? Remorse? Maybe not those but something...something was in the back of my mind. Amelia. Would she have severed me for good had she come to learn I had directly killed someone with my own hands and not with my brain this time?
See, unlike my brother Kanan, matters of destruction didn't make me smirk, but had often caused my face to twist at the sides with this inkling at the back of my mind saying: You're just like your brother. I didn't want to be like Kanan, but it felt like I had no control over the air of thick black clogging that area in me I desperately tried to keep at bay.
Kanan could murder with a grin across his innocent-looking face. But me...I couldn't handle doing so with my own two hands. What I was good at was initiation. Then my brothers would jump on the boat as they never mind getting trapped at sea, but I was afraid of the water so I'd stay on land and watch from afar as they drove spears into fishes and ripped the heads of scavengers. Then when they returned, bloody, I'd pretend the sight of them didn't cause my face to twitch. But it'd be a short moment before the relief of it all sank in.
It was, admittedly, the same thing with Jacob Whitaker. That freckled-faced boy that didn't want to leave Amelia alone, lingering outside the afterworld with no abiding place. He wasn't going to have her. I'd sent out the order for a reason. But then Kanan saying Amelia had begged for his death had thrown me off just a little.
As I stood in front of the mirror, fixing the top button of my shirt with shaking hands, I felt something...a presence. And the fear that had often visited me when I was younger and even then returned.
My fingers stilled on my necktie, and my eyes slid up in the mirror to see Kanan standing in the doorway to my room. At the first glimpse of his silhouette, garbed in his full black suit, his eyes appeared pitch-black, lips tightly pressed together. But then his smile, crooked and confident, fell over his features like untangling a pretty curtain, and his hands found his pockets.
"Where were you just now?"
Mental tapes of Giselle's naked chest and when I had sat over her squirming figure flashed before me, and I looked away, my fingers slipping off the tie as though I'd forgotten how to fix it.
I was always afraid of Kanan. But I hid it well. It was stupid to let the man whom you fear know, just how much, you were afraid of him.
"Giselle. I went to see her."
"And how did that go?" Kanan angled his head to the side with this face that felt like he'd already known the answer to that question.
"It went...okay." My eyes watched him discreetly as he fully entered my room, bobbing his head to nothing whatsoever with his mild cologne mixing with mine.
I sighed through my nose. It was alright...being around him with Keegan...but when it was just us two...things felt different.
It had always felt different. Ever since that night.
"You could consider her feelings..." He started as he sat on the bed, leaning back on his palms. I watched him through the mirror. Uneasily. "She has liked you since we were little."
"Someone can't force themselves to love someone they don't, right?"
Do you know why I feared him? Because he couldn't be understood or read. He was just... Kanan. The boy you couldn't tell if hated you. Because he smiled at who he hated and smiled at who he didn't.
"You're right." He grinned. "Just like someone can't force themself not to love someone they do, am I correct?"
I paused and looked at him, and he kept my gaze with that sly smile in his eyes and on his lips.
"Do you have someone you love?" I questioned quietly. And what was I asking? My brother...he didn't seem to have had romantic feelings for anyone. He was no virgin, though, that much was true. But even when I slept with posh girls with squeaky voices and pristine backgrounds, which were the only girls I had been acquainted with before public school, he'd just spend his time watching gore. As though that was where his pleasure came from.
It was questionable whether he had truly loved our parents or not. Alluding to the day there had been a huge accident right down the street, and Kanan had laughed, saying perhaps it was our parents' car and maybe we'd be getting an early inheritance. Keegan didn't care about the statement, but I had to take a good look at him.
He'd show care for Amelia, like when she was sick, but I didn't know if it was logic or if he genuinely cared.
"How do you know when you love a girl?" He asked softly, and I thought for a moment.
I had never truly loved a girl...
But when he asked the question...I couldn't stop my mind from wandering to Amelia. I had a deep affection for her, but I wasn't sure if it was love. I loved being around her, I hated when she was sad, and I couldn't stop thinking about her every second of every day. Was it love? I wasn't sure. I had never felt those feelings for a girl before her.
And then William...I hated when that kid was around her.
"When you love someone...I guess you hate to see them with someone else," I offered up, though unsure I knew exactly what being in love felt like. One couldn't blame me. I'd grown up with dragons as parents. Tenderness wasn't something I knew too well. My parents could pretend to be tender-my father especially-but it was an enshroud that couldn't be maintained for long.
And me and my brothers? We were just that. Three identical boys that shared the same blood. We'd defend each other in the face of other people, but was that something we felt compelled to do under the basis of logic and expectations? Yes. Maybe it was.
Oh, but don't judge just yet. It was not our fault. We weren't taught how to love from the deepest part of us, for my mother could still see lipstick stains on my father's white dinner shirts at dawn.
"Ah..." Kanan breathed like he'd just drank a cup of ice-cold water on a baking Sunday. "I long to feel that and be sure of it..." And with that he stood up, to my secret relief, and walked out of the room. The air was light again, the sun seeming to bleed comfortably through the pure white curtains that swayed by my window. And my chest...it was finally free of the ball that had sat on it.
By an hour later, cars, mostly matte black with tinted windows and healthy, stealthy engines that made no sound were rolling up to our gates in this asymmetrical line like a ritual.
The dinner started off boring, and it'd be boring to the end; I was sure of it. It was like a marathon of your most-hated movies. The conversations were repetitious--forex, stock exchange, whose daughter was set to marry whom all for the joint plan of business and social marketing. And I was...suffocating.
But that wasn't the only reason. Amelia. She sat on a chair across the room next to William, who was making gestures with his hands as though strumming a guitar and she was laughing, eyes lighting up, but the black rims around them reminded me that she wasn't well.
I couldn't talk to her. Not when my father was present and vigilant, depending on us not to embarrass him in the face of other people. He was next to me now, and the man whom he was talking to had this daughter next to him, biting her lips and blushing like she'd trip somehow and fell in a bucket of red paint, but all I could see was past her. Amelia. She used to smile at me often, but she looked fresh and unworried around William.
Get rid of him. That ghostly demon in the back of my head said. But I shook it away. Knowing Amelia would have hated me. For a second her eyes caught mine while she laughed, and her smile broke like cutlery and settled into a straight line, her eyes glowing with sheer sadness. My father's head shifted in my direction, and I quickly looked away, smiling forcibly at the man who was holding out his hand to me.
"Forgive him, he was distracted." My father spoke up, and I saw the warning he threw at me. I swallowed as a dead Simon blared before me and took the guest's outstretched hand.
"Sorry. Got exams on Monday, so."
"Ah, yes." Mr. Bush, I think was his name, smiled and positioned his palm in the middle of his daughter's back. "She has exams too. She's in the twelfth grade."
The girl eyed me with a suggestive look in her gold irises but I pretended not to see. Had it been months ago, I'd have taken her up to my room when these men were no longer around and have sex with her. But the thought didn't entice me. Not a little bit. Not at all.
"Oh, he's also in the twelfth grade as well." My father happily shared. "He and your daughter could get acquainted."
My head snapped to his, my brows furrowing. I smoothed them out fast and locked my teeth.
"Oh yes. You're right." Mr. Bush grinned wide, and I knew rich people had a habit of selling out their children for the sake of bigger pounds. "What do you think about that, Maryann?"
"I think it's a lovely idea, pa.′ He's handsome." She smiled, revealing white teeth caged with silver braces.
I smiled, hoping it wasn't obvious how disapproving I was. "You're pretty, and that does sound good, but I have a date soon. She'll be here any minute, and I'd hate to be disrespectful to her."
I was correct. Lily would be here any second as I had to invite her to silence her. I didn't trust what I would have done to her if she had gone chatting about Amelia and I kissing in the bathroom on the A block. And lately it had been getting hard to silence that dark mist hidden away inside of me.
"Oh, a gentleman never disrespects a lady." Mr. Bush said with a smile that seemed genuine, but the other two people were clearly disappointed. Mary-whatever because she apparently wanted me to get between her legs then ignore her the next time we encounter, and my father, for turning down the request of this man who he'd been trying to impress for whatever reason.
Mr. Bush then patted my father's shoulder. "We will talk again before the night ends. I'll go greet your wife."
Kai smiled stiffly and nodded, and when the man walked away with his brooding daughter, my father turned to me and I knew what was coming.
"Is there a reason why you said no to his daughter's request?" It was not her request. It was yours. "Is there another girl that you like, Khalil?" His gaze darkened, that warning in his eyes again. "Explain to me because you don't seem to fancy Giselle. And who is this Lily girl? Is she even alive?"
"Yes, she is. She's a girl I...fancy. She's a girl from school. I told our mother that I was going to invite her."
"And that's the reason? And not because of some other girl, correct? A girl you know you cannot be fooling around with. If I come to ever hear that you're so much as touching Amelia in any form of--"
"Cheers, Mr. McKay." A man in a full navy suit, who I recalled as the Chief of Police was now in front of us. My father swung away and rubbed his lips, and I sighed and shoved my hands in my pockets, watching as Kanan chatted with Jordan at the corner of the living room. Keegan, as usual, was nowhere to be found. Presumably, he was at the library.
"How are you doing, Mr. Gae? I was to give you a call but-"
"There is no need since your lawyer had already spoken to me." The stout man sipped from his round teacup, regarding me with a cheery nod. "I apologise about that newbie detective. He is new in town and doesn't understand the waters that should be trodden and the one that should be left alone." He eyed us evenly.
"Conrad Conard is his name, right?" Kai posed.
There was no need to fret over that man, when my father could orchestrate the cruelest method of getting rid of him. I was bored of the system, since murdering a boy wasn't even enough to prove wrong the corruption of the moneyed class.
"Yes, sir. Should we get rid of him?" The chief of Police raised bushy eyebrows streaked with lines of white, and my father lifted a hand, chuckling.
"No need. Let him be. If he should question my children without the presence of their lawyer again I'll have a word with him myself."
Children. The word made me disgusted. I was sure, a brother shouldn't dream of kissing and wanting their sister in a way that I did. Children. He needed to bloody stop saying it.
"Excuse me," I muttered and turned away, heading straight for the staircase to the bathroom before I vomited all over their spotless dinner suits.
I knew that if my father had come to learn that I knew Amelia loved those white panties with lace bows on the band, and peach brassieres that didn't quite match them, he'd have sent a copper between my eyes the way he'd done to Simon.
I washed my face and looked in the mirror, shaking my head. I wanted this day to end fast. I wanted night to come where I could lay next to my favourite person in the world and block out everything else. Then the door knocked faintly. I took a breath and cracked it open. And who I saw there caused my forehead to smooth out.
"Khalil..." Amelia whispered, looking up and down the hallway, her eyes filling up with angst. "Are you okay?"
I nodded in a trance, shocked that I had her this close. She had come to me. She glanced around her again, clearly uneasy.
"Come inside if you're uncomfortable," I told her, and she hesitated. Like she thought I'd try touching her again. I wouldn't. I told her that and I meant it. I didn't care about touching her. I just wanted to know if she was fine. I wanted to find her brother and I wanted her to stop feeling guilty about Jacob. Then I'd be fine.
"Okay, I'll come inside." She decided and slipped past me, smelling of vanilla and shampoo. She was wearing a simple cream dress with lace covering, her hair made up with a glistening silver clip. She looked like an angel. So beautiful and so pure. No matter what she thought about herself...she was pure. Impure was me, who'd just hours ago, almost strangled her 'friend' to death.
I closed the door and leaned my back against it while Amelia searched my face as though looking for any signs of bruises or injuries. "You didn't come back to me...when you said you would...I-I was worried." She looked down.
"I am sorry...I got caught up for a moment..."
"With what?" She asked, her big eyes alight with care.
"N-nothing. Nothing at all..."
She knew I was lying. Her face loosened. "Did you...did you do something bad?" I could see the trauma behind her gaze.
"No. I-I didn't." Bad would be killing Giselle. I left before then. But what would have happened if her parents hadn't shown up?
"Oh." Her lips were bent.
"How're things with William?"
At the mention of him, she looked elsewhere, appearing almost guilty. Like we were involved and she had cheated on me. "Things are okay. Meredith is going to take me to the doctor tomorrow and then after, I have to go by William's house to have lunch with his parents."
My jaw jerked and I rested my head against the door. "Oh."
She nodded with a sad look. "She thinks I'm having...sex or something..." She blushed and shook her head. "It's mad, isn't it?"
I could only manage a nod because the thought of Amelia having sex with some boy didn't sit right with me. And what was my mother trying to fucking do? Play cupid and hope it'll drive us apart? My parents...they were getting even more annoying really fast. The way Jacob Whitaker had begun to supremely piss me off all at once.
"I think I should get back. They'll know we are both together. And I don't want to...I don't want them suspecting us."
"Yeah..." I breathed, realising I didn't say all I needed to. What could I have said? That I hated when she was with William? The boy had the tongue of Shakespeare himself and I was still learning how to be tender. There was a difference between being tender and affectionately lustful. Professing how I felt...would have only scared her away. We couldn't be together anyway.
I eased up from the door as her small fingers enclose around the gold knob. Then she paused. "I'll go first, then you..."
"Okay..." I was busy taking in the area between her ear and neck. How delicate it was.
But before she left, she turned on her heel and asked:
"H-Have you heard from Giselle? She would normally be here. We sort of had a falling out, and..."
My shoulders raised in a sigh. "I doubt she'll be coming..."
"You spoke to her?" Something like a frown crossed her face but it disappeared fast.
"Yeah. Something like that. Don't think she'll be coming."
"Okay..." She gave me another queer smile before she slipped out of the room, and I wish we could have spoken longer as I wanted to ask her if she'd seen Jacob in the last three hours.
I hoped not.
When I stepped out of the bathroom moments after she had left, I bumped into a figure, a pair of spectacles falling to the floor. The person bent to pick it up, and when he stood again, I realised who it was.
Ashton, or something like that, the boy who Amelia was tutoring the other day. What was he doing here?
He looked different without his glasses, almost familiar as though I'd known him way back when, with the rim of his eyes swollen a bit from wearing those spectacles too long. His dark hair was curly at the tips and he had a round baby-face.
"Sorry," I said, but he only nodded with respect and turned to return downstairs. I thought he wanted to use the bathroom? What was he doing standing there?
But then I couldn't resist the thought: had he been eavesdropping on us?
"Stop." I commanded promptly, anxiety growing within me.
He immediately halted in his strides but didn't turn around and I began to advance towards him, cocking my head to catch sight of his face. No guilt. No anxiety. This boy...acted like Keegan.
"Turn around..."
He slowly spun around to face me like a criminal who was caught red-handed with his hands in the air. But only his hands were not aloft but were limp at his sides.
I stopped in front of him, not knowing where to start with that bored expression stamped on his face. "D-did-were you listening to us?"
"To whom?"
"Nothing." I shook my head, careful not to tell on my own self. "Are you looking for Amelia?"
"No." His words were short and I couldn't help expecting something else. Nothing came.
"The bathroom is there--" Before I could finish talking, he spoke up:
"Your father was the one who had invited me."
My brows scrunched slightly before breaking free. "Oh..."
Without saying another word, he turned away and left, his footsteps soundless against the floors. But something shiny glowed in his back pocket...something like a knife?
I wasn't sure if it was. But I was sure of one thing. He was one weird kid...
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Amelia
I was slowly losing my mind, and there were so many factors causing it. One of them being Lily, in her short black dress and pointed heels, and her dark chocolate waves twisting over her slim shoulders. The minute she had arrived, she had flung herself into Khalil's arms, and he lifted his hand to stroke her back.
And I was jealous, so jealous that my stomach churned and my eyes pricked like thorns got jammed into them. Meredith greeted her with this huge grin she'd never given me and Lily ensured to bring forth her most intelligent self because first impressions last, but God, I didn't want it to. I couldn't hear what was being said since I was on the top floor, looking down at the hell below. And as though Khalil could sense me there, he craned his neck to look up. Our eyes connected, and his face softened helplessly.
I wasn't sure if he could see how broken this all made me feel.
I turned away and walked to my room, pushing the door up but not closing it as I sunk into the bed. A tear escaped down my cheek, then another, and another. I reached a pale, trembling hand up to wipe them away, all the while trying not to be audible with my crying.
It was stupid...the way I was sobbing over Khalil. Like a little kid deprived of candy...
And does it make sense to cry over something you can never have? Surely not. The tears won't change it, not if its salt isn't made with some form of magic powder that grants wishes whenever shed.
Then I heard a sound and peered up under wet lashes to see Keegan standing quietly at the door in his full black suit. I quickly looked away from him and wiped the tears smeared across my face. When I turned my head back, he made his way over and slowly sat next to me, the bed bouncing beneath both of our weights.
But he didn't say anything at all. He just sat there.
I regarded him in the corner of my eyes. He smelled like grape shower gel and sweet orange.
"Are you okay?" He finally asked, and I nod, looking down at my hands.
"Yes. Just a bit tired. And...bored."
"That's why you're crying?" He asked composedly, staring ahead of him.
I didn't answer, lacking the energy to lie. After some moments, he turned his body to mine. I met his eyes with a burn in my nose and a clot in my throat.
He stared at me for a few seconds, then his salmon-red lips parted as he said: "I'll...I'll try to cheer you up..."
"By..." I trailed off when he leaned in suddenly and placed a soft kiss on my forehead. I stilled.
His mouth was cool and felt like clouds. And the kiss felt protective. Different from Kanan's and Khalil's affection, but unique in its own way.
He moved away, and I blinked my eyes.
"Kee..." I breathed, shocked. He stared off somewhere behind me, seeming confused for a split second before he jumped up abruptly. I looked up, trying to read his eyes behind his glasses. But his faraway look was back. "Keegan?"
He turned around and walked out, leaving me in bewilderment.
What just happened?
Keegan was definitely changing. His mental health was improving; it was evident. I didn't know if I should say it to Meredith or Mr. Kai. They didn't seem to like me talking about their sons' mental health. Maybe I'd say it to Khalil.
When...he was finished with Lily.
I felt saddened all over again. But before I could resume muddling in my insecure thoughts, a clattering noise resounded again. Thinking it was Keegan who'd come back, I lifted my head. "Kee?"
But it wasn't.
My eyes lit up automatically as I stood to my feet. "Ashton."
The night had fallen so he was nothing but a shadow in my doorway. But his stance, his hair, and his aura couldn't be missed.
"What are you doing here?" I asked in confusion, and he didn't say anything.
"Ashton."
"Your father invited me," he finally spoke.
"Oh." A bright smile illuminated my face. He looked so proper in his black dinner suit. "Well, I am happy to have you here. You look nice."
He said nothing to that. He only stood there...staring at me with only his glasses shining in the dark.
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Ashton
Perfect timing it was, wasn't it? She was alone now, standing here in the middle of the room with her brothers nowhere in sight. What would have been their thoughts if they had come by to see her lying in a pool of blood on the floor? They'd have probably screamed their throats out and I would have smiled.
Music to my ears, it'd be.
Her smile faltered a little and I realised she had just asked me something but I was too caught up in my head to hear her.
"Ashton? Are you not well?" She worried.
I commenced my mental countdown.
One
"You're not talking to me...and it seems something is wrong...?"
Two
"Ashton."
Three
She stepped forwards, "Are you..."
"Stop talking," I said softly, and she obeyed, gawking at me in bewilderment.
I advanced towards her, slowly taking the knife from my back pocket, its blade glistening in the pale moonlight, and she stepped backwards with her eyes falling to the weapon.
"A-Ashton?" She squeaked, fear marring her features in an instant, "Why are you--what's going on?"
She was evidently confused but it wasn't long before she used her intelligence to understand what was about to happen here. What I was going to do to her. Homeschooling didn't turn out so well, did it?
Shaking her head rapidly, she inched backwards, one anxious step at a time, keeping her rounded eyes on me.
"Why are you doing this, Ashton, you're scaring me, please stop."
I didn't say anything. I learned along the way that taking yourself up in meaningless conversations before flipping the switch was pointless. It gave you remorse and sympathy--two things you won't want.
When she finally got the notion that I wasn't going to converse with her, she tried to get away from me, yelping as she jumped over the bed, but I crossed the other side and grabbed her by her pinned hair, yanking her hard against the floor. Waves spread out under her head, and the music from the gathering downstairs drowned out her cry as I sat on top of her and spun her over onto her back and drove the first stab into her stomach.
She gasped breathlessly, mouth falling open in awe. And I smiled.
"A-Ashton...?"
I dragged the blade from clumps of stomach fat as my hand rose and lowered again, another hole right next to the other, sanguine fluid squeezing down my hand like a leaping tap. Then another and another while her blood, dark and rich, bathed my face in its rawness. She screamed and thrashed with her eyes wide. "Stop! Stop!" Splatters of red gushed and splashed all over my figure and the collar of my dinner shirt and I could hardly see as my eyes burned terribly. And she laid motionlessly in the rich pond of hot liquid with her eyes and mouth half-open while the last of her life left her, her body shivering rapidly.
And I breathed heavily, dragging the knife out with that awful squelch and dropping back on my haunches with my face painted claret. Listening to her weak groans and whimpers until they were no more...
"Ashton?"
I blinked to realise that Amelia was standing in front of me now, confused at the way I was staring at her and not saying a word. That faraway place I had just visited in my mad brain felt too palpable and my fingers twitched with the impel to make it all a reality.
"Y-You're making me worried." She said, her eyebrows lowered. "Are you well?"
Definitely not.
"No..." I breathed out, my hand going around to my back pocket, "I am not..."