Page 7 of Fragile Facade
Epiphanies aren’t fun when you don’t want to have them.
Because the death that will land me here won’t be near as appealing as the one I’m living now. Riot won’t be here, taunting me like he always does, and there will be nothing left to fight for.
I look at him, finding his eyes already on mine. He knows what I’ve just realized. He knows that the chase with him is more appealing than the race to Death’s precipice. He knows that I want to do it with him barking at my heels.
“There you are,” he says. “You still tempting Death, Ghost? Or are you tempting me?”
My arm barely twitches. Not enough to rip this vine away from my neck, but enough to force my fingers tighter around his cock. “You think I’m at your mercy?” I ask, squeezing hard enough that his face tightens in pain. “Please. I just seduced you enough to drag you along for the ride. When this thing ends, we’ll both be dead.”
“Promise?” he asks, starting to sweat.
“Promise.”
He buckles forward, his hand landing on my throat to press against the length of the root already wrapped there. He groans in my ear as his cock throbs in my fist, his orgasm as pained as my epiphany, painting my abs in warmth. “Game on, Sauder. Your cock is hard, so I win this round.”
Fuck him, I’ll win the next.
3
NO EMPATHY
RIOT
His music is his mask.A shield he hides behind. A way to feel without showing feelings. An emotion expressed without a word spoken—he’s used this method so often that I’ve taken on the term.
Ghost keeps the house awake with his violin, but none of us have ever complained. He plays and plays, and the music gets stronger and more prominent, and as he lets go of everything trapped within the deep well of his seemingly shallow psyche, so do the rest of us. We settle in bed, close our eyes, andfeel.
The strings of his violin make sense of our sensations. The tenor of his music pulls understanding from the locked boxes of our hearts. When Ghost plays his haunting harmonies into the dead of night, I start making sense to myself. I almost understand who I am and why I am the way I am. I understand it through the way he hurts, putting his pain into his music and ridding himself of the burden of it by creating something so deceptively dark.My self-understanding always fades away from my grasp as soon as the music ends.
Sometimes, Seven’s guitar joins his violin, bleeding frustration and beauty into the music. Ransom’s woodwinds sometimes join on nights Monster is having a particularly hard time. Oboe or clarinet, it doesn’t matter, Ransom can play them all and make the melody hurt. Facts sometimes joins with his viola, deepening the tone until we’re all entranced by it, but when he plays the organ at the asylum, I swear we all break a little. And when Monster adds himself to the music… it’s so special it’s hard to bear.
There’s one piano in Vile House, and five of us can play it, but it’s never me. I hardly even attempt to play in private, choosing to try to express myself in solitude because nothing about me makes sense and I forgot how to interpret my music. Nothing about how I feel, what I want, and who I am is meant for the outside world. They see my mask, what I manipulate them to see, and that’s all they’re allowed.
They don’t even realize how fragile all my facades are.
Tonight, Ghost’s music is full of desolation. Not pain. Not fear. Not even anger or rage. Just desolate longing, a feeling of emptiness and destruction. He’s a broken boy who refuses to be broken; a destroyed man with no outer damage; a hunter whose prey is both too real and not real enough—a hunter who forgets to look over his shoulder and realize he is also prey.
Death. He seeks it. Not to die, but to broker a deal with it. To be better than it, more powerful than the allure of it. I used to think it was because he’s a thrill seeker, and he still is, but he’s also so fucking lost that he doesn’t know where else to seek what he’s after.
I’m going to be that thing. The thrill he chases. I’m going to be the emotion that finally fills him with something, overthrowing all that desolate emptiness to bring him back to life in a way he’ll almost resent me for. I made a deal with my brother, but I’m not going to keep it like he thinks I am. I’m going to keep the one I made with Ghost instead, and when I win, everything will change.
Tonight in his grave was only the beginning, and I love that my actions have brought on this music. He’s playing because of me. He’s expressing himself because of me. He’s broken because of me. My palm rubs my cock because of all of it combined. The way we both taunt something we won’t name, and the game that brings a level of danger neither of us will admit to fearing. Our back and forth has always been exciting, but now… fuck, I grab my cock harder. I wonder if my cum is still painted on his abs along with the dirt from his grave?
As Ghost plays, filling Vile House with the relief we all need, giving us the comfort to do it in the privacy of our own rooms, I smile with my eyes closed and feel everything he feels.
Because without even knowing it, his violin playing is a cry for help.
I’m going to answer the call.
Dreaming of ways to do just that, I drift into a level of rest without ever falling asleep. My dick hard because of his music, my chest settled because of my pride, and my mind busy because of its dark ideas.
But when the emergency light in the corner of my room flashes red through my eyelids, I wait, my eyes wide open now. Waiting to see if it stays red to indicate an actual emergency or turns magenta to signal exactly what I need. Wide awake, I grin devilishly when the first tone from the alarm signals and the red light turns magenta.
Some little lamb has come to Vile House to make a bargain.
* * *
I love this part.The deals and the bargains. The lost souls who swallow their pride and make their way to Vile House as their last resort. The locals who have tried everything within their power but still failed, and the tourists who get trapped here, still seeking a way out.
