Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 46785 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46785 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 234(@200wpm)___ 187(@250wpm)___ 156(@300wpm)
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought I was helping. I’m going to go get dressed.”
As usual, whenever he tried to help, things went wrong. He felt the old urge to curl up on himself, to go deep inside and hide every part of himself from the eyes that roamed him.
When he emerged from the bedroom, he was wearing jeans and a shirt, a thick, heavy plaid piece of fabric that functioned more as an emotional shield than as clothing.
“Sorry,” he said again, feeling as though he had spent all of his life apologizing for one thing or another. He couldn’t get anything right. Why couldn’t he get anything right?
Another person might have said something like it’s okay, or don’t worry about it. But Mort wasn’t a person, strictly, and he did not naturally offer that reassurance.
“We still have the matter of your punishment,” Mort said.
“Oh?”
“I promised it would be painful.”
Excitement flowered inside Tristan. “Yes,” he said. “You did.”
Mort put a pen and paper in front of him. “I want you to write down everything you remember about the forty days you spent in the desert.”
“That’s my punishment?”
“There are few things more painful than memories of bad times,” Mort said. “That is one of the reasons souls drink at the Lethe. Forgetting is bliss. But I need you to remember, because that mark was likely given to you there, at a time when you should have perished, and yet survived. Someone saved you. I need to know who. No detail is too small.”
“You’re a twisted…” Tristan sighed. At least the punishment, such as it was, made some sense, and had some kind of purpose. “Fine.”
“Good.” Mort turned and made for the door, leaving the kitten in his wake.
“Wait. Where are you going?”
Mort paused, dark shock of hair nearly covering his eyes as he replied.
“I have to see Tom.”
Jealousy sparked. Mort sure seemed to run off to Tom every time he got the chance. It wouldn’t be the first time Tristan had been looked over in favor of the all-American boy next door.
“Oh.”
Mort walked out the door.
Tristan waited exactly thirty seconds before he screwed up the paper and got a beer.
12
“Tom. I have come for the first aid class,” Mort announced striding into Tom’s garage.
“Oh. That’s cool. They’re usually run…”
“I would like the first aid class now, please. I do not know when Tristan will next enact some destructive psychodrama, and I need to be prepared.”
“Yeah, that dude is wild,” Tom agreed. “What’s the deal with you two. You hanging out, or…”
“He is mine,” Mort said.
“Yours,” Tom repeated.
“Mine.”
“Uh… so like, usually, you’d have maybe a boyfriend, or like a… husband or…”
Mort fixed Tom with a hollow gaze. “Mine.”
“Gotcha,” Tom said. “Well, I guess I could drag out the dummy. But I need to get this car ready for Mr Patterson. He said he’d pick it up…”
His reasoning and excuses simply faded under Mort’s commanding stare. Tom was so much easier to handle than Tristan, but that was because Tom was common and robust and solid. Tristan was wild, and free, and cursed. Oh yes, so terribly, unfortunately, completely cursed.
Tom went into his office and then came out backwards, dragging half a torso encased inside a plastic bag. For a brief moment, Mort was surprised at how interesting Tom had suddenly become, but it was quickly apparent that the limbless torso was plastic. Some kind of oversized doll.
“This is a training dummy,” Tom explained under Mort’s questioning stare. “It’s not weird or anything.”
Mort looked down at the plastic form of a person. It was just the first of many strange things in what felt like a bizarre montage of Tom’s instruction.
“HA HA HA HA, STAYING ALIVE, STAYING ALIVE. That’s the rhythm you have to follow when giving chest compressions,” Tom explained at one point, kneeling over the dummy and pulsing at its chest.
It was odd, but Mort was determined to learn everything he needed to take care of his mortal boy.
“Here,” Tom said, getting out of the way for Mort to have a go. “You try.”
Mort put his hands, one over the other on the dummy where Tom had been working, threw back his head, and shouted the incantation to the sky.
“HAHAHAHAHA STAYING ALIVE.”
“No, it’s not laughing. It’s from the song. Staying Alive,” Tom said, clearly perplexed. “And you don’t just shout the words, you have to pump the chest at the same time.”
“I am not familiar with this composition,” Mort replied.
“Compo…” Tom went to his phone and began messing with it, until a pleasing tune of men’s voices began to play through the tinny speaker.
“See? It’s a song. It has a rhythm. That’s what you need to do, follow that rhythm. You pulse and pulse and…” Tom paused again. “Sometimes it feels like you’re really not from around here.”
“That is because I am not.”