Page 62 of Sick Bargain

Our middle brother seemed fine one day but not the next. He flipped on a dime, but his death didn’t come until weeks later. Because we watched him. We protected him. We knew, and we tried our hardest. In the end, it wasn’t enough.

My dad was happy. He reached middle age and defied the odds of so many Sauder men before him. I think he was hopeful. He felt defiant and powerful that he’d beaten those odds, and because of that pride, he didn’t notice when it snuck up on him and ripped it all away.

But me? I had business to accomplish, and my business was not yet done when the curse infiltrated my mind and turned me suicidal.

I killed Reeven Matterson, but that’s not why.

I fell for my rapist, but that’s not why.

After my beers with Cain, I laid awake in his spare bed and couldn’t turn my mind off. Because everything came at me all at once.

My mom is chipped and brainwashed. My brothers are dead. My dad is gone. My uncles and cousins are dwindling by the year. My life has no purpose. I made a stupid bargain with Vile House because, like my dad, I thought I could stop it. I thought I could entice a killer into murdering me. And that’s what set me off. Krypt won’t murder me.

And I no longer want him to.

Because my newfound hope for life became more important to me than ending the Sauder curse, and that makes me selfish like I’ve never been selfish before. I fooled myself into thinking I could enjoy him until death eventually claimed me, but I’ve been lying to myself for days now.

I’m not just enjoying him. I’m dragging him down with me. I’m choosing him over saving my family.

The flipped switch of my priorities overwhelmed me.

I left Cain’s house before dawn, slinking through the streets of Moros until I found what I was looking for. A nurse. A guy who is a respectable professional at the asylum but deals prescription medication in the dead of night. I went to him forsomething to numb me, knock me out, turn me off for a few days.

And it was there, in the back of my head, the knowledge that I shouldn’t trust a nurse who steals medications from insane asylum patients and medical cabinets.I knew.I knew there was a very high chance that what he gave me wasn’t what he claimed it was. That’s why I waited. I didn’t take the pill. I cried on a bench on Death Row with the crows as my allies, and then I went to work to snap myself out of it.

All the while, that white pill thatapparentlypromised numbness was in my pocket, taunting me with a deep sleep uninterrupted by overthinking thoughts. A reprieve from the madness swirling uncontrollably inside me.

I was born doomed. My aunt told me that when my mom birthed me and saw that I was a boy, her face fell. Mom knew. She knew having a boy was a death sentence, so from the very beginning, she treated me as one. She loved me in increments. Instead of letting me capture her heart, she protected it from the eventual heartbreak she’d feel. I don’t blame her. If that many Sauder boys died early, I’d do the same thing if I found out I had a boy.

Actually, I’d never have kids. I’d end the Sauder bloodline altogether.

But because of my gender, my parents never made me important. My teachers knew I’d kill myself at some point, so they never put much stock in my education or advancement. I mean, what’s the point when it’s all leading nowhere, right? I don’t blame them either.

I’ve never had a meaningful relationship, have only one true friend who doesn’t believe in curses, and have a strained relationship with my remaining brother. A good but distant relationship with my sister.

Until Krypt. Who made me his world. For deranged reasons, sure, but it was the first time I’d ever been important. And I think that’s why I want him. Because I’m Remiel Sauder, unimportant and destined to die, and apparently, I’ll take attention in any form I can get it.

And Krypt’s attention is all-consuming.

I hate how weak it makes me that the first chink in my well-maintained armour was him walking away from me on the stairs. The first kiss of poison stung my brain when his back tattoo disappeared upstairs.

The poison spread when I talked to Cain and admitted that my entire foundation had changed because of a man who turned his back on me.

The bright spot in all of it was what Riot said to me. About how Krypt doesn’t know how to feel feelings, so he’d need a minute to process. But while I gave him that minute to process, I also processed.

I’m a sick man with an attention issue.

I developed a level of codependency with a killer who treated me like his property.

I put my life in his hands, and he protected it against my will.

I went from being Remiel on a mission to protect my family to Remiel selfishly obsessed with my own needs. And when Krypt showed up at the shop, I got stupidly hopeful again.

Krypt has a trigger word.

I have one now, too.

Important.

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