Page 12 of Genesis
I snorted. “Figures. Overdose on morphine like the pathetic pussy you are.” I rolled the bottle around my fingers. “Couldn’t take the pain, eh? Coward.”
As I said it, I unwrapped a needle from the paper and plastic pouch, sliding the tip into the bottle and drawing as much liquid into it as I could. Just to see what it looked like. I plunged it out and started all over again.
“Did it help?” I asked Cadoc’s corpse. “Does it feel better now? Is it worth it?”
Maybe I was tired. Too tired to keep going. Sully would understand, and he’d sort my crew out. Andi would be a great person to lead with him, and the two of them could start a new chapter in Genesis. They’d make themselves useful, and they had the mind and the attitude to survive in this new world. Maybe they didn’t need me anymore. No one needed me. Cadoc was the one I got tasked with protecting, and look how that turned out.
“I still blame you,” I told him, drawing liquid into the chamber, mixing it with liquid from another bottle. “You should never have encouraged him. It really is your fault.” I watched a bead of clear liquid appear on the sharp tip. “But I’m still sorry. I’m sorry your heart had to break.” I pressed the needle to my skin, feeling the sting of it. “I’m sorry you had to suffer.” I pushed it in, no longer caring. “I’m sorry your soul shattered and you couldn’t find a reason to keep living.” I pressed the plunger until every drop was inside my body. “I’m sorry I wasn’t enough. I’m never enough.” I tossed the needle and slipped down so my head could rest on Cadoc’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry you loved and lost. I’m sorry for blaming you. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for not killing you when you asked me to.” I cried freely, relieved that the end was near.
I looked around the room, remembering the times I spent in here with Zan, chatting and talking into the night and telling each other our stupid dreams. He just wanted to go on an adventure, and now he was the hero of his own story, sacrificing his life to kill the villain. Too bad the princes he saved weren’t strong enough to go on without him.
Numbness spread through my body and my muscles relaxed for the first time in days. I breathed. A real breath.
“I’m sorry I hated you for having what I wanted.”
I linked our fingers together, somehow hoping we’d travel together in the afterlife.
My eyes got heavy. “I’m sorry I loved you when I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry for wishing you were mine sometimes. I saw the way you looked at him, and I wanted it for myself. No one had ever… and you…” My eyes closed completely, the sound of my beating heart slowing to a lulling rhythm—the lullaby of a dream this time. “I’m sorry I picked you when you didn’t pick me.”
I’m sorry for being too angry to love.
I’m sorry for existing.
I’m sorry I look like him. I’m sorry I look like him. I’m sorry I look like him.
I’m sorry for interfering with your happiness because I was envious of it.
“I’m sorry, Cadoc. For loving you and hating you in equal. I’m sorry… for failing.”
The blanket of darkness embraced me, and maybe for the first time in my whole life, I felt at home.
Hey again, Zan.
CHAPTER 6
I WON’T BOTCH IT LIKE YOU DID
CADOC
Not everyone neededtenderness and soft-hearted compassion. Love could be brutal and love languages could be savage. Passion could be aggressive and still convey the same message and meaning as warm love.
Zan tried to tell me that the real gift of giving love was to give it in the way that conveyed the message best to you. He said, ‘It doesn’t matter if you love differently than everyone else, as long as I know how to receive it in the way you intended for it to be received.’
As a person, I was fake. I covered deep hurt with nonchalance. I cared too much about some things, but faked indifference as a means of self-preservation. I ignored deeper feelings because I didn’t know how to process them, and I pretended to lack empathy to protect the things I loved. It kept me distant, detached, and apart from anything that could get hurt because of me. But that all changed when I met Zan, a strange boy in the lake who swam up to me as I tried to pee through battered and bruised kidneys, using the water to hide my physical pain. It didn’t help that I met him during aparticularly low point in my life. I’d tried, but there was no hiding my pain, and as ashamed of that as I was at the time, he never made a single comment about it. He faked it for me because he knew I needed it.
I’d never faked it for him. Not once in our whole relationship. I fucked up by trying to conform my style of love to something more conventional, but with a few words written on the back of a receipt, Zan reminded me that he loved me anyway, and he didn’t want me to stop loving him in the only way I knew how.
Zade was different. He faked the opposite of how I faked. I tried to dim down my aggressive feelings, and he tried to tamp his anger and act happy despite being the most unhappy person I’d ever encountered. I knew it. I saw it. I recognized it because I understood it, had been through it, and knew what it felt like to put on a smile I didn’t recognize. Zade did that every fucking day. He did it to make Zan happy, and that made me love Zade even more. He picked his brother. He chose his twin as the winner, the chosen one, the one who got to experience life, and Zade chose himself as the tribute, to suffer for all of us.
No vices. No crutches. No coping mechanisms. No tranquilizers. No pain medications. Zade did it all out of sheer willpower to give his brother a better life. His mind dipped into dark realities while Zan’s soared into the freedom of love and connection. While Zan got to feel the good things in life, Zade suffered through the bad on behalf of both of them.
I knew it. I knew it and I thought about doing something about it. I never did. All I could ever do was recognize it, because if I called him out on it and tried to get him to let it go, it would ruin the only good thing he ever had. He chose to suffer so Zan could be happy, and if I acknowledged it and brought it up to Zan, Zade’s life purpose would have shattered before his eyes. So instead of talking to Zade about it, I sometimes sat with him while he healed. I stayed with him while his mind foughtto come back to his body after an intense mental torture by his father. I always left before he opened his eyes, but at least he could feel that someone cared. Someone knew. Someone knew and thanked him for the sacrifice he’d willingly made.
It made him angry, but who wouldn’t turn angry after that? He got to watch us have everything he ever wanted, and the only reason we got it was because he sacrificed himself. Their father was a sadistic fuck who needed to control someone’s mind. If it hadn’t been Zade, it would have been Zan.
I never knew how to thank Zade for that.
