Page 15 of Genesis
“No one to mentally fuck me up?” he huffed, pointing at me. “You are the literal mind-fuck of my life, Dire.”
“Well, like you said, I’ll be dead soon. So…” I shrugged. “What happened to you being the reaper of my life, huh? You said you’d follow me everywhere to make sure I was fucking miserable.”
“I don’t have to follow you for that. You’re miserable all on your own.” He walked into the bedroom and came back out with the case I’d found loaded full of drugs. “I’m too fucking tired to… I can’t make you any more miserable than you already are.” He shuffled through packets of pills, bottles full of liquids and powders, baggies of coke and other shit, and vials of tar-like resin. “Which of these will kill me?”
All of them, if done in the right amounts.
I knew the right amounts. I grew up watching my mom kill men with overdoses. Which all just made me very aware that I had the knowledge and the skills to kill myself with drugs, butI’d failed four times. Maybe I was more afraid of death than I thought I was. I’d even held a gun to my head while I was high as fuck, and I still never pulled the trigger.
I was a coward.
“Fuck it. I’ll do them all.” He opened a baggie of pills and took two, and then he snorted something, took another pill, and eventually, I stopped him. Didn’t know why.
I did know why. “I promised him, Enge. I promised him.”
He could get fucked up if he needed to, but I couldn’t watch him die.
Protect my brother.
CHAPTER 7
BURN IT ALIVE
ZADE
He lookedat me like he used to look at Zan. Eyes full of want and a hunger to the heaviness of his gaze that had me guilty and uneasy.
How long had I wanted to be looked at like that? Like I was the light of someone’s life, the most desirable thing in the world, and the object of someone’s affection. How often had I witnessed this look aimed at my brother, coming from those blue eyes all hours of the day? In the back of my drug-riddled mind, I knew Cadoc was still looking at Zan like that. Because right then, I was Zan, and the drugs convinced him of that every time he blinked.
Would it be so bad to enjoy it for a fraction of a second? To pretend the high of the drugs matched the high of that look? Could I be Zan for one night, finally experiencing what it felt like to be the love of Cadoc Dire’s life?
When he licked his lips, I flushed, looking away.
I wasn’t even gay. Sexualities had nothing to do with it. It was about affection and attention. I craved the concept of being chosen, picked, and desired so strongly that the rest of the war-torn world vanished into the abyss and left open the path to cataclysmic passion.
If he touched me, he’d be touching Zan. Could I pretend?
If he kissed me, he’d be kissing Zan. Did I have the right to want it?
The only person who had ever touched me, skin to skin, without the gloves on, was my father, and his touch provoked nothing but pain and disgust. Would anyone ever strip their gloves off, reach for me, and press their skin to mine, showing me what it felt like to be touched, picked, desired? As myself. As Zaden Enge. Had anyone ever wanted me?
I took the glasses off, hoping they’d remind Cadoc I wasn’t Zan. As soon as I set them on the coffee table, I regretted taking them off. As pathetic as it was, I wanted him to continue looking at me like that. The weight of it was liberating, even if I knew it was a lie. Lies were pretty, meant to appease, and my lack of self-respect didn’t mind being lied to.
I avoided his face, not wanting to know if the removal of the glasses changed the way he looked at me, and pinched a yellow-ish pill between my fingers. I didn’t know what it was, but I’d taken one earlier and felt great. I pressed it to my tongue and swallowed it down with a gulp of fruit punch from a tetra-pack hiding in the pantry.
“Careful, Enge,” Cadoc’s roguish voice husked at me from across the living room, hating himself for calling me that name. Enge. My last name, but only Zan had been worthy of it. I was just Zade. Mostly, I was just forgotten. “Those are addictive as fuck.”
I’d take a drug addiction over the pain, so bring it on. “What are they?”
“Hydromorphone. Dilaudids.”
I looked at the baggie, seeing hundreds more of them. “How do you know? Zan said you never did drugs.”
“Didn’t. Don’t. Not a fan of being… out of control.” He muttered something about being numb instead, swallowed a Dilaudid, and then he cleared his throat. “My parents sold them. They were always in high demand.”
Right. I guessed gangsters didn’t just deal in weapons. I chanced a look at him, peeking up through my lashes instead of tilting my head. Cowardly, but I’d come to terms with being a coward by this point. Cadoc was still watching me, but the look in his eyes had glazed over a bit.
We’d been here doing drugs for three days, and I didn’t know if we were waiting for them to run out, or if we were just building up the courage to move on. We barely ate, but we kept enough in our stomachs to keep us alive, and showering became a thing of the past. What was the fucking point? We’d both rather be dead, so maybe if we let our bodies rot for long enough, death would be called to us by our filth and decay, and we’d walk into his embrace with open arms. Maybe the promise wouldn’t be broken if we died together; we could still protect each other in the afterlife.
