Page 23 of Envious Of Fire
“I do not enjoy games.”
The game of manipulation is quite easy to master once you learn one thing: what a person truly wants.
“And what do you truly want?”
Tristan lifts the dark bracelet to his eyes, runs a finger over the beads, smiles.To be loved, of course.
4.
The Dream.
—·—
Kaleb stirs from his sleep with a gasp.
The gasp scatters through his small stone cell like whispers of ghosts. He catches his breath as the last image of his dream slowly fades—a pale face in a fire, peering down upon him, eyes like winter with the haze of snowfall passing over—that face as it slowly fades into the bricks of his cell, Kaleb slowly returning to reality once again, the dream letting go.
Six feet wide, twelve deep, featureless walls, a skinny table with a leather-bound book upon it across from his bed. Lantern with a faint glow still left, his only light other than what spills in from the hallway through the small glass window of his door.
This room is Kaleb’s home.
He often wonders about that word—home. It makes him think of another dream he sometimes has, a more distant one, where he imagines he was the proud, well-studied son of a man and woman he called Dad and Mom. They loved him, even if he felt at times drowned in his workload, in his endless studies, in his violin lessons, in his math clubs. He wanted a break, but they loved him too much to let him rest, he had to be the top of all his classes, had to be number one. In this other life, he often wondered what it was like to have friends, to attend birthday parties, to stay up too late, to not know questions on school exams. Makes him laugh, the absurdity of such a life.
That wasn’t ever his life, was it?
It’s just a second dream behind the first one with the paleface in the fire, the pale face with eyes like winter.
He didn’t really have parents either, right? This dream he used to call a memory, he has had it so many times, he wonders if it betrays him now. Details changing. Shifting like water in a sink. There was never a fire that burned his house down, right? No studies. No awards framed on the wall. No alarm clocks.
Kaleb stares up at the ceiling of his room, a spot way up in the corner that’s darker than the rest, and suddenly remembers another face from that imaginary life.
The face is like his own, same eyes, perhaps harder jawline, thinner eyebrows, twice the charisma he could ever hope for, a surprising softness when he smiles that indicates a keen ability to see and empathize with others’ suffering. This is the face of his imaginary older brother. His name is Kyle.
Kyle didn’t care if he studied, didn’t care if he attended all his violin lessons and his extracurriculars or finished all of his homework before bedtime. Kyle was the kind of brother who’d remind Kaleb that he was human, that he could be flawed, that there was nothing wrong with a moment of fun now and then, sitting on the edge of a bed playing a video game, drawing in a spiral notebook all matters of dragons and silly monsters. The more he thinks about his brother, their mom and dad, that house and the accolades and the stresses of studying, the more he believes it truly is just a dream. He was never born to that man and woman. Never kin to a kindhearted older brother. He was born in this cell. Six feet wide, twelve deep, featureless walls. This is where his life began. It is where it will someday end.
“1025,” comes a voice at the door.
Kaleb brings his feet to the cold floor, moves to the small window. “987?” Kaleb murmurs quietly. “What are you—?”
“Find me at dinner,” says 987, his face a blur through the glass. His voice is uncharacteristically stressed. Though Kaleb never asked his age, he guesses the guy is in his mid-twenties, atleast ten years younger than him. “We need to talk. It’s big.”
Kaleb draws shapes on the glass, bored. “Chicken parm big?”
The scoff from 987 casts breath over the glass. “Way bigger, 1025. We’ll talk at dinner.”
“Okay. At the usual canteen?”
“Pipe room,” says 987. Kaleb makes a face. “Hey, I know, but we can’t risk being overheard. Gotta go.” He slips away.
Kaleb sits on his bed for the next hour, his mind growing a pair of hands that juggle many possibilities of what urgent news Blood 987 has for him. He tries to read another chapter from the book on his table, but his eyes feel strained in the waning lantern light, and he can’t seem to focus. Between 987 and the recurrence of the dream last night, his mind is chaos.
Maybe he died in the fire that took his home, the fire that ate the bodies of his parents before his eyes. Maybe he died and this is the Great After.
That pale face that looked down upon him with those pale, wintry eyes—that was the face of the angel who took him away, escorted his soul from his broken body to the Great After. This place is a place of processing. Someday, it will be his turn to go, and his soul will reunite with Mom, with Dad, with Kyle.
Hopefully this place isn’t Heaven or Hell.
A final destination, where he will remain forever.
