Page 114 of Seth
A silent shadow, sitting on the bed with his face to the window, didn’t move. Seth clenched his fists, crushing his initial impulse to flee.
“Why didn’t you leave? Aren’t you scared of me now?” In the night, his voice sounded almost loud.
“I don’t believe you did this. You are just pulling my leg. The joke isn’t funny. Please, say it’s just a coincidence.” In contrast to his, Ignaz’s voice was dull and weak. “The news said “excruciating cruelty”. They said someone had their eyes burned out, and their insides were stuffed with broken glass.” Ignaz stopped short. “Please, tell me you have nothing to do with it. I’ll believe you.”
Seth leaned against the wall. Behind the window, the newly born moon hung above a maple tree. Bright, almost yellow, it emitted an indifferent light. In the steadily changing world, the moon always remained. Somehow, speaking became easier when he looked at something eternal.
“Do you want me to lie?”
Ignaz’s shoulders slumped; he became even smaller as if folding into himself. “Why?”
“Because I promised they’d pay. Every single one. I intend to keep my word.” Seth shrugged. It was so obvious that he wasn’t sure why Ignaz had to ask.
“But this isn’t what I meant. I didn’t even know half of them,” Ignaz whispered. “There were innocent people there.”
“No.” Seth remembered the black vortexes feasting on the souls, trying to snack on his own. The vortexes never attacked pure hearts. They didn’t even want to take Justin’s, agreeing that the boy deserved a second chance. “There was not a single light heart. They all came there for a reason. They deserved to die.”
“Who are you to decide?” Ignaz slipped off the bed and came up to him. His fist bumped against Seth’s chest. “This isn’t what I wanted. Why did you do this? Why?” When Seth didn’t answer, Ignaz screamed, “I didn’t ask for this! I wanted to see them in jail, not dead!”
Seth lifted his chin. The tiny fists bombarding his chest knocked the air out of his lungs in sharp small exhales, but they didn’t hurt him. Ignaz’s distress did.
Did I make a mistake?Despite the thought,Seth couldn’t find a sliver of remorse in his heart. Moreover, if he had to, he would have done it over and over. The remaining names on the list burned in his memory, demanding retribution. He knew the day would come when he collected all of the debts.
At some point, Ignaz stopped hitting him. His forehead bumped against the bruised place on his chest, and the spot where their skin touched dampened. “I didn’t want this.”
“But I wanted this,” Seth confessed. “I couldn’t forgive them.”
They stood in silence. Seth’s watch buzzed three times as the moon traveled over the sky. When Seth lost all hope of hearing Ignaz’s voice again, the boy asked, “Will you get arrested?”
“I don’t know.” Seth remembered the pieces of broken glass that had sunk into his palm and crumbled to the floor. His DNA must have been all over them. “Maybe.”
“Have you killed before?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“I stopped counting.” Seth looked at the boy but didn’t say anything else.
Ignaz dropped his chin, blond hair cloaking his eyes. “No. Don’t look at me like this. This is a mistake. It should have never happened.”
Seth didn’t know what to say, so he kept silent. At some point, Ignaz pushed away from him and left the bedroom, but Seth kept standing next to the wall, watching the night melt into a gray, cloudy sunrise.
* * *
Ignaz didn’t leave,but things irretrievably changed. Oppressive silence filled the days, and the shy smile Seth adored disappeared from his face. More often than not, the boy locked himself in his bedroom. He didn’t share Seth’s bed anymore, and even the intimate touches Seth longed for shrank to nothing. Distance grew between them, and Seth hated every inch of it.
Almost every night, Ignaz sneaked into Seth’s studio. Every morning, Seth saw long lists of his queries in the history log of his laptop. News and social sites showed information about the victims of Seth’s rage. He never confronted Ignaz about it, thinking he should be happy with this frail illusion of peace. After all, Ignaz never left him, but somehow it didn’t make him happy.
A few times, the boy left at night. Seth didn’t follow him. He didn’t want to know where he went. He was too scared to find out that Ignaz looked for pain in someone else’s arms. The scene from the BDSM club still haunted him; he yearned for a reassuring touch but didn’t know how to ask for it.
For many days, Ignaz left in the mornings and returned late at night, shaking. The dates always matched the funerals of the men he'd executed. Seth couldn’t understand what drove Ignaz, the guilt or the need to confirm the murderers of his boyfriend were truly dead? He didn’t ask and didn’t stop him, but the haunted look on Ignaz’s face suggested that whatever it was, it sank its claws deep into his heart.
Once, Seth trailed him to a funeral, craving to understand, but it only brought him bitterness, as after visiting a victim’s grave, Ignaz visited his past lover.
The deathly hush of the silent desert filled his nights. The sand cleared, wiping off the remnants of the destroyed souls. The god didn’t change. Just like before, he knelt next to the boy, scrutinizing him as if trying to see something in the depth of his core. The heavy feeling in the air was too familiar. The perfect calm had always meant only one thing—the desert waited for a change, and the change happened. Not in the god, not in the desert, but in the boy.
He didn’t look perfect anymore. The weight of every night added up and curved his spine to the side, as if he was missing a few ribs or his backbone didn’t hold his body anymore. No matter how many times the god tried to set him straight, the boy folded to the side like a paper doll left in the rain.
