Session 10

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I didn’t expect to smell pancakes the next time I opened my eyes.

I was in my own bed, under my own covers, with my head resting on my own pillow like I had never left. Keenan occupied the space beside me, a plate of pancakes resting on his lap as he stared at them awkwardly. It almost felt like a reverie, like those moments when you dream of something wonderful only to wake up back in hell.

Keenan was hell. He just had a way of disguising it at times.

His eyes shifted over to me when I moved. He set the pancakes down on the night table before saying, “You can eat when you’re ready. I just assumed that you would like breakfast in bed or something.”

I would’ve run the hell out of there if I could’ve. He would’ve caught me easily if I tried. Keenan watched me with cautious eyes, daring me to make a single move out of that bed. When I shifted, his eyes narrowed. I dare you to try, he told me indirectly. I won’t hold back if you do.

So I didn’t. I settled into the pillow, feeling the back of my head as I did. I nearly laughed despite the situation at hand. The bastard had bandaged me up nicely as if he wasn’t the one who hit me. He tucked me in bed and even made goddamn pancakes. He was acting like he never did anything wrong; like he could pass off for the Pope or something. It made me sick.

I know that you’re probably cursing me for not doing anything. I mean, there were a lot of things I could have done, really. But put yourself in my place for a moment. Watch as the colours of your spectrum fade to grey. Wear my mind for a moment and look me in the eye; tell me that you wouldn’t have obeyed every single word he said.

That’s right. Nobody in this goddamn facility can fix me, not after what I’ve seen. I’m more aware than ever that I might never be sane again. I guess the only reason I’m telling you all this crap is to make myself feel lighter. I told you I was selfish. Some days I hate myself for it, but we can save that for another time.

Anyway, once I settled back into the pillow, Keenan finally relaxed. He rested his back against the headboard, letting out a deep sigh as if he had things to worry about.

“How are you feeling?” he asked me. “Does your head hurt?”

“I had the wildest dream...” I’m still not sure why I said that, but I didn’t stop. “I dreamt that you weren’t human—something called the Death King—and you took me to this snake lady who said I died once.”

“Jack—”

“It seems absurd, right? It can’t possibly be real. Right?”

Keenan didn’t seem concerned at all, and it sort of pissed me off. I didn’t know what I was expecting, to be honest. Even if I did, I’d be too embarrassed to tell you. “You know yourself that it wasn’t a dream, Jack,” he told me. “You would’ve found out about it soon enough, anyway.”

“Stop fucking with me!” I snapped. “Is this some kind of sick joke? That thing...it’s just old tales to get kids to be good. Is that what you’re claiming to be? Foolish stories from old folk?”

Keenan flinched at my harsh tone, but he nodded anyway.

 “And what that woman said...that’s all true too? I...died?”

He rolled his eyes at me. “You’re alive now. Doesn’t that count for something?”

I let out a cold, short laugh. I didn’t even know where the hell that came from, but I let it through anyway. It’s scary how things can make you turn into someone else, isn’t it? I dealt with that more than anyone ever should.

“You don’t get it, do you? I want to be dead. Sure, maybe life seemed good at first but now...now I don’t even know anymore.”

 “Are you saying this is my fault?”

“Of course! If you weren’t here, Cillian would still have some ounce of humanity left in him. But you probably fed him this lie too, and he’s stupid enough to believe it.”

Keenan’s eyes went ice cold in a manner of seconds. He stared at me long and hard, a slight sneer resting on his lips. I was testing his patience. “I don’t think you believe what you’re saying Jack. Your eyes haven’t deceived you; you saw it for yourself. Why can’t you accept that?”

Jesus, I hated him the most when he said that. He was acting like I was the crazy one for bitching about it in the first place. As if I was being unreasonable or something.

Either way, I let out a shaky sigh with my heartbeat erratic, muttering, “I’m just...I’m afraid to admit that you—and all this—is real. Like once I start believing it, there’ll be no way out and I can’t—”

I choked.

I was on the verge of crying. I knew that I cried a lot, but I just couldn’t help it. I was nothing but a broken man with death lying right next to me, asking me if my head was okay. What kind of crap was that? Who in their right mind wouldn’t go insane?

I jumped out of the bed at that moment; I couldn’t care less if he liked it or not. I began to pace around the room frantically as sweats broke out in awkward places. I kept muttering to myself without actually realising I was saying anything at all, something along the lines of this can’t be happening and what does it take for a guy to get lucky?

“You need to calm down, Jack,” Keenan said. I didn’t know if it was just the anger blinding me, but I swore he looked scared for a split second. “I can’t have you—”

“Don’t tell me to stay calm! How could anyone stay calm?!”

I expected him to say more, or at least try to hold me down or something. But Keenan stayed perfectly still, watching the last ounce of my sanity shatter into pretty little pieces.

I was too busy freaking out to care about what he thought of me. I could feel everything boiling inside of me like soup left on high. Keenan’s identity, the fact that I was saved by some ethereal being, Cillian’s soon-to-be death, the woman trapped in the basement, the stupid pancakes getting cold on the night table...

I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take it, and I wasn’t even going to try.

 “Fuck!”

I exploded. I grabbed my hair in uneven clumps before crouching down and yelled, “Fuck!”

I kicked the bed, sent my fists through the wall, spilt the pancakes and smashed the plate; doing anything that could allow me to forget about what was happening. Even so I still saw Keenan watching me, his image fading from a perfectly tanned boy to some feathered beast, morphing back and forth as if it was a game.

He watched me watch him and smiled like the sick bastard he was. A twisted and cruel smile that would have sent my spine trembling any other day, but not that day. I had enough.

So I hit him.

I hit him until he stopped morphing.

I hit him until that smile disappeared and all I saw was flashes of copper hair and honey eyes.

I hit him until he grabbed onto my fists and told me to stop, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I didn’t want to.

My rage was boiling over the top as I tried to break free from his grasp, soon turning into something else. Something that hurt my stomach and choked me, only letting sobs escape from my lips. Tears burned my eyes and crashed against Keenan’s face, but he never did look away.

“Why’d you do that?” I moaned.

Keenan’s eyes were indifferent as he said, “I couldn’t have you screaming anymore, so I thought I’d get the breakdown done and over with. Sorry.”

I wanted to punch him again for that comment, but my fists didn’t want to obey me anymore. So instead, I let him set me down on the bed and watch me cry like the coward I was. I’ve done some pretty embarrassing things, but I think that had to be the worst one yet. And the funny part is, I knew it. I knew that I had the ability to stop and toughen up but I just...didn’t.

Keenan lay down beside me and didn’t say anything about the freak out or the breakdown. He didn’t tease me for being a twenty four year old guy who still had the ability to cry like he was three. There were some things that were better to be left unmentioned, and that was one of them.

“Do you want me to tell you a story?” Keenan asked when my sobs finally subsided into nothing but echoes of the past.

“What is it?”

Keenan smiled beside me. “Believe it or not, I’m not actually a king. I don’t know where they got that from. I’m a prince, but my father doesn’t like me much.”

“You have a father?” I asked with surprise. Keenan shot me a look.

“What do you think? I made myself?”

I looked away from him, feeling uncomfortable. “I...well...I always thought that faeries kind of, you know, appeared.”

“My dad’s the Unseelie king,” Keenan continued, ignoring me. “I’ve got a brother before me. Well, half brother. My dad had an affair.”

I looked over at him again, remembering what he had said to me in the kitchen. Just a bastard son.

“So you’re...”

“I was disowned,” Keenan finished for me. “My mom was from the Seelie court—a summer faerie. I looked too much like her, glowed too much like her, smelt too much like her...” Keenan laughed coldly. “He didn’t want anyone seeing me, not until he gave me the job of the Death King.”

“Your dad made you this way? How?”

Keenan shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I was half dead during most of it, so I couldn’t really take notes.”

I sighed and flipped over to my stomach. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I wanted to make you feel better. Don’t humans find satisfaction when they meet someone in a worse predicament than them? I thought that if my problems distracted you from your own, you’d forget about crying.”

He was right; I did. The tears had turned into invisible stains on my cheeks, which I rubbed away with slight disgust. I felt like I was back to square one with nobody to trust but myself. Hell, I couldn’t even trust myself. I could back out of the non-existent plan faster than light at the first sign of trouble.

There’s a problem when you can’t even trust yourself. A big problem. I had a lot of problems, but I never would have guessed that not trusting myself would be one of them.

“What are you going to do about me now?”

A look of confusion crossed over his face. “Me? What do I have to do with anything?”

“Are you kidding right now? You’re telling me that I was saved by one of your kind and you have nothing to do with it? Or are you trying to tell me that what that woman said was a lie?”

“No,” he sighed, “it’s true. Even Cillian knows that. Why do you think he was pissing his pants when he first saw you?” He scratched his head and grunted in frustration. “Look, I went to go confirm it myself after I dropped you off. The whole thing was done by some high elf from my court.”

“What for?”

“He admitted using you as an experiment. He’s trying to figure out a way to bring the dead to life for my father. Your memories were wiped and he didn’t know what else to do with you, so he placed you in the yard after finding out who your brother was. It was stupid, really. It didn’t even work.”

I raised one eyebrow, asking, “Didn’t work? How the hell am I breathing then?”

Keenan sat up and stared at his hands, biting his lip. I had never seen him look so uncertain. “He said it was defective; he wasn’t strong enough. It can’t...the magic won’t work properly for long.”

“Which means...?”

“I don’t know what it means. It could mean many things, really. You could live forever, die normally, or just...disappear.”

“Disappear,” I echoed. “You’re not messing with me, right? Because this whole situation is kind of hard to take in.”

Keenan glanced over at me, his face looking more worn out as seconds passed by. “You should know that I can’t lie, Jack. Your mother knew that, so she must have told you.”

“But you sure do know how to bend the truth,” I said, holding up a hand when he opened his mouth to speak. My head felt like it was home to a war and my body was raging with a mixture of emotions. I was confused, I was angry that I was confused, and I was even more pissed off that I even had to be angry and confused. It was a trip, seriously.

“It’s probably easier to just kill myself.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why the hell not? Heaven will probably make an exception with me. Maybe the big guy upstairs will realise that he screwed up and put me somewhere better.” I shook my head. “This whole thing is screwed up. I’m screwed.”

“Just think of it as a game,” he said. “You’ve wasted time getting here; you might as well play until the end.”

I didn’t say anything else after that since I was too tired to. It was hard keeping up with him, trying to figure out what his words meant, and arguing over what was right and what wasn’t. I finally relaxed in the bed and breathed out all the emotions within me, closing my eyes and leaving an empty carcass.

I heard Keenan talking again, something about how I’d find more answers if I got the basement key again. When I didn’t answer, he started talking about making more pancakes. Then he left.

And I just lay there, cursing every goddamn thing in my life that I could think of.

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