Page 1 of The Villains of Winter

PROLOGUE

ELLIOTT ARCHWAY WITNESSED HIS BIOLOGY teacher’s murder on Thursday. Blood pooled around the cranium. Striations of intestinal matter leaked on the ice. Dead flies scuttled on the pallid skin in a horrific sight that etched permanently into his brain at fifteen years old.

All of it was Elliott’s fault.

Because of a boy.

​​ CHAPTER ONE

ELLIOTT ARCHWAY WANTED TO SKETCH the aching glory of the stars onto his messy bedroom, like a frenetic epigone of van Gogh.

However, he needed an excuse to escape the orphanage, therefore he pressed open the heavy metal doors to the Northmen locker room. He ignored his blackened eye. He ignored his chipped tooth. His tape was on full-volume, but the batteries were dying out. For years to come, Elliott would wonder if maybe he had replaced the batteries before he snuck out of the splintered orphanage window…Maybe if Elliott had tucked the small machine safely under his tattered pillow where no one could find it…

Then none of this might’ve happened. Then Mr. Newton might’ve lived in the end.

However, Elliott couldn’t breathe without music. He couldn’t think straight without a pair of drumsticks in his hands. The explosive lyrics and hard, percussive drums kept his soul alive. In a dark sense, Nirvana had killed Mr. Arthur Newton.

That March, Elliott needed Nirvana as a distraction. Otherwise, he would think of James Wilde again.

His mind would be consumed with him completely.

Elliott was gripped by obsession. He could never handle a fixation normally. It was an irrepressible impulse. A compulsive urge.

He couldn’t trust himself to even own a cellphone because he would swipe his photographs endlessly, mindlessly.

Don’t think of him anymore. Elliott shoved his hands into his denim pockets, he tightened the strings of his gray hoodie, and he concentrated on his injuries that stung and ached within his skin.

Elliott washed his bruised jawbone in the locker room. He replaced the gauze on his wound. He kept his eyes off of him.

There were only three more years until he was old enough to live on his own. Rugby was his way out until then. Elliott would prove his physicality in front of the coaches, practice after practice, week after week, if he had to.

Even if his right eye was starting to swell and leak badly.

Even if his rear molar was raw and loose.

Elliott couldn’t afford his escape without a scholarship. A composition scholarship paid his tuition at Northmen Academy, a paragon of erudition that extolled poetry, music, and art. Nestled in Banebury, Connecticut, the meritorious academy was wreathed in colonial mansions and lauded orchestral halls. He lived in the oak-and-maple towns of New England, where the air ripened of cider in August, the gated manors signified their historic wealth, and the burly mountains were smoky in elegance. The cardinal autumns torched the tawny leaves with its fiery flames by late September. The deep rivers thickened with fog by October. The timbered valleys stirred with sparrows by November. The rich earth was awash with russet, as if the scarlet leaves were wine poured insouciantly from a drunk jazz player’s hand.

Banebury, Connecticut was a dream of luxury and pure nature.

However, their affluence belied a darker quality underneath.

Above art and strings, Baneburians hailed stature and political power. In their dignified minds, it was rather embarrassing to be famous; to be seen chasing after fans or pleading for attention. To debase oneself to entertain. To parade oneself as a circus for scraps of money.

Stardom was seldom distinguished. Celebrity was akin to beggary.

How mortifying and humiliating it was to be known not for history, but instead fleeting seconds of a spectacle for the masses.

Televisions were discarded from households.

Glamorized, glossy magazines went unpurchased.

Instead, in their collective belief, if one must debase themself, it should be in the exhibition or pursuit of art.

If one must bear the burden of fame, it should be for whole and complete political domination.

Acclaim in the arts was bestowed, not cheaply given. Political praise was earned, not willingly exchanged.

As patrons of the arts, they expected students to be willing to die for their craft. To seek divinity in art. To be consumed with their art to the point of savagery. Baneburians believed in nothing else if not in ritualistic art to the extent of barbarity. There were three high principles of barbarity in Banebury: