Page 31 of The Villains of Winter

“You believe his own trust of electors will select him?” James said in response to his naivety, roughening Elliott’s hair in amusement as though Elliott were still the shy boy that would trail after the upperclassman endlessly in trauma from what he’d seen. For the first summer weeks they met, Elliott rarely spoke, not even when spoken to by James, he was haunted.

Would you follow me into death? James jested once, his mouth as slick as silver.

You’re my friend, yes, Elliott responded.

That summer afternoon, he tested Elliott, leaping into a rapid waterfall, where many boys were mourned after by their mothers. Finch Hudskin had fractured five of his knuckles there twice. Elliott didn’t hesitate to vault into the waterfall after him and if that disturbed James, he had a strange way of expressing it by making Elliott his best friend.

Elliott never needed to say it, Yes, I would follow you into death.

Years later, belatedly now, James realized it and he stammered. He removed his hand from Elliott’s hair. He would follow me into death. What have I done? The young man with more words within him than an almanac turned reticent to speak. James forgot to even finish his shave.

“Don’t–Don’t do this, Elliott.” His voice was almost pleading, unknowingly sounding exactly like Professor Winston on the fateful afternoons he drank. “I will be selected, don’t follow me. Don’t even attend.”

He didn’t want Elliott to witness the tragedy. He’d never recover.

James’s voice was struck thin. “I am begging you, Elliott. Don’t follow after me when I am dead. It’s not worth it.”

However, his words detonated Elliott.

“You won’t be dead!” Elliott exclaimed in frustration, leaping out of his seat, his chest churning like a beast. “Will everyone stop fucking saying that?”

Now it was James’s turn to trail after Elliott as he stormed out of his dorm and into the late evening’s brisk air, pounded with pelting hail. Their coats left behind. James caught his arm, but for once, his touch felt like inferno to Elliott.

Elliott removed his arm out of his hold, tightening his own black tie, as though he wanted to suffocate himself, prevent himself from speaking as he charged out of Winterthur Hall.

“Elliott, you don’t understand what the ancient philosophy department has done to me–”

“Do not say my name. Do not speak at all, if you’re fine with being dead.” Elliott was spiraling already and the worst part of all was that he could not hide it. Elliott felt like ripping out his own hair, searing apart his clothes. Anything to stop the tears that barged against his eyelids. Anything to keep the graphic images of what he’d done to his biology teacher out of his mind. “You will not be dead. You will never be dead. You will live forever.”

“Elliott, stop, please,” James chased down the college student, but for some reason his heart couldn’t work, his tongue twisted in his mouth, and his legs mangled as Elliott miraculously gained preternatural speed through the snowed campus and out into the immense wilderness. “Elliott, you need to understand that the ancient philosophy department has damaged me beyond any atonement–I am sick–I am depraved–”

The young men were out of breath within miles of running through hail–sprinting past fields and thickets, prairies and pines, pits and troughs–extensive acreage that lured them near the mountain’s edge. Elliott collapsed first, and James caught him around his abdomen and brought him close against his heart. Close enough that Elliott felt the perspiration and rapidity within James’s own heartbeat pounding against his skin.

“You don’t want me in your life. Stay innocent, Elliott,” James’s breath panted on his nose. “I am corrupted. I am an obscenity.”

He said the last part almost like a cry for forgiveness, a rare breath of naked truth, before he bore his soul. “I am enchained to the ancient philosophy department in ways you don’t understand. ‘I am obsessive and possessive in turns of wretched measure. Run from me.’”

The last sentences were part of the hibernal performance. Elliott had heard him practicing the lines for the recitation, but now it was if he spoke through to him.

Elliott wondered what he meant. He was sick from medication he didn’t tell Elliott about?

Tell him, Jamie, you coward. James faltered his words, his mouth moving uselessly a few times, before he stopped himself, drawing in a shallow breath. Just tell Elliott what you’ve done. Who you’ve become. However, James knew if he revealed even a fraction of himself–the reprehensible truth of him–Elliott would never look at him the same. For some foolish damned reason that mattered greatly to him. Elliott could forgive Kitty of anything, but it wasn’t the same with James. James wanted to die with Elliott loving him as he always had.

Elliott argued with choked tears, his heart fighting through his chest, forcing out words he’d always kept hidden. “I don’t want to lose you. I see all of myself in you. There is no me that exists without you, James Wilde. What don’t you understand?”

“You need to lose me, Elliott.” Instead of a confession, a warning leaked from James’s throat. His voice strangled out darker words on top of him. “Please, Elliott, graduate from the College with a degree in art. Find a nice girl and buy a home far outside of Connecticut, like Knox did. Turn grey and old, grateful your soul was never polluted an inch by inch by the ancient philosophy department. That slaughterhouse.” His teeth clenched. “That butcher’s yard.”

​​ CHAPTER NINETEEN

“WHAT IS THE HIGHEST FORM of love in regards to Greek Antiquity?” For the final examination week, Professor Hexley mounted a Classical oil painting above the cave fire of the lecture chamber. Little flames of light licked beneath the aureate frame. Charred cinders scattered across the wintry grounds. Gracile and idle, Professor Perrineau arched one lithe ankle over the other, immune to the bloodshot eyes of the petrified twenty-one-year olds with frayed sleeves and their jaws clenched wide. The hibernal ceremony was to be held at midnight without exception.

Immensely claustrophobic, the silence stifled them, strained with dread. Indifferently, Professor Perrineau sipped Egyptian hibiscus tea as Elliott charged past him, fracturing the silence, and nearly shattering the fine pottery crafted by Professor Perrineau’s wife. Elliott marched to the farthest limestone ledge, a trail of snow and brittle pine needles in his path. His cheeks were raw and tear-struck still.

Professor Hexley’s voice rose above the suffocating quiet. “If ‘the intoxication of pathos[9]’ is the experience of one consumed with emotion…perhaps then the highest state of love is agape, storge, pragma, or…” Professor Hexley hesitated with a sensitive pause. “…philia?”

Philia. All at once, everyone turned to glance at Elliott. He couldn’t feel the heat of their gazes on his thermal skin. His buttons were loose. His collar was withered. He’d dragged himself through the dreich weather of dark fog and drizzling rain outside in a ruined corduroy jacket. By then, they’d all heard of his panic attacks in the ache of night. They heard he had barricaded himself in Swiðhun Hall, where he curled himself in a closet between the forbidden N.W.A posters, underground rap cassettes, and a boom-box radio stashed in the messy closet of someone’s room. There was an afro pick on the desk and a first-edition copy of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, which Huey Powell read while he kept watch on Elliott for the night. Elliott didn’t even know he’d broken into Huey’s dormitory bedroom. He’d never had a fight with James before, he didn’t know where else to sleep at night. The harpists and cellists that shared a hall with him heard his shouts of agony. He was torn apart by grief. He was desperate to save James from the reaper.

Elliott gnawed his finger in between his canines. His hands trembled.