AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Tristan turned around, celebrating his strike, to see Mort standing over Tom, who was just coming around on the ground. Mort was squared up, legs parted, both fists clenched, looking down at Tom as if daring him to get up.
Tristan gave Mort a questioning look. There were a lot of looks coming their way now, and a furious looking manager with a combover and fabulous mustache making his way over from behind the counter.
“The Perdition Bowlerama is a family venue,” the manager said. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“No problem,” Tris said, taking Mort by the arm. “We’re going.”
Mort stepped over Tom’s prone body on the way out, as if Tom was less than dirt. That gave Tristan more than a little satisfaction to see. He had not enjoyed what he considered to be Tom’s attempts to flirt with Mort.
“What was that about?” He waited until they were in the parking lot to ask. Mort felt tense and angry next to him. His expression was sour.
“He was rude,” Mort said. “And disrespectful.”
“So you knocked him on his ass in the middle of the Bowlerama,” Tristan smiled.
“Yes,” Mort said, eyes dark. “And I would do it again.”
“You’re so sweet,” Tristan said, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “I don’t think bowling is for us.”
“No,” Mort agreed. “I don’t think it is.”
18
Days went by, and then weeks. Time sometimes seemed to pass slowly in the mortal realm if one paid attention to it minute by minute, but paradoxically it also seemed to all flow together and go by very quickly if one stopped noticing.
Tristan and Mort sat on the porch steps together, watching the sun set over the abandoned shopping carts sitting in a tangled heap across the road.
“Do you ever think of moving?” Mort broached the subject. “Now that we have enough money to do that, I mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
Mort noticed Tristan seemed reluctant. He didn’t want to say no outright, because he never liked to say no to Mort, but it was clear the answer was no.
“I don’t want anything more than this. I don’t need anything more than you. You’re already more than I could have hoped to have.”
“That is sweet,” Mort said. He realized something. It had been weeks since the revelation came from Loki, and yet they’d never talked about anything Loki showed him about Tristan.
“We never talked about the murder,” Mort said. “I was too caught up in my own self-pity. I am sorry.”
Tristan recoiled as if from the memory. “Being mortal will do that to you. And it’s okay. I don’t really want to talk about it anyway. I want it to be swallowed up by my memories the same way the body was swallowed up by the desert.”
“Understandable,” Mort said, not pressing the subject.
Then, in a very mortal way, Tris kept talking about the thing he had insisted he didn’t want to talk about.
“I killed that man. I stabbed him. And I felt nothing. I didn’t feel guilt. I didn’t feel fear. I felt like what I had done was right and necessary. It was like having killed a spider.”
Mort nodded, understanding.
“I think I’m a psychopath.” Tristan gave him a haunted look, voicing a fear he must have been holding inside for many years.
“You’re not a psychopath,” Mort reassured him. “But you are comfortable with death in a way many are not. Perhaps that is why you see demons. Maybe you allow yourself to see what others will not.”
“Maybe. Anyway. I got away with it, like you saw. Not long after that, Mom got sick. And when she got sick, her friends didn’t want to come around anymore. So it felt like a blessing, at first at least. Until it got worse.”
Mort sat solemnly, listening with a deep focus, drinking in every word.
“She was ill for years before she passed. We lived on her savings for a while, then I dropped out of school and did jobs here and there, earning what I could, and stealing to make up for what I couldn’t earn. And then she passed, and it was just me. Just this house. I tried for a while, you know. Tried to be normal, to fit in, but I’m not, and I can’t. So I gave up.” Tristan looked Mort in the eye. “And that’s why you found me on the porch. I’d given up on ever being anything to anyone ever again. I felt like the world didn’t just not need me. It didn’t have a place for me.”
Mort kissed away the tears that rolled down Tristan’s cheeks silently. The pain was still real, even though it was not from the present. Remembering it made it real all over again. It took a few minutes to compose himself, but Tristan stopped crying, and like the sun emerging from rain clouds, smiled instead.
