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“They kidnapped you?” Kyle can’t close his mouth. “That man kidnapped you and turned you into their fake son?”
Like I was a mink coat he picked up at the store for his wife for their anniversary, yes, just like that. Tristan takes one long and thoughtful lick of his ice cream, gazing far away. It was a long time ago. Longer than I should admit. I can’t be sure what happened, exactly. The order of things is hazy. But I know I never saw my real dad or sisters again. Do I know if they’re alive? Dead? Searching for me? Forgotten me? I cannot even properly tell you how old any of them would be, they’re a faded life, my old life. My sisters are likely great grandmothers now, if they’re even still alive.
Kyle drops his eyes to the ground. “I … I can’t just forget them. I can’t just … just let my life go, not like that.”
You will learn to. Everything is unimportant, my love. We’re all just tiny sparks in the football stadium of the universe, existing for a little moment, then gone, no one cares, like the breeze erodes a mighty mountain to dust, one great civilization falls, another built on top of it, over and over, our little world keeps turning like rotisserie chicken around the great oven of the sun. I regret getting you that ice cream, you haven’t even taken a lick.
Kyle takes one lick. He tastes nothing.
I know, says Tristan with a sigh. Nothing will taste interesting ever again, I’m sorry, we should have made a stop at your favorite restaurant before everything happened.
“They’d all have been closed,” mumbles Kyle absently. He wants to cry, but nothing happens. He feels empty.
You notice I don’t look thirteen, right? You will continue to age, in case you were wondering, but it will slow, and slow, and slow, as your lovely new condition claims more and more of you by the heart, then finally stopping you fully. I think I might have stopped fully. I’ve not noticed much of a change these past few decades.
“Decades …?”
I did say it was a long time ago. Strange, how time stands still in the mind. Everything eventually feels like yesterday … whether it was a year ago, a hundred years ago, or actually yesterday. Tristan tosses his ice cream at the grass, then slides an arm around Kyle to cuddle him close. At least now we don’t have to do it all alone.
“How much will I age before I stop?”
No more than five years, maybe six, from what I know, which is not very much. If you’d like any piercings, I recommend getting them soon. Tattoos, too. Your skin will become … far less easy to penetrate the more you mature. I can see you with a cute nose ring. Or a stud.
“I can’t eat this.”
Tristan snatches the ice cream from Kyle’s hand and flings it away to join his own, somewhere in the grass. Problem solved. What else shall we do with our night?
“Is there somewhere we can go? Stay for a while? I … don’t want to run anymore.”
The night is a blur of darkness and fog. Kyle finds himself standing in a parking lot, aloof, as Tristan heads into the lobby of a motel. Next, Kyle plods into a musty room on the second floor, the door shuts, and he curls up on a creaky bed.
Tristan lies behind him, stroking his hair. It is like a disease inverted, he whispers, the sicker you get, the stronger you get, and yet the sicker you get. But if we are smart, if we are careful, we will always be strong, gods among the earth, with the whole planet as our palette to paint whatever scores of monsters we desire. You will also become stronger. You will sense more. Feel more. It is a responsibility and a burden, remember? We are the respectable agents of Death, our great employer, and we forever look down upon Them, who wastefully drink the blood of innocents, who are selfish, hedonistic, and very vile. Have you given any thought to where you’d like to live, by the way? The prairie? The mountains? Hmm, I think a nice wooded cabin may be cozy, plenty of shade, I can learn how to crochet.
Kyle clutches the pillow next to him. It feels like paper and misshapen cotton balls. “That man who abducted you … that fucked-up man and his fucked-up wife … Where they one of them, the very vile ones? Or more like you?”
Tristan lets out a soft breath. They were … one of Them.
“And how did you get away from them?”
Are you sure you wish to know?
“Yes.”
I did my job. I ended them.
“How?”
With a silver bullet. Two, to be precise.
Kyle touches his pinky right then, reminded anew that his silver ring is no longer there, Kaleb’s ring. Tristan is holding on to it, stuck in a pocket somewhere, safe. He closes his eyes and strains to hear his brother’s last words, whatever it was he shouted, through the haze of red in his memory, and Tristan hums a quiet melody as he strokes Kyle’s hair.
