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It’s not his fault he’s like this. He was born wrong. It was that hole in his heart. Why him, why us?
It was easy enough to believe, I suppose, when I was a small child who didn’t smile or cry or talk. I had a hole in my heart. That’s why I am all wrong.
After that, it was the hospital, the doctors, the operations, the long periods of coalescence. My little body, ever shrouded in the sheets of hospital beds, my paper-thin skin brutalised by needles and scalpels and chemicals. They made me small, frail, drained, isolated.
When I returned home, I was forced to remain a prisoner within the walls of our house, every room made dark and silentand cushioned for my wellbeing. I couldn’t go to school or play with other children or leave the house. That, my mother would assure anyone who would listen, was the reason I was so odd, so silent, so different.
Then, when the surgeries were a success—mostly—and my heart was functioning as it ought to—mostly—then it became harder for her to justify why I was the way I was. She still tried, of course. She bemoaned my misfortune relentlessly, lavishing her friends and the media with stories about the terrible impact of my childhood on my adolescent self.
“It’s all those years spent in hospitals, spent stuck in his bedroom recovering. He never learned to form normal relationships, to communicate with his peers. We tried everything we could to help, but the damage was done. Those formative years were too crucial—he missed too much. He was born wrong, and now that he’s fixed, he’s still wrong.”
The truth was and has always been precisely this: I wasn’t born wrong, and there’s nothing abnormal about me. The hole in my heart was only everjusta hole in my heart. The long years of operations and coalescence had no impact on me.
I am the way I am because I realised, very early on in life, the nature of the world. My mother, guileful Catholic that she was, often catechised about heaven and hell, good and evil, angels and devils. She wasn’t entirely wrong.
Hell is real; we’re already there. And good and evil and striving and believing—none of it matters. Because hell knows no greater hierarchy. In hell, you either rule or you serve.
And I never once intended to serve.
The next morning, Ifind Willow curled up on the floor next to the bed, her body a comma on the corner of the bedside rug. She’s not even bothered to drag down the throw from the foot of my bed to cover herself with. She lies like a street urchin in a scene of Victorian poverty, her arms tucked against her chest, both hands jammed under her cheek. Her black hair is spread around her head in a black corona. She’s pale, in her sleep, her mouth ruby-rose, like a comatose cartoon princess.
She doesn’t so much as twitch or sigh while I go about dressing myself for the day’s hunt, so when I’m done, I go over to her and prod her side with my foot.
Her body moves but there’s no other response from her. I push her a few times, wondering if I dosed her with more propofol and forgot. Crouching at her side, I place my hand over her face, covering her mouth and nose. She stays still for so long I wonder if I’ve actually suffocated her, but then her body gives a hard lurch and her eyes fly open.
She scrambles up and away from me. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Her voice is hoarse with sleep. I stand up with a scoff.
“Trying to wake you up. You sleep like you don’t want to be alive, Lynch.”
“With you for company, how could I not?” She tries to wipe her eyes with the balls of her hands but her left hand is stopped by the handcuff. “You gonna untie this thing or what?”
“I live to serve your pleasure,” I say drily, but I do fetch the handcuff key and free her from the bed.
She stands and stretches her arms all the way up, and my eyes fall, of their own volition, on the points of her nipples pushing against the fabric of her pyjama top. I think idly about grabbing her by her waist and tossing her on the bed and pinning her there just to see if my dick might be once more tempted out of its slumber, but I firmly dismiss the idea. I’ve never been a slaveto my urges—I’m not about to begin now, not when I have to be composed and clear-headed for the hunt.
“I advise you to dress warm and comfortable and eat a healthy breakfast,” I tell Willow as I follow her out of my bedroom. “We’ll start the hunt at one in the afternoon, when the head start will begin. Fifteen minutes—what we agreed—nothing more. I won’t come out of my office until your head start is over.”
“Your office?” she asks, stopping in her tracks in the middle of the corridor and wheeling around to face me. “Where you have access to all your creepy cameras?”
I shrug. “You may try fucking with my security system once more, but you’ll be wasting your time. If I were you, I would use the time to put as much distance between you and me as possible.”
Willow glares at me. “If you have access to your creeper feed, so should I.”
“Nothing stopping you from setting up a creeper feed of your own, Lynch.” I lean over her to smile right in her face, where it will grind on her nerves the most. “I guess it’s a shame we’re having these hunts onmyproperty and not yours.”
“Hah—you wouldn’t last a minute in Greenleigh.”
“No, the stench would probably drive me to suicide within minutes.”
She rolls her eyes and gives me the finger. “Your insults are as limp and harmless as your dick.”
“Yes, and you can’t stop thinking about either.” I stride away in the direction of the staircase with a wave. “Use your head start well, Lynch. Make it count.”
“I’ll do my best to ruin your day.”
“You always do.”
