Alter Arlo

by Nordika Night

His name was used as the heaviest threat, a curse, a way to make the children behave and in the silent nights when some poor fucker was under his care, you could hear it whispered in the wind as a silent prayer for mercy. Mercy never came.

Karma was a bitch, and Fate was a jokester. Those pricks were always shoving us together when we least wanted it, but most needed it.

“I am chained to freedom.” “Isn’t freedom supposed to be a good thing?” “Not when you want to belong to someone.” “Who do you want to belong to?” “Nothing.” Me. I was nothing.

Wherever this life took us, we’d go together because we were two pin-pricked voodoo dolls, tied together, feeling each other’s pain in different places.

“Night and day don’t matter in perpetual darkness,” he said, his fingers drumming along the column of my throat. “I can be a daymare as much as a nightmare.”

“Today,” he said, his lips brushing my ear, “we chase the chaos.”

We chase the chaos.

Keiran became invisible. A ghost. A monster. The goblin of nightmares and the prince of forced reality.

“Two tortured souls,” his voice echoed around us. I could barely see the silhouette of Zade, but as my eyes adjusted, I saw the glistening moisture in his eyes. “One afraid of his past and one afraid of his future. Both stuck in grief over the same ghost.”

“You taste like a broken heart and a nightmare.”

“Do you see that we are not the same? That life can move in different lanes and still get to the same place? That baggage can be heavy, but it strengthens us to carry it? That light and dark are but shades of grey. You, Cadoc, are our shade of grey.”

“You telling me you love me, Kei?” My heart pattered out of control. “I’m telling you I’ll hunt you forever and howl at you for eternity.” So, love then. I smiled, happier than I’d been in…years. “You make the trip to insanity fun.”

“Something you pulled out of a nightmare and turned into a dream.”

“Ew!” Rosie shrieked. “There’s people on my boots!”

“Zaden,” he moaned my name straight into my mouth. I breathed it in, wondering if I’d ever tasted a better sound. “Finnegan,” I breathed his back. “You’re mine, too.” “Even if you drag me to Hell,” he agreed.

“Now we’re bound together for eternity. I will walk through your dreams, haunt your nightmares, stalk you in the waking world and bring you to my otherworld. You will never escape me.”

“Shackled to a freedom slave.” “Forever. Nothing and freedom, cuffed for eternity.”