Alter Arlo

by Nordika Night

It might kill me one day, but I’d rather die than live in a world without a vice.

We had freedom, even if it was dangerous freedom.

Rosie leaned in real close, the smell of moonshine and Lip Smackers potent.

“One of these days, Cadoc, Dante is going to kill us both for how bad you want to double-cross him.” Whatever. I turned my back on her, flicking my new Zippo in my pocket. I didn’t want to double-cross Dante; I had no inclination to lead this clusterfuck of a community, but I didn’t trust him.

Zade might hate me because his skewed deception of what really happened made him believe I played a part in his brother’s death. And maybe to some degree, that was true. Not by choice. I’d give everything I had to go back and change that day. But I hated him because he looked exactly like Zander Enge.

“Fuck you for dying, Zander!” I shouted at the dark lake. “Fuck you for making me love you! And fuck you for leaving me here with him!”

I’d made one promise in my life, and it was in the moment of Zander’s death. Protect my brother. Reluctantly and without grace, I had never broken that promise.

I guess that’s how I felt about Cadoc Dire. I didn’t fear him, but the thought of him made my skin crawl, repulsed me, and drove me mad.

Anger burned me up. One of these days, I’d get my revenge on Cadoc, make him pay for convincing my brother to kill our dad.

Why must I approach everything with anger? Because anger was all I knew.

Making a deal with the devil himself to just let me fuck this one person and actually get off without breaking down into an episode of pure turmoil and insanity.

I love you, Cadoc. Don’t stop. No. No. No. I had to stop, or it’d kill me now without him. He left my world and broke me, shattered me into fucked up pieces that would never fit together again. I was destroyed, hopeless, panting on the floor of my room, begging the devil to take me, kill me, end me once and for all and put me where I deserved to be.

We were both sick over the same situation, both grieving a person who reluctantly joined us together, even if the only thing tying us was Zander’s memory and our hatred. It was something. It was a tether we despised

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.

“We weren’t going to let anything happen to her! We were going to let Dante believe the marriage was happening, and then kill him before the ceremony so we could overtake Genesis for ourselves.”

“He made a formula that was slowly added to the water filtration system in Genesis. Everyone in the community has been dosed in varying increments over the past two years, building their immunity and their resilience to illness. It’s why no one ever gets sick from there!”

I’d never shared a bed with a guy before, and not that anything about this felt sexual, especially since I couldn’t even breathe without him berating me for it, but it was…more intimacy than I’d had in years. I never dated, never had, and didn’t hook up. Sex was one of those things that pissed me off because it all seemed fake. I hated fake, and I hated forced obligations, so I hadn’t indulged. And I sure as shit hadn’t shared this bed with anyone.

Despite how much we hated each other, reality and fate kept us fighting for the other’s life, always inadvertently protecting one another while refusing to admit it.

Nothing was worse than this. Nothing was worse than complete darkness, decaying flesh, piss and shit and vomit, and the worst villain to ever enter my life: my mind.

The influence and vastness of my own thinking process was worse than Arlo Thorne. Not only had that hope diminished entirely, but the lack of reason and the inability to self-soothe made everything a hundred times worse. Without an understanding as to why Arlo had taken me and thrown me in a bunker, the more time I had to come up with possible reasons.

“Good and bad are subjective. Good people do bad things for good reasons. Bad people do bad things for reasons that are good to them.”

“You tempt me with my own game, Cadoc Dire.” His voice was the soundtrack of night terrors, the timbre of it slithering up my spine to become an infestation in my brain. “You hunt the hunter on his own grounds?”

“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.”

“Do not fear it, Chaos Chaser,” Keiran whispered into my ear. “Without your pain, we would not exist. Without your grief, we could not be. Without your loss, I would not appeal to you.”

“Want to haunt him?” “No,” Zade said. “Too late,” Keiran told him. “You already do. Every day. Every time he sees you. Every time you speak, move, walk or talk, you haunt him. Just like you haunt yourself.”

I couldn’t let him give up, because if he gave up, I’d give up.

“I’m not enough of someone to have a thing anymore.”

“I think he might be dead.” I stopped my retreat. “Who?” “The one with the skeleton paint.” Fuck. No. No. No. I couldn’t allow that. I couldn’t let Cadoc lose two boyfriends in one lifetime. “Find out for me. Please, Finn.” He nodded. It was curt and abrupt, and then he was gone.

Chase the pain. Chase the chaos. Chase away Keiran.

“I’ll see you soon, Cadoc Dire.” He backed away, evading me. “Then we’ll chase rapture.”

“We’ll figure this out,” I told him. “Together.” I smacked his cheeks. “I fucking pick you too, Zaden. Every goddamn time. I pick you.” I hauled him to his feet and pushed him toward the truck. And I’d continue to pick him for as long as my ratchet-ass heart pumped blood.

“I see you in these eyes.” He pointed to me in the photo. “I recognize your anger.” That didn’t make me feel any better. That’s all I’d ever been known for. I was more than just angry, wasn’t I? There

“I want to be scared.” “Why?” “Because it means something.” On the verge of running, screaming, crying, or blowing up, I met his eyes again, waiting for him to put me out of my misery. Waiting for Finn to unleash me, setting me loose on whatever emotion he was about to stab me with. It means something. “I’m scared of losing you. Of missing you. Of wanting you more than you want me. Of pushing you away when you get tired of my phobias. Of having you and losing you in the same lifetime. I…I don’t think I’d survive it.”

He was real. He was real. He was real. He was real, and he tasted like mouthwash and cleanliness. His lips parted, my tongue taking no prisoners. I needed him for my sanity, and no matter what happened in this fucked up world with this fucked up person, I’d pick him, too.

“When and if you’re ready, Finnegan, I want you in every way I can have you.” He moaned, but there was a tension to the tone of it. “Every fucking way. Okay? If you only ever want to kiss me again, I want it. If you’ll let me suck your cock, I want to do it. If you want to hold hands or just sit in silence, I want that, too.” I lifted my hips, our cocks grinding together. “And if you want to fuck, I want you in whatever position makes you want me back. I’ll fuck you. You fuck me. All the goddamn ways, Finnegan. I just want you. Don’t disappear on me.”

Please don’t disappear.

I’d never been religious, and being in here somehow made me feel closer to the devil, but for whatever reason, my devil didn’t have horns and a pitchfork. Mine had skeleton paint and a bloody nose.

Whether what Dante said was the full truth or not, I didn’t give a fuck that Keiran was some version of Arlo. I spent my time being all bummy about it, and now I was just fucking ready to move on with him. He might be housed inside the body of a lunatic, but he was loonier. He was a poet and a riddler, a dreamer and a stalker, and he was mine.

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

“Like half of something, but no longer trapped in freedom.” Keiran pulled back, his skeletal eyes boring into mine. “Not trapped anymore?” I shook my head, declaring whatever fucked up feeling I felt for him in the only way I knew how. “You’re mine now. Shackled to me with no freedom.” “I belong to nothing,” Keiran echoed; I was nothing—the whole of nothing. “And nothing lives inside me.” When his crazed, wide smile split the paint around his lips and cheeks, I matched it. I hadn’t smiled in so long that it felt unnatural, but unnatural was my favourite feeling now.

How were we supposed to win when the enemy and the one I was trying to save were the same person?

“Hey, Nothing!” Keiran’s voice came from somewhere behind me. “What’s up, Kei?” Cadoc shouted back, laughing. “How’s my showmanship?” “Fucking perfect!” “Hide, Cadoc Dire! I’ll find you in the rubble!”

So, I became angry. I embodied it, lived in it, wielded it as a weapon and a shield until it was all I knew. So, yeah, I might have been angry, but it was because no one ever fucking thought to check on me, too.

“And what if he does shut Arlo out? Or makes him revert or whatever it’s called? Like, if what he said is true, and they’re all there as protectors or whatever, what happens when they have no Arlo to protect? Do they protect each other? Or…like, is Arlo the main focus?”

I think Keiran knew a lot of things without knowing why he knew them. Finn might be the brains, but Keiran was the subconscious.

He wanted to push Arlo to the back so that Finn and Keiran could always be in control.

I didn’t even want Dante to be in control of him, and when he’d made it clear in front of a gathered crowd that he only answered to me…fuck, that was a high I’d never felt before. This ghostly, dead-and-can’t-die man had chosen to tether himself to me. Me. A lowlife piece of shit with a bad attitude covered in nonchalance. What had I ever done to deserve Keiran?

“Because when my lights turn off, your face keeps me here.”

Keiran was a living nightmare. With the skeleton paint on his face and hands, the scars on his body, the old red rings etched into the skin of his wrists, and the paleness of his skin under the moonlit night, he was a ghost come to life. The phantom of my life. The eyes in the vents. The stalker I stalked back. The crazed poet who saved me from my grief.

I love you, Cadoc. Don’t stop. I smiled. Chase death. I was. I love you, Cadoc. Don’t stop. I love you, Zan. “I love you, Cadoc. Don’t stop! I love you, Cadoc. Don’t stop. I love you, Cadoc. Don’t stop living!”