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.

“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.

“I appreciate you remembering you’re alive long enough to help me tonight.”

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.

“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.”

“He’s not crazy,” I defended, even though he most certainly was crazy. “He’s my stalker.”

“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.”

“Yeah.” I smoked. “Don’t die now. I can’t…I can’t live in this fucked up world without hating you.” “So, stop getting fucked up at the lake and trying to drown yourself. I can’t live without hating you either. It’s all I’ve fucking got.”

“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’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.”

I’d shackle his wrists and ankles, put a damn collar around his neck, and make a deal with a crossroads demon to bond our souls if that’s what it took.

Cadoc was Keiran’s master now, and no one else.

“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.”

“This prissy bitch ain’t prissy. Just a bitch.

This was the fucked up part of life; the decision to save the man I hated but needed or the evil man who created the persona of an alter I was falling for. Never, in all my worst and best imaginings, did I think my life would come to this.

“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.”

“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.”