Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (86 page)

I shrunk down with him. “I know I’m a failure,” I said. “You’re not… you’re perfect.”

He rubbed my hand and patted it before picking up his hamburger again. “I’m not perfect but thank you, you’re so sweet. I think some of the family sees me as a failure because I don’t have that cruel streak in me and I don’t go crazy and lash out – well I didn’t anyways.” A half-smile appeared on his face. “I kinda snapped when Felix was insulting you. I kinda tore one of his ears off.”

I stopped chewing and stared at him blankly. “You tore Felix’s ear off?” I quickly swallowed and blinked, feeling rather perplexed.

Jack’s eyes turned up to the ceiling. I laughed and drew him in for a kiss. It was hard to kiss him because we were both smiling though so I decided to act like a goof and I licked his cheek.

This got a giggle out of him and he kissed the corner of my mouth. “I love you. Did I tell you that today?”

“I love you more.” I kissed him back. “Or at least I think that’s what this feeling is…” I scowled a bit and Jack pulled away from me. “I don’t think I even know what being in love feels like. Maybe that isn’t it at all?”

Jack laughed at my scowling face and patted it. “Just don’t think about it too much. I don’t know either, maybe no one does? All that matters is you feel good and you’re relaxed.”

Suddenly Barry appeared behind Jack; he was towering over him with a wide grin. His pointed teeth showing, the top and bottom row perfectly folded into each other like weaved fingers. “You’re not capable of loving anything,” Barry taunted. “You’ll just hurt him like you hurt everyone else. You loved King Silas and now he thinks you’re just a lying whore.
Lying whore, lying whore!
” As Barry sang I jerked my face away from Jack and snatched the plastic container of food. As I got up Jack put his hand up to stop me but I stalked away towards the darker corners of the room. Barry singing and singing, his voice steadily getting louder and more piercing.

“What’s wrong?” Jack called after me.

‘Lying whore, lying whore!’

“He needs to shut up!” I snarled. I heard Barry laugh behind me, his taunting voice felt like sandpaper scraping over my ear drums.

I put the plastic container down and picked up an old mantle clock that we had found in one of the cardboard boxes. I turned around and when I saw Barry giving me that stupid grin I clenched my teeth hard, and with all of my strength, I threw it right at his head.

I heard Jack yell, and right before it hit him Barry ducked. Though as his attention was diverted away from me I picked up the hotplate I had been cooking my food on and flung it at him too.

This one did hit. As Jack grabbed my arm I watched Barry’s face snap back and he was thrown backwards. He landed hard on the ground and I laughed at him as Jack pulled me back.

“Now shut up!” I yelled at him. Though as he shut up my other friends started to scream over what I had done. Instead of Barry’s taunting chant I was now assaulted by my small friends crying and shrieking, hollering over the fact I had injured Barry.

It was too much, it was too overwhelming.

“Shut up! All of you!” I screamed. I tried to wrench my arm away from Jack but he wouldn’t let go. “All of you, just go to your room! Leave me alone!”

“Sami’s just like Jasper! Sami’s just like Jasper!” they all chanted in unison, their small yet booming voices were assaulting against my brain, and the contents of their words poisoned me. I found myself screaming from frustration and my hands went to my head. As I crumbled under the sensory overload I started tearing at my hair.

“Sanguine… Sanguine…” Jack whispered. “It’s okay, close your eyes.” I felt something push against my lips, it was Xanax. He had picked them up for me a few days ago. I took the pills and chewed them and closed my eyes like he asked. The voices wouldn’t stop though and the darkness only seemed to give them physical form.

“They aren’t going to stop,” I screamed. “They won’t stop until I do what they fucking ask. They’re only my friends until they want something. Just like Crow!” Fuck, just like Crow.

It was Crow all over again. Yelling and yelling until I did what he said. Constantly harassing me until I obeyed him and only then would he be my friend again. Only then would he be quiet.

“What are they asking you to do, hun?” Jack whispered. He started making shushing noises while he rubbed my back.

“They want me to go and kill someone… so I can make the mouse real. They hate me because I haven’t made the stupid mouse real,” I said to Jack. “The stuffed animals… they want to become real and until I make them real they’re in agony. They’re trapped in darkness, confinement, like I was at Jasper’s. I can’t let that happen to them, Jack. You don’t know how it fucking feels!”

“Shhh, shhh,” Jack said soothingly. “So… you’re saying that your friends are constantly yelling at you because you haven’t gone out to kill someone?”

I nodded.

“And how does killing someone make the stuffed animals real, hunny?”

I got up. Jack tried to stop me but I took his hand to urge him to get up as well. “I’ll show you,” I said, and the voices started to die down as I led Jack towards the metal door in the back of the room. The one I had asked him not to go into.

Jack held my hand but he seemed hesitant. “What – what are you showing me?”

“How they become real,” I said back. “How I make them real. This is where I lock them when I need my time with you. They go back to their physical bodies, well, except Barry. Barry has always been real so he’s always been intact.”

“In – tact?” Jack said nervously. “What do you mean…”

I pulled the handle on the door and shoved it open.

Hanging from the ropes I had tied to the support beams hung my friends, their human heads still sewn onto their stuffed animal bodies. All of them were now green and grey and leaking fluid which now stained the concrete below them in dark puddles. Their eyes had all been eaten by rats now, and the maggots had infested their flesh, and the old maggots were now buzzing flies around the corpses. Their stuffed parts were rancid and smelling as well. Their colourful fur, some purple, blue, greens, others browns and whites, all had been stained a putrid brown, but I could still see some of their colours.

I beamed at them, my lovely friends with their little paws and little suits and admired them like one would admire a beautiful piece of art. Mouse and Julia looked the most beautiful, their skin and flesh had started to slide off of their faces, their yellow-stained skulls now peeking through the slippery meat.

I turned to Jack with a smile, and saw him staring forward with his eyes wide open as was his mouth. He looked so in shock that when a fly landed on his face he didn’t even blink.

Jack’s mouth opened and closed like his mind was commanding him to speak but his mouth was unable to form words. He seemed to have become a statue in my doorway, unmoving and lost.

“That’s…” I saw Jack’s throat constrict, before a funny look appeared on his face.

“Sanguine, that’s beautiful.”

Now it was my turn to be shocked. I looked at him like he had just grown five heads.

“Really?”

Jack nodded and took a step over to them. He put his hands on his knees and looked down. “It’s like art. The most… grisly, twisted art I have ever seen. When I get home I’m going to paint this for us. We’ll hang it in our living room. I wish I could paint it now… you’re an artist and I bet you didn’t even realize it.”

I shrugged, feeling heat come to my face, his flattery was making me feel embarrassed. “Thank you… I never thought you would like it… or understand.”

Jack nodded. “I do understand. You sewed their heads to the stuffed animals and after that… they become real to you, don’t they?”

“Yeah,” I whispered. “I have others I haven’t created yet… I didn’t feel like I needed to once I met you. You’re my boyfriend now, and that makes you my best friend too.”

He put an arm around me and pulled me close to him. “You only have one stuffed animal left?”

I nodded and since the smell was horrendous, I turned away from the metal room and closed it. Then Jack and I went to back to the main part of the house. “Just the mouse, his name is Ralph.”

I leaned down to pick up the small mouse but the moment I touched it a scream tore through my head. Immediately I retracted my hand, my jaw clenching as the gut-wrenching sound echoed around me. It was a horrible noise, a scream I knew I had heard somewhere but my brain refused to tell me where.

“Do you think the voices will stop yelling at you… if you make him alive?” Jack picked up the mouse and held him with both hands. Obviously he was unable to hear the screaming.

“That’s what they want…” I said. I sat back down with the food and Jack followed me, still holding the mouse in his hand. “That’s what Barry wants.”

Jack put the mouse down beside Barry who sat on the foot of the bed Jack and I shared.

“Well… why don’t we?” Jack said slowly. He looked up at me and I could see the hesitation on his face. I knew he wasn’t sure if he was saying the right thing. “If it will stop them from bothering you. I mean… it’s just one more person right?”

“I guess…” The mouse was sitting beside Barry, a little grey mouse with pink paws and feet and whiskers too. It was an old mouse but he looked new next to Barry. Barry had been through a lot in our years together, he was old and worn and his stuffing was warped in some places.

I still loved him a lot though; I think Barry the physical bear wasn’t the same as Barry the boy. My bear would never say such cruel things to me.

“You would be okay with that?” I asked

Jack picked up Barry and brought him over to our table. He set him down beside our food and sat down himself. “Anything we can do to give you some peace. We’re chimeras, we’re princes. We’re allowed to kill whoever we want.”

I was silent after he spoke. I finished my food and he finished his, Barry the bear looming over both of us with the kind black eyes that the friend inside of my head never had. In the distance my little friends played with one another, though every once in awhile I could hear them whispering to each other that I would be putting them away soon.

And that I was a bad friend, who didn’t even care that the mouse was in pain. That and many other insults, it seemed just like before the friends in my head were starting to become enemies.

I looked at Barry the boy, sitting on the bed with his cigarette, and saw his black outfit. Though it was changing too – the black fabric had a sheen on it, it was almost like – it was starting to grow feathers.

He was starting to become someone else too.

“Okay,” I agreed after our food was finished. Jack had been sitting politely watching me eat, a napkin crushed in one of his hands.

My boyfriend smiled at me and started putting all of our trash into one of the bags, and set aside the plastic containers so we could get the deposit back. As he rose he kissed my forehead and petted my hair back.

“We’ll have fun. I’d love to see my chimera in action.”

I wasn’t sure how much truth was behind those words.

That evening found me in Jack’s arms again. We were laying in bed together, our shirts forgotten on the floor but our pants and shoes still on. Jack was half on me, his fingers rubbing and teasing my nipple and his tongue joined with mine in our mouths.

Jack broke his lips away from mine. I closed my eyes and stifled a groan when I felt his mouth on my nipple. I leaned back and enjoyed it, before it started feeling uncomfortably good.

“Okay…” I gasped and immediately he removed his mouth. Then with a smile he gently blew air onto my erect nipple, the wet from his mouth making it sting with cold.

“When are you going to take me again,” Jack said in a growled voice. He bit the corner of his lip and took my nipple between his fingers again. He pinched it, which only made the tightness worse. He was having a wonderful time finding and then exploiting all of my sensitive places.

I frowned but he only smiled back and joined our lips again. I could smell the lust radiating off of him, it was usually at this point in time that I started trying to cool things down between us. We could only make out for so long before he started needing more, something I couldn’t give to him right now.

I pulled away. “I don't know if I can ever do it when I’m not… in that crazy state,” I said to him. I started to get up and Jack took the hint and slid off of me. “It really makes me uncomfortable.”

Jack got up with me. “I understand – you just drive me crazy,” he said with a mischievous smile, we both started putting our shirts back on. “I just want to be closer to you and be intimate. What we did in the abandoned house was fun and all, but it wasn’t intimate at all. I want to make love to you and with you.”

My ears burned I mumbled an apology and started looking around for my tin of cigarettes.

Jack laughed. I felt him behind me, before he put his arms around my waist and kissed my neck. “I love you, you’re such a silly muffin. Especially when I make you nervous.”

I grunted at him. “I don’t think you’re taking my mental issues seriously. I’m not putting off sex because I’m being silly or a
muffin
as you call it. It’s because I’m dangerous and the last time I fell into that state I almost raped you, after I murdered our brother. I even showed you the severed heads in my room and you say it’s beautiful?” I turned around and gave him an exasperated look as I put a cigarette into my mouth. “Something tells me you’re not taking this seriously.”