21. Not Even Death, Remiel
21
NOT EVEN DEATH, REMIEL
REMIEL
I always thought that when I went mad, it’d be this obvious trip to insanity, like I’d recognize when it was happening. I’ve been bracing for it all my life, so it’s not like I didn’t see it coming. I just didn’t see it coming like that .
It wasn’t a slow build or an iconic downfall. It was fast and jarring, there in an instant, and poisoning my mind faster than I could apply the antidote. It was like a wasp sting. It hurt so fucking badly when it happened, and I was aware it had happened, and then… the burn spread. The sting of it was so harsh that I never stood a chance of fighting it off. Healing it. I turned black and couldn’t find any light.
I wonder if that’s what it was like for my brothers. My dad.
My youngest brother struggled for so long, trying to avoid the curse but not strong enough to withstand it. Gregory Malone pushed him over the edge. He differed from me, but still snapped in a second.
Our middle brother seemed fine one day but not the next. He flipped on a dime, but his death didn’t come until weeks later. Because we watched him. We protected him. We knew, and we tried our hardest. In the end, it wasn’t enough.
My dad was happy. He reached middle age and defied the odds of so many Sauder men before him. I think he was hopeful. He felt defiant and powerful that he’d beaten those odds, and because of that pride, he didn’t notice when it snuck up on him and ripped it all away.
But me? I had business to accomplish, and my business was not yet done when the curse infiltrated my mind and turned me suicidal.
I killed Reeven Matterson, but that’s not why.
I fell for my rapist, but that’s not why.
After my beers with Cain, I laid awake in his spare bed and couldn’t turn my mind off. Because everything came at me all at once.
My mom is chipped and brainwashed. My brothers are dead. My dad is gone. My uncles and cousins are dwindling by the year. My life has no purpose. I made a stupid bargain with Vile House because, like my dad, I thought I could stop it. I thought I could entice a killer into murdering me. And that’s what set me off. Krypt won’t murder me.
And I no longer want him to.
Because my newfound hope for life became more important to me than ending the Sauder curse, and that makes me selfish like I’ve never been selfish before. I fooled myself into thinking I could enjoy him until death eventually claimed me, but I’ve been lying to myself for days now.
I’m not just enjoying him. I’m dragging him down with me. I’m choosing him over saving my family.
The flipped switch of my priorities overwhelmed me.
I left Cain’s house before dawn, slinking through the streets of Moros until I found what I was looking for. A nurse. A guy who is a respectable professional at the asylum but deals prescription medication in the dead of night. I went to him for something to numb me, knock me out, turn me off for a few days.
And it was there, in the back of my head, the knowledge that I shouldn’t trust a nurse who steals medications from insane asylum patients and medical cabinets. I knew. I knew there was a very high chance that what he gave me wasn’t what he claimed it was. That’s why I waited. I didn’t take the pill. I cried on a bench on Death Row with the crows as my allies, and then I went to work to snap myself out of it.
All the while, that white pill that apparently promised numbness was in my pocket, taunting me with a deep sleep uninterrupted by overthinking thoughts. A reprieve from the madness swirling uncontrollably inside me.
I was born doomed. My aunt told me that when my mom birthed me and saw that I was a boy, her face fell. Mom knew. She knew having a boy was a death sentence, so from the very beginning, she treated me as one. She loved me in increments. Instead of letting me capture her heart, she protected it from the eventual heartbreak she’d feel. I don’t blame her. If that many Sauder boys died early, I’d do the same thing if I found out I had a boy.
Actually, I’d never have kids. I’d end the Sauder bloodline altogether.
But because of my gender, my parents never made me important. My teachers knew I’d kill myself at some point, so they never put much stock in my education or advancement. I mean, what’s the point when it’s all leading nowhere, right? I don’t blame them either.
I’ve never had a meaningful relationship, have only one true friend who doesn’t believe in curses, and have a strained relationship with my remaining brother. A good but distant relationship with my sister.
Until Krypt. Who made me his world. For deranged reasons, sure, but it was the first time I’d ever been important. And I think that’s why I want him. Because I’m Remiel Sauder, unimportant and destined to die, and apparently, I’ll take attention in any form I can get it.
And Krypt’s attention is all-consuming.
I hate how weak it makes me that the first chink in my well-maintained armour was him walking away from me on the stairs. The first kiss of poison stung my brain when his back tattoo disappeared upstairs.
The poison spread when I talked to Cain and admitted that my entire foundation had changed because of a man who turned his back on me.
The bright spot in all of it was what Riot said to me. About how Krypt doesn’t know how to feel feelings, so he’d need a minute to process. But while I gave him that minute to process, I also processed.
I’m a sick man with an attention issue.
I developed a level of codependency with a killer who treated me like his property.
I put my life in his hands, and he protected it against my will.
I went from being Remiel on a mission to protect my family to Remiel selfishly obsessed with my own needs. And when Krypt showed up at the shop, I got stupidly hopeful again.
Krypt has a trigger word.
I have one now, too.
Important.
Am I important to you?
He couldn’t even answer, and in the blink of an eye, that spreading poison dripped into every fissure of my brain and spread through my bloodstream.
I swallowed the pill because if I’m not important, there’s no point anymore. That’s what my poisoned mind told me.
I just wanted to scare him. Force him to tell me how he feels about me.
I felt weird less than a minute later, knowing that nurse fucked me over. I had no idea what I actually took, but the honest fear in Krypt’s eyes made me regret swallowing it. Because right there at that table, with his phone pressed to his ear and the words ‘suicide pill’ coming from his mouth, I knew I was important to him.
I regretted it. He was right. It is regrets that go through our minds in our moment of death, and right then, I regretted nothing more than scaring him.
I told him that wasn’t our dynamic, and I meant it. He’s supposed to scare me. I’m not supposed to scare him.
“Hi, bestie.”
I turn my head in slow motion, the room taking a second too long to shift focus with my eyes. Next to my hospital bed, a young guy with ice-chip eyes full of absolute craziness stares at me. I don’t think he knows he’s smiling, but it’s there on his face, making him eerily friendly.
My throat burns and my voice is weak when I ask, “Bestie?” I cough, and this guy holds up a cup with a straw to my lips. He sits right on my bed, hip digging into mine, not understanding personal space or indifference. We don’t even know each other.
“Yeah,” he says happily. “I knew it from the moment you came to our house. We’re meant to be besties, and I’ve waited so long to tell you. Literally forever.”
I take a sip when he forces the straw through my lips. “Do I know you?”
He points to his hair, tinted bubblegum pink, like that should mean something to me. When his hand waves around in front of his face, his smile stretches impossibly wider. He bends down, nose literally touching mine, and whispers, “Pink mask. Kyd Kopitar! Nice to officially make your acquaintance, bestie.”
I try to pull back, but he leans in with me. “Oh. Uh, hi.” Kyd. The energetic one.
Kyd sets the water down and forces me to move over so he can lie next to me. He crosses his ankles, sighs at the ceiling, and puts his arm behind his head. “So, I’ve always wondered. What’s death like?”
I attempted to kill myself, and this is not how I thought my wake-up would go. The entire length of his body is pressed against mine, and he’s humming something under his breath. His energy is optimistic and happy, and even though I don’t deserve it, I want it. He feels nice to be around while my mind is so dark.
“Did I die?” I ask.
“Yep. For like three whole minutes. Maybe four. I stopped counting the seconds out loud when Ransom told me to shut up. He’s rude like that, but I love him. He’s my other bestie.”
I bet everyone is his bestie. “I don’t know,” I answer him. “I think I got trapped in some place that told me how stupid I was. Like it shoved my regrets at me and nothing more.” I cough again, and Kyd’s hand lands on my chest to rub gentle circles. I… weird.
Kyd nods his head on my pillow like that makes sense to him. “I figured.”
“Did you?”
“Well, this one time, I tried to drown myself in Gamble Lake just to see if I could see Hell, and when my breath stopped and my brain died, all I could think about was how I regretted not getting my dick tattooed. I’d always wanted to, but I’d never done it because I couldn’t come up with the most awesomest design. So that ran through my head, and I think it’s what brought me back to life. It tracks.”
He’s ridiculous. I don’t even… “Did you do it?”
“Get my dick tattooed?”
“Yeah.”
He sits up. “Wanna see?” He puts his fingers into the waistband of his bright yellow pants.
“Uh, maybe later.”
“Right. Right.” He offers me another megawatt smile before lying down again. “What’d you regret? No dick tattoo?”
I laugh despite the direness of my situation. “No dick tattoo.”
“I know a guy,” he says. “I’ll hook ya up.”
“Thanks.” When I cough again, his hand comes back to my chest, relaxing me enough to admit the truth. “I regret almost succumbing to my family curse, but mostly, I regret how much it’d hurt my brother and how bad I scared Krypt.”
Kyd snorts and laughs way harder than someone should after a suicide attempt. “Yeah, those losers are currently locked in the basement because they went fucking feral.”
“What?”
“Lil baby Ghosty and Krypty. We had to lock them up in order to save you. They were just getting in the way and being irrational because of their love for you.”
Love.
I shake my head, unwilling to believe that.
“What’s it like to be loved?” Kyd asks.
For whatever reason, that’s my tipping point. My eyes well with tears and my chest cracks open, the poison of the past two days spilling out of me and rendering me weak and broken. He doesn’t say anything as I cry, but he moves to his side and cuddles me like… like we’re actually besties.
I let him because I need it.
Dr. Cooper comes to check on me, asking about where I got that pill. I keep my mouth closed about it until my brother storms into my hospital room, demanding to know who gave it to me and why the fuck I did it. Kyd stays by my side the whole time, flashing his teeth at my brother like he’d rip out his throat for upsetting me. Guess I really do have a new bestie.
I told him the name of the nurse who gave me the pill and explained that I went for something else. Soren left as Ghost, eyes shrouded in the promise of death. Cain came by, bringing me something to eat from the Midnight Diner, crying with me and promising me that I’m stronger than my family curse. He was mad at me for not going to him and made me promise to always go to him. I don’t think it was empty.
I talked to a psychiatrist. About suicide and my mental state. I got a therapist. I got placed on a seventy-two-hour watch. I’ve tried it all before, the therapy and the help, but maybe this time will work.
Krypt never came.
Dr. Cooper sits at the side of my bed. He kicked Kyd out, and now I’m propped up on pillows, unsure what to make of this man or why a pharmaceutical scientist has such an interest in my case.
“They call me Director,” he says, draping his lab coat over the back of his chair.
“Who does?”
“The Vile Boys.”
“Oh.” I frown, unsure what that means. “You’re… what?”
“Vile House has been in my family for generations. My grandfather and my dad were both Director during their lives, and now it’s mine. I own and run Vile House, Remi. Since you’re now with one of my boys, it’s time you learn who we are.”
Literally nothing is what I think it is. My whole life is a fib. Moros is a mystery.
“My great-grandad used to work at the old asylum here. He was a psychologist, and he helped make Vile House what it is today.”
“Which is what, exactly?” I ask.
“A family secret, I suppose. Just another dark society in the history of Moros,” he says with a sigh. “But I like to think we do good. Good for Moros and the residents of Moros.”
“Virtue in lives exchanged,” I whisper.
He offers me a small smile. “My boys might be a bit unconventional, but they understand what virtue is. It’s their mind frames and genetic makeup that give them the ability to create goodness with vile acts. It’s not perfect, but I think Moros is better for it. Do you?”
I’d never really thought about it before. But Krypt and the rest of the Vile Boys helped me end a cult that did nothing but harm, so maybe I see his point. They got a sick thrill out of it, but the town will prosper without the Matter Cult. Vile House has always been a silent partner, a place to go for help, even if it’s feared.
“I think I do.”
He smiles again. “Remi, I created that pill you were given.”
“Why?” I gasp.
“It’s supposed to be for medically assisted death that isn’t sanctioned by the hospital. Or, in the case of Vile House, it’s a safeguard. If the ten are ever taken, they always have it as an option. But listen to me, Remi. None of them ever, in the history of Vile House, even before my specific pill, have taken it. They’re stronger than that. But… I worried about Krypt over the past few days.”
My throat clogs. “Is he okay?”
“He’s very much not okay, but he will be.” Director sighs. “He’s a complicated person. I’ve been working with his doctors for years, and none of them have ever come up with a perfect diagnosis for him. Krypt sees that as a fault because he wants to understand himself, and since his bargain with you, he’s… I think he feels seen and understood for the first time.”
“By me?”
He nods. “Yes, but that also scares him. He’s hidden himself so well that drawing out all his parts takes time. Krypt has two settings when it comes to feelings. Absolute numbness, or complete overwhelm. You overwhelmed him, and when he gets overwhelmed, he’s not a pretty person to be around.”
“He doesn’t want to be around me anyway. He hasn’t…”
“Would you believe that’s for your own good?” he asks. Director stands, and the sympathetic smile on his face breaks me even more. “He asked me to give you this.” He sets an envelope on the bedside table. “Vile House is at your back, Remi. Now and always. You struck a bargain, and we will always see that through. Rest up.” With another smile, he leaves me alone in my room.
I’m terrified to open the envelope. Terrified that it will be a goodbye.
It takes me an hour of pure anxiety to even touch the envelope, and an hour more to open it. When I see the purple calling card, I cry so hard I soak my gown and stain the front of the card.
Please don’t break me , I pray before flipping the card over.
Not even death, Remiel.