2. Rest In Paralysis
2
REST IN PARALYSIS
GHOST
Halloween in Moros isn’t something to be taken lightly. A holiday that signifies the end of life in the form of summer and the start of death in the form of winter, bringing Pagan, Gaelic, and Celtic believers to our small town. Dressed in traditional costumes from the roots of Samhain, crowns made of sticks and branches, wispy robes and long willowy dresses fill the streets, heading to the cemetery for the celebrations.
Samhain. The signifying switch in seasons that leads us into the ‘dark half’ of the year. I’m a believer. I feel the darkness creeping in, but I’m not resisting its pull. I’m embracing it, letting it consume me, inviting it to fill me even more. Because I’m someone who is affected by the seasons, the weather, and old beliefs.
“What’s wrong with you?” Krypt asks, handing me his joint. “The weather?”
I’m fucking humming on the inside. Agitated and alive, but unsure how the combination is going to snap. The rain breathes something into my bones, making me cold and dangerous, but the thunder and lightning amplify the feeling, creating an electric buzz in every cell of my body. I feel the switch in the season, the life of summer fading after harvest, ready to welcome the death of winter and the darkness of the days. The combination of Samhain, as well as the busy streets of Moros, brimming with costumes ranging from slutty get-ups to traditional Pagan, has me on edge. In a good way. Alive and dark about it. Sinister blended with gleeful.
I take the joint and inhale the taste of weed, letting it out through shaky lips. I ignore his question because there’s nothing wrong with me and fuck him for asking. “Where’s Remi?”
Krypt looks across the street. We’re sitting on the roof of The Midnight Diner with an unobstructed view through the windows of The Ambient Raven, but I don’t see my brother through the glass. Dusk makes the interior lights of all the shops turn on, aiding the streetlights and decorations in turning our main street, Death Row, as ominous as the night will be.
Then I see Remi coming from the back of the shop to the front counter. He hesitates by his cello, touching it fondly but refusing to take it off the stand. My heart recognizes his pain, but I don’t hurt for him. I recognize his turmoil, knowing he wants to play, but also knowing it hurts him to play alone. I haven’t played music with my brother since before I left The Ambient Raven to initiate for The Misfits. I long for it, but I fear it, too. Afraid that the combination of our sorrow, blending through notes and stringed instruments, will be too much for me to bear. I’m already jigsawed and shattered, barely glued together, and if we play together, I’ll turn to dust and finally meet the death I’ve been toying with for years.
Because music is a way to speak without having to confess aloud.
“You miss it?” Krypt asks, nodding at the shop.
Yeah, I miss it, but he doesn’t deserve to know that. I miss the energy of the family business and spending time with my brother. But I’m not built for all that. I’m made to create music, not talk about it with the public. Remi is more suited to the business, and Cain is the piece that brings the place to completion. Not me. As much as that irks me to admit. So, I don’t admit it. I ignore Krypt’s second question and move on.
I take another hit, handing it back to Krypt while we both spy on my brother. I hate that they’re together, but I don’t hate all of it. Krypt is a terrible person with no sense of boundaries, but who am I to judge? He’s good for Remi because he refuses to let him die, and that’s about all I could ever ask from someone. I don’t want the responsibility of my brother’s life on my hands, so having Krypt take the burden does me a favour anyway. I’m selfish, but Krypt is possessive, so he works better. Balance, I guess.
“You feel guilty for raping him yet?” I ask, side-eying him as lightning webs across the sky, charging me from the inside out.
Krypt simply glares at me with annoyance, barely a glance, before his eyes snap back to The Ambient Raven. Cain says something to Remi before leaving the shop to head home, where I know someone in a blue mask will be stalking him.
“Don’t let him out of your sight tonight,” I tell Krypt, standing.
“Don’t tell me how to own him.”
“You don’t fucking own him.”
Another glare, all his inner beasts coming to life. I grin at that and leave him on the roof, climbing down the back emergency ladder of The Midnight Diner. The Neon Demon Nightclub isn’t open yet, but later tonight, it’ll be as busy as the cemetery, where the harvest festivals take place. Moros is split on Halloween—half of us ritualistic and the other half all about the party. Some of us are even all about the fun for the kids. But pretty much all of us believe in the horror of it, the spooks and the scares, and the thinned veil between our world and the one we’re heading to after.
Which is another reason I’m amplified tonight. A peek into the afterlife I’ve been taunting? Yeah, that intrigues me, and I know just the place to experience it.
* * *
“Hello, Dad.” I smile at his grave, nestled between my brothers, uncles, and cousins.
It’s quiet here, with the rituals taking place on the opposite side of the cemetery. But I have no interest in them tonight.
Stepping over my dad and brother, I look at the plot reserved for me and Remi. A headstone already sits in place, blank except for the Sauder last name. I smile at it, feeling at home here in my eventual eternal resting place. There’s a certain comfort in knowing where my body will end up, but the uncertainty of not knowing the state of my dead body is what titillates me.
How will I die? Will I be mutilated and unrecognizable, or will I be whole and at peace? I’m already a ghost in my living life, and a part of me knows I won’t go to the grave silently. I’ll fight my way there, holding onto the allure of death until the very last second when I’m finally forced to give in and accept that Death is a more victorious opponent than me. Until then, our game will continue to be a race—her trying to lure me there and me luring her to try harder. A worthy set of opponents.
Squatting at the end of my burial site, I lightly brush my hand over the dewy grass, wondering when it’ll be disrupted by digging a six-foot hole. It’s a nice plot near the edge of the forest, close to where Krypt assaulted Remi’s throat over a dead girl’s body, the treeline encroaching on the place reserved for me. I don’t mind. I live and breathe for Moros, so if its tree roots want to keep me company in my coffin, I’ll allow it.
I wonder what the sky will look like from my supine position. Might as well look. Standing, I turn my back to it, spreading my arms wide. With calmness in my mind and the lightning all around me, I fall backwards with my eyes closed just to be dramatic.
But the grass and dirt don’t meet me with a hard impact. I fall through them, my heart jumping into my throat, and my morbid mind suspended in contrast, unsure if I’m happy to fall into my grave or pissed at it for tricking me.
The sod fooled me, the grass so alive I didn’t realize it'd already been disturbed. When I sink through it, letting it blanket my back, I panic internally but do nothing externally to prevent myself from falling into the hole already dug. I don’t grasp at the roots protruding from the sides, and I don’t turn my body to catch my fall. With a thump, I land on the grass I dragged in here, my ears ringing and my body jolted. Six feet of dirt surrounds me on all sides, the roots sneaking in to tickle me in a few places, caressing me and welcoming me home.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I’m in here, underground, so I might as well get a real feel for what it’ll be like. My heartbeat disrupts my attempt at deadness, thudding in my chest hard enough to prove I’m still alive.
Why do I feel so dead inside?
“Knew you’d look good down there. Comfy, sweetheart?”
I sigh and close my eyes. I do feel comfortable, actually. I’m not sure if it’s because death appears comforting or because my life is already so brutal and melancholy that any distortion in the monotony of my thoughts puts me at ease. I’m complicated that way. I love myself—I hate my mind. It’s an internal war I’ve been waging for years, doing everything possible to mask my puzzle pieces in confidence and only show the outside world my prideful ego. Moros needs a ghost, and I am that ghost, but I need somewhere else to run, a different escape, because my mind is no longer a safe place.
“Can you see them?” Riot asks from above. “It is Samhain.”
I open my eyes and look left, wondering how many inches of soil block me from my brothers’ dead bodies. I look right, wondering the same about my dad’s casket of bones. Their souls aren’t here, and to be honest, I wouldn’t want to talk to them if I could. What would I say?
Sorry I fucked up and failed to notice your impending suicide because I was too selfish to think about anyone but myself?
No. I’m Soren Sauder, I don’t apologize, and I don’t fuck up and fail. Not outwardly. I bury my insecurities as deep as my family's bodies are buried, hidden from the intrusion of prying eyes, but never deep enough to hide from myself. And then I gaslight someone else into taking the blame and believing it.
“We both know you have no interest in talking to the dead,” Riot says, making me turn my head straight, looking up at him peering down at me. Lightning flashes beyond him, and like he’s God himself, he blocks the rain from hitting my cold but not yet dead body. His black clothing and dark, wavy hair drip rainwater down on me like he’s the only thing powerful enough to affect me in my gravesite. “You want to flirt.”
“Flirt with who?”
“Death.”
My flirting with death isn’t subtle or gentle. There are no coy looks or bashful blinking, no suggestive hints or licked lips. No, when I flirt with Death, I fucking scream at her. I throw dares at her, goading and riling her to step up her game. I want her flirting back just as brutally, making the trip to Hell seem so fascinating that there isn’t a chance I’ll be able to resist it. Honestly, she does a good job. Because it’s not death I crave. It’s the precipice, that ledge, the tipping point of this life and no life. It’s the mingling of a beating heart and a body that functions to the realization that it’s faltering, failing, shutting down. And when I get to that point, where all will be lost within a second or two, I want to take that second or two to actually experience it. I want to live in that second or two. Not alive. Not dead. Somewhere in the middle. I almost got it when Riot drowned me in the pond. Almost.
“Thought you were chasing me straight to her?” I ask him, goosebumps lining my skin when the thunder booms. “Seems to me like you’re just following along. I got here all on my own.”
His feet thud on either side of my body, jolting me, but he pins me down with a hand to my chest, straddling my hips. I don’t fight him. Because the look he currently has in his eyes is exactly what I need from him. He’s not like Director who wants to rationalize with me. He’s not like Remi who worries for me. He’s not like Krypt, who protects me subtly. He’s Riot, ready and willing to indulge in my game and laugh with me when I make it to that one-or-two-second precipice. He’s here, in my grave, ready to push me even deeper. For how dark and twisted the Vile Boys are, Riot is the only one who has ever found my morbid game tantalizing.
When he presses on my chest, settling his weight on my hips, I sink into my grave. His eyes are bright grey, so much brighter than the night, flashing silver at me every time the lightning strikes. But his smile? Fuck, it’s one of his sickly charming ones. Not the same as the charm he throws at strangers to establish a bond of fake trust, but one that’s so pleasant it can only hint at something sinister. It’s so beautiful it’s deceiving.
“You sure you wanna be down here when I die, Riot?” I shift my hips, making him settle his weight right on my cock. “Trust me not to drag you under?”
His smile deepens. “Don’t trust you worth a shit,” he says. His hands slide up my chest and over my shoulders, caressing. “You’re making a mistake right now, Ghost.”
I don’t make mistakes. “Am I?”
Pulling something from above my head, he laughs at my nonchalance. When long roots of a distant tree wrap around my neck like a noose, I latch onto his wrists, pretending to stop him. Oh, I’m not making a mistake. He is.
“Think a little choking is a mistake? Asphyxiation is my kink, man.”
Riot keeps smiling, tying the vine root off to something. When he snugs it up against my throat, tight enough to hurt but not tight enough to cut off all my oxygen, he looks at me. “Oh, this is just a restraint, but we can get kinky if you want.” His ass wiggles on my lap, and my hips buck in an attempt to fight back. “Ever fucked in your grave before?”
“What would my father think?” I gasp. Literally, because his elbow pounds on my solar plexus, knocking the wind out of me while a tree strangles me. I cough, my eyes watering, my hands grasping at my throat.
That’s when I realize my mistake. Both hands at my throat, wrists close together. Close enough for him to slap on a pair of cuffs and tighten them so much tighter than the noose.
“I don’t think he’d be too surprised,” Riot says as I struggle. “He knows his oldest remaining son is an attention whore who will fuck anything darker than he is.”
Still gasping, I spit at him. “You think you’re darker than me?”
“It says something that your mind went to me first.” He pushes my bound wrists above my head, hooking the cuffs to the root sticking out of the soil. Leaning over me, his eyes narrow, his hair falls forward to drip more rain, and his smile stops being charming. “Oh, sweetheart, you have no fucking idea how dark I can be.” He holds up a syringe, and fuck , I start to panic. “Wanna know what it really feels like to be dead down here?”
“Fuck you, Riot! What is that?” I kick my legs and buck my hips, but Riot is strong and muscled, entirely in control of his body and mine. He jabs the needle into my hip with a jolting sting and tosses the empty syringe down where my feet are. “You fucking prick.”
“Just a paralytic.”
No. No. No. No!
“Knock me out.” Panic fills me this time because nothing scares me more than being entirely present while unable to do anything about it. Don’t take my body away and leave my brain! Fuck! My mind isn’t a safe space, remember? My body is my only weapon, and he’s taking it from me, leaving me with my weakest part. “Knock me out!”
“Not a chance,” Riot says while my legs go tingly. “Because you need to learn to think without having any of your other vices. I’ll wait.”
He leans against the soil wall, waiting for my body to numb. I feel my heartbeat slow, but I don’t lose all feeling in my upper half. Yet. I don’t like it. I don’t like the feeling of being disconnected from my body, the one and only thing that actually keeps me alive. Because if my mind was in control, I’d have died years ago. The suicide curse lives in my brain, infecting it with its whispers of total oblivion. My body is the part that fights back. It’s my skill as a ghost and my confidence in my strength that’s keeping me alive long enough to tempt death but never actually achieve it.
I don’t want to play the game without my body!
I can hear myself hyperventilating, but I can’t feel it. Titling my head down, the root digs under my chin, and I witness my chest heaving. I tell my legs to kick, to knock Riot out, to stand up and climb out of here, but they don’t do anything. Not even a twitch.
“You know what my favourite part about you is?” Riot asks, making my eyes shift to him. I hate him. I’ve hated him for a long time because his ego challenges mine, and I’m a sore loser. Not that I’ve ever lost to him, but if I ever do, I won’t be able to handle it. “How pathetic you really are. You think no one notices?” He laughs, cruel and powerful. “Oh, I notice. It’s all I notice about you. Poor Soren Sauder, a ghost who gets no recognition.”
I might not be able to feel my body, but I feel the burn inside it. How fucking dare he. He plucked my biggest insecurity straight from my soul, and now he’s wielding it like a weapon in my own grave.
“The narcissist who craves recognition but is forced to thrive in silence. Your talents go unseen, ironically, because you excel at them. The Ghost of Moros. The man who wants to live in the spotlight but thrives in the dark. You’re a mindfuck, yeah?” He smacks my legs, but other than sensing my body jolt, I don’t feel it. “It’s gotta hurt. Does it? To be the only Vile Boy who doesn’t get to be present for every big reveal and all the dramatic moments because you’re off lurking somewhere in the dark to give us the intel we need. You do all the work, and we get all the credit.” He laughs again, getting up onto his knees to lean over me. “Admit it hurts.”
Never. My tongue is partially numb, but I say, “You just admitted I do all the work.”
He's right, though. It fucking kills me, but I’ll never admit it to him. Because I’ve learned to rationalize it within my mind. I tell myself that none of these assholes would be where they are if it weren’t for me. I’m the one who accomplishes the most on our jobs, and without me, they wouldn’t get their credit and their big dramatic moments. I’m the strength of Vile House. I’m the Ghost of Moros. I don’t need the credit because I know I earned it.
But fucking hell, it grates when I don’t get it. When I have to be silent and hidden while they get to be loud and powerful in the public eye. Every time I have to watch them get credit from our locals, be thanked by our citizens or applauded for their efforts, another piece of my well-glued-together puzzle chips away to stab at my pride and infect my already infected mind.
It’s why I taunt Death. She’s my most attentive audience member.
“Does it bruise your sensitive ego, Ghost?”
Despite all the numbness and the insecurities, I can still feel my face, so I morph it into the illusion of confidence. I’m a madman at my very core, and no one brings it to the surface like Riot does. I smile at him, forcing myself to laugh at how pathetic he is. He’s the one with the inflated ego. He’s the one who needs recognition without ever earning it.
“The fuck do you even do for Vile House?” I ask through choked laughter. “Cause some chaos? Fuck, that’s easy. You think my ego is bruised? Look at yours, you sociopathic fuck.” The root digs into my jaw, but I keep on laughing.
Harder and louder. Deeper and harsher. I can’t feel my body, but I can feel my broken mind, and it’s a goddamn master at deflection. He wants to hold a mirror in front of me? I’m gonna spin it until he can’t stand to even look at himself. There’s no time for introspection when I can tear someone else down first.
Riot laughs with me. He thinks I’m pathetic, and I think he is, and never, in the history of our feud, have either of us ever given in. It won’t happen tonight, either. Straddling my body again, his toned legs press against my hips, and he brings my arms down and undoes the cuffs, letting my hands uselessly fall to my chest.
“Chaos, yeah,” he agrees with me, dark hair flopping over his forehead. “Ready for a little more?” He lifts on his knees, opening his pants.
“The fuck are you doing?”
“You’re dead, aren’t you? This is what you wanted. A trip to Death’s doorstep, and now I’ve brought you here with a deadened body and an awake mind. My turn to have a little fun with it. It’s not quite necrophilia, but it’s close enough. I’ve always wondered.”
Reaching inside his pants, he brings his hard cock out, palming it above my still body. I watch for a second, transfixed by the bead of precum already on the tip, trying to figure out what his plan is and why I’m anticipatory over the unknown of it. But when I look up at his face, I see his thoughts. He’s going to taunt me physically to fuck with me mentally just because he can. Because he somehow knows how flawed my mind is. Because he sees through the illusions I weave, peering into the mess of who I actually am.
Letting go of his dick, he grabs both of my wrists, holding them up above my chest. “Some guys sit on their hands to numb them so it feels like someone else is jerking them off.” He laughs, looking at my slack hands. “Righty or lefty?” he asks.
“You stalk me enough to know the answer.”
There is no way out of this—not until I get my control back. Whatever he has planned, I need to block it out and not let him invade my mind. Because I can take whatever he dishes out and not consider it a loss unless he gets in my head. He won’t. I won’t let him.
“True,” he admits, dropping my left wrist. He moves forward, and when he wraps my right hand and fingers around the length of his thick cock, I hate myself just like he knew I would—taunting me physically to fuck with my mind, like I thought. Because it’s not shame I’m feeling, it’s regret, and he somehow knows it.
Regret that I can’t feel him—can’t taunt him back. Can’t play the game because he’s momentarily bested me.
I refuse to look at him. I won’t let him see it in my eyes. Because there’s a reason he’s my biggest rival. My narcissism and his sociopathic personality aren’t supposed to get along, and we don’t, but fuck do we love goading one another. Taunting Riot is almost as alluring as taunting Death.
“Go ahead and try, Ghost. Try to block it out. But your mind is online and your body is at my mercy, and when your cock gets hard, I’ll let you know. You won’t be able to feel it, but your blood knows exactly where it wants to go.” He grins, tightening my fingers around him. “And tonight, with you dead in your grave, that’s what dictates winning. You won’t even have to admit it to me. Your dick will.”
Oh, fuck him. “Why not just rape me? Hallows family tradition and all.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d finally get fucked by me and be able to use paralysis as an excuse.” He slides my hand up and down, milking precum from his tip. “Nah, no excuses. I’ll fuck you when you ask for it.”
I laugh. “I never will.”
“Your lies are so pretty, sweetheart.” He leans down again, hair falling in front of his grey eyes now, shrouding him in something as sinister as this night. “Asphyxiation isn’t your kink,” he tells me, lips almost brushing mine while my dead hand jerks him off. “Restricted blood flow is. Don’t worry. I know just where to apply pressure to give you that blood buzz in your head when you’re ready.” He licks the corner of my mouth before sitting upright again.
And I just have to watch it. Watch myself jerk him off without experiencing any of the sensations of it—having my mind experience it on behalf of my body.
I swallow thickly, my throat still able to feel, but my mind unsure of how I’m feeling. How does he know about the restricted blood flow? How could he possibly know that I’m into that?
“Stalker,” I accuse.
“You already said that.” He looks down at the show. My hand, his cock, my fingers twitching the odd time, a glistening tip. I swallow again, trying to hide that some sensation is already coming back a little. His deep V peeks out the bottom of his jacket, a dusting of dark hair where his pants are opened, and tanned skin covering toned muscles. It all heats my face because I don’t appreciate finding him alluring. I don’t enjoy the fact that he’s winning and I find it hot. It’s a contradiction my mind should loathe. “Like what you see?”
I close my eyes to block it out.
But then he’s right there in front of me, breath fanning across my cheek. “What’re you gonna do when you finally find her, Ghost?”
“Who?”
“Death. What’re you gonna say to her?”
“I’m gonna laugh in her fucking face and turn my back on her.”
“Keep going,” he urges, his voice taking on a tone that brings tingly sensations back to my feet. Deep. Gravelly. Charged.
“I’m gonna spit in her face and tell her I’m better than she is!”
“More.”
My eyes open, peering into his, up for the way he’s enticing me. “I’m gonna tell her how fucking despicable I am, and despite it, she still failed to lure me into her trap.”
“Fuck,” he groans.
When he leans back, sitting on my lap, I feel myself shake. I’m gaining feeling back already, and fuck him for engaging my mind. Because my dick is hard. My eyes are glued to my hand, consciously trying to determine if he’s still the one controlling it or if I am now. I feel it. Vaguely. Hardly at all. But it’s there—his hot, hard flesh in my deadened grip, giving me a sense of control.
“You didn’t give me enough of the paralytic.”
He grins, the master manipulator in him rising to the surface. “I gave you exactly as much as I wanted you to have.”
Fuck, he knows I’m starting to feel. He planned it this way.
My heart picks up speed, gifting adrenaline to this dire experience. I’m dead, aren’t I? Paralyzed in my plot in Moros Cemetery, living the feeling of what it’ll be like when I’m put to rest here as an actual deceased man. But…
Epiphanies aren’t fun when you don’t want to have them.
Because the death that will land me here won’t be near as appealing as the one I’m living now. Riot won’t be here, taunting me like he always does, and there will be nothing left to fight for.
I look at him, finding his eyes already on mine. He knows what I’ve just realized. He knows that the chase with him is more appealing than the race to Death’s precipice. He knows that I want to do it with him barking at my heels.
“There you are,” he says. “You still tempting Death, Ghost? Or are you tempting me?”
My arm barely twitches. Not enough to rip this vine away from my neck, but enough to force my fingers tighter around his cock. “You think I’m at your mercy?” I ask, squeezing hard enough that his face tightens in pain. “Please. I just seduced you enough to drag you along for the ride. When this thing ends, we’ll both be dead.”
“Promise?” he asks, starting to sweat.
“Promise.”
He buckles forward, his hand landing on my throat to press against the length of the root already wrapped there. He groans in my ear as his cock throbs in my fist, his orgasm as pained as my epiphany, painting my abs in warmth. “Game on, Sauder. Your cock is hard, so I win this round.”
Fuck him, I’ll win the next.