3. Template For Destruction
3
TEMPLATE FOR DESTRUCTION
REMIEL
The Vile Boys have a calling card. Everyone around town knows it, but now that I’m staring at it, seeing the purple that marks it from him , I’m hesitant to flip it over.
The symbol is always the same. The skeletal system of a torso. Ribs, a spine, the pelvic bone. It’s the splashes of colour that differ. Ten colours, and although I’ve never seen a purple one around town, I know I’m about to become vividly familiar with the bright shade.
It’s still sitting on my nightstand. With no idea how I got here—after waking up with a throbbing headache and a bump on the back of my head—I blinked at my room and saw the card. From him. I haven’t moved since. I’m not usually such a chickenshit, but I did sign my life away last night, so my hesitation is justified.
“Remi!” Mom shouts. “Breakfast!”
Does she know why I’m here? I don’t even live here. I moved out of my parents’ house four years ago after my dad’s death. Haven’t stepped foot in this house since my younger brother’s death six months ago, and our other brother even longer ago than my dad. Just me and Soren left to the curse now, and I hate knowing he’s stronger than me. That he’ll outlast our race to suicide. That I’ll break my deal with the man in the purple mask and he will wipe out my bloodline because of it.
Regret is almost worse than the curse.
“Remi!” Mom shouts again, her feet stomping up the stairs. I snatch the card and hide it under the blankets just as the door opens. “Morning.” Her smile is empty, but it’s artificially bright, and I don’t know what to think of her anymore. She’s different now. “It’s been a long time since you’ve been here, so I thought we could have breakfast before you go.”
Her eyes are pleading. She’s a mother who has lost two sons and a husband to suicide. She’s a brave woman—or maybe a stupid one—who married a Sauder man and thought she could prevent the self-inflicted mortal wound to his life. She didn’t fail. The curse is just too strong. I can see it when she looks at me now. She’s memorizing me, taking me in, committing the good parts of me to her mental recall because she knows . She knows I’ll be next, and even though she loves me, she’s long given up on trying to save us.
“I’ll be right down,” I tell her with a forced smile.
She wants to say more, maybe to ask why I’m here, but she doesn’t. She leaves the bedroom door open and heads back downstairs.
I don’t look around my childhood bedroom. I know the room by heart, and there’s a reason I never come to stay in it. I shared it with a brother who no longer lives in this world. I don’t want to see it, so I pull the calling card from beneath the blankets and hold my breath while I flip it over.
Midnight. Your father’s grave.
Great. Exactly where I want to go. I exhale dread.
I get dressed, stuff the card in my jacket pocket, and head downstairs to have breakfast with my mom. When I get to the kitchen, I see my younger sister sitting at the table with her nose buried in a book. She’s not a voracious reader of novels. She’s a stubborn studier who thinks she can break our family curse by studying psychology. Been there. Tried that. But she goes to the university in the next city over and often comes home on weekends because… she never knows when our last day of life might be.
“Morning, hun,” Mom says again, handing me a plate of eggs and potatoes. “It’s nice to have you here. How are you feeling?”
I sit opposite my sister Selena and pick bacon off the platter on the table. “Feeling?”
“You were wasted when they brought you here last night,” Selena says with a laugh. “Honestly, Rem, I haven’t seen you that drunk since you took me to my first high school party.”
Drunk? Funny, because I don’t remember drinking, and I don’t feel hungover. This should scare me more than it does, but getting knocked out, drugged, and carted home isn’t that dire compared to what I actually did last night. “Who brought me home?”
“Soren and Keegan,” Mom answers. “Keegan found you passed out on the lawn of The Misfits’ party, so he called Soren and they got you home.”
I didn’t even go to The Misfits’ party, so how the fuck did I end up with my brother and his best friend? I look at Selena, who’s eating, reading, and talking all at once. “Did you go to the party?”
“Yeah, for a bit.”
“Did you see me there?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “But it was packed. This is the last weekend before the Vile initiation, so people went wild knowing they’d be locked at home next weekend.” She flips a page. “I’m thinking of pledging.”
Mom smacks down a pan of sausages, glaring at Selena. “No. We just got out of one mess. I don’t need you stepping into another.”
“Why not?” Soren asks, walking into the kitchen in nothing but black sweatpants. His tattooed chest and full sleeves make up the rest of his outfit. He slips on a t-shirt before turning around, covering his torso but leaving his gang tats on display. “Selena’s badass enough to make it.” He grins at our sister before offering me a more evil one. “Hungover, Rem?”
“She’d have to murder people!” Mom shouts. Her hand wraps around a knife, and the three of us glance at each other. It wasn’t too long ago that Mom lost her mind and… I rub the scar on my wrist. Soren takes the knife from her, and she snaps out of it, focusing on her cooking. We all just look at each other again, unsure what keeps happening to her. Because this isn’t the first time.
Murdering people on Initiation Night is just a rumour, anyway. I mean, the bloodbath the next day is usually a surefire sign, but no bodies are ever found, so we can’t be one hundred percent sure that murder is part of the initiation.
“I could off that bitch Sally Davies. She’s a cunt if I ever saw one.” Selena grins while Mom shakes her head at her.
“Preach,” Soren agrees, sitting next to her.
She shoves him. “Pretty sure you hooked up with her like three months ago.”
“And got a real up close and personal experience of her cuntiness,” he agrees. “Pledge, girl. You got this.” He’s gaslighting her into initiating for a ruthless society? Why? Does he wish her death, too? And he’s from The Misfits, so again, why?
No one even knows if they accept female members, and I have no idea why they’re accepting initiations when they’ve never, in the history of Vile House, had over ten members. I counted ten last night. You must have to be a lower-ranking member for a long time before you get anywhere close to a coloured mask.
“Where’d Keegan really find me?” I ask Soren.
“The Misfits’ party. Said he watched you stumble down the front steps and face plant on the lawn, so he helped me get you home. We couldn’t find your house key or any of your shit in your wallet, so we brought you here.” He shrugs.
So, was I knocked out and dropped off at the party or…?
It doesn’t matter. The purple calling card in my pocket is all that matters. Because from now on, when he calls, I run. And Soren’s name is the third on my bargain list.
He doesn’t try to hide his gang affiliation. He’s never spoken about it to us, his family, but his gang tats are right there on his arms, silently speaking for him. I think it broke Mom’s heart, but she’d never say anything about it because the gang life, despite being dangerous, gives him a better chance at survival than our family curse does.
Soren isn’t top dog in The Misfits—a crew that often rivals Vile House—but he’s working his way up, and he’s narcissistic enough to think he just deserves to run the damn place. The weird thing about our town is that gangs, crews, cults, clubs, societies, and brotherhoods don’t hold animosity toward one another. They all have their roles and reasons, and mostly, they coexist because chaos breeds more chaos, and Moros thrives on chaos. So, even if Selena does initiate for Vile House and get accepted, she and Soren would be fine belonging to opposing groups. In Moros, grievances are between people, families, or friends. But mostly, it’s Moros against the tourists. It’s history against the future trying to change us.
It bothers me that Soren can sit across the table from me this morning, not at all affected by stalking me last night. I know he was there. I know he was one of the shadows following me because I sensed him—nostalgia and betrayal—which means he knows I went to Vile House, not the party. But there’s no point in drawing attention to it.
The grin on his face tells me he knows. So I offer him one in return to let him know that I know.
It’s the why that fucks with my head. Why he herded me there, or maybe why I led him there. Maybe I’m wondering what he was even doing there because he’s not the one I was outrunning.
“It’s so nice to have you all home,” Mom says, sitting with us.
There might be a world of misunderstanding between me and my brother, and Selena is mostly aware of it all, but none of that infiltrates breakfast because we all have a tepid love for our mother, despite what she did to me. When Dad died and she freed herself from the cult we were raised in, she proved to all of us that she’s stronger than we are. But that cult won’t let us go quietly, and over the past few years, our family has dwindled because of it. It’s why Reeven Matterson’s name is the first on my list.
When I’m done washing up, I kiss my mom goodbye, wave at Selena, and head out front, where Soren is smoking on the front step. When I walk out, he walks with me, our arms swaying between our bodies and our lips pressed tight together. I wish I didn’t resent him. I wish I didn’t want to include his name in my bargain. I wish our family was different and our lives were more stable. But nothing is ever that easy in Moros. I’m doing it for him, and someday, he’ll understand. It’s the only way I know how to love him.
Because Selena is trying to stop our family curse by studying it.
But me and my brother? We’re trying to end the curse by killing another Sauder—maybe even each other—before we have the chance to kill ourselves. Or he is, anyway.
I made a sick bargain instead.
“Do anything interesting last night, Rem?” Soren asks as we walk down the street.
“Like what?” I play along.
“Make any deals with devils?”
I grin into the foggy morning. “Nah, just got wasted at the party.” I glance at him. “Apparently.”
“Apparently,” he echoes, smirking. “Have a good day.” He turns the corner, going in a different direction than I am.
Soren doesn’t work for anyone other than The Misfits now. I don’t know what he does for them, but he’s an unremorseful sort of person, so whatever he does, I’m guessing it’s brutal. I hold a level of resentment towards him because, before he joined the gang, we worked together. Owned a business together. Got along and wanted to beat this curse side by side. Fate eventually won out, and now we’re pitted against one another in a world so cruel our blood bond doesn’t matter. Soren might kill me or I might kill him, and whichever way it turns out, I hope it ends the curse on the Sauder men.
Now I own the shop alone. I run it with my best friend Cain, who excels at instrument repair.
Musical talents in a town this small are usually one in a million, but Moros breeds deceptively talented people. It’s sad how many of us turn to music as our escape, but it’s even more depressing how many of us excel at creating darkness with our instruments. It makes my music store a busy place.
Unlocking the front door of my shop on the main street, I enter the dim room to hear the serene sound of the cello. Piano joins it, and together, the harmonies are so haunting my heart stops for a moment of appreciation. My eyes close in remembrance, and nostalgia sweeps through me.
It’s a recording, more than four years old, from when my dad would play along with my cello. He never questioned the gloomy vibe of my music, he just matched it, adding a second sound to make the sadness brighter. I keep it on while the shop is closed, afraid to listen to it while I’m here, but not wanting the music to be wasted. So, I play it for the emptiness of my space—the space willed to me and my brother after our dad’s death. The space Soren walked away from to join The Misfits.
I can’t help but pause with my back against the door to listen. Maybe if I don’t move, it’ll be like I’m not really here. Like I’m just one of Moros’ ghosts who listens to chilling music in the dead of night at vacant little music shops. I can almost picture him playing. I can scarcely see myself from years ago, my cello between my legs and my bow gliding across the strings of its own free will. I never made music. Music made me, and I followed its muse.
But I’ve been cut off from it lately. Since Soren left.
The front door chimes a second before it slams into my back. “Sorry. Didn’t see you standing there,” Cain says, coming inside and taking a moment of his own to listen to the recording of me and my dad. “You okay, Remi?”
Furthest thing from it. I nod, offering him a smile he knows is fake. “Yeah, good. You go to the party at The Misfits last night?” I move through the shop to shut off the music, killing the nostalgia along with it.
“No, but I heard you were there.” He laughs. “Why didn’t you call me? I would have come with you.”
“It was a last-minute decision,” I say. “There are, like, fourteen repairs booked this week. What’re you doing here on a Sunday morning?”
“Wanted to get a head start on some of them. The parts for that grand piano are supposed to come today, and I want to be here when the delivery guy shows up.”
Out-of-town delivery drivers tend to get spooked in Moros, so more often than not, our parts end up at the post office on the edge of town. If Cain is here to greet the driver and promise nothing bad will happen if he walks inside the shop, things go over easier.
“What’re you doing here?” he asks me the same thing.
I bargained away my life and needed to come somewhere I felt safe. “Same reason. Wanted to get ahead.”
And distract myself. I haven’t visited my dad’s grave since the day we buried him, and tonight isn’t the night to start. But at midnight, I’ll be there despite my wishes because I’m no longer in charge of my life.
The whole thing is a template for destruction and I know I’ll be the one ruined in the end.