Chapter 11 The Sunshine Has Gone
I sit in a bed of soft grass and small wildflowers, picking the weeds while I pout silently.
We are not home. It was winter when we first left. It is spring here. I count my blessings though. We are not in Vexamen, just the Bear Traps. Not a bad turnout. The weather is lovely. We aren’t being attacked.
Niklaus sits up next to me. The cocky smile I’m used to seeing on his face has been gone for a while now. There’s only brooding, scowling, and silent seething.
“I don’t know,” I say with a sigh.
I steal another glance at his face, but I’m surprised when I don’t see an expression full of relief that we’re no longer outnumbered and being attacked.
He looks tired and pissed off. The vein in his neck twitches as those tendons tighten and flex.
And there’s a phantom heat pouring off his skin, as if from the anger boiling just under his surface.
The silence that hangs between us is overtaxing because my nerves can taste the bitter sample of an explosion peeking over his last reserves of calm.
“Let’s find out where we are now,” he says stiffly.
I stand up with him, adding pressure to the cut on my thigh.
“Out with it then,” I reply, stepping around a boulder to face him. “Say what you want to say.”
Coward.
Niklaus lowers his slightly downturned eyes to meet mine. The irises go pale under the blazing sun, and he just stares at me without blinking as a line forms between his eyebrows.
“I have nothing to say to you.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Oh, no? You’re fucking welcome for saving you and getting us away from that ambush!”
“Saved us?” There’s a cruel tilting of his lips, and his deep laugh has an icy core. “You think you’ve saved us?”
“Of course, I did.” But it feels like I’ve answered a question that is rigged to make me feel small and ashamed.
“You’ve fucked us, Sapphire! Look around. We’re so goddamned far from home. Are you really that deranged in the head?”
What bothers me the most isn’t his words.
I know he’s wrong. But it’s the way he’s taking steps toward me, invading my personal space with his overbearing height.
It’s meant to intimidate me. Scare me. What kind of a man does that?
And to top it off, he says the word deranged with a certain weight to it.
Deranged. Deranged. Deranged. A word that he’s used to describe my father all our lives. Sick. Disturbed. Unstable.
Heat meets my cheeks in a violent flare of anger.
“Is your penis really that small? The need to get in my face and attempt to scare me is that compelling, huh?” I shove at his chest once to get him to step back an inch.
“You really can’t help it, can you? No wonder you hate your dad so much.
You’ll never measure up to Uncle Niles, and you know it!
Everyone loves him, and he’s twice the man you are! ”
The white-hot flames of my ire are quickly extinguished by my unforgivable words. I went too far. Because there’s a lot of truth to that statement. Everyone loves Uncle Niles. Too many people in our lives have asked him why he isn’t more like his dad.
Niklaus’s jaw tics, and the cruel, dangerous smirk returns with a vengeance.
“Niles isn’t my real father.” Another furious step closer.
“And you’re one to talk, aren’t you? Your father fucked your mom with the weak semen that created you.
Then he fell asleep for the entirety of your life.
Why do you think that is, Spitfire? Is it because God knew Patient Thirteen would have killed you for being a shameful mistake that should have died in the womb?
Or because he’s the pathetic one who lies in a bed and leaves your mother and his children to rot alone in the woods like a family of psychopaths who belong in that asylum. ”
And with those venomous words, Niklaus hooks his hands around my ribcage, throwing me into the creek.
“Your father is as good as dead. And you’ve all but killed us too, you evil bitch.”
Cold, murky water splashes around me in a small explosion of mud, algae, and mushy grime.
I spit out the small amount that splatters into my mouth, gasping as goose bumps run ramped over my chilly skin.
I squint against the blaring streams of sunlight, panting in shock as his haunting figure stands over me.
My eyes fill with tears, hot and fast with a lump swelling in my throat. Impossible to ignore or hide. I swore he’d never make me cry again after last time!
I inhale sharply through my nose but am unable to stop the tears from burning miserable pathways down my cold cheeks. The cry is pressurized in my chest, threatening to cause those obnoxious, embarrassing hiccups.
Why am I crying?
Those insults about my father don’t hurt me anymore.
They don’t hurt me.
They don’t hurt me.
He’s lying in a bed. Alone in his own mind. Left my mother. Left me. Left Krimson. Left DaiSzek. Left his family. Not by choice. I never knew him. Will never know him.
My mind spirals uncontrollably with fury and grief. Stop crying! I don’t care about Patient Thirteen. I’m not a child anymore. I’m a grown woman. But the well of tears are heavy, slow, and that of a wounded little girl as they drop into the foggy creek.
Niklaus’s cheek and brow twitches, but then morphs back into the careless, ruthless, soulless expression he loves to wear so proudly.
Patient Thirteen means nothing to me… He can’t hurt me. Those words can’t hurt—
“Whoa, everything okay here?” a man calls out from just over the hill behind Niklaus.
Shit.
“We’re fine here,” Niklaus shouts back, but doesn’t take his punishing eyes away from mine.
“I know a lover’s quarrel when I see one.” The man’s strange voice gets closer. “You okay, little miss?”
Those buttery summer beams blasting from the afternoon sky take my breath away as they land on a young man.
His sun-kissed skin and golden hair shimmer before me.
Though he’s missing the aged smile lines and minor hint of crow’s feet around his eyes from laughing every day…
there is no mistaking the man who has approached us.
It’s my Uncle Niles.
At least twenty years younger than the man I know from my time.
I nearly shout his name, exasperated and speechless.
More tears blur my vision as I recall my last encounter with Uncle Niles.
We left him behind. I don’t even know when!
I have no concept of the year, day, or time he is lost in right now.
All I know is he’s in Vexamen. Before Aunt Ruth took the throne and ended the Meat Carnivals.
When it was a federal offense to be from the shining Chandelier City.
He must be so confused. So lost.
We left him behind.
The ache and hollowness of guilt dissolve into my chest, pinching my lungs together in a tight fist that won’t unclench.
I can’t breathe.
“Oh, fuck…” Niklaus loses his sinister glare. It falls so quickly as he stumbles back a step, gawking at his dad.
My eyes bounce between the elevated tension and shock emanating off the two men standing in front of me. I shiver in the ice-cold running water as they stare wordlessly at each other.
“That’s no way to treat a beautiful young lady, friend…” Uncle Niles says with a smile.
He reaches down and holds his hand out to help me get to my feet.
The action is all so familiar. It’s as if he hasn’t changed at all from the many times he picked me up off the ground when I scraped my knee playing.
How he’d kiss my forehead when I’d cry, tell me he’d always take good care of me—that he loved my father dearly.
That when he found out he’d fallen asleep and can’t wake back up, he promised him he’d love me as much as he loved their friendship.
Yet even though he looks much younger as he greets me with that warmhearted grin, I catch a strange flicker in his dilating pupils.
They stretch wide then small then wide again, nearly consuming his blue-green irises.
Even at the age I currently know him, his eyes don’t look this tired and sunken in shadows.
Something about him seems sick.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Young Uncle Niles laughs. “I’m not the one drenched in mucky creek water, darling girl.”
Uh-huh. Fair enough.
Niklaus is an immovable, mute statue.
“Come on, let’s get you two inside. There’s a night dawper on the loose on this side of the Bear Traps. Folks have been staying indoors until the mangy thing sulks back deeper into the forest.”
We follow Uncle Niles to a small, ratty cabin along the stream.
The black shingles are patchy and destroyed from years of wear and tear and storms carrying strong winds.
His traditional smoky stained oak front door is hanging crooked on its hinges.
The windows cracked and covered in a gray grime.
The wooden porch is a walking hazard, with broken boards that have probably sprained and broken numerous ankles, house many rodents, and act as a current cesspool for moldy debris.
And it smells. It makes my nose sting as it spoils the air with its acrid, dead odor.
Past the decay and subtle undertone of fish, the atmosphere is hard to describe.
It’s the embodiment of loneliness and a slow poison hanging in the air for years, living on long after the dead have turned to dust.
It’s not Uncle Niles.
His home with Aunt Marilynn has always smelled of freshly baked cookies, warm vanilla sugar, and a gentle stream of sunlight twinkling through the curtains.
This house is not the kind of house I’d ever imagine he lived in.
“This is your house?” I ask as we step onto the creaky porch with soft, unstable wood.
Niklaus shoots me a dark glance, but I can tell he’s cautious of the same upsetting thoughts. Whether he has a good relationship with his dad or not…this is not the man he was raised by.
“Home sweet home,” Young Uncle Niles replies with open arms wafting to his crumbling abode.
A sinister chill trickles down my spine.
As we follow behind my uncle, I can’t help but gawk at the poor condition of his home.
The dusty old furniture covered in grime and dirt.
Walls speckled with chipping paint, holes, and crooked paintings.
Pictures on the walls of his family. A man’s face blacked out of the photographs. Flickering sconces and stained floors.
If we were following anyone else into this house, I’d turn my ass around and walk out of here. But I’d trust this man with my life. Even if he’s been living in a rough spot.
We sit down at an old dining table. The chairs groan under our weight.
“Tea and sandwiches?” young Uncle Niles asks.
I gulp forcefully. Though I’m starving and would love a meal that hasn’t been previously hunted…
“You sure we’re not going to catch a disease by eating in here?” Niklaus poisons that stale ambiance with his punitive words.
I pinch my lips together and widen my eyes, throwing a dirty napkin at his chest in horror. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” I mouth.
He shrugs and signals to our surroundings.
My uncle chuckles. “Maybe just a mild infection. Malaria… Tetanus. Polio.” He glances back at us from over his shoulder. “Streptococcus?”
I laugh, letting my shoulders sag in relief. Humor remains intact.
Uncle Niles sets a tray down in front of us. Two pink teacups with steaming amber tea. A small porcelain plate with finger sandwiches. Though the lettuce is wilted and old, I could devour them with how hungry I am.
“Thank you,” I tell him, sipping the hot tea that tastes like raspberries and licorice.
Niklaus nods at his father without making eye contact.
I toss my manners out the window and snatch as many sandwiches as I can from Niklaus’s grasp, cramming them in my mouth. I leave him two and chomp down on four with a shit-eating grin on my face.
Niklaus lets out a long sigh, eating his food as he watches me with bored disgust.
“So, what was the lover’s quarrel about?” My uncle walks around the table to sit on the filthy countertop, swinging his legs in amusement.
“Just a quarrel. Not lovers.” Niklaus cannot hide his disdain.
“Oh. Relatives?” my uncle asks with a slight quiver in his voice.
I let out a happy sigh as I lick my fingers. “Nope. I just don’t date eunuchs.”
“Eunuch?” Uncle Niles raises his eyebrows at his son, then glances down at his crotch.
Niklaus’s face falls, and his eyes narrow on me. “My dick is very much still intact.”
“Is it?” I sip on my tea with a pinky up. But the taste hits wrong—too bitter, too heavy. “I hear the ladies in town can never find it when they go looking for it.”
The right corner of his mouth tilts upward.
“Quite the treasure hunt with little to no reward.” I wink at Uncle Niles but am confused as my eyes start to roll in the back of my head.
The room tilts.
A heaviness collapses on top of me.
“Well, you two certainly don’t like each other very—”