“Yeah, fuck you, too,” she says, adding her own sign, and two of mine. “Fuck you, pervert, repeat forever.”
Outside the door, out of her sight, I rest my left hand on the wall and stand there, trying to get my thoughts to flow properly again. The numbing fluid is churning in me. I badly want to break something, but I’ve already broken almost all the locks and kicked in almost all the doors in this building. Instead, I rest my head on my hand, breathing in and out, while the spasms in my throat subside. Inside the apartment, I can hear her crying.
It’s about the worst thing I’ve ever heard.
RAVEN
The blankets return, and all the clothes. Even the book comes back, damp but undamaged. He also brings two bowls that miraculously survived the fall, and a pile of bowls I assume he found in another apartment. He doesn’t look in my direction as he delivers these things.
Later, after I’ve eaten the food he gives me and he’s disappeared, I find the teddy bear in the bathroom. It’s in two pieces, its head torn right off. I’m not sure if this is some kind of warning to me, or an admission of guilt or an oversight on his part. I wet the head in the bucket of water and use it to wash my face and under my arms before throwing it in the bath.
He doesn’t reappear that night, and despite the piles of blankets the cold is a punishment I did not anticipate. I shiver and toss and turn, tucking and retucking the blankets around me. I dream, when I finally sleep, of crawling into his warm lap, having him wrap his arms around me. He breathes in my ear and whispers vivid, violent, and terrifying things. I wake in the dark, paralyzed with fear and cold. And missing him. Missing his warmth, his protective shadow.
Missing August. The one who perpetually seems inches away from killing me, simply out of habit. I wish I didn’t know his name or the details of him that I’ve gathered over the weeks. How he loves sunsets and falling snow. How he checks my breathing when I sleep. Sometimes I pretend to be sleeping and hold my breath, just to bug him. If he knows I’m doing this he doesn’t let on. He doesn’t eat, or sleep. He never sits; he rarely even kneels. Sometimes, especially after I’ve said something unforgivable, he leans against the wall or doorframe, always with his left hand.
I say unforgivable things to him a lot, call him a creep if I catch him watching me at night, accuse him of murder when my mind won’t stop replaying Felix’s death behind my eyes. I let the venom out of me as words, sometimes barely knowing whether it’s under my control at all. My parents were smart putting me in martial arts all those years ago, and my teachers were right—anger needs to be controlled. It’s as though with my body weak and wounded, my words are the only outlet I have.
But when I can manage it, I still fake civility, and it’s tragic how no amount of venom seems to change his attitude toward me. I can see he’s sad, and frustrated, but his manner is always kind, indulgent even. So I try to get him to answer questions.
“What is the poison in the darts?” I say one day when I find him in the hallway, leaning on the wall. He shrugs.
“What are your plans for my planet?”
I have no plans.
His word for “plans” is like three lines drawn over his right ear.
“Your people,” I say. “What plans do your people have for my planet?”
He just shakes his head and walks away. He does that for about 50 percent of the questions I ask him. At first this made me angry, but now I think maybe he’s tired of telling me he doesn’t know. I’m reminded of school, of lessons I hadn’t done the reading for, and how teachers seemed to relish putting me and the other slackers in our place by asking us questions we couldn’t possibly answer. Say I don’t know enough times and it starts to sounds like I’m a fucking idiot.
I let August get close to me only so I can study his armor, and I no longer care if he decides to off me as I sleep, or abandon me. I know, even with his help, it’s nearly impossible that I will ever see the others again. Topher thinks I’m dead. He saw it, I think. I have a vague memory of knowing he was nearby in the stadium. From his point of view, that Nahx killed me, beat me to death. That Nahx that wasn’t August. That August says wasn’t him. I have no way of being sure he’s not lying. I don’t remember it very well. In my mind the attacker and the rescuer blend together as one, blend and spin together in pain and terror until I’m nauseous just thinking about it.
He knows how angry I am at him, at his kind, at the whole world. And he does try. As if the decapitated teddy bear wasn’t enough, there begins now a parade of gifts and offerings, each more unexpected or inappropriate than the last. There are over a hundred apartments in this building, and he is pilfering through each, one by one, in search of some trinket that might appease me. It’s a rather sad and poignant quest actually, the kind of thing some sick person might write a poem about one day, but it has little effect on me. Though the day he finds an unopened box of Belgian chocolates is a good day. The day he turns up with someone’s diamond bracelet is a bad day. A very bad day. But he stands stoically for twenty minutes while I tell him a made-up story of the man who splurged on the bracelet for the woman he loved, maybe for her birthday, their anniversary, or Valentine’s Day, only to watch her be murdered by the Nahx, then succumb himself, a poison dart in his heart.
“Were their bodies still there?” I ask accusingly. “Did you take this right off her wrist?”
He simply snatches the bracelet back and sends it sailing over the balcony. I don’t see him for a day and night after that. Another cold night, shivering, wondering if he’ll ever come back, struggling to not regret the things I said. I only need him, I remind myself; I don’t care about him. Once I get back to the mountains, back to the base, I could cut his throat without a second thought. My fingers slip around the knife concealed in the lining under the sofa.
He can still surprise me though. One day, as I doze on the sofa, afternoon sunlight streaming in through the sliding doors, he tosses something onto the blankets. I open my eyes, closing my fingers around a small hardcover book. My breath catches as I see what it is. It’s an illustrated book of the Edgar Allan Poe poem “The Raven.” He stands there, silent, as I stare at it for a few moments.
“Can you read?” I ask. He nods slowly. I’m quite surprised. “You can? Did you read this?” He nods again.
Sad. Repeat sad.
“It is sad, yes. Very sad.” I open it and flip through a page or two. As I read, I’m dimly aware of him taking a step forward, then another. He kneels in front of me.
Zero repeat forever.
“Repeat?” I say, imitating his sign.
He taps the book in my lap. This is as close as he’s come to me since the blankets came back. Zero repeat forever.
My mind translates it this time to “nothing again forever.”
“Oh! Nevermore?”