Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Before the rock hits his window, Kayn spirals.

He’s deep in a mood—anger mainly, hot as the bastard weather and accompanied by some underlying wretchedness. The air conditioning is broken again, or shitty enough that you can’t even feel it, and the house is almost as miserably humid as outside. The heat is so furious that it makes Kayn want to cut his braid off with a pair of scissors, or else he feels it hang and gross against his bare back. He’d taken his shirt off as soon as he’d finished stomping up to his room, making sure to slam the door extra loud, so Zed would know that he was extra mad, even if it’s not helping his case.

Their argument had been explosive, but Kayn had known it’d be. He’d spent the last two weeks preparing for it, finishing up his finals and being sure to let Zed know exactly how well he’d done on his exams. Dad, look, he’d said, practically throwing the letter at him. Honor roll. 

Kayn only calls him Dad when he likes him. When Kayn is mad then he becomes Zed again, or rarely Father, spat out like a piece of phlegm.

Well, it turns out that it doesn’t matter how Kayn flashes his grades or how many times he does the dishes and vacuums without asking. In the end, Zed is still a tyrant. Neither of them are good at arguments. They both fight to win and negotiations quickly dissolve into a screaming match—which is the usual—until Zed silences him with a hush, a dangerous flash of his brown eyes.

“Lower your voice,” he hisses. 

“Or what?” Kayn screams back. That’s one of his problems. He can’t help but want to sink his teeth into authority. There’s something about it that makes him want to bolt, test the rules, shatter them, and when he’s angry it’s even worse. The crippling urge to rebel, backtalk, cross some line that can’t be uncrossed.

And Zed turns around, because he knows this, his back an impervious wall. Suddenly he’s decided he’s done with the noise. “Go to your room, Kayn.” A warning and an order, like Kayn’s a fucking kid again.

“I’m twenty!” His throat is sore. They haven’t had a fight in ages and Kayn’s out of practice. It’d actually been a really good streak. Whatever. It doesn’t even matter that Kayn was twenty. As long as he lives under Zed’s roof, he’s also living under Zed’s rules.

So Kayn goes upstairs, though he makes sure to stomp extra loud so the old steps squeak and groan all the way up. It’s wickedly hot in his room and he rips off his shirt and whips it hard against the floor. Then he beats the life out of his pillow and really feels like a kid again.

Zed just doesn’t get it.

Kayn picks up his shirt and throws it in the corner of his room by his guitar. Then he flops down on his bed. It’s the same bed he’s had since he was eleven. His whole room is like that: dated. His guitar was a garage sale find. His dresser was secondhand—maybe thirdhand, and so was his night table. Everything in his room shows its use, slightly messy, a little lopsided, nothing's ever new. And it’s so awfully hot. Kayn lays on the bed, attacked by the heat, the humidity clinging to his skin. He thinks about having a cold shower, but he doesn’t want Zed to think he’s not angry anymore. It’s too soon. Because he is still very angry. Sometimes when Kayn is angry he imagines burning down the house or crashing his car, or even better, crashing Zed’s car—since his own is a beaten up junker—right into a ditch. It all feels so serious in his head, like Kayn is a few short seconds from changing his life and going to jail, and he doesn’t even care. He only knows one other person who thinks the way he does. Everyone else is a pretender. 

Kayn reaches for his phone on the nightstand. His blankets feel grossly sticky because of the heat. He gets up and double checks that his fan is set to high. Maybe it’s just his imagination but it seems to be whining louder than normal. That might be a bad sign. It matches the crickets and cicadas outside, wailing like they’re trying to give a concert.

He returns to laying on the bed. He’s still mad.

Kayn unlocks his phone and flicks to his messages. Right now the only person who might understand his train of thought is Talon. After all, he’d told Kayn in private that when he gets upset or overwhelmed, he thinks about murder. And Kayn knows that he’s not exaggerating. Talon’s got it even worse because Kayn’s seen Talon’s sister—the wicked scar across her eye—and he’s seen Talon play with knives. He’s got this abnormal aura to him, Kayn can’t describe it. He’d liked hanging out with Talon because it made him feel less like a freak in comparison, and because Talon was stupid rich with no concept of how money should be spent on himself or his friends.

HOW’S YOUR SUMMER GOING? he could ask. The last text he’d sent to Talon was a few nights before the semester ended, and then Talon had responded one week into summer break because he’s terrible at that. Kayn could prod him again. He could ask how his move back home had gone, or maybe he could open up with, I want to drive Zed’s car off a bridge. Talon would understand. He wouldn’t judge him for it.

But—

Kayn lets the phone drop to his bare chest with a groan. Everything stinks. It’s not even just the fight. You know something’s impossibly wrong in the world when somehow Talon gets a steady boyfriend before you. Actually, that’d annoyed Kayn so bad that he’d all but ignored Talon the last few weeks of school, aside from those odd texts. It’d almost ashamed him to admit, but Talon scoring before Kayn had put a crack in his ego, and a familiar, well-worn thought had crawled through the gap.

Maybe Kayn is doomed to be alone forever.

He stares at the ceiling, listening to the bugs outside and the fan spewing its whiny breeze. The lamp on his desk casts yellow light across his room. Maybe he hears that too, the slight buzz of the lightbulb. He’s half-tempted to crush it in his fist, if just to do something. That’s his problem. He just hasn’t done anything. Talon’s way more of a weirdo than he is but at least he’d lived up to the hype and attacked someone. Two someones if you count that other incident, so of course the people that love the psychos came running.

No matter how much Kayn’s rebelled, he can’t ever escape Zed’s long shadow. Sure he’s snuck out of the house and he’s done some light vandalism, underage drinking, and the odd trip here and there, but that’s still kid shit. In the end, Kayn gets good grades and mows the lawn without complaining too much. And somehow he’s still labeled a total freak. Except he’s not a total freak. He’s not like Talon. The real problem is that nobody gets him.

The worst part about feeling this way is how close it comes to what Kayn actually wants. He’s never wanted to fit in. He wants to burn his way straight to stardom and he wants the whole world to see him coming. He wants to be good-special, not bad-special. It’s the same word, but somehow the difference is unbearably wide. Sometimes Kayn feels just like a rabid dog chasing after it, full of almost embarrassed desperation, then people get put off by the way he acts and they say he’s—a lot.

That’s what Akali had said, ages ago at this point. They’d been playing video games at Shen’s house and Kayn had just thrown his remote against the wall. Kayn, she’d told him. You’re a lot.

Years later, her words seem more fact than opinion.

Now is when the rock hits his window. It knocks against the pane but doesn’t break it, more of a gentle toss, a very specific get-your-attention kind of throw.

Akali. Kayn sits up, blankets sticking to his back. It’s as if thinking about her had been enough to summon her. She only lives a few blocks away. Maybe she’d somehow heard the screaming match and come over to investigate. Somehow that wouldn’t surprise Kayn. Neighbors have called the cops on them before, when the arguing has gotten too loud. It probably doesn't help that he and Zed only ever seem to fight at night, and the suburb is generally a quiet, boring neighborhood that never knows how to have fun. He checks his phone. Nothing from Akali. Or anyone, for that matter. Now that the semester is over his social life is dead. Summer with nowhere to go? Embarrassing. Kayn squeezes his phone in his hand. The screen is cracked in two places, but it’s not his fault. His phone always somehow ends up broken. He’s never even thrown it. Well, maybe once, but it hadn’t even been scratched.

He slides out of bed and moves to the window. He can see the Buvelle’s house on the other side of the street, illuminated by their flickering porchlight. In all the years Kayn’s lived here, he’s never seen that light replaced. It’s only ever been a dim, pulsating yellow, constantly on the verge of death.

He opens the window, sickly hot air hitting him in the face. If he wanted to, he could step over the windowsill onto the roof of his porch. That’s how he always sneaks out. Akali comes over and throws bits of gravel until he notices, and then he climbs out onto the porch roof and drops down to the lawn.

But Akali isn’t out there. 

Kayn leans out over the windowsill, looking left and right. Usually she’d be standing on the lawn, right there. Akali does whatever she wants, Shen be damned. That’s always something Kayn’s secretly admired about her. 

“Kali?” he calls out, voice hushed. 

The chorus of bugs only seems to get louder.

Kayn closes his window. He moves to stand in front of his fan. Maybe it was just a cicada flying straight into the glass. The thought sends his already bad mood into freefall.

You’re a lot. 

Something clatters against his window. Kayn definitely doesn't jump. He stomps over to investigate, sliding it open again.

“Akali,” he tries, a little louder.

Silence.

“I’m not in the mood,” Kayn hisses.

Nothing. A very long nothing.

Kayn snatches his phone off his bed.

11:16 pm : WHAT’S THE DEAL??  Kayn has to smash the send button several times with his thumb, because it’s right under a crack in the glass. She’s not like Talon so she’ll respond right away. She’ll say—

11:16 pm : ?

11:16 pm : wat

Kayn glances over his shoulder at the still open window. He feels a little strange now. He wanders to the sill again, squinting at the heat. Something is off, or maybe that’s just the circumstance. Everything is freakier at night. Kayn slaps the back of his neck, where his skin prickles. He stares at the Buvelle porchlight across the street. Maybe it’s just him, but the light seems almost sickly now. He can imagine it like an eye, staring at him or through him, an ominous presence like a harbinger, a lantern held by some old fuck in a horror movie. And then he thinks, when did it get so quiet?

“Hello?” He’s not expecting anyone to answer, so he doesn't know why he calls out, other than to prove that he’s not afraid. It’s sort of a lie. He feels uncomfortable, though he has no real reason to be. It’s like when you’re a kid and you run to your bed as fast as possible from the bathroom, because you don’t want anything to attack you, even though there’s no threat.

“Down here.” 

Kayn flinches at the guttural voice, startled. His arms have broken out in gooseflesh. He looks to his right, the section of yard between his house and the one next to it. The shadows are deepest there, dampening in a way Kayn doesn’t have time to explain, because nestled in the darkness is a pair of gleaming red eyes. Kayn knows they’re eyes. His forebrain recognizes them instantly, the shine of someone looking at him from the blackness. Nevermind that they’re unnatural. Eyes don’t glow like that. People don’t sound like that.

Kayn realizes he’s gripping the sill too hard. The old wood is creaking under his fingers. There is no other noise except the drumming of his own heart. No crickets or cicadas. Even his fan seems muted.

And then the same, monstrous voice calls up to him. “Coming down?”

Kayn slams the window shut and he yanks the curtains closed for good measure. He doesn’t know what to think. His heart feels like it might jump from his chest. He takes a step back, legs feeling unusually unstable.

That is not Akali.

What was that? 

Suddenly he thinks about Zed. He’s probably downstairs standing in the kitchen, because he’s often doing that; standing in the kitchen and sipping black coffee, totally unaware that there’s—

The cicadas abruptly start up again and the difference is so jarring that Kayn flinches again. He turns around and comes face to face with a monster.

It’s—Kayn doesn’t even know where to begin. The shock crashes into him like a landslide, like the monster pushing him back against the window, one of its clawed hands slipping over his mouth. Its hand smells like hot earth, that’s where Kayn will start, the smell of freshly overturned soil.

“Don’t scream,” it says. When it opens its mouth Kayn can see the sharp points of its fangs and the back of its throat, glowing fire-red. Kayn hasn’t even processed the situation enough to scream. He’d always figured that he’d survive a horror movie no problem, since he wasn’t a pussy, but in the moment he has yet to understand what’s happened. The monster is towering, almost to the ceiling, with red skin and big curved horns and Kayn can’t stop looking it in the eyes, where a red and evil glow lives, barely contained.

“Don’t scream,” the creature repeats, leaning in until Kayn can hear its fangs clicking together, even over the pounding in his chest. “Not yet.” And then its voice becomes almost grossly sweet, crooning, the echo of some ugly, rotting mess. “I want to be the only one who gets to hear it.”

Kayn is still processing, but at least some part of his human brain is starting to remember how to be alive again. That’s what happens when you stumble into a life or death situation. Your body will suddenly remember what it is like to live. All the things you take for granted become almost grossly obvious; what it feels like to swallow, what it’s like to inhale, exhale; blinking, not blinking; the clumsy lump of your tongue hiding in your mouth; the feeling of pressure on your skin. Fear boils under the surface. His hand moves on its own, fumbling along the windowsill behind him. The monster’s breath is hot on his face.

Finally Kayn twists his hand in the bottom of his old, dusk-blue curtains. He rips them down with all his strength. His curtain setup has always been rickety, now it falls to pieces. The curtain rod knocks on the monster’s head with a clang and the fabric gets caught on its horns, draping over its face like a veil. It rears back, letting go of Kayn claw the cloth free. Kayn darts beneath its arm, streaking to the door, his heartbeat thundering.

“Z—” he starts to shout before he is yanked away from the door by his braid, so fast and hard that Kayn’s feet leave the floor entirely. He is tossed through the air as if he weighs nothing, landing at an angle on the bed. The mattress squeaks in protest and the headboard clacks loudly against the wall, and then the monster’s hand is slapped firmly on his mouth again, pressing Kayn’s head down. Tears have sprung to Kayn’s eyes, brought on by the pain radiating in his scalp. For a moment he lays still, winded and struggling to breathe through his nose, the monster looking down at him. It’s climbed on top of him and pinned him flat with its body, straddling his hips, and its other hand digs into the bed by Kayn’s ear, claws piercing the covers and mattress like knives sinking into flesh. A shred of tattered curtain still hangs in its horns.

“Kayn!” Zed’s voice booms up the stairs; sounding tired. “It’s late!”  He’s too used to Kayn slamming doors to suspect that anything is wrong. The monster glances at the door and one of its horns almost hits Kayn when it twists, barely missing his face. Kayn struggles. He tries to buck his hips or move his head, flail his arms around and fight the monster’s grip, but he is utterly stuck and there’s nothing in reach. Kayn tries to scream next, but his voice is completely muffled under the monster’s palm. It turns back to look at him, eyes burning with what might be glee.

“Is that it?” it asks, tongue flickering out between its jaws. “The one you want to kill?”

Chapter Text

Kayn’s head is going to explode. He can feel it, the way he’s pressed flat into the bed by the monster. His neck hurts. The mattress groans under their combined weight. Kayn’s head feels like a watermelon wrapped in too many rubber bands. Except instead of rubber bands he’s choked by shock, confusion, and the weight of the monster’s huge hand under his nose. It’s hard to breathe.

“We can go right now,” it tells him, almost eager. It doesn’t look even remotely human, but Kayn gets the impression that it’s smiling, red eyes narrowing slightly. He tries to pull the monster’s hand off his mouth. It takes all his strength to pry up one finger. Or maybe the monster is toying with him. It observes his struggle, jaws sliding shut. It looks at him the same way Kayn would look at an insect right before crushing it under his shoe. Kayn stops fighting. He stares into its eyes, two red pits, completely unreadable except for a burning red.

The monster slowly lifts its hand off Kayn’s mouth, still looking at him. Kayn gulps air, his breaths coming in fast and quick. For a moment he doesn't move, just breathes. The creature doesn't attack. It leans back and the heavy weight of its body makes the bed groan again.

Are you going to eat me,” Kayn asks, after what feels like forever.

“Do you want me to?” it answers, almost kindly.

Kayn shakes his head. The pressure hasn’t subsided. Probably something to do with the monster sitting on him. He closes his eyes tightly and reopens them. It’s still there. He tries a few more times. 

No. This is real. 

Its tongue flickers out again, just like a snake. “Shall we kill it together?” it asks.

Kayn’s voice escapes, barely louder than a whisper. “Kill what?” 

The creature glances at the door again, and Kayn pictures Zed in the kitchen still, pouring himself another mug of crummy instant. “No killing,” he adds quickly. “No killing anything—”

The monster suddenly turns and leans over him again, this time with claws outstretched. It reaches towards his face with one finger, as if pointing, and then its hand sinks closer—closer. Kayn twists and turns his head and kicks wildly and tries to grab the monster’s thick arm but it is unstoppable. It reminds him, in some comically morbid way, of those videos where things get crushed by hydraulic presses. Kayn tries to shrink further into the mattress as the tip of a sharp claw approaches his face. He writhes, he turns. The monster grabs his chin with its other hand, locking him in place with brutal strength. Further the claw sinks. Two inches from Kayn’s eye. An inch. The sharp claw is so close that Kayn can’t focus on it. He closes his eyes.

Maybe it touches him. He can’t quite tell. Kayn thinks the tip of the monster’s claw bumps his eyelid, but he is so on edge that it could have been its breath instead. It could be leaned in, ready to nip the soft skin on his face. It could be biting off the tip of his nose, it could be driving its claw into him like a needle—it would all feel the same.

The monster abruptly rolls off of him. Kayn opens his eyes to see it turn, surveying the room as if seeing it for the first time. The pressure in Kayn’s head reaches a fever pitch. He gets one hand up in time to cover his eyes before all the lightbulbs in his room explode at once.

After a moment Kayn peeks through his fingers, ears ringing. Glass litters the floor and Kayn’s bed. The room is very dark and empty.

He slides out of bed and rips open his bedroom door. Kayn takes the stairs three at a time, practically sliding down the bannister like he used to as a kid.

“Walk,” Zed reminds him from the kitchen. He is standing exactly where Kayn thought he would be, by the kitchen window, and he is not expecting Kayn to hug him. At some point Zed became the shorter of the two of them. Kayn’s not sure exactly when. The moment would’ve been very important to him, but he’d missed it entirely. A bit of coffee splashes on the linoleum floor. Zed pats his back awkwardly.

Neither of them apologize. Kayn pulls away from him, eyes stinging faintly.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” he says.

Zed stares at him, unfamiliar with whatever this is.

“I’m not that old,” he finally says, but the hard edge in his voice is nowhere to be heard.

***

Kayn’s room is a catastrophic mess. In the morning he surveys the wreckage, a reminder that everything had indeed occurred. His bed has been pierced through, blankets, sheets, and the mattress. His curtain rod is warped and the curtains themselves are scattered across his room in pieces. Bits of glass are hiding everywhere and his bed makes a weird creaky sound whenever he puts much weight on it. Kayn lets out a low breath and goes back downstairs to find the broom.

He and Zed had slept in the living room last night, though for Zed it was less of a conscious choice and more something that’d just happened. He’d parked himself in the armchair in front of the television and then snored open-mouthed for hours. Normally Kayn would be very annoyed, but this time he hadn’t cared much. He’d been laying on the couch, staring at the ceiling and reliving what’d happened over and over, feeling the choke of fear and adrenaline, phantom pressure lingering in his head. The memory echoes. Kayn sees it in pieces like a lightbulb, shattering with a bright pop, over and over again. Sleep doesn’t find him so much as creep up on him, and when he wakes he is alive but not rested. Now he spends the first hours of his morning cleaning his room. Some things are unfixable. The mattress is unfixable. The bedframe is probably unfixable. Kayn glances at himself in the mirror. His reflection stares tiredly back at him, offering a question he doesn’t want the answer to.

“You’re stuck with me,” Kayn tells it.

His guitar is miraculously untouched in the corner. Kayn picks it up and sits on the bed, picking the strings half-heartedly. Part of him wonders why he didn’t tell Zed what happened. Part of him is begging for it. He could go running and screaming down the stairs. The idea of someone believing him is cathartic, swimming through his bloodstream. But Kayn hadn’t told Zed. The monster had gone as quick as it’d come, and it’d left behind no useful evidence. A fucked up bed and ruined curtains are nothing. Kayn put his fist through the drywall once, which is something he’d learned from Zed, who’d done it almost a year earlier. And Zed had learned that from Shen, apparently. Kayn’s been to Shen’s house lots of times but he’s never seen the hole, though Shen’s house also has lots of paintings so he could easily imagine it hiding behind one of those, like a dark reminder of what might happen when you get too angry. Kayn’s anger is inherited, even though none of them are related.

He delivers his guitar back to the corner with more care than he’s shown anything else in his room. Then he grabs his sneakers and his wallet and tramps down the stairs. 

“I’m going out!” he yells, opening the front door.

Zed doesn’t answer. Kayn waits a solid minute. This always happens. Zed will call him and if he doesn’t respond in two seconds then he’ll get on his ass about it. But if Zed doesn’t answer. Well, that’s just life.

A piece of last night catches him again, a sliver of a memory, the monster’s bright burnings staring back at him. Kayn shuts the door.

Zed is in the basement, by the way. And he’s fine. I heard you, he says, like the idea of Kayn checking on him twice in twenty-four hours is weird.

Kayn steps out onto his front porch. It’s barely noon and he already feels rancid. It’s hot indoors but outside is a whole different animal. Festering heat glues itself to his skin. He makes it down the steps to the edge of his driveway and he already feels decidedly sticky. Kayn peels his bangs off his forehead. Maybe he should cut it. Akali’s bothered him about it already. She’d said he’d probably feel a lot lighter with his braid chopped off. Kayn would be lying if he said he hasn’t considered it. He could snatch a pair of scissors out of the junk drawer and hack at the base of his braid until it eventually falls off like an amputated limb. It’d be easy.

Kayn squints up at the sun. It glares mercilessly down at him, as if sensing the current of his thoughts. He glances at the Buvelle house across the street. He can’t tell if their porchlight is on in the daytime. It probably is. Kayn looks right. The street dead-ends a few houses down, just before the woods. He’d used to wander through them all the time as a kid. He and Akali would play ninja and take turns throwing pinecones and rocks at each other.

He turns left and starts walking, grateful for the occasional tree offering shade. It’s so hot that Kayn worries about his shoes melting on the sidewalk when he pauses at an intersection. Luckily the convenience store is just up the road, and there’s half a deer in the parking lot.

Kayn stops to look at it, a rare chill setting into his body. The back of his neck prickles. It’s the front half of the deer only, the head and the forelegs and a bit of soggy innards and a lot of dried blood. The deer’s eyes are wide and glassy, its mouth open, its tongue limp and dark purple. A trail of blood extends from it, like it’d been dragged. Kayn’s seen roadkill before, but he’s desensitized to it. When things get crushed they all end up looking the same somehow; a splat of pink and red and whatever fur color applies. Hell—Kayn might have ended up the same way under the monster’s grip.

This dead deer feels very raw. It doesn’t even smell too bad yet. Someone’s put a couple of old traffic cones around it, one of them crumpled at an angle like it’d been run over. Kayn steps around it and goes into the convenience store.

“Where’s the rest of that deer?” he asks the clerk as he passes the front counter. He’s pretty sure they went to the same high school but he can’t remember her name.

“I dunno,” she says.

Kayn grabs an energy drink and returns to the counter. He presses the ice-cold can against his forehead. “What happened to it?”

“A bear.” She’s impressively disinterested, her eyes trained on her phone.

“Really?” Kayn asks. “I’ve never seen one around here.”

“That’s cool,” she says, finally glancing up at him from beneath her teal bangs. “I don’t care.”

Kayn frowns. “You probably should. It’s in your parking lot.”

“It needs to stay there,” the girl snaps back, flatly, as if he’s stupid. “The animal control guys are coming. Or something.” She fixes him with a cold stare. “Are you gonna pay for that?”

Half of Kayn wants to pitch the can at her face. He doesn’t. He looks at the wall of cigarette brands behind her. His fingers twitch. Finally he pays for the drink.

“You’re a bitch,” he says on his way out.

“I know where you live, Kayn,” she calls after him.

Kayn chugs the whole energy drink on the way home. He can’t smoke anymore because if you smoke too much your singing voice turns to ash, and Kayn means to take it seriously. Zed doesn’t allow it at home anyway, even though Kayn’s caught him in the backyard before, red-handed.

What’s wrong? Kayn had asked.

And Zed hadn’t told him but he’d shaken his head, silent, so Kayn knew it’d been Shen again.

He could’ve just smoked anyway. Zed is allowed to do whatever he wants. Kayn holds the empty can to his forehead again. He never does anything. 

Kayn pulls out his phone as he reaches the house. He texts Akali.

12:44 pm: GET ME that job at the boba place

She wastes no time.

12:44 pm: can’t. 👍

Kayn scowls at his phone. The screen door clacks loudly behind him. He toes off his shoes in the hall.

12:45 pm: AN INTERVIEW

12:45 pm: were not hiring anymore.

12:45 pm: my breaks over ttyl

YOU’RE USELESS, he types in all caps before he deletes it. Kayn leans his head against the wall. It’s so hot. The heat is trapped in his bones. The curtains are all drawn to keep the sun out but it makes the whole room look dreary. It’s a fresh summer day during peak summer hours. Somehow they’re always like this; sour. Summer is when the whole day flies by but doesn’t go anywhere. Instead it feels like rotting, it really feels like rotting, it feels like that deer split in half on the sidewalk, drying up in the sun. And Kayn needs to get another summer job because he’s never allowed to just bum around. No, only the rich people get to bum around and do nothing. And they’re self-made if they do it, while everyone else gets labeled a good-for-nothing. And Kayn doesn't know how long it’s supposed to go on like this. He craves a crowd. He wants studio lights and the roar of power like the drop of a rollercoaster. He wants something different.

The backdoor slides open and closed. Kayn hears Zed before he sees him, unusually loud, so he must be frustrated. Zed comes into the hall, wiping sweat off his forehead.

“The air conditioning is broken,” he announces.

“I thought it already was,” Kayn says in dismay.

Zed shrugs. He always looks vaguely tired. He used to sleep for what felt like days when Kayn was in high school, and he’d still get up with sunken eyes, pallid as a corpse. “I called Shen,” Zed tells him. “He’ll fix it in the morning.”

“Tomorrow?” Kayn groans.

Zed nods, tight-lipped as if his own failure might hide stained on his teeth.

“What about tonight?”

“Take a cold shower,” suggests Zed, turning around.

Kayn watches him shuffle into the kitchen. That’s Zed’s solution for everything. Cold showers. Probably says more about him than anything else.

Kayn sits on his bedroom floor and melts. The incident with the monster feels like it’d happened a year ago. He’d replaced all the lightbulbs but now the light is too bright when he flicks it on. Doesn’t matter yet, the sun is out and it’ll be out for a miserably long time, just torturing everything. Kayn plugs in his laptop and tries to figure out how he’s going to make money. He’d had a pool job one summer but that’d been miserable. 

He wonders where his classmates are. Qiyana is going on some sort of multi-week vacation, but he can’t remember where. Talon’s family has a lake house apparently, so Sett will probably be going there too. Akali doesn’t really count but she’s also working, though she’s still planning a trip across the country to see her girlfriend. And somehow Kayn is doing nothing. And no one.

Kayn wiggles the charging cable until it starts working again. He doesn’t know whether the problem is the laptop or the cable. Both are secondhand. He gets up and collapses onto the bed and wiggles his fingers into the gashed mattress, imagining the monster’s claws again, sharp as sin.

Something impossible happened to him last night—but not really. Nothing’s changed.

Time crawls on. The hours turn to mush, a pink smear on the back of life’s tires. Zed orders pizza and they eat it standing in the kitchen and neither of them bring up the argument. When Kayn goes back upstairs the sky is dark enough to see the Buvelle porch light across the street. He looks out the window to the patch of lawn where he’d first seen the monster, but it’s only grass.

Maybe a life changing moment is just that: a moment.

Kayn feels the loss of that fleeting spotlight, whatever opportunity had been gifted to him—whatever it was. The opportunity to die, maybe. But it’d still been something. A demon? A monster—a cryptid like bigfoot? Red-horns. The devil? 

The moon emerges, the cicadas start screaming. Kayn holds the loss inside his chest, trapped in his ribcage. He sits up and grabs a pair of sneakers from his closet, the pair crusted with dried mud that he uses to go hiking with. He reties his braid and pries open the window. Something’s wrong with it. He’d slammed it too hard the last time. Kayn puts one foot out onto the porch roof.

“Is anyone there?” he calls out, quietly.

There is no response.

Kayn swings his other leg out onto the roof. The heat is less intense but the air is still grossly muggy. A few mosquitos take the opportunity to escape into his room.

No one is there, Kayn thinks, shutting the window behind him. He pats his pants to make sure his phone is in his pocket. He’s not known for making the smartest decisions. Kayn is known for pinching out birthday candles between his index and thumb. Shieda Kayn is known for playing with fire.

Chapter Text

The air tastes sour. Kayn can’t decide if it’s because of the heat or the tension building up like a knot in his throat. Everything looks different at night, that’s true, but everything feels different too. His phone flashlight had seemed adequately bright in his bedroom, but the woods swallow the light up. The shadows are deeper, the trees taller, the leaves rustling ominously overhead.

Kayn doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s already lost. He can’t find any of the old landmarks. There should be a big clearing up ahead marked by a jagged stump—the one where kids had tried to start their own fight club one summer, but Kayn has yet to stumble into it. Instead he wanders through the woods for over half an hour, and his phone gets very hot in his hand. The cicadas are screaming again, buzzing in waves, and sweat rolls down his neck.

He has always thought of himself as brave. Whenever he and Akali (and sometimes Shen, lurking in the back with his arms crossed) would watch horror movies, Kayn would always be the one to lean in. The threat of blood and violence has never bothered him much. One night a few years ago he’d woken up with a nosebleed and bled all over the bed and himself, and the only real conclusion he’d come to was that being covered in blood made him look really cool. For a second there in the mirror Kayn had looked otherworldly.

And it’s not just the horror movies. Kayn has never been afraid to speak up or step forward. A leader, Shen had told him once, and Kayn had informed him that he didn’t need anyone slowing him down. They can sit back and watch while he breaches the atmosphere. Most people are incompetent. That’s what Zed had said. He’d been in the backyard smoking again, one of his arms folded across his chest, and he’d said that unprompted. “Most people are incompetent, Shieda.”

“What?” Kayn had asked. He hadn’t liked the way Zed had sounded, kind of like his words were reaching for him. He couldn’t describe it.

Zed had taken another puff of his cigarette. When he spoke again his voice was hoarse. “Most people are weak,” he’d muttered. He must have been talking about Shen. Or maybe he’d been talking about himself, even though Kayn’s never considered Zed weak so much as pinned down by his own life.

Kayn stops. He wishes he’d brought some water. His plan had been impulsive, even if it’s built on one crucial fact.

The monster—the demon—whatever it is. It hadn’t killed him.

He thinks about the deer, its eyes dry and milky in the parking lot, and he leans against a tree. He should’ve passed the clearing by now, or at least the decrepit tree house or the make out log. His phone has gotten very hot and he turns off the flashlight, surrounding himself in darkness. Kayn glances around, letting his eyes readjust and messing with his braid. There are no bears, he thinks. There hasn’t been a bear sighting—ever.

This seems like a long shot, like threading the eye of a needle, the thread itself a long spool of instinct. Kayn is not stupid. He’s not afraid to take a chance but he’s also not stupid. The monster hadn’t killed him when it’d had every opportunity. And sure it could have gone anywhere, but Kayn thinks—somehow—that it must be nearby, that maybe it’d ripped that deer in half just for him.

(An insane thought, sure, but the narcissism keeps Kayn daring.)

He clears his throat. “Are you out there?” He’d meant to speak louder, but the woods swallow that too.

There is no answer. Kayn rubs his hands on his shirt, hating how clammy he is.

“I want to talk,” he tries, louder.

Nothing. 

Kayn scowls. He decides to keep going.

The longer he walks, the more Kayn starts to feel like a tin can slowly crumpling up. He—refuses. He refuses to believe that a monster would visit his bedroom and disappear and nothing else will happen to him. Disappointment warps into spite, then into hard anger. And he is still smoldering silently when he stumbles upon the rest of the deer. Kayn’s shoe collides with something soft. He points his light down and discovers it with all its innards strewn about, heaps of brown fur and crusted blood and crawling flies. His kneejerk reaction is to backpedal, then his heel catches on a tree root and Kayn falls backwards into the monster’s hands.

His phone has fallen into the grass, light muffled by the dirt, but it doesn’t matter. The red eyes are bright enough on their own. Kayn stares up at them, unable to decipher its expression, devoid of anything except fire.

He blinks, finally, air sucking back into his lungs along with a fresh injection of adrenaline. His arms have broken out in gooseflesh again, alarm bells going off in his head. He is hyper aware of the fact that the monster had caught him. One of its big hands is slid under his back, and the other is cradling Kayn’s head. Warmth radiates off its palms, but it’s not a kind heat. YOU ARE IN DANGER, Kayn’s brain warns.

“You’re—real—” he manages to say.

The monster is gone as quick as it appeared and Kayn drops the final few inches to the ground. 

“You came looking,” it says, its voice so deep and rumbling that Kayn can feel it in the ground below him. The grass might be trembling. He pushes himself up onto his elbows. It’s standing in front of him, crazy tall and faintly glowing. It’s easy to see in the darkness. The eyes are bright as the sun, sure, but Kayn is staring at the dim light gathered at the center of its chest, like a star is buried under the skin—if that’s skin. 

“I thought” —Kayn sits up— “Because you didn’t kill me—”

The rest of his sentence is lost as the monster snaps forward and snatches him up by one of his wrists. His body is jerked through the air like a ragdoll, and Kayn’s stomach does a backflip. He crashes backwards against the nearest tree, pinned against the trunk by his wrist like a piece of meat—that deer ripped in half. Kayn’s head blooms with pain. He dangles, stunned, body throbbing, pain travelling down his arm to his shoulder.

“Wait—” he mumbles, though his mouth feels slow, like he might as well be speaking in slow motion, like his words are still on the ground where he’d left them. “Wait—”

“You can scream now,” the monster tells him, and its other hand grabs Kayn’s chin.

“Wait—” Kayn repeats, kicking his legs out in a panic. He can’t reach the ground. It’s not as if Kayn’s short or weak. This thing is just so much stronger. “I just want to talk!”

It pauses, looking at him.

“I just want to talk,” Kayn repeats, face squished in its grip. His arm hurts. He reaches up to brace his other hand on the monster’s shoulder, looking for leverage, a place between its shoulder and thick neck that isn’t just mean edges. 

The monster lets go of him abruptly, and Kayn slips to the grass, stumbling on a tree root. He rubs his sore wrist, finding it wet with what must be blood. His heart feels like it might explode. Kayn crouches to pick up his phone, keeping one eye on the monster, who’s backed away to give him room. Not that it matters, Kayn thinks. It could cross the gap in an instant, he’s sure.

YOUR PHONE IS OVERHEATING, his phone screen reads.

Kayn quickly shuts off the flashlight. He feels wobbly. The monster is licking Kayn’s blood off its claws. The glow at the center of its body pulses, unearthly, demonic red.

“Are you from hell,” Kayn asks.

It laughs—must be a laugh, though it sounds jagged. Kayn leans back against the tree, his face still hot from where the monster had touched him.

“So that’s a no,” he decides, searching the creature’s face for any truth. Its eyes are slightly narrowed at the corners, jaws cracked open to let more light out between its fangs. It’s smiling, Kayn figures.

“Where did you come from?” Kayn asks.

It shrugs, eyes narrowing further. Kayn’s head aches.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

“You sound disappointed." 

“No!” Kayn says quickly. “No killing me.” He remembers what happened in their last encounter. “Or anyone else.”

The monster’s jaws click together.

“Why did you look for me?” The already muggy air feels even heavier, and the bugs have shut up again, leaving a stiff, oppressive silence. The silence might be scariest, even compared to the monster. It is so devoid of—everything, and the air smells like death—that deer carcass rotting close by.

“I was—I thought maybe—” No. Kayn hates the way he sounds, stumbling over his words. He stops, letting the silence in, letting it press against his body. It smothers his nerves.

He clenches his fists. “I want my life to be different.”

A pause. Then the monster laughs again, this time tipping its head back. Kayn’s face burns. He waits for it to stop, but it just keeps going, the sound booming through the trees.

“Are you done?” he asks, fighting back embarrassment.

The creature’s jaws snap sharply closed. It points at Kayn and reaches up to wipe a tear off its face, though if it’d actually shed one, Kayn can’t tell. “You think I’m a genie?” It’s mocking him. “You think I can free you from your pathetic existence?”

“I—”

“I can change your life.”

Kayn swallows thickly, breathes in death. It is no longer smiling, he decides. Suddenly it is very, very serious.

“I want to be famous.”

It tilts its horned head and takes one step closer. “I can make you famous.”

“Like rock star famous,” Kayn clarifies. “Not murderer famous, or anything.”

Its eyes glow brighter, two embers inside its head. “I can do that.”

The monster is creeping closer, and Kayn’s brain is screaming at him again; that this is wrong, this is dangerous, this is a predator playing with its food. Kayn pulls on the front of his shirt to unstick it off his chest. He decides he doesn’t like the tree against his back so he moves to the right, just in case. “How?” 

“I can do anything,” the monster tells him, tongue flicking out to taste the dead air. “You only have to pay the price.”

“The price,” Kayn echoes. Subconsciously he thinks he’d known. You always read about this sort of thing, or you see it in movies. There’s some sort of sacrifice. Like a goat or something. Or a ritual at least.

The monster is way too close again. Its knuckles brush against the bare skin of Kayn’s forearm, surprisingly harmless. Kayn still steps out of his reach. Its touch leaves his skin tingling.

“Your arm.”

Kayn stares at it. “What?”

“Your arm,” it repeats firmly. “Cut it off at the elbow, or better yet—the shoulder. Bite through skin and flesh and bone.” Suddenly it’s behind Kayn, he backs up into its chest, and it’s grabbing his elbow to inspect it. Kayn twists out of its grip—it doesn’t stop him.

“Cut off my arm?” he asks in disbelief, cradling his elbow protectively.

The monster leers down him, jaws wide and sharp. “How badly do you want it?”

Kayn’s mind races. All his hope comes crashing down under the weight of what might be an impossible task. Blood and guts are fine until it's your own arm. “I could die.”

“You could. You won’t.”

“That’s like—”

“Torture,” the monster agrees, sweetly. “It’ll be very painful.” It’s close again. This time it finds the end of Kayn’s long braid, but it doesn’t pull, instead working its sharp thumb into one of the pleats like a knife stabbing through skin, and still its voice sounds so oddly tender, sweet as a corpse. “There’ll be lots of blood. It might be the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.”

Kayn lets out a shaky breath. He can’t even begin to picture it—or—he can but he knows it’s not right. The truth is that he’d never be able to imagine how painful it might be. In high school he’d broken his arm, but that pain—while terrible—must still be incomparably different. There’s some stuff you just won’t understand until it happens to you.

“I can’t give you my power for free,” the monster adds, “even if I wanted to.” 

Whatever spell Kayn is under, he snaps out of it. Maybe his face gets too hot or his breathing stutters a second too long. Maybe the tingling on his skin wakes him up or maybe it's because his stomach decides to do another backflip for good measure. Or the mention of that holy word, power, works just like one of Zed’s patented cold showers. He pulls his braid free. The monster doesn’t stop him.

“You’re not lying?” he asks.

“I can’t take it myself,” it tells him tenderly, “or I’d tear it off your body right now.”

Kayn remembers again the deer, split in half. He takes another useless step away. His brain is begging him to get some distance. Run! 

“You have to give it to me.”

Kayn feels sick. Maybe the smell is getting to him. His throat convulses like he might retch, and he tastes bile, but he swallows it down.

“And that’s—the only thing I need to do?” he clarifies.

“The only thing.”

Kayn closes his eyes. He can’t focus on anything. He thinks of the deer. The monster’s glow hiding behind its teeth. The face that Zed had made when he realized Kayn’s arm was broken, his sallow face pinched with worry.

“I need to think,” he announces, opening his eyes.

The monster is frighteningly silent. Maybe it’s disappointed. The hair on Kayn’s arm is standing on end.

“You know,” he adds quickly, desperate to quell whatever horror is gathering in the darkness, “because it’s my arm.”

The monster jerks its head, causing Kayn to take another step back. “Of course,” it reassures. Another click of its jaws. Another flicker of its tongue. Kayn doesn’t realize the monster’s glow has been fading until suddenly it’s only an outline in the shadows. “When you have your answer, call my name.”

“What name?”

It snorts, barely visible. “I’ve already given it to you.”

“What?”

“Stupid boy,” the monster scoffs, just a voice now. “It's Rhaast.”

“Rhaast?” Kayn repeats dumbly. But the monster is fully gone. He spins in a circle, searching for its red eyes, but there is no one, and in the monster’s absence the cicadas begin again.

Chapter Text

Zed wakes him up early in the morning. He bangs on Kayn’s door ruthlessly until Kayn has enough lucid strength to try and make some noise. He tries to shout that he’s awake but what comes out instead is just garbled nonsense, dripping with exhaustion.

“Shen will be here soon!” Zed calls, and then Kayn listens to him stomp back down the stairs.

It’s a good thing that Zed hadn’t opened the door, since he’d notice the curtainless window. Kayn notices, that’s for sure. The sunlight is streaming cruelly through the glass, unchecked, getting his room nice and hot at only—

Kayn reaches for his phone on his nightstand. 

Seven in the morning.

He groans and rolls over.

Ordinarily he wouldn’t be afraid of just sleeping in anyway, but that can’t happen today, so Kayn gets up. His eyes feel like they’re full of sand. He stumbles off to the bathroom.

He’d gotten home late last night, though not on purpose. Kayn had tried to go straight home but instead he’d remained severely lost for what might have been hours, phone dead, before he’d finally stumbled across the make out log. After that it hadn’t been so hard to find his way back, but Kayn was fed up with the woods and dog-tired. He’d crept in through the back door, snuck upstairs to his room, and crashed with his shoes still on.

The cold shower wakes him up, but he still feels like he’s on death row. At least the heat hasn’t descended upon the house yet. Kayn puts on his shirt, first backwards, then the right way, and then he goes downstairs. Last night almost feels like a dream, or a nightmare. Either way he can still smell the phantom stink of that dead deer. It’d followed him home and now refuses to be washed out. He rubs his nose. 

By the time he gets downstairs, Shen is already sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea, and Kayn walks right into the middle of whatever nebulous energy had been gathering like storm clouds.

“Did you make coffee?” Kayn asks Zed.

Zed gestures towards the pot with his shoulder. He is leaning back against the kitchen counter, his arms crossed. He doesn’t look particularly happy to see Shen, and he won’t be particularly happy when Shen leaves.

“Hey Shen,” Kayn says.

“Good morning, Kayn.” He is as composed as always, though Kayn knows that's a lie. He's heard Shen screaming into the phone.

“Did Akali come?” he asks, glancing around like maybe she's hiding under the table.

“She slept in,” Shen says.

“Oh so she gets to sleep in.”

“Kayn,” Zed warns.

Kayn pours himself some coffee and snags one of the bagels Shen’s brought. He reaches for the sugar, since he can’t take it black the way Zed does. He’s tried. It just tastes like ass. There’s a weird pressure to the air, like his ears are about to pop. Whenever Shen and Zed are in the same room Kayn feels like he’s interrupting them, even though they never seem to be talking to each other. He’s not crazy, Akali’s felt it too, they’ve even compared notes. Whatever Shen and Zed have is defined by this pressure, this feeling, like a scar, a crater in the space between them where something crashed and burned. And Shen and Zed are both tiptoing around it in endless circles, a loop of wordless visits and splintered looks, while Kayn and Akali can only watch, and marvel, and wonder how long things will continue this way.

“I can’t stay long,” Shen says, setting down his empty mug and standing up. “I’m on call.”

“I can help,” Kayn says, and downs his cup of coffee in only a few burning swallows. He rips the still-warm bagel in half and dunks it in cream cheese and follows Shen outside.

“Kayn,” Zed warns again, in passing, but he doesn’t move from his post.

Kayn doesn't know anything about fixing air conditioners. He hands Shen his tools, imagining that they're in an operating room instead, and Kayn is handing him a sterilized scalpel instead of a dirty screwdriver in the backyard.

“Have you ever amputated something?” he asks. It’s hot, but the cold shower is at least delaying the inevitable.

Shen is fiddling with the back of the AC unit. His hair is tied in a neat topknot, as usual, and his exposed arms bulge with muscle. Kayn had asked him once about how to get built the same way, and Shen had offered him a routine, starting at five in the morning. Kayn had declined. He’s got enough muscle already.

“Amputated something,” Shen echoes, half listening.

“Yeah, like sawed off someone’s leg or arm or something,” Kayn says. He’s hit by a stinging sense of deja-vu. Surely he’s asked Shen this before, years ago maybe. It sounds like something he would’ve already asked about.

 “I’m not that kind of surgeon.”

Shen passes Kayn a handful of small, dirty screws. He opens up the back panel of the AC unit, exposing wires. Veins, Kayn thinks.

“Is it hard to saw off someone’s arm?”

Shen pauses, squinting at the wires. He scratches the side of his head, behind his ear. “Where is this interest coming from?”

“My friends and I were talking about it.” Kayn answers quickly. “Like those hypotheticals like what would you do for a million dollars. And you're the surgeon so you’d know.”

“Not much,” Shen corrects. “It's always dangerous.”

“How dangerous?”

“Dangerous.” Shen pokes at the wires. “It's just the capacitator,” he mutters.

Kayn doesn't know what that is.

“Like what are the chances of death?”

Shen turns to look at him, maybe for the first time all morning. His eyes are especially piercing, like they see straight through Kayn. “On the table?” he asks. “You said an arm?”

“Yeah.” Kayn drags an invisible line across his elbow. Or better yet, the shoulder. But staring at his own arm in the daylight makes it seem impossible.

Shen considers his question for a few seconds. “As far as major amputations go, it’s not as bad. A leg would be much worse.” He turns back to the AC. “But there’s always a risk.”

Kayn eats the last hunk of his bagel. He needs more detail, but Shen doesn’t know the context, and he wouldn’t believe it anyway. He recalls the monster’s—Rhaast’s red eyes, gleaming at him in the darkness. His skin has broken out in gooseflesh again. Whenever he thinks about the monster in the woods his stomach curls with newfound disgust, an ache of revulsion with no real target except the circumstances. What had happened had been rotten. It’d felt forbidden, or cursed, or like consorting with something that should never be consorted with. And despite all that, it makes Kayn feel special.

Zed is peeking at them through the kitchen window. Kayn waits till he slips out of view before he speaks again.

“Shen,” he asks, “did Zed tell you about the fight we had?”

A click, a clank. Shen pries a metal cylinder out of the AC unit. No idea what that is either.

“He did,” he answers, slowly.

Kayn shakes the screws in his fist. “Would you talk to him about it?”

“What would you want me to say?”

The evenness in Shen’s voice almost throws Kayn off. He’s heard it before, and heard of it, since Akali’s ranted about it, but it’s been a while. Shen can do this thing where he becomes eerily calm, like a robot with no hint of an opinion or emotions. Except whenever he does that, Kayn remembers Zed and him screaming at each other, and he knows that Shen is a crocodile lurking under the water.

“Convince him to let me switch majors so I can do music,” he says, and then immediately realizes how unconvincing that sounds. “I’m good, Shen I’m so good—you’ve heard me, I know I can do it—”

Shen cuts him off with a laugh, humorless. “I can’t convince Zed of anything.” He sets the metal cylinder on top of the AC and shuts the back panel.

Kayn swallows down his dismay. His face burns, pride nipped by Shen’s laughter, even if it hadn’t been intended for him. “But your opinion matters to him—”

“I’m inclined to agree with Zed,” Shen says shortly. “Music is a risk. You are better off pursuing something more reliable.” He holds his hand out behind him. “Screws.”

“Like being a surgeon?”

“Screws,” repeats Shen.

Kayn clenches his fist until he can feel the metal screws biting his palms. He slaps them onto the top of the AC unit and storms inside. He stomps up to his room and slams the door so hard that the sound echoes in his chest.

Rage and frustration tingles in his fingertips. Kayn seizes his guitar from its spot leaning against the wall. He imagines shattering the windshield of Shen’s car. That’d show him. It would be glorious but it wouldn’t do anything for him. Shen already thinks that he’s a hot-head. He drops the guitar and snatches his lucky pen off his desk and digs his songwriting notebook out of his backpack. The words spill out of him, vicious and biting, and too angry to be much good. Even his lucky pen can’t fix it, beloved as it might be. He’s written all his best songs with it, but this won’t be one of them. What Kayn really—desperately—wants to do is prove everyone wrong. The idea of everyone being right about him hurts worse than anything. And Kayn wants this so bad. He can feel it burning inside his chest, the knowledge that right now he would do anything. He could just drop out of his major. Fuck whatever Zed thinks. And Shen too. Or—

“I can do anything,” Rhaast echoes in his head. “You only have to pay the price.”

Kayn flips the notebook closed and reaches for his laptop.

***

The sun has already set by the time Kayn wakes up. He stirs awake in the evening, folded on his bed like a crumpled newspaper. His mouth tastes foul and his neck hurts, and a sense of doom awakens along with him.

He had thought avidly about the name and why he knew it, because Rhaast had been right—he had known it. It’d been planted somewhere between his lungs, the empty space between all of his organs maybe, and when Rhaast had called him a stupid boy the name had wiggled up and out of him like a parasite, and then when Rhaast had said its own name the parasite had nodded its head and agreed. Yes, that feels right. 

Maybe he’s going crazy.

Kayn slides out of bed. His clothes are wrinkled as shit and his neck hurts from how he’d slept. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but coffee be damned it’d happened anyway. His hair—which had been loose since the shower—is a tangled mess. Kayn grabs his hairbrush off his night table and tries to fix it.

And still, that heavy, doomed feeling stays with him. He’s going to do it. He’d spent that morning researching, since Shen had proved to be decidedly useless. From how hot the room is he hadn’t even fixed the air conditioning. Anyway, there was that one guy who got his arm trapped under a rock and he had to saw it off with a pocket knife. If he can do it then Kayn can too.

Kayn tests the name on his tongue. Rhaast, he thinks, but doesn’t yet say it. He slips out of his room and into the darkness of the house. Kayn tiptoes across the hall to Zed’s room. He cracks the door open, completely silent. Zed is a lump under his covers. Kayn stares at him for a few minutes, not really knowing why he’s looking or what he might be waiting for. Then he closes the door carefully and goes downstairs into the kitchen, and he opens the knife drawer. It's past midnight and the normally innocent tools have turned sinister. Kayn’s hands hover over the handles before he selects one. He glances at his elbow.

“Rhaast,” he finally whispers. 

“The choice won’t matter,” the monster rasps in his ear. “The result is the same.”

Kayn spins to face it. The monster towers over him as if it's always been there, standing too close. Kayn leans against the counter to get some space, with little effect. By now he’s more used to the monster, even as his brain begs him to run.

“You can just appear,” he says.

“I can do anything,” Rhaast hisses, with a hint of smugness.

“Then why do you look like that?” Kayn crosses his arms. “How come you look so awful?”

The monster is equal parts menacing and out of place in Kayn’s kitchen. It lifts its hand to brush its knuckles against Kayn’s cheek. “You think I look awful?”

Kayn slaps Rhaast’s hand away. He turns to the knife drawer.

“If I do this,” he says, trying to keep his voice low just in case, “you’ll give me what I want?”

Rhaast’s head tilts. “I’ll give you everything you want.” 

“Why me?” Kayn asks the question that has been bubbling inside him ever since that first night. He almost doesn’t want to ask.

It touches Kayn in the center of his chest, its hands exceedingly warm. Kayn grabs its wrist and his pale skin offers sharp contrast. “I heard your violence,” Rhaast says. “I hear it even now.”

Maybe it shouldn’t make Kayn feel as good as it does, but it does. It could be the grasp of recognition, or maybe it’s just the fact that he’s being taken seriously for once, and Kayn had not realized how badly he wanted that until now. All his life he’s been—a lot. He’s been a little too much. Too angry, too intense, too rude. There’s a light in his eyes that won’t leave. Akali’s pointed it out. They were talking about girlfriends and she’d said, “You’ve just got this—look in your eyes. Like you’re manic or something. I think it puts people off.” And Kayn had thought briefly about running her motorcycle over. He didn’t care that he was too much of anything. It was just—again—somehow he ends up on the bad side of special, instead of the good side where you get labeled enigmatic. Because no one is smart enough to really understand him. No one can match his energy, and Kayn might be alone forever.

“There it is,” Rhaast reassures above him, practically purring, hand still pressed against Kayn’s chest. “I hear you. I’m listening.”

***

The monster follows Kayn back to his bedroom, carrying the knives. It makes no noise up the stairs. When Kayn glances back at it he thinks it might look cheerful.

“You’re going to do it here?” it asks, once the door is closed behind them. “This will be bloody.”

Kayn sits down on his bed, feeling the frame tremble. “It’ll be bloody either way.”

“Wouldn't you rather go back to the woods?”

A chill passes down Kayn’s spine at Rhaast’s luring tone. “No,” he decides. “I’m sick of the woods. Too many bugs.” 

“They never bother me,” the monster scoffs.

Kayn grabs a strip of cloth, the remains of his curtains. His bed squeaks precariously under him. That's another reason he doesn't care. Everything he owns is second-hand. And there’s a big hole through his shitty bed. He peels off his shirt and loops the strip around his left arm. The knot is hard to tie one-handed. Then Rhaast’s hands intercept him, sharp claws grazing Kayn’s skin as it shoves his hands aside. It ties the cloth fiendishly tight around his bicep. Kayn looks at the monster again, minding the wide reach of its horns.

What is happening? his brain asks. It’s too hot in his room.

He stays seated on the bed until his arm starts to really tingle, pins and needles shooting pain up his arm while he watches Rhaast pace around his room, silently inspecting the various posters and trinkets that have accumulated over the years. Kayn is not in the mood for conversation, so he’s glad that the monster stays quiet. And meanwhile he’s fingering the inside bend of his elbow where the skin is soft and tingling. Kayn wonders if he even woke up from the nap he’d taken earlier. He wonders if he’s still out in the woods, maybe dead as that deer. A fog of surreality has set in. There is no going back, he thinks firmly, and glances down at the knives set on the covers next to his phone. One is a long and serrated bread knife, and the other is a pointed butcher's blade, good for slicing, and both are abysmally sharp because Zed always makes sure of it.

Finally, after some time—Kayn doesn’t know how long—he reaches for the butcher’s knife. The handle feels abnormally cold in his hand.

“Is it time?” Rhaast has returned to him, leaning over him on the bed. 

Kayn nods, not trusting himself to speak. 

It wraps its hand around his own and gives him a squeeze as if to reassure him before letting go. Kayn savors the comfort, oddly enough, even if it doesn’t last and doesn’t calm the churning in his stomach. “I cannot help you unless you do this.” Its eyes seem to glow brighter. Kayn can feel its excitement in the air. “Do you want to scream?” 

Kayn shakes his head jerkily as he sets the knife edge on his arm. The blade is cold—it’s so cold, and it causes his arm to start tingling again. He has begun to shake, his teeth chattering together with adrenaline. This can’t be real. There is no going back.

Rhaast is behind Kayn now, and it reaches around Kayn’s head to smother his mouth under its palm. It could snap Kayn’s neck in an instant. It could rip his head off his shoulders. Kayn can feel the strength in its body—for a moment—against his lips. He remembers being held down on the bed, or up against the tree, all of it dreamlike.

“You’re so close,” Rhaast murmurs behind him.

Kayn grits his teeth, baring them in a smile. He grips the knife tighter, feels a line of narrow ice against his arm where the blade sits. “Prove yourself,” Rhaast coaxes, and Kayn hears it in his own head too, the resounding thought that he has to do something, that he has spent his whole life wishing for a moment like this, desperate for a chance to show the world who Sheida Kayn really is; not an orphan, not a weirdo, not some manic maniac with a pipe dream. 

Suddenly he drags the knife across his arm. 

The skin splits open far too easily, like it wanted it to happen. Kayn doesn’t scream but he squirms for a second, shocked, and Rhaast’s other hand clamps down on his shoulder to keep him still. He is plunged deeper into surreality, or the edge of a faint, or the exact opposite where everything is nauseatingly real. Blood is already coating his forearm, and Rhaast’s hand is so warm that it might be burning his skin. Kayn lowers the knife, ears ringing. Another cut in the same place, far deeper, and now the pain descends upon him. The first cut—that’d been recoverable. The second? Kayn screams, involuntarily, but Rhaast’s hand muffles all sound except the furious exhale. He twists again, trying to pull himself free of Rhaast’s grasp, but Rhaast doesn't let him go. The pain is overwhelming. It attacks him. It reminds him that he is flesh and blood and there is already so much blood. It is single-handedly the most pain Kayn has ever felt. His vision constricts to a pinprick, a tiny hole of color, surrounded by blurriness, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. And out of that tiny hole crawls the little parasite again and it tells Kayn that he is dying.

When he glances down he sees the damage, just how impressively deep he’d cut, the forbidden, blood-stained truth of bone buried in his arm. His whole arm is throbbing. It wants to get away from him, betrayed.

Kayn drops the knife.

He has to finish the job. In theory he should pick up the serrated blade and start sawing his arm at the joint, but the feat seems completely impossible. He thrashes in Rhaast’s grip until the monster abruptly releases him. Kayn slaps his hand over the wound in a paltry attempt to stem the bleeding. When he leans forward he thinks he might fall through the floor. Blood gushes through his fingers. Kayn’s hand might drown in it.

And Rhaast says, out loud or maybe in Kayn’s head, a single crushing word. "Disappointing." 

Kayn drags up the blanket to try and smother the wound but it soaks too fast. He’s severed something important, some vein or other source of all his living. He is so alive right now, doubled over on the bed. He’s remembering Zed in the kitchen, holding Kayn’s arms under the faucet as he washes out a scrape. He’d been littler then, struggling to reach into the tall sink. And he remembers driving fast on the highway in his stupid beater car and he remembers splitting a bowl of popcorn with Akali when they watched movies at Shen’s house, fifteen and fourteen, and he even remembers Shen pouring him a cup of tea and telling Kayn that it would taste earthy and it did somehow taste like hot earth, like the palms of Rhaast’s hands. And he remembers the buzz of being known at school, of being feared or loved in the halls—there was no difference—of having the shitty lifeguard job that one summer. And getting Zed a new coffee machine in winter, and bringing home straight A’s because Kayn’s good at that—living—and all these memories coalesce into one big memory, which is being alive and being a presence or a fixture in all these different lives including his own. And Kayn doesn't want to die like he really doesn’t want to die. And he is reveling in this new lust for life, teeth chattering, while he is dying.

“Help—me,” he gasps, unable to hide the panic.

“I cannot,” Rhaast sighs, almost wistful. Kayn struggles to lift his head, to catch a blurry glimpse of the monster’s crimson body, standing in front of him.

“I—”

“An arm was too much,” Rhaast muses to himself. “I forget how weak humans are.”

“No—” Kayn cannot believe it. He’s dying. He picks up the serrated knife, finding the handle slippery with his own blood. He can’t move right. He’s lagging. He’s in shock. He’s dying. His makeshift blanket bandage is soaked and dark and when he yanks it away Kayn reaches a new height of pain that he hadn't experienced previously, and he drops the knife, hand spasming.

Rhaast catches the blade before it clatters to the floor, the movement barely discernable on the edges of Kayn’s shock-obscured vision. He can’t do it. He can't cut off his arm. This isn’t a goddamn movie. Why did he think he could?

“A pity.”

Kayn tries to reach for the phone on his bed. He can call 911. He might be dead before they get here. He’s never seen so much blood in his life. It’s on the floor. It’s on himself. Zed. He should howl for Zed. He should get up. Kayn grabs his arm again and swings to his feet and is immediately assaulted by a wave of dizziness and fresh agony. Rhaast grabs his other arm to steady him, and it covers his mouth again before he can scream.

“An arm was too much,” it repeats quickly, voice dripping with sickly sweet regret, “but I can still help you.”

Kayn exhales against its hand. It lets him go and reaches for something on the bed, holding something up in Kayn’s narrow pinhole of vision.

His lucky songwriting pen. Blue and narrow, with a potent, sharp tip.

“An eye,” Rhaast says urgently. “Give me an eye and I will make all your dreams come true.” 

Run, Kayn thinks. Run to Zed. He’d heard it then. The remorse in Rhaast’s tone had rung false. It had been too sweet. It had been practiced. It’d been said by a mouth full of sharp teeth. There is a lie somewhere—maybe the whole fucking thing and it’s too late to know. Darkness is creeping in on the edges of Kayn’s vision.

Kayn snatches the pen out of Rhaast’s fingers. He clicks it with his thumb and swings it up to his eye. For a moment he hesitates, overcome by horror. He remembers Rhaast’s claw sinking so close to his eye—his eye—

Kayn plunges the pen as far as it will go, which for a brief moment feels impossibly far, like diving into the deep end of the pool to save some drowning shithead. That instant where you are sinking and haven’t yet touched the bottom. Maybe it’s because of the agony in his arm, but it doesn’t hurt at all.