I turn my head, flick my gaze, confirm there’s an Aidan-shaped shadow sitting in the equally shadowed driver’s seat and know that if I was breathing I would be screaming. It’s like before, this is the Otherside. From beside me comes a cadence of noise that I know is speech, I know Aidan’s saying something even if all I hear is warbled nonsense.
And then Cain cuts in with a hoarse, “Shut up.” There’s no anger to it, just cranky weariness, but the words are distinct and sharp.
The fact I can hear him, feel him, that should come as a reassurance except he’s a shadow. Before he was the only thing I could see clearly on the Otherside, but now I’m surrounded by a black-and-white world I can’t understand with all this terror filling me. I’m not sure how it’s possible to keep feeling more and more frightened.
“Cain!”
The name flies forward with the same panicked strength as the rest of me, but fire shoots up my arm as Cain bears down on my hand. Only my other arm moves, my folded legs and chest don’t seem mine anymore. I lose where I am to the seat.
Grabbing the smoky, insubstantial shadow of Cain’s arm is impossible, but I snatch frantically anyway. I’ve gone hysteric and know it, I even try to pull my right hand free. The more he strains to keep hold the harder I struggle until I’m clawing and shrieking, gone as impossible for him as he is for me.
“Ethan, stop!”
He snatches at empty air before his free hand connects with my left arm. That same reverse-burn sensation flares where the pressure and resistance of his shadowed flesh finds me, wrangles instead my wrist into his hand.
“Calm down,” he says. He actually sounds reassuring. He’s not snarling or snapping. He’s pleading it at me, soft-toned and desperate, “Abel, calm down.”
I stop fighting him, stop struggling to either free my right hand or grab new places on him with my left. I let him hold on to me instead, reassure myself he won’t let go because of the way he begs me again, “Sweetheart, calm the fuck down.”
I shake with deep, wracking shudders that get smaller and smaller as the panic drains out of me. My voice is horrifically shattered sounding as I say, “Okay.”
I hear Cain sigh. It’s frustrated, weary, lifting into a rueful chuckle. “Okay,” he agrees. He eases his hold on me in slow increments until I don’t flinch each time. He keeps hold of my right hand, pats his other hand over the tight knot he’s made.
His tone changes, the black-on-black outline of his head turns some. I know he’s addressing Aidan when he says blandly, “He’s fine. I got him.”
From Aidan’s intangible shadow is a stream of garbled noise, indistinct and unknowable.
“Yeah,” says Cain. “Sure. Why not?” He snorts, amused and bitter, full-throttle sarcasm that betrays him. I don’t think his answer was the one Aidan wanted, and it sounds like Cain knows that. I’m getting pretty good at recognizing when Cain has the answer but doesn’t want to give it for whatever selfish reason.
“Are you okay?” I’m relieved I don’t sound quite so scared and broken anymore. I certainly feel a lot calmer.
Cain rumbles a low laugh and says, “Yeah. Sure,” in much the same way. I bet Aidan just asked him that. Cain’s voice softens as he says, “You are the worst fucking necromancer.”
I should feel insulted, except I’m not. The weight of Cain’s affectionate tone crushes my chest with incandescent ache. Apology rushes up and lodges in my throat.
Cain speaks first, beats me to it. “Sorry,” he says. Flippant, brisk, too-sharp and not especially sincere, and he follows it up with, “You’re not going to like this next part any better.” It has to be my imagination that Cain seems to squeeze my hand. “Ready?”
“Wait,” I say. “Wait, please.”
He does, to judge by the sudden awkward pause. Awkward for me, because the silence of the Otherside is absolute without Cain’s voice to fill it. I flinch my right hand tighter into Cain’s and hear a soft grunt from him, as if I’ve kicked him. I stop, immediately, almost jerk my hand back except he won’t let go. He’s gripping me tight.
“Is this hurting you?” I ask. “What’s happened? Why am I on the Otherside? What are you doing?”
“Sweetheart.” He speaks through gritted teeth. “Now is not the time for your dumbass fucking questions. Are you ready or not?”
Exasperation shoots through me. I make a small, quiet snarl of my own as I snap, “No! No, I’m not. I’m not ready at all! Cain, please — I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know what I am anymore, much less whatever it is I can do. I can’t be ready if I don’t know what to be ready for. You have to explain this to me.”
Silence follows. Abject silence, painful in how complete it is. A hollow panic blooms somewhere low and rises through me. I’d be breathless, if I was breathing.
At last Cain grumbles something harsh and foreign. “Fine,” he says, louder. “Fine, princess. Think of it like I’ve got one door open, you’ve got the other, and we’re about to toss this hapless shithead through. The door hurts like a motherfucker to keep open, so I need you to shut up and be ready. Does that make enough fucking sense, or do I need to draw you a goddamn picture?”
I bring my lips between my teeth, feel at the scar with my tongue. “Yes, it does. I understand. Tell me what to do. Please,” I add. “I can be ready, but I have to know what to do.”
“Just be you, sweetheart.” He tries to sound snarky but comes across as sincere. I feel a pause in the air like he wants to say something more, hear him sigh in defeat as if he was struggling not to say anything else. It’s gritted teeth snarling as he adds, “Don’t let go of me. I’m not chasing your ass down if you do. This one’s too fresh and stupid to struggle, but if he tries to keep hold of you then, well.”
I wait, but Cain doesn’t elaborate. Tentatively I prompt him with a soft, “Yeah?”
“Then I’ll have to find me another necromancer. One that’s not so fucking stupid, maybe.” All these snarled things aren’t what he really wanted to say, I bet. He was going to say something else. He sticks out his left hand expectantly.
“I’m ready,” I say quietly. If this is hurting Cain then I don’t want to delay any longer. I want back in my bright complicated world rather than the shadowed sterile nothing of the Otherside. I set my left hand into his.
Our right hands clench together, Cain’s blunt-edged nails biting in with a sting. He guides my left hand toward his lap — that helmet, I can almost feel the hard plastic shell. Yes, I can, my fingertips brush into something solid, Cain presses my palm into the rounded curve.
A brisk, chipper voice speaks up with a soft-startled, “Oh! Hello, again.” I get a brief glimpse of big, soft eyes and a smile, a droopily sweet expression, a strange insight into everything this motorcyclist once was as a person. I see a bedroom with sunshine streaming in from gauzy curtains, feel satin sheets with a stretch, know these aren’t my memories but get lost in them anyway.
I roll my head on the pillow, look to the window, think about a mother and father, a best friend, a lover, errands I’m going to run that day, pleasant dreams and expectations. I get out of bed, find myself dressed and in a kitchen filled with light and color. Plants crowd the window ledge, beautiful bursting blooms and tumbling green leaves.
Details pop everywhere, like a familiar goofy souvenir magnet holding a pizza menu to the fridge, or the wafting smell of the incense from my nextdoor neighbors. Comforting, domestic familiarity overwhelms and excited me for the day. I snag keys off a hook near the door, pick up a flashy red helmet, lock up my apartment and hum to myself because it’s my last day alive and I don’t even know it.
I don’t even know I’m dead. I couldn’t be dead. I don’t remember dying, after all, I remember all these things about being alive. I know all these wonderful lovely things, like the invigorating first sip of hot coffee on a chill Sunday morning, or the damp cool touch of fresh-sweated dark skin on a lover. How can I be dead? I’m meeting someone for lunch, I’m running late as usual. My lover is waiting, and we’ll laugh about it when I get there. I’m all these living memories, I’m something still thinking about being alive.
Something painful knows a terrible dark truth, though. It knows obliterating nanoseconds that contain miniscule molecular destruction — the breaking silence of synapses firing their last chemical glory. Bursts of adrenaline, dopamine, and serotonin form that last conscious moment. Muscle fibers flex and bones shatter, it’s a cellular infinity of ruin that knows this singular absolute truth of nonexistence.
I won’t deny this harsh awful truth, but it’s not mine. My truth is the searing numb hold of Cain’s hand in mine to know what is me, what I am. I’m not the one who has to let go and be dead. I am not on a motorcycle, nor am I meeting my lover for lunch. I am not a soft-spoken young man fond of orchids and moonlight who loved life so much and doesn’t want to be dead.
That’s someone else, that’s not me. I don’t even know his name, but I know everything else, his first and last kiss, secret moments alone wondering and wanting. I knew his final shocked denial absent of fear, the memory full of endorphins and dopamine to make everything pleasant, even to the gruesome end.
It’s an overwhelming amount of information, an utter confusion where the line between his life and mine threatens to blur again. I didn’t die, I’m not the one dead even though I have memories of torn-apart moments full of agony and suffering. I have violent memories of slipping on a boat deck, swerving on my bike into a car. My life, painful and real, I won’t let it go and can’t, it’s all here inside me amid this invasion of foreign memory.
A pulling sensation redefines my arm, my entire body, my existence — who I am, not just my name but whole collective consciousness of memory that forms the tapestry of my life. The distinct perspective of what’s impossible to share completely, the continuous stream of thought that’s mine and mine alone, this entirety of what makes me separate and distinct, a thing that is and does. This me that I am, I keep hold of Cain’s hand for the blistering return to my beautiful living world.
An impossibility of everything consumes me at how abrupt the transition is. My lungs snatch and spasm for breath, and I try not to panic that it needs to be forced. I have to find and set a rhythm that should be natural.
I hear Aidan’s matched gasp, feel the tightened squeeze from Cain — I see him, we’re still faced off across the interior of the parked car. It looks like a monster’s clawed our joined hands, put long red ribbons into Cain’s arm.
Horror fills me, a fresh-certain dark truth I have to confirm. I lift my left hand up, see blood smeared on my fingers and ripped skin collected into thick crescents under my nails. I can feel the fullness, bitterness rushes into my mouth. I’m the monster. I’ve done this to Cain.
I think Aidan’s saying something, it’s not precisely the distorted nonsense I heard on the Otherside, but I can’t understand him all the same. I can barely hear him over my own choked sobs, the shuddering hard slam of my frantic heartbeat. He’s probably asking if I’m okay, or exclaiming over how I’m clearly not and neither is Cain.
Cain still has my hand, or I still have his. I don’t want to let go of the only thing that feels truly mine. The hard-squeezing pressure and bruising grind of small bones, I’d let Cain crush my hand entirely just for the reminder of what I am, who I am, where I am. I need something solid and real. I want the burning sear of his flesh
I throw myself forward. Our mouths fit together with hungry desperation. He bites at me, I bite at him, we’re attacking each other even as he cradles my hands in both his as if this is going to be gentle. I push my knees to either side of Cain in the seat and spread my thighs over his lap, fit against him close.
The collar on my sweatshirt cuts into my neck as I get yanked back from Cain. Aidan’s frantic, “Get off him!” is sharply distinct. He gets a second fistful of fabric and tugs, grabs at my arm.
I squirm and twist to knock Aidan off me. “S’fine!” Tears blur my vision, sobs still choke my voice. “Go – go away! Go away!” I slap at Aidan’s hand.
Aidan gives up on trying to haul me off Cain and pleads with his big puppy-dog brown eyes instead. “He’s bleeding. You disappeared –”
“Go away!” I scream at him. “Get out of the car! Go!”
I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I am. This terrifying depth of want within me that I possess for Cain, it’s filled and overflowing. I’m going to drown in the flood, all this cold numb impossible that fills me with desperation and need is going to win. I know I’m being beyond crazy, but I also know I’m going to fuck Cain right now in this parking lot and if Aidan doesn’t leave then this is happening right in front of him.
I’m half-turned toward Aidan but still straddled across Cain’s lap. I have my left arm around Cain’s shoulders to keep him pulled against me, half-protective and half-possessive. I’m so totally crazy right now and know it, even without seeing Aidan’s expression mirroring the truth back at me.
This isn’t the face he makes when he’s pitying his crazy best friend. No, right now Aidan’s realizing I’m a monster like Cain. He’s a demon, I’m a necromancer, together we’ve manage to kill the boy thirteen-year-old me could have grown up to be. He’s only memory, dead as that orchid-adoring motorcyclist. I’ve killed Aidan’s best friend.
Aidan fumbles a hand into the console for his phone. The engine’s running, the keys are in the ignition. He pulls on the handle but doesn’t open the door. He stays turned around staring at me. It’s officially the most scared I’ve ever seen him. He knows he won’t see me again if he gets out of the car.
“Wait,” I say. “I’m sorry. Wait –”
Cain’s draped heavy on my shoulder, his lazy lean more woozy than seductive. His arm is slung limp around my waist, one rests heavy on my thigh. His hot, ragged breaths fall over the smallest hairs on my neck.
“Sweetheart,” Cain slurs. “Don’t stop.”
I might be a necromancer, totally crazy and full of lust for this demon, I might be all that but I can also be calm. I should stop crying at least. I don’t want to have sex while crying. I need to be calm about this at least.
“Wait,” I say softly. Now I truly do sound calm. “Wait, stay. I’m sorry.”
Aidan opens and then shuts the door to reset the latch. The dome lights pop on to be helpful, but all they do is expose the horror of the moment. I shudder in a fresh sob to help clear the rest and remember only with brief, peripheral crimson flash not to wipe my face with my hand. Collared bruising denotes Cain’s strong grip, but the blood is his. It’s his skin under my nails.
“Cain, you’re hurt.”
A sandpaper snarl forms his reply. “Yeah. No shit.”
He stirs with a stuttering jolt that’s punctuated by a laugh. Mocking me invigorates him enough to push out of that slow-melting lean. He’s on the verge of collapse — I reach without thinking to steady him, my hands snatching like to catch a teetering porcelain vase.
Cain’s gaze slips out of focus but then sharpens as he rallies with a sneering look of disgust. “You are the worst fucking necromancer,” he declares. He bites each word distinctly. He keeps a glare locked on me until his dark-gleaming eyes roll back, he slides forward. I have all of Cain’s dead weight to hold.
I have this hurt, unconscious demon now and a wide-eyed best friend. I don’t know what to do except start laughing. I keep at it until Aidan joins in, nervous at first and then giggling. We start howling, it’s the best fucking joke either of us has heard. Too bad it’s going to be painfully awkward when the joke’s run its course, and we have to figure out what to do next.