Chapter 15
Demons of Death
Silence permeated the thick walls of the lodge as the dawn began to creep from between the thick branches of the surrounding trees. Both Ronald and Tara shuffled and thrashed in their sleep but never woke. Ethan observed them through everything, sitting in the kitchen, having not slept a minute. It wasn't strange, though—he was used to not sleeping, occasionally even going a full week without an hour's rest. When life hung at the thinnest of ropes, there was little time for rest.
He knew why they were restless but chose not to wake them. It would hardly help, as they would have to face those demons inevitably anyway, and it was best to do so when they were fresh. They've faced death—and though, in some ways, they've faced it the night they met Ethan, their fight last night was different. They faced the chassis of death, as Ethan called it.
There were two kinds of deaths in the world—inevitable and preventable. People may be sorrowful of the inevitable one, but few were truly afraid of it. After all, it was all-encompassing; it would come and sweep like a storm, and there was nothing nobody could do about it. Preventable death, however, was the terror's crutch—people feared it, low and high, and the unlucky ones who had to face it would either break and unwind or find their way to a therapist's chair.
One of the most common kinds of patients Ethan got were survivors of suicide attempts. In some ways, he 'specialised' in them as his colleagues often referred the patients to him. He would, then, take the terror they felt facing death, and all the sorrows that led them there, and bundle them inside his own psyche, understanding them all, before feeding it back. While what Ronald and Tara faced was opulently different, it wasn't that different—they'd faced the chance of dying and lived through it, and now they had demons whispering death's songs swimming through their heads.
Those demons would haunt them—and haunt them for a long time. Even Ethan, trained though he was, suffered all the same once he embarked on the path of an Awakened. He could still recall, in immaculately vivid detail, his first 'death encounter'. Just like with Ronald and Tara, it was ugly, brutal, terrifying, and with an impact that was beyond long-lasting. Those demons never truly go away, but become patches in the ever-evolving armour of the human psyche.
The first one to wake was Ronald. The young man was shivering and shaking, drowned in sweat, eyes glazed in the horror of nightmares he escaped from. He looked around absentmindedly for a moment before his eyes found Ethan and as though they found the light to guide them, the permeating fog within them cleared ever so slightly.
"Go get changed," Ethan said, tossing him a few articles of clothing. "And take a shower. There'll be food waiting for you."
"… thank you," Ronald said simply as he went to the bathroom. In the meantime, Ethan quickly made him a very simple breakfast—two slices of bread framing a single slice of salami with a sliced apple as the side. Even this was perhaps too much, as his stomach would be brewing and boiling for some time. However, he had to eat—they both did. Such was the suffrage of the human body when its mind was breaking.
Ronald returned a few minutes later, fresh in appearance though still dim and dark in spirit. The young man sat on the other side of the kitchen counter, ignoring the sandwich completely and fishing for a few slices of apple and the coffee in the Hello Kitty mug next to the plate.
"It's gonna get easier, right?" Ronald asked after a little while.
"What is?"
"… this. All of this."
"I dunno," Ethan shrugged. "For some people, maybe. But those will also be the first morons to find themselves dying. Why should facing your own mortality ever get easy, anyway?"
"How come I have a feeling it's easy for you?" Ronald looked at him strangely causing Ethan to sigh and smile bitterly.
"You two pissants should really stop trying to emulate me," he said. "I'm broken beyond repair, kiddo. That's not something you should aspire to be."
"Just seems easier than being whole, then, I guess."
"At times, I suppose it is," Ethan said as Ronald ate the last slice of apple, prompting Ethan to wash a new one and start slicing. "So, when I have a knife pressed to my throat, I don't feel like pissing myself and, I guess, I can logically think of a way to get out of that predicament. That's good, right? But then, when I'm watching a kid not named Layla burning alive all while screaming so loudly their throat snaps, and I feel nothing? Boy, you don't want to be me at that moment, trust me."
"… are you really like that?" Ronald asked cautiously. However, just as Ethan was about to reply, the two heard groggy mumbling from behind. They turned and faced the living room where Tara was untangling from her dream state and facing the dawning reality that she was awake. Her demons were gone, instead replaced by two men who were looking at her strangely.
"Piss off," she cursed as she stood up from the couch, feeling her head split. She immediately reached for her thigh as the memory swelled inside of her—but there was no gaping wound, no missing flesh yanked by the monster's yoked jaw. It healed. She looked up incredulously at Ethan who merely shrugged at her gaze, as though to say 'it's not a big deal'. But it was a big deal. It was the sort of wound that would take months of intensive care and therapy to heal properly, and even then it was the question of if it would ever be the same. No, it wouldn't—there would always be a missing chunk, a reminder of what had occurred, a physical chink in the armor. But she was whole. Unbroken.
"There's a change of clothes for you in the bathroom," Ethan said. "Go get yourself cleaned up and come have a bite."
"…" Tara obeyed in silence, though had little intention of 'having a bite'. She felt full, so full in fact she felt as though she'd keel over and empty herself. Images of the last night kept flashing through her mind—the desperation, the fear, the terror, the adrenaline, all the sights that would have had her screaming just a month ago. She faced a monster, and she won. Perhaps it was a pyrrhic victory, and perhaps their victory was never in doubt as Ethan would have likely jumped in were they ever in true danger of dying, but it was the sort of victory that she needed. It proved to her that she could hang with the change—that the world would not leave her behind. That she would not be alone once again.
She returned shortly after, fresh as she could be in her state of mind, her hair still wet, glistening with droplets of water. There was something liberating about being so free and untethered to anything, as though she was floating. But it wasn't a feeling that would last, she knew. There would be another horror to ground her.
Contrary to what she thought, she ended up indulging in the fresh slices of apples—one way or another, she always ended up taking a few bites whenever Ethan would cut them, as though she felt obliged by his effort. The three sat in silence for some ten minutes before Tara broke it.
"Ignoring the parental 'good job' you gave us," she said. "Objectively, how were we?"
"…" Ethan's look was… piercing. It was akin to a father looking at his young child who thrashed in shallow water for thirty seconds and asked him if they swam well. Tara's cheeks flushed in shame as she buried her head down, snacking away at the slices of apple.
"Yes, we obviously know we were shit," Ronald said as to dispense with the awkwardness. "But is there anything more constructive you could offer us?"
"Boy, I gave you a chance to stop digging, but you not only kept at it, you switched out a shovel for a fuckin' excavator," Ethan's words muted the two, but he continued nonetheless, his lips curled into the faintest of smiles of amusement. "Yes, you were shit. Shit beyond shit. I'm fairly certain you have never fought in your lives. Not a bad thing—commendable even, to be fair. But it won't serve you well."
"…" Tara and Ronald stayed silent, waiting for a but. But that 'but' never came. A minute, two, five, soon, ten minutes have passed and there was only silence. They'd occasionally glance up at Ethan but he seemed so entirely divorced from everything he reminded them of that alien orb—as though he didn't even belong here, with them, with the rest of the world.
"Everybody starts someplace," he spoke suddenly, as though having realised that both of them were practically on the verge of tears. "This ain't one of those things where I tell you you managed to somehow showcase some brilliance in your rabid pursuit of life. You didn't. You stank. You stank all the way to high heaven. Just like all military recruits stink. Nobody walks through those gates and immediately gives a boner to their Drill Sergeant for how well they do stuff. They get shaped and moulded just as much, if not more, than their peers, as part of becoming a soldier is being defaced. Do you want me to deface you?" his words stung for some reason, though neither could fathom as to why. "Strip you of everything that makes you you in pursuit of making you more efficient at killing those things?"
"…"
"Neither of you is special," he said, causing their hearts to stir. "No more than any other kid. You are just lucky. Lucky that you got a head start over the rest. If it's any comfort, I ain't special either."
"Bullshit."
"I'm just lucky, like you," Ethan smiled at Tara's outburst. "Whether you take it as me telling the truth, which I largely do, or you imagine I'm feeding you a story like you're toddlers in need of being taken care of… I honestly, hand-to-God, piss-on-my-grave-if-lying just… don't give a single flying fuck. Now, I'm gonna take my nap."
"… Ethan." Tara called him out just before he got to the bedroom, causing him to turn around and face the two. "You are special. To us, at least."
"…"
"…"
"If you ain't got balls to ride it out," Ethan sighed as Tara's cheeks flushed and even Ronald looked like he was burning up. "Don't say chummy things. Jesus, every once in a while, I think—man, these two kids are really mature. The fuck you are. You are exactly the way your age tells me you would be. And it's perfect that way," he added with a wink. "Stay in your lanes, kiddos. Kiss-ass and Righteous-Justice. They'll take you places." He slammed the bedroom door shut and the room turned to silence. The silence that weighed a lot yet seemed to help them float rather than drown them. Silence only he could create so effortlessly.