Death's First Love

As always, everything starts in darkness.

Then the pounding starts. The pounding fresh in my ears, the sound of my feet as they thump on the pavement. Daggers clinking against each other, steel against steel. Cursing, lots of cursing, and the smell of blood. The feel of a hand striking against my cheek, and the grip of fingers as they clutched my chin so tightly I could feel my bones ache. “Lucca, good job. Again.”

I would remember his voice, no matter how long it had been since I last heard it. My father who raised me, took me in despite not knowing who my real father was. My mother was one of his mistresses, an honor since he was the leader. Our gang was strong, we were feared by all. Our heads lifted high, even in the face of death and destruction, we were strong.

Crying. The sound of my crying was loud in my ears. I had been so young when my mother had died. The children in the gang would go to other mothers’ houses for school, my father didn’t trust us out to get kidnapped. We were the future, he’d say over and over again, to be protected. I was five, my small lunch box mostly empty and clutched to my chest as I hopped up the stairs to my home. “Mama! I got an A! I did it!” I had been so proud of that A. I struggled with letters, the sounds were hard, and I had a slight stutter when I was nervous and had to stand in front of others.

Gang mothers were harsh. They weren’t like the soft and kind teachers at school. Gang mothers would sit leaned back in chairs with a cigarette in between their fingers and a scowl on their faces. They’d always look like they wanted to be somewhere else, and if we came home with bruises on our arms or hands we were expected not to tell, or to cry. Be better, our moms would say with a shrug. Maybe you won’t get hit next time.

I was so excited over my A. Maybe it wasn’t anything special to some, but it was my first. Then there was Allison, the little girl who smelled like milk with soft brown eyes and skin the color of trees. She had smiled at me, she had told me good job, and I felt like I was flying. Then I opened the door, and everything fell to the ground around me.

The smell of blood wasn’t strange, for a child raised in a gang. The smell of drugs, did you know they had different smells? Some didn’t smell like anything, and some smelled terrible. I never cared to know what each smell meant, what the white powder that was always crusted under my mom’s nose meant, or the soft stain of red that always seemed to linger even after she had scrubbed it away. That day, I had opened the door to the smell of drugs and blood, and it didn’t mean much, not at first. It was a familiar smell, after all. I hummed under my breath as I jumped over a pile of dirty clothes, and skidded around the pile of broken dishes, almost like it was a game. This was my life, you know? I didn’t know houses weren’t supposed to smell like this, weren’t supposed to look like this.

I didn’t know that having a plate full of white powder with a credit card balanced on the side of the plate wasn’t normal. Didn’t know the sink filled with syringes and scalpels, razorblades, or the rolls of gauze, sewing string, gloves and antibiotics that scattered across the counter wasn’t normal. For me, it was my life. So I skipped through the wreckage, and I searched. Until there wasn’t anything worth searching for anymore.

I found her in the bathtub. Filled with water that was ice cold now, I assumed she must have tried to take a bath. She didn’t always bathe lately and claimed to be too tired, and I didn’t mind. She was my mom, no matter what. She still held me tight and told me goodnight, she still told me she loved me. She meant the world to me because she was the world to me.

I guess I just wasn’t the world to her.

Eyes wide and glassy, pupils were blown and hollow. There was a tray over the tub with more powder, and needles scattered around. I had fallen to my knees, my little lunch box tumbled and tumbled, and I couldn’t pull my eyes away. “Mama?” I remember saying. Over, and over, and over. My little fingers twitched as I stretched them far, but it was too late.

I wasn’t sure even to this day how long I sat there. The light that streamed into the bathroom window through the dirty broken window faded away, only to return again, but I still hadn’t moved. My vision faded, my stomach ached, and my little throat was sore from calling out to her every few minutes. “Mama?”

After that, all I had was him. The leader had loved my mother, for some reason. Unsure if I was actually his son or not he took me in, raised me as his own. The other children of the other mistresses hated me. From then on, I didn’t go to classes with other moms, I stayed at the manor with my father. His favorite child, he’d call me, even as his own flesh and blood watched on with angry stares. I was treated as a prince, trained by the best, taught by the best, and I excelled.

The crack of skin against skin as I fell to my knees, my heart pounding in my chest as I struggled to breathe, only to feel that hand against my chin as it roughly yanked me back to my feet. “Lucca, good. Again.”

I had been the best. A machine, they used to call me. No friends, no lovers, nothing. All I knew was the feel of the dagger in my hand, the firm weight of a pistol, and the motion of movement as I trained, fought, and excelled. Until I died, and there was nothing left; but darkness.

I woke with a gasp as fingers curled around my shoulders and held me down. Automatically I swung out and heard the sound of laughter that jolted through me, bringing me out of my sleeping state. There was darkness here too, as the laugh sounded once more, followed by a soft groan. “You’d think I’d get used to you punching me, but here I am, covered in blood, once more.”

“Brother,” I mumbled sleepily as Raven turned on the light.

I flinched automatically, unable to stop myself from groaning as I pressed my hands against my eyes to block out the light. “No, don’t mind me, go ahead and keep your eyes closed. It’s not like I’d like your help resetting my nose or anything.”

I sighed wearily as I opened my eyes, to see Raven seated in front of me. Even with blood streaming down his face, I could clearly see his tanned skin and his soft brown eyes as he grinned, pulling his eyes to kiss in the corners in mirth. “You can set it yourself, you know,” I mumbled as he stayed silent and continued to smile at me.

With an audible pop, Raven flinched under my fingers as I clutched the back of his neck with one hand and snapped his nose back in place. He looked down at his bare chest with a frown on his face, followed by a sigh. “I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t put my cloak on yet.” He mumbled with a look of annoyance.

I shrugged, uncaring. “You know I swing when you try to wake me. Do better,”

Raven snorted as a reply as we went through the motions of getting ready. At first, I assumed the building had been large enough for everyone to have their own room. By the size of them and how jammed full they were of extra furniture, it was kind of obvious that it had been built to hold one person. However over time, more of us started to come, and a roommate was assigned. To graduate from the Custos Academy was seen as something to have pride in because it wasn’t easy. Four years of literal Hell, and if you failed, you’d be sent to Hell for eternity. The select few, retain the title of Sentinel, or Custos, as we were used to being called. Raven was here before me, but I wasn’t sure how long. He was pretty secretive about his past.

All I knew about him was he was Korean, Raven probably wasn’t his real name, he told me once he was twenty-five when he died, and he was the one who killed me. Not that I really held it against him, to be honest. The four years I went through the academy were hard, but Raven would pop up now and then and bug me, and somewhere along the way, we became friends. When I graduated we were assigned a room together, and had been best friends ever since. Closer than best friends, to be honest. We underwent the ritual to swear ourselves together as Pulsatio, Custos’s that were considered an unbreakable team.

As Raven washed the blood off of his chest with the small sink inside the small walk-in bathroom each room had, I stood up and stretched. Each room was the same. Plain white walls with no decorations, two mats that were pulled out, and pillows and blankets expected to be folded back up and tucked out of the way every morning. We each had a desk, stacked full of textbooks from the academy we were required to continue reading, and new tests we were expected to pass, even after we graduated to keep us fresh. There were two dressers filled with the same clothes. Black jeans, black shirts, and a closet filled with black cloaks. There was never a different color, not for the Grim Reaper level of Custos.

“You were dreaming again,” Raven muttered as he stepped out of the bathroom sliding his fingers through his wet black hair. It was getting longer again, long enough he could pull it into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. We were required to be freshly shaved and groomed properly, to look our best, while we greeted those we reaped and took to the gates. Raven was a mischievous one though, he liked to try and get away with it as long as he could before he got yelled at to behave. More than once I wondered how he was still here, but he’d just laugh and shrug, and exclaim someone on the higher levels must like him.

“I don’t dream,” I scoffed as I shoved him out of the way and walked into the bathroom. I went through the motions of shaving, as was expected of us every morning while Raven scratched at the small patch of hair that spotted along his chin and shrugged. Over the scratching of the razor, I could hear him shuffling out of his pajamas and into his daily clothes.

As I washed my face and brushed my teeth, I stepped out to see him holding up two black cloaks as if he was comparing them to see which he wanted, despite the fact that they were both the same. “Yeah, I know. You don’t dream. You’re a machine, you have no personality, you’re cold like ice. Yada yada,” he teased as I narrowed my eyes at him.

It was times like this that I struggled to understand how to be a friend. My instinct told me he was teasing me, that he needed to be dealt with. Growing up, my father would have expected me to either shoot him to kill him or shoot his knee to make him learn his lesson. But this wasn’t the past, and this was Raven. My best friend, my Pulsatio. “We need to hurry. We’ll be late for rounds.”

Raven rolled his eyes as I tugged on clothes and yanked one of the black cloaks out of his hands. “Hey! I was going to wear that one!” He complained as I tugged it on with a raised eyebrow. “Besides, I was already ready. You were the one not dreaming with your eyes closed and muttering something that sounded like mama.”

I flinched as he stepped out into the hall, and for a moment I closed my eyes as I tried to brush aside the well of emotions that billowed inside me. ’Silence’, I told myself. ’It is the past, and the past will not hurt you.’ I pressed my hand against my chest, and felt the scars that lingered across my pecs and down my sternum, the autopsy scars.

“Coming, bro?” Raven called. I held my head up high, and followed him.