WRATH HOMINIDAE

A Recumon Story

©2016 Michael Adams

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This book is licensed for personal reading only.

All aspects of this work are intended as fiction.

I.

The students of Shadowcrest Academy trekked one mile from the main gate to their school. The air was still and scentless. A stone path led the way through a flat, grassy field. Above, puffs of clouds puckered together, their linings lit in a golden glow around their shadowy underbellies. Through the tears in this heavenly tapestry, Abel Carraway saw the marble sky, pure blue with wisps of white. In silence, walking with his best friend, Nathan Somerwalder, he almost captured the dual nature of eternity in a single moment. The sky and the stones held a secret. They were beauty and misery, God and demons. As he was about to reconcile Heaven and hell in all of their finite infinitude, his friend made a suggestion:

‘Maybe we should get girlfriends this year. Like real girlfriends.’

‘I already have a real girlfriend,’ replied Abel.

Nathan sighed. ‘It’s about time. People were starting to think you were weird. Who is it?’

‘Who else? Ilanya.’

‘Illy?’ Nathan’s head fell back with a hearty laugh. ‘All these years I spent defending you two. No, I said, they’re just friends. And you go on and ask her out. You know what this means?’

‘It doesn’t mean anything. We’re just dating.’

‘You’re dating a childhood friend that everyone assumes you’re in love with. Why do you think most girls never hit on you?’

‘Because they aren’t interested in me.’

‘God, you’re oblivious. How would you survive without me?’

‘I’d get by. And it would be a lot quieter.’ He smirked. Nathan shoved him, and they laughed. They returned to silence, walking, but after a moment...

‘Do you love her?’ asked Nathan.

‘Of course I do.’

‘Don’t act stupid. You always do that. You know damn well what I mean.’

‘I don’t know. We’ll see where it goes.’

‘Dude, you’ve spent most of your lives together. You know her and she knows you better than any two people could know each other. The only reason to ask her out is because you realized you’re in love with her.’

‘Then there’s your answer.’

‘Good. You love her. You need to love someone, ya know? Life sucks. If we’re gonna be stuck here all of our lives pretending...’ He sighed. ‘I mean... I know you are going through a lot, and I’m happy you have someone.’

‘I have you.’

‘I’m not sucking your dick. But I’m flattered you considered me.’

They laughed.

‘You’re an ass,’ said Abel.

‘Keep talkin’ smooth like that, and maybe you’ll get some.’

And this time, they fell into a quiet that was less fleeting. Nathan was taller than Abel, his hair darker than his friend’s auburn locks. Their eyes were voids that swallowed the light. However, if the tilt of Abel’s head and the angle of the sun’s rays coincided in a rare partnership, then flecks of dark brown could be seen floating on the black pools. When they were younger, Abel did not like looking directly at Nathan. When his friend smiled, a cleverness struck his eyes. Abel thought that he was plotting with a secret of his nature that he himself did not possess. Abel learned later that this was true, but Nathan always acted with an unassuming benevolence. If his comrade said that he needed love, then Abel was inclined to believe this. He now felt more confident in his decision to date Ilanya. After all, everyone said you should marry your best friend. He had sensed that the next step into manhood lay before him, waiting to be illuminated. Now, he was pleased to have some verification that his path was lit, but he had lied by omission. Ilanya had been his girlfriend for at least two months. Shouldn’t people have noticed? They got along the same, but something had changed. A heaviness smothered him. He attributed this feeling to resistance. He was reluctant to mature, to take on deeper, more meaningful–more personal–responsibilities. Everything was becoming so serious.

On an instinct, a sense of a hovering presence, Abel casually glanced behind him and saw Carmine Lassiter. He proceeded to smile as a conventional greeting to his peer, but the young man sped up his pace and breezed past them, checking his watch. Abel wondered if Carmine had been avoiding them, lingering behind to stay undetected. He considered playing a kind of prank on their seemingly preoccupied classmate, running after him and forcing a friendly conversation, but he was not brave enough to approach. His next observation proved an excellent distraction. He would not have to contemplate why Carmine’s evasion mattered to him. He would not have to wonder if asking Nathan for confirmation of Carmine’s avoidance was odd. He would not have to deal with the possibility that he was taking the affair personally. Instead of the mundane anxieties that came with socializing, he chewed on a problem that only he could find reassuring. Carmine’s shadow had a tail.

II.

The summer was cram season. Students studied for standardized tests, prepared for the forthcoming school year, or freshened up on ideas that may have eluded them during the previous term. Abel had failed his literature class. His teacher, at first, assumed his various absences to be the reason for his plummeting grade and prepared a final essay assignment to allow his passing. Abel still underperformed. His teacher could not secretly blame a life of hunting daemil for interfering with Abel’s schoolwork. The exorcist needed extra help. He had to attend the summer session.

In the name of celebrating great art, Mrs. Rickshaw held her nineteenth-century literature class in the amphitheater embedded in the ground. Her thirty students, including Abel, were scattered throughout the ten tiers of circular stone seating, looking down upon their teacher, who stood on the stage. She had intended the class to be an open discussion but had fallen under the spell of her passion. She lectured on the ghostly nature of the oppressed woman, who, her heart denied, still walked through the world wearing a prettily made-up mask. Abel did not pay attention. Carmine sat three rows down. The teacher had announced that he would be her assistant. His tail never reappeared.

III.

After class, Carmine Lassiter made his second visit to the Museum of Natural History. Every year, the student advisors assigned a project to their charges. They made worldly experience a chore because the young did not pursue true culture on their own. Carmine’s homework led him to the museum’s third floor. He stepped off the elevator and stood before a dark portal. Above, a sign in blocky lettering read, HISTORY OF THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN.

The entrance was a tunnel. Along the sides, dark-skinned, big-lipped men and women lay in rows on stacks of wooden platforms. They were shackled, naked except for the dirty cloths that covered their genitals. The air was heavy with heat and the lingering scent of sawdust. On his first visit, Carmine had remained in the entryway of the exhibit. A crowd obstructed the other doorway. After wiping his glasses with a monogrammed handkerchief, he checked his watch, remembered that he had to be home to wash the dishes, and left. Now, he could see the square patch of light on the opposite side. He breezed through the passage and stepped on the yellow-and-brown checkered tiles of the main floor.

‘Hello,’ said a voice. ‘Welcome to the History of the African-American.’

‘Yes, I am here to learn about nature’s natural course,’ said Carmine. He did not look at the attendant. Six beige walls, two rows of three, partitioned the room. Life-size models of men, barefoot in overalls, stood to his left. Glass cases displayed rusted shackles and ship diagrams to his right.

‘This is definitely an educational and rewarding experience,’ said the voice. ‘Please make your way around the walls of each room for the best chronological experience. And for elaboration on an era of interest, you can consult the center aisles.’

‘Yes,’ replied Carmine. ‘Nothing is more natural than the linear movement of time.’

‘Excellent.’

To the far right, a gold post upheld a black sign with cursive lettering. It read, Start Here. A companion post, stationed to the far left next to a portal, read, Continue. Down the center aisle, he saw a broad, velvet-cushioned stool. He looked to the attendant, a woman with dull green eyes. She smiled professionally. He mirrored the gesture and walked down the middle passage, taking a seat on the plush stool with stocky mahogany legs. He retrieved his small pad and pen from the interior pocket of his brown academy blazer and looked up to observe the random subject of his paper, a painting. His first impression: three men were toying around with a jungle animal. The dark creature had thick calves and breasts relatively small for her wide hips. She sat on a naked man’s lap. Seated on a material that captured light and shadow like silk, he held her arm, posing her. His comrade stood, laughing as he pointed at the spectacle. His chest was bare, and a white sheet bountifully draped him from his waist to his knees. Carmine understood now. It was a woman. They were on a bed. The cherub men, their faces plump and jovial, were engaging in a sex sport. Carmine jotted down a description of the painting, returned his scholarly tools to his pocket, and proceeded to leave.

When he rose, he straightened his coat. He glimpsed a moving shadow and raised his eyes to see what object had cast it. A little black monkey with a smooshed face lay on the portrait’s ornate frame. Its amber eyes trained on Carmine, its tail swinging like a pendulum marking time, the creature shook its head with a rhythm that was so slow, so methodical, that Carmine believed time had ceased. He could not move. The world had ended. Then his stomach rose with his breath, and the sparkling river of existence continued to flow through the banks of oblivion. He walked around the bench only to freeze once more. At the other end, a great black animal propped itself on its long front arms, blocking his escape. Its hands curled under, the beast placed one hand before the other, walking on its knuckles for two steps. Carmine did not breathe. The dimming river dried up, its bed as dark as the banks. His eyes were shut from the light. He was falling. And then someone stepped in his way.

‘Hey,’ said Abel.

Carmine opened his eyes before the void could extinguish the last sliver of light. For the first time, the two classmates saw each other. Abel was struck. He shook his head in a quick jerk as if his fellow human were the illusion that needed to be cast away. Carmine blinked once... twice... thrice... his mouth opened as if to speak. Abel tried to force himself into the casual demeanor he had occupied, but they looked at one another, to one another, one finding a question, the other an answer.

‘Hi,’ said Carmine, smiling dazedly. ‘Did your advisor make you come here to?’

‘Uh, no,’ replied Abel. ‘I was bored I guess. I mean... I was just wandering around and ended up here.’

‘Oh. Okay.’

Abel saw a plea in Carmine’s eyes.

‘I think you should come home with me,’ said the exorcist.

Carmine looked over Abel’s shoulder. The demon was gone. He heard a huff. He felt a hot breath on his neck. He smelled the animal’s fur. He gazed in Abel’s eyes, needing some clear expression that he was a savior. The gorilla stood at their side, observing the bespectacled youth.

Abel gathered himself. He smiled with an oblivious genuineness and said:

‘Cool. You’ll spend the night at my place. Let’s go.’ He placed his arm around Carmine’s shoulder and led him out of the museum.

IV.

The house on 1323 Forest Lily Drive was a picture of elite modesty. The stately brick home with its trimmed shrubbery were the portrait of a family well off but not excessive. Carmine had returned to this residence to pack a bag for his night with Abel. When his father arrived, interrupting his escape, he told Abel to remain in his room and sat with the Lassiter patriarch in the dining room for a snack.

The walls were an innocuous tan with enough color not to be bland but too plain to be noteworthy. On the back wall, a gold cross crucified a pale pink rose, an icon of compromise. Carmine’s father once feared God. His lover found the original imagery too severe. She presented him with this more palatable representation of martyrdom. The dining table, the center of familial communion, carved from American walnut, had a grand, braided trim. Each corner boasted the head of a ram. The glossy finish produced a glare that made Carmine dizzy. His stomach turned when he caught a whiff of the chemicals. He sat to his father’s right, training his eyes on the silver charger under his floral plate, concentrating his olfactory sense on the pea soup in front of him. A tradition, he quietly endured the table, eating soup during the summer. He would do as he had always done on days like this. He would eat quickly, excuse himself to complete his homework, and then sneak a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkle of sugar into a glass of water to cool and cleanse his palette. He had smuggled packets of sweetener from the academy cafeteria. But he remembered that Abel was in the house. He would be leaving. They could get ice cream. He typically ate vanilla; however, today he would indulge in his favorite, chocolate dipped in white chocolate sprinkles.

Reginald Lassiter wore a navy blue sweater vest over a collared coral shirt. He was a barrel-chested man with a booming voice. As a child, Carmine feared his father, believing the man only capable of yelling. He now knew the nature of his father’s tone. His father’s voice was in its ordinary register. As Abel listened with the door open, he heard the expression of a tyrant.

‘There should be no reason for you to spend the whole day doing homework. You are only assisting the one class,’ said Lassiter. ‘We should go to that new exhibit at the museum.’

‘I have already been,’ replied Carmine. ‘I had to go for school.’

‘That’s all the more reason to go again. Education is important but you need to see the world through a wider lens. Thinking about life as an assignment detaches you from the greater scope of history.’

Carmine failed to understand how an exhibit, with its glass cases, wooden frames, and velvet ropes, opened one up to this greater scope. ‘I understand, Father,’ he replied. ‘But I am spending the night at a schoolmate’s.’

‘You did not ask my permission.’

‘It’s for class. We need to finish a project.’

‘What’s the point of being the teacher’s assistant if you are also a student? This defeats the whole purpose of–’

‘It’s okay, Father. I volunteered.’

‘You should demand more respect. All the reading you do, you could probably teach those damn teachers a thing or two.’

And they ate in silence. They delicately scooped up their soup and tilted the spoons to their lips, pouring the thick and creamy purée down their throats. Lassiter always noted that his son ate a bit too fast. Carmine always sensed that his father wanted to sustain the moment.

‘Do you like the changes Sheila has made?’ asked Lassiter.

‘Yes, Father. They add a feminine touch.’

‘Good. I want you here when she moves in on Thursday.’

‘I thought today was Thursday.’

‘No. It’s Tuesday.’

‘I see.’

Lassiter had accepted his son’s peculiarities as a default. He believed there was nothing he could have done to put him more at ease. He knew his child was a tempest in a marble. He decided the best course was to let the waves swell and the lightning crackle in relative isolation. His mother had been his sole confidante. He believed only another woman could replicate her soothing charms. All he asked was that his boy sit with him each day for a bowl of soup, a tradition that began with him and his grandmother. In the past, they could have eaten dinner at their respective workstations.

‘She wants to make us a big dinner,’ he said. ‘She said she will cook all of your favorites.’

‘Thank you,’ replied Carmine. He heard the clink as his father placed his spoon on the edge of the shallow bowl. He saw the blurred, peripheral image of his sire sitting erect, watching him. He continued to eat.

‘That’s how things will be from now on. We will sit and eat as a family.’

Carmine noticed bars of sunlight on the table. Outside the window, he saw a wasp leave the shrubs. He took his next sip of soup. The puréed peas tasted sweeter.

‘I’m gay,’ he said.

He heard the abrupt sound of the chair scraping against the floor. The table shuddered, clinking the bowls. There was a flash. He lay on the floor. A thick fluid choked him. He coughed. It sputtered and dripped. Its taste churning his stomach, he touched his fingers to his lips. They were stained with a red-dyed water. His teeth were in a red pool on the floor. Cranberry juice. Blood. Blood on his hands. Blood splattered on the wall. The side of his face pulsed with pain. He did not know a ceaseless stream of tears were pouring from his eyes. He stood up.

‘I’m sorry, Father.’

He walked past him. Out the door. Lassiter looked outside the window: Carmine did not know beyond the front porch. Assured that his son still had enough wits to not embarrass his name, he resumed eating. His son just needed to cool off, he thought. He would return, and they would continue their daily ritual. Life would go on.

Carmine shut the door behind him. Birds chirped. A little green lizard climbed up the porch’s stone column. The wasp floated among the wildflowers blooming in hanging baskets. The world moved. He was no longer a part of existence. The songs of mating birds were his only tether. He did not hear the slam that shuddered the soup bowls. His exorcist held his father against the dining table, the patriarch’s arm bent behind his back. Abel grunted, seething a saliva that dripped in a tendril and wetted the navy blue sweater. A fury had crept from his being, possessing his hands, willing him to squeeze Lassiter’s wrist and the back of his neck until they snapped. Veins crept around his darting eyes. His dark oceans glowed crimson rings. He thought about Carmine alone on the porch. The gorilla. He bent over and whispered, ‘If you say anything, if you report anything, if you talk to him, if you look at him, I will find a way to get to you.’ He released the old man and left the house. Carmine stood on the welcome mat. Abel took one step down to join his peer and sidestepped to maneuver around without touching him. When he faced Carmine, he witnessed the healing tears flow, pouring into his mouth and dripping down his chin. They once again locked gazes. The tears ceased. Carmine thought he had seen an eclipse in Abel’s eyes. Abel considered a hug as the protocol for consolation. He would be within proper etiquette to proceed with this action. He raised his arms but heard a screech. A monkey sat on the mailbox. He could float away in Carmine’s sorrow or be grounded in his purpose. The hunter found himself in the daemil. He approached the creature. It ran. He took chase. He could fix everything once he killed the demon. The monkey ran across the street, through a yard, and disappeared in the forest behind the neighbor’s home. Carmine remained alone under the portico.

The young Lassiter was known to study long hours on behalf of high achievement, but he did not care about grades. Books passed the time. Any awards or well-repute he gained were a coincidence of his efforts. He found, though, that in allowing this perception of studiousness, he had an acceptable reason for shutting himself away from the world. An intellectual nature was his cover for evading society. Now, his mind was gone, and he was not startled. He did not grasp to reclaim an identity, an authority over himself. He opened the front door to the place where he resided, returned to the dining room, and found the gaudy table decimated in a pile of splinters on the floor. He smelled sawdust. This earthy and chalky scent was present on the slave ship, naked bodies on bare wood. This aroma used to please him. In shop class, pushing the wood through the jigsaw, holding it against the sanding belt, sculpting and smoothing a block into something... a tic-tac-toe box. He had made a square block with engraved lines, three by three squares. Each square had a shallow hole with a flat bottom drilled in its center. Two cylinder compartments were drilled in the side of the block, each compartment for a set of marbles, one for black, the other for white. He wondered where it was.

‘Father,’ he asked, ‘where is that tic-tac-toe box I made in middle school?’ He looked to the elder Lassiter in the back corner of the room. The man’s eyes were wide, horrified. He yelped.

‘Get out!’ said old Lassiter. ‘Get out!’ He pointed to the wall with his left hand. A gorilla stood, holding his right arm, making long strokes with the stump. The beast painted the room red.

‘Can you see me now?’ asked the gorilla. ‘I was thinking this room could use some sprucing up. Something a bit spicier.’

‘Father,’ said Carmine, ‘I understand you are going through something. And I will leave. But I would like my tic-tac-toe box first.’

His father cried. His eyes closed. His head drooped.

‘Fine,’ said Carmine. ‘Be that way.’ He retrieved his school satchel from his room and left.

V.

Three cubicles canvased gray established the hierarchy of a maroon office. They formed a square. The senior diabolist, Norton Amparo, occupied the larger, rectangular workstation along the back wall. His hair greasy, his gold bracelets piercing the silence with their tinkling every time he turned the pages of his dusty old reference tome, he left his reflective trance, and, after three hours of unbroken study, his only movement the rote turning of his arm, he took a rest. The room was cool. He took a black blazer spotted with skulls from a hook and wore it over his Hawaiian sunset shirt. Taking a bag of double-coated cheese sticks from a drawer, he put his black boots on top of his metal desk and proceeded to snack. The crinkling of the bag, the crunching of the salty snack, the bracelets–his assistants continued studying theories and histories in the two smaller and square cubicles placed side by side before their mentor. When Abel charged through the door, the two associates spun around, seeing the exorcist covered in monkey blood. The boy to the left swallowed hard. The girl to the right returned to her book, choosing obliviousness as the proper course of action. Amparo sighed and arose from his chair, his head peeking over the partition.

‘We need to talk,’ said Abel.

Amparo snarled, reacting more to his exorcist’s obviousness than his crudeness. Abel perceived the diabolist’s expression of insult as a condescension against himself. Amparo’s haughty demeanor triggered the rage. He touched his temple, his eyes rolling back as he suppressed the fiery specter. Amparo did not understand why Abel found him revolting. Without a word, he left the office and walked to the adjacent room. The side of his khaki shorts bulged. He reached into his pocket and relieved his shorts’ stitching with the removal of age-bronzed skeleton keys on a silver ring. He flipped through ten with many more to go before finding the desired one. Abel cleared his throat... tapped his foot... and looked around as if he could see every second passing. Amparo unlocked the room and entered.

Fluorescent lights in frosted plastic casings flickered on with the opening of the door. A blue metal table with a notebook and pen stood in the center. Abel and Amparo took a seat on opposite sides. Abel relayed the events of the past hours. The monkey had scurried up a tree, ran along a branch, and jumped on him. Abel tore its head from its body. He ensured Carmine arrived safely at his house and then came to meet with his diabolist.

‘Was beheading the monkey necessary?’ asked Amparo, jotting notes.

‘It attacked me,’ replied Abel.

‘Did it?’ Amparo placed the pen down, rolling his eyes before bringing them to a stern standstill on Abel. ‘Did it claw at you? Did it try to pluck your eyeballs from your head?’

‘I didn’t give it a chance.’

‘You were trying to protect Carmine?’

‘Of course I was.’

‘He’s a good person?’

Abel had only known Lassiter as the intellectual who sat silently in the corner during European History. Carmine was not the kind to gaze longingly out the window, and he was not the kind to stare, enraptured with learning. He observed the lessons, parsing the information through some internal algorithm. He never took many notes. Abel remembered how different he had looked at him in the museum, on the porch. The visage seemed familiar, like a curiosity with an answer unknown but expected.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He deserves protection. I am going to protect him.’

‘That’s not what we do. The Tolesect–’

Abel had reached over the table and grabbed his arm. ‘Please, let me handle this. He’s not like the others. He doesn’t want this.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ replied Amparo. ‘The daemil would not have appeared if he had not consented in the deepest of essence.’

‘I looked at him. I am telling you he is lost. I saw it in his eyes. I’ve never met anyone so determined to fight the change.’

‘The daemil often–’

‘He does not understand what is happening to him.’

‘On a subconscious level, he called out to them. And to be the oddity to not one, but two, daemil is an unprecedented event. A gorilla and a monkey. The Tolesect is going to intervene regardless.’ He pulled his arm from Abel’s grasp. He hated him. The exorcist had a simpering look. Abel’s plea was manipulation disguised as vulnerability, and yet Amparo still felt genuinely judged. If he had exhibited the same passion in the name of righteousness, he would have been labeled aggressive, or worse, emotional.

‘That’s not fair,’ replied Abel, pointing at him. ‘He gets some say in how he feels. You can’t just make it all up for him. We all have feelings, desires, that make us want to do horrible things. That doesn’t mean we should be treated like we’ve already done them. If he doesn’t want this to happen, then we should help keep it from happening. You know what the Tolesect will do. They will study him then exorcise the daemil.’

Amparo wanted to break his finger. ‘He’s only an oddity. The theurgist is not complete. As long as he has not become a recumon he will survive.’

Abel scoffed. ‘You’re a liar. They take a piece of you that you can never get back. If I know it, you know it.’

‘And you don’t want your friend to be different, to lose himself?’

‘He’s not my friend.’

‘Then who is he to you?’

Abel sat back in the chair. He slapped the side of his pocket as if expecting to hit on a pack of cigarettes. Empty handed, he shook his head.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I mean, I want him to keep being who he is. He doesn’t deserve this.’

Amparo sucked his teeth. He tore the page from the notebook, folded it into a square, and placed it in his blazer pocket.

‘Thank you,’ said Abel, smiling.

Amparo laughed. ‘I’m not doing this for you. There is a unique opportunity here. The Tolesect would never let me get my hands on something this intriguing. I don’t have clearance, and I’m tired of working up their rickety ladder chipping away at glass ceilings.’ He believed the Tolesect burdened him with Abel in order to tarnish his record. The fool was his first exorcist. He was Abel’s first diabolist. And yet, they were both renowned–Abel the rampaging barbarian who needed a leash, he the enviable prodigy who needed to be taken down several pegs. ‘Here’s the deal,’ he continued. ‘Carmine will keep,’ he trailed off, tilting his head. He gave a sharp nod: ‘most of himself. He will have to submit to reversion.’

‘No. No brainwashing.’ Abel leaned over the desk, his gratitude vanishing into an oppressive gravity.

‘It’s inevitable. And the Tolesect will only erase the time he has spent as an oddity.’

‘How is this possible?’

‘Because you are going to give me complete control over this case. You will do what I say no matter the consequences. Trust that whatever happens is the best way it can end.’

Abel shook his head. ‘If you screw me over on this.’

‘You should have killed the gorilla and have left the damn monkey alone. He was harmless. He may have been trying to help you, pointing to a way to defeat the larger threat. Monkeys are tricksters. And where there is one there are others. They would have guided you to the methods for resolving the four hundred pound beast that tore a man’s arm off. So, one more time, who’s in charge?’

Abel tilted his chair back, lifting its front legs off the floor. He allowed the chair to crash down in a shudder, sending tremors through his body. ‘Whatever. You’re in charge. Go ahead and use a human being’s life to get ahead.’

‘Thank you,’ said Amparo.

‘Why Carmine? If he is so against being a recumon, why did they come for him?’

Amparo’s smugness melted into a frown. Again, he felt guilty for something that was not his doing.

‘That may be the fault of our ancestors,’ he said. ‘Half of mine and all of yours.’

‘Our fault?’

The diabolist clasped his hands together, the bracelets falling. He knocked his fist on his chin. ‘We may have given the primates the idea that our darker-skinned brothers are their brothers.’ He cast his gaze down and released his hands to brush himself off, freeing himself from an invisible filth. ‘As a result, some are more predisposed to being chosen as hosts than others.’

‘God, you’re such a shit person. You of all people–’

‘Don’t act like you know me.’ A watery glass covered his eyes. ‘Me of all people? How about you of all people? How many daemil have you killed with your bare hands? How many recumon have perished? And it’s always the weak ones. The lambs. The lizards. The monkeys.’

‘They were monsters. If I handed the recumon over alive to the Tolesect, they would have died anyway. I got my hands dirty because I cared about something you don’t, the innocent. The council is supposed to be this invisible force of good. People walk around with their heads up their asses because they believe a higher power is protecting them. But how many people die before a recumon is brought in. And it’s all in the name of research, of learning.’

‘Information is power.’

‘How many people has that power saved?’

‘In the grand scheme of history, many more than you have. Now, do you want me to ensure that Carmine isn’t a husk of a human, drooling away in a straight jacket, or not?’ Abel was silent, his lips pursed. Amparo proceeded: ‘Follow the monkeys’ signs. Kill the gorilla. Explain nothing to Carmine. Ever. The less he understands, the less he can sympathize, and the less he sympathizes, the less the daemil can claim of him. When there is only a monkey to contend with, I will write the report. It will be so mundane that a simple reversion will be the prescription. He will forget his time as an oddity, the monkeys will vanish.’

‘What do you get?’

‘You tell me what the monkeys lead you to. And I get the gorilla’s body.’

‘Fine.’

‘Now, I need you to get me some things.’ He made a list. ‘Just read this. The monkeys will do the rest. They will comprehend this plan far better than you ever could. They will either follow my scheme or enact their own plot, if superior.’

Abel took a deep breath. For Carmine, he exercised restraint. When Amparo handed him the list, he snatched it and left the room before the efforts of his humility could be reversed. Down the hall, the elevator doors opened. A monkey sat, his arms and legs wrapped around a large leather-bound book. Amparo returned to his office, not seeing the demon. Abel boarded the elevator. The monkey scooted back into the corner, its eyes wide, frightened. It whimpered. Abel looked to the creature and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ The monkey slid over to him, sat on his feet, and held the book over its head. Abel took the tome and noticed dog-eared pages. The book was battered, but the folds were deliberate.

VI.

As the monkey led Abel through rivers, forests, and mountains, Amparo visited the Lassiter home. He often bribed a contact in Daemil Resources to allow him to sort through open cases, searching for something juicy to edify his intellect. Fortunately, his source had already set the object of his inquiry aside for him. After hearing a ruckus from 1323 Forest Lily Drive, neighbors called the police. A brave, solitary citizen visited the Lassiter home, discovered the scene, and called for an ambulance. A table smashed on the floor, blood smeared on the walls, and Reginald Lassiter without his arm in the corner, the authorities called upon a higher force, the Tolesect.

The debris cleared, Lassiter bathed and dressed in a coral sweater vest over a lime green button-up shirt, the armless patriarch and the tinkling agent sat in two chairs facing one another. Amparo sensed that the home’s owner did not want him past this space. Lassiter did have an instinct not to allow any investigator into the other rooms of his house, but the site served as a memory capsule, a reminder of his failure as a father. He now found strength in having been so weak. He had felt a dread that every man avoided and survived. Feelings were no longer a power worthy of his fear.

Amparo had established himself with a flash of his badge that was long enough to suggest its legitimacy but brief enough to hide the limits of its jurisdiction. He was a researcher not an investigator. Lassiter did not insult his intuition with asking to observe Amparo’s identification. He knew this boy was a snoop, but he did believe in the authenticity of his credentials.

‘Do you know where my son is?’ he asked.

‘He is fine.’ Amparo crossed his legs, his ankle resting on his knee, his foot wagging. He was slightly nervous around the man who peered at him with his chin raised. He had thought the public to be more fearfully respectful in their regard towards the Tolesect. They were protectors, but they were also shadows. ‘I know you’ve been questioned, but I would like to go over some things.’

‘I’ve already said what I had to say. You should be hunting the man who did this.’

‘You do understand that if this incident does not involve a certain kind of influence then you are not the Tolesect’s concern. Your protection, your son’s protection, and your health,’ he held his hand out to the space where the arm should have been, ‘will no longer be under our supervision. Once our authority wears off, you will be left incapacitated in a hospital, assuming you even live. Do not underestimate the necessity of the council’s charms.’

Lassiter looked through Amparo, at the spot where he last saw his son standing. ‘The exorcist with the red hair. Is he with him?’

Amparo nodded.

‘As I said, some roid-raging beast of a man came tearing through my house. And I shouldn’t have to repeat myself. Let the proper police, the public servants of our community, do their sworn duty.’

Amparo shook out his arms. He did not find Lassiter noble. He found the man frustratingly stupid. Still, he was concerned with the consequences of an outright display of condescension. ‘May I propose another idea? Perhaps it was not a man who tore your limb from its socket. Maybe it was a gorilla. Maybe this particular gorilla had come to you, and you denied it. In its fury, it punished you, leaving you a permanent reminder that you are not whole without the demon. I can understand why you lied. You live your life a certain way, and you want to preserve that at all costs. However, when the Tolesect follows up, if you asked some questions to suggest there was a greater truth, and that greater truth could be revealed with some assurances of your family’s safety, and, once assured, you told them the aforementioned greater truth, then I can assure you that the only reprimand is that you will undergo a brief process to exorcise your memories.’ As he spoke, he swayed from side to side, waving his hands and looking down as if conducting an orchestra.

‘I can’t forget today. I need to remember.’

‘Your son will be forgetting.’

Lassiter leaned over. ‘Are you threatening us?’

‘No,’ replied Amparo, clearing his throat and uncrossing his leg. ‘I am saying that your son has engaged with a monkey. And it needs to be just that, a monkey and only a monkey. It’s not uncommon for families to be targeted. The energy of one daemil conjures the curiosity of others. With something as forceful as a gorilla, it’s not difficult to believe that a lesser, more impressionable, relation–’

‘The monkey.’

‘Yes. He might be drawn to the gorilla and have found your son.’

‘So I can put this all on me?’

‘Precisely. Your son will proceed to reversion. When he is relieved of his memories, the monkey will vanish. Since you have proof,’ he looked to the shadow arm, ‘that you fought your demon, then you will also be cleared.’

‘So that’s it, that’s how you people keep your secrets? You brainwash everyone who knows too much. We live like this, knowing something evil is haunting us but never seeing its face, knowing you are out there doing God knows what in the name of protecting us, and we are supposed to just keep pushing it out of our minds. We pray. We question whether those prayers matter, if they can even exist outside of our minds,’ he looked at the rose cross, ‘and all we get in exchange is a sack of lies hidden in secrets hidden in a ridiculous notion of normalcy.’

‘That is the status quo. And you should probably be more concerned with safeguarding your family than debating our town’s politics. I am supposed to be stuffed up in a dusty room reading reports–your testimony–but instead I came out here to help you, to help your son, all on behalf of an exorcist I wish did not exist. So I don’t know, but maybe gratitude would be a better strategy given the circumstances.’

Lassiter smirked. ‘I’m not afraid of a little shit like you. That exorcist, as you called him, made himself pretty clear he has things handled. I just met the boy and I knew he would cut down anyone who interfered with him protecting my son. And the fact that you can’t look me in the eye most of the time–and I’m no one–means you’d probably piss in your pants sooner than cross him.’ He stood and brushed himself off, thinking he was using both hands. ‘So, thank you for helping Carmine. And thank you for telling me how to help him. Those are the two messages you can relay to the exorcist. As for you, it’s time to go.’

Amparo nodded in a bobbling motion. He coughed and took his leave. As he passed through the open door, he looked back. Lassiter smiled and, with two fingers to the forehead, saluted. Amparo left, muttering about work on his desk. Lassiter proceeded to the kitchen, called his lover to terminate their relationship, and made a cup of tea. He poured his hot beverage in a mug branded with his alma mater’s logo and not from the new country rose tea set. He returned to his seat in the dining room and took a sip, thinking a prayer of peace for his son.

VII.

Carmine awoke in a king bed. A milky beam of moonlight carved a celestial path in the dark. From walls to ceiling to floor, the space was a neo-Byzantine pattern of black, white, and blue lines that wound outward and inward in squares. He crept out of the bed and felt along the walls. There was no break in the glassy smoothness of the pattern. There was no door. He made his way around the room, returning to the opposite side of the bed. He sunk to the floor, held his knees close, and cried.

Abel awoke to the sound of Carmine’s sobs. His shirt stained with sweat, his boots caked with dirt, his leather jacket draped over him, he had fallen asleep at the foot of the bed. He got to his feet, looking in the darkness, wanting to reach through and touch the one lost.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Abel.

Seeing a dark figure standing over the tunnel of light, Carmine laughed, wiping his cheeks. ‘Sure.’ He saw the shadow move, melding into the dark. He heard the thud of boots. He heard a sigh, the rustling of jeans. Abel sat in the corner. The young Lassiter saw a hand and pressed himself against the metal bed frame. He was afraid how being touched would make him feel. The hand grabbed his arm and pulled him close. He went to lay his head on Abel’s thigh, but his exorcist swung his body around. He lay between his legs, resting his head on his chest, hearing his heartbeat. He smelled the forest on his jacket, his musk from his shirt. Turning on his back, he felt arms wrap around him, and stared into the dark.

He believed kindness was Personality’s tool. Nice people craved the peace that came with being well regarded and wanted to be well treated in return. They pretended this motivation did not exist. This trait betrayed them as hypocrites. He was not afraid of a selfish nature. That was human. He feared liars. Did the kind-hearted think of themselves as separate from humanity? Why did this idea called humanity always suggest goodwill when every burning candle of virtue was snuffed out in the storm of a greater evil? The most dangerous lie masqueraded as a noble truth. The children of Adonis doled out blessings, and the people adored him for such minimal effort. He would have his dreams, believing bliss was his reward for being good, for being beautiful. He would not understand the price everyone else paid to fail to win happiness. Carmine knew the time would come when, for Abel’s sake and his own, he would soon pretend to be happy.

‘Promise me you will never lie to me.’

Carmine was not sure he had heard a voice. Only in the moment of silence that followed did his mind reconstruct the phenomenon. He had heard a voice. It belonged to Abel. He had said, ‘Promise me you will never lie to me.’ Understanding what had been asked–commanded–of him, he sat up. The arms around him fell away. He crawled back to his nook, leaning against the bed.

‘So you’ve written the course,’ he said. ‘I’m in trouble. You help. I am grateful, and you somehow deserve more than a hearty thank you. I owe you kindness and compliance.’

‘I don’t think it’s too much to ask that when someone goes out of their way to help you then you be nice to them.’

‘When someone goes out of their way?’

‘You know I didn’t mean it like that.’

Carmine understood. He felt his exorcist was too dedicated, too genuine, in his desire to protect. ‘A gift shouldn’t be given with the expectation of having it returned. That’s not kindness. It’s self-serving. Why are you going out of your way to help me? Where have you been all night? I’m not the kind of person people usually want favors from. I don’t have anything, and I’m not breaking my morals out of the pressure of some invisible contract to be even with you. I probably wouldn’t even buy you a cup of coffee to express my thanks. What could I give you that would be worth all of this? Did you hurt me, and now you want my forgiveness? Do you want my soul? Only a treasured heart can ask for a soul. I think I read that in a book. Something about the price of love, but it applies to any trade. Do you think you will need me some day?’

Abel listened to Carmine’s rambling, a kind of profound, half-hearted purging of thoughts. He felt there was a pearl in the muck. He was afraid of taking the greater idea too personally at the expense of understanding what he was trying to say. He felt that a riddle had been presented. This realization was its own accomplishment, but it was not an answer. Maybe Carmine was playing a reverse game. Maybe he wanted him to say that he would be needed.

‘I think you will be useful,’ replied Abel. ‘I’m sorry if that sounds cold.’

They wanted to see each other, to put faces to the words in hopes of confirming their tone. At times, they sounded offended, begging, and cruel to one another.

‘Liar,’ replied Carmine.

Abel clenched his fist at the indictment. A relief, felt because Carmine could not see his reaction, tempered his irritation. He always felt smothered. ‘I don’t run away from my problems,’ he said defensively.

Carmine heard it as an accusation. ‘Everyone is running. Men like you just don’t know what you are running from.’

‘If you know me so well then enlighten me.’

‘That’s a cliché. You are the proper template of a frustrated man.’

‘You don’t know me.’

‘Another cliché. You’ve inserted yourself in my life, forced–’

‘I saw you. You know damn well you need me.’

‘You forced your help on me. Never told me how I could save myself. You just handled it all. And it’s my fault because I helped you even though it couldn’t be my fault because I didn’t have any tools to design a resolution with. And I can tell. You are not going to tell me anything, are you?’

‘It’s for your own safety.’

‘Convenient. Information is your power and my destroyer.’

‘If you want to know I will tell you. I’m not making you promise anything that I wouldn’t hold myself to.’

‘I don’t want to know.’

‘I know you don’t. So maybe you should stop acting like you know me, and I should tell you a thing or two about yourself.’

Carmine laughed. ‘Did that make you feel better? You like having the upper hand? You’re taking a part of me and keeping it secret from me. And I’m letting you. I don’t want it, but I hate that you do. And still, I’m relieved about the whole thing. That’s far worse than having to sit through a little analysis. I’m reaching into the abyss because I know it can’t reach back.’

‘Who’s cliché now?’

‘I couldn’t find a more beautiful way to say it.’ The bed creaked. His voice came from a higher position. ‘And it wasn’t a cliché. It was a variation of a cliché.’

Abel smiled. He heard Carmine as he settled into the bed and returned to sleep. He sat, unsure of what to make of their conversation. Then he remembered Nathan. His best friend had said he needed someone to love. Abel now knew the truth. He needed someone to trust.

His phone vibrated. He reached into his pocket and turned off the alarm. He had three messages from Ilanya. He shut down the phone and moved to the next phase of the monkeys’ plan.

VIII.

From the highway, the trees of Dunhill Forest seemed to grow at random. From a another angle, they were arranged in rows. Abel parked his motorcycle on the side of the road and at the first wisp of sunrise trekked down the corridor of towering, gray trunks. The forest floor a blanket of dry, scarlet foliage, the crunch and snap of the twigs and leaves under his feet were like gunshots. His vigilant senses made every sound except the droning of silence a threat.

His monkey guide led the way to a clearing. A circular dirt patch provided the plot for a structure made of twigs, a round domicile with a cone roof. Stationed at the eight principal directions, turtles had receded into their yellow-splotched shells, chameleons perched on top. Abel entered the dwelling through a door covered in ivy. A girl spun around, her expression furious until she registered Abel, a stranger, and smiled.

‘Are you my new guardian?’ she asked, pulling her braided mane back. She sat at a desk, a board plank propped on two logs. On the opposite side, a pallet lay on the floor. Above, a dim light bulb dangled from a chain. ‘I need supplies,’ she continued. She looked at his empty hand. ‘And where’s my food?’ She then looked at the hand holding the lantern. ‘Is that for me?’

‘You can have light or food,’ replied Abel.

She huffed, the natural squint of her eyes magnifying the gesture’s snootiness. Her dark skin kissed with dewiness, her plum blouse plunging to reveal the curves of her back, she completed her turn on the stump that served as her chair. She crossed her legs. There were tiny cuts on her bare feet. The hem of her jeans were soiled.

‘You have no idea who I am,’ she said. ‘You’re too young to be a sentinel, and you aren’t a diabolist. You’re an exorcist.’ She noticed the monkey, peering from behind his legs. ‘That monkey isn’t yours. He’s too clever.’ She leaned over, smiling at the animal. ‘Hello, little fella, do you like to be petted?’ The monkey crept from behind Abel and ventured forward. ‘Oh, my, your oddity is quite the joker.’ The monkey leaped on her lap and smiled. ‘What machinations is he stirring up for you?’

‘What are you talking about?’

She made kissy faces to the enchanted monkey. ‘A daemil’s temperament and disposition is largely informed by the oddity’s true nature. At minimum, a daemil can never excel beyond the potential of their host. That is why our spirit friends must be particular in their choices.’

‘Why do they want humans, anyway?’

‘Why does the sun want to rise? Why do the tides want to rise only to crash on the shore? Why are you so ignorant and yet so brave?’ She put the monkey down and brushed herself off. It looked at her with a mopey expression. She ignored it. It scampered back to Abel, sitting on his boots. ‘P.S. My name is Valnesse Ibori. Who the hell are you?’

The exorcist replied with his name.

‘And what do you want?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he replied. ‘I need to kill a gorilla.’

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘Don’t worry about that. Just tell me what you want, and we can make a deal.’

‘I want to be free.’

The monkey nodded with a spasmodic motion, a broad smile on its face.

‘Fine,’ said Abel. ‘Let’s get to it.’

‘First, tell me how you got in,’ she said to the monkey. ‘This place is supposed to be impervious to the daemil.’

The monkey shrugged.

Valnesse laughed. ‘Keep your secrets.’ She stripped off a piece of bark from the stump and approached Abel. Before she could explain, Abel took it and plunged it into her side. She sunk, and he caught her, carrying her to the pallet. He left the hut and journeyed into the woods.

Valnesse Ibori was a prisoner. A former exorcist, she perverted the power of the daemil, becoming the recumon to a demonic parade. Under her charge, her spirit twisted their natures, creating an army of beasts, The Pale Assembly. The Tolesect considered her too valuable for execution. They housed her in a mountainside prison and then her current forest fortress, places where only exorcists could pass over the threshold. Those who had investigated and sentenced her knew of her existence. They took turns keeping watch, hoping to learn more of her condition. She was twenty-seven, but had not aged since residing in her first concrete prison a decade ago.

Abel heard the heavy, wheezing snort of a large animal. Behind him, down the path of dead leaves, a snow white rhinoceros with a glistening black horn bowed its head and charged. The exorcist planted his feet. Sending screeching birds aflight, his screams echoed through the forest as the horn pierced his gut, lifting him off his feet. The demon pounded down the corridor. Abel slid down the horn, his eyes rolling back as the pain sapped his consciousness. Sensing he was about to fall unconscious, he plunged his fists into the creature’s beady eyes, breaking bone and reaching into its pulpy hollows. The animal roared in a husky whine and tumbled over. It slid on its side, leaving a dirt wake through the leaves. Its chest heaved. It whined. Abel grabbed the hard dirt under the leaves, dragging himself across the ground. Once he was cleared of the horn, he collapsed and blacked out. He did not see the tribe of monkeys emerge from the treetops with jagged rocks. They bashed the whimpering animal until its breath was gone, its body still, and then attacked the hide around its horn, pounding and chewing until it fell. They smashed and scraped the rocks, sculpting the horn, christened in Abel’s blood, into a dark blade, the exorcist’s weapon. The machete was sharp in edge but dull in luster.

When Abel awoke, night had returned. He was healed. He retrieved his sword and made his way back to the twig hut. Valnesse sat at her desk, reading a book.

‘My watchman came while you were...’ she looked at the hole in his shirt, the dirt in his hair, the blood drenching his coat, ‘busy, let’s say.’

‘Let’s go,’ he said, holding out his hand.

She giggled. Placing her palm in his, he escorted her outside. They passed the circle of daemil.

‘Do you need a ride?’ he asked.

She nodded. He released her hand and they walked under the stars. She no longer smelled the bark of her prison. She took in the clear, crisp air.

‘Why is this gorilla so important?’ she asked. ‘Why not just let the Tolesect do its exorcism?’

‘I’m protecting a friend.’

‘Why does that matter? He’s not a recumon. The monkeys would not be helping you otherwise. Is that it? You are preserving him for them?’

‘No.’

Valnesse sensed the oddity was important to the exorcist. She was curious to know who could provoke such a wild loyalty in a man. However, her playful intrigue dissipated as her concern shifted to herself. Abel’s abrupt seriousness, his quietness, triggered her intuition. She was not afraid for her future. She was afraid that she would never get the chance to worry about the rest of her life. She had sacrificed one of her daemil to be free, and, as she silently called for her hoard, none came. They had rightfully abandoned her. For the first time, she felt alone. She stopped, turned around, and ran. She would have been better off in the hut than with Abel. She could outwit the fools who watched her sooner than the boy who tackled a rhinoceros and plotted with monkeys. Abel’s allies dashed in a line, impeding her path. She stumbled and fell. They surrounded her. Abel grabbed her hair and dragged her through the forest.

‘I know what you did,’ he said. ‘You slaughtered our brothers and sisters, our fellow exorcists.’

‘You don’t understand,’ she said, panting, trying to get back on her feet but always falling. She gripped his hand, digging her nails into his flesh. He held her tighter. ‘I had to. The gorilla I bound myself to wanted vengeance. The testing, the weaponizing of Mother Nature’s spirits, it’s been going on for generations. But they are closer than ever.’

‘The Pale Assembly they call it. That’s how you helped. You used the daemil for a massacre.’

‘I’ll never tell them the secret. I only did it for force, to destroy them.’

Abel reached his destination, a vernal pond where the surrounding leaves were green. He tossed her into the water. She clamoured to her feet, and he pointed his black blade at the center of her forehead. He said:

‘If you run, I cut your head off. You lay down, and you get another chance to scheme, which is more than you deserve.’

She cackled. ‘Maybe I would rather die.’

‘You wouldn’t have let me drag you here, taking the whole time to beg, if you wanted to die. Lay down.’

The water was cold. She shivered as she lowered herself into the pond. Abel approached, splashing through the water. A monkey brought him a cooler. Inside, there was a wood frog covered in frost. He placed it over her heart, and, in time and space, she was frozen.

Monkeys climbed down the trees. They looked to the west. An animal growled, stumbling through the forest, hurling its arms. The monkeys shrieked, swarming the gorilla who picked one off, flinging it away, only for three more to attack. Abel ran, and, once close, the monkeys leaped and darted away. The gorilla was confused. It looked around and fear flashed in its eyes as it saw Abel. With a swing of a blade, the demon’s head fell. Abel stood over the body. He killed a monkey because it was weak. He killed a rhinoceros because its owner allowed him. He and he alone had made Carmine’s demon know terror.

IX.

Abel remained in the forest, drifting in and out of dream state. When he was not awake, wild boars chased him through a jungle, he waited naked for the school bus to take him to the first day of kindergarten, and his mother tried to smother him with a pillow while he cried in a crib. Awake, he left once to return to his motorcycle and retrieve a canteen and foot-long hero. By morning, the ephemeral pond was gone. He returned home. Carmine was not in his bedroom. He wandered the house until the smell of baking brownies led him to the kitchen. An industrial space with sterile metal countertops and matte white tile, Carmine sat at a preparation station, dropping gooey treats that had not cooled into a beige container of vanilla ice cream. He was dressed in the burgundy button-up shirt that Abel wore during the Christmas season when his mother hosted guests.

‘I was going to make you breakfast, but here we are,’ he said with brownie sticking to the roof of his mouth.

Abel snickered. He took a spoon from a drawer and joined his new friend. He hoped they were friends now. He dug the spoon into the ice cream and scooped up the breakfast treat. He wanted to ask a question, but Carmine made an inquiry first:

‘Is your mother a caterer?’

‘Among other things.’

‘Is she good at anything?’

‘She’s good at making money.’

‘A jack but never a queen of any trade.’

Abel smiled. He shoved the next spoonful in his mouth and enjoyed the sweet creaminess that melted into the chewy dark chocolate: ‘You’re supposed to be smart.’

‘Said no one I respect as intelligent.’

Abel laughed despite himself. ‘How do you know if you’re in love?’

Carmine closed one eye and twirled his spoon as if tracing the flight path of an insect. With his attention occupied, Abel felt more comfortable and looked at him.

‘In love is just infatuation,’ replied Carmine, looking to the standing freezer against the wall. From the corner of his eye, he saw Abel staring. ‘If you have to ask then it’s probably not the case. There is no rubric, a checklist of symptoms. Every man who has tried to convince himself he is in love ends up in quite the web when he meets The One and just knows. Even then, it’s often just infatuation, a crush at once grounded and heightened by some personal experience. None of this matters though. This is just the juvenile’s playground. Love. Only love. No ins or outs. Every whim, curiosity, and passion distilled into this one word. How do you know? I don’t know. Maybe it means something different to everyone. Maybe it can mean different things to the same person depending on whom the feeling is directed towards. I think it’s relatively relative until it’s not. There is a form that is transcendent but most of us will never reach that plane. You can only love as much as you can love, and you can only be loved as much as you can tolerate being loved. Everyone has different capacities. There is a love that aches, that burns, that swallows you and lives as you, being you, Life itself. Most people can’t handle that. It becomes obsession or you free yourself and find contentment in settling. So whatever your greatest expression of love and the greatest expression you will accept–that is love for you.’ He looked to Abel, searching for the bottom of his cup, wondering how deeply he could love. He pondered this as a curiosity, like a scientist who had made the figurative heart his expertise. He thought about Abel at Shadowcrest, the picture of superficial likability, and he thought about Abel now, the myth of the daemil hunter. Abel knew he was the subject of a study and coughed to break eye contact. Carmine felt sorry for making him self-conscious and thought about his life. Could he go home? Was he intruding on Abel? As he considered his fate, he continued expressing the stray thoughts that appeared from the murky fathoms like fortunes in an eight ball: ‘True love, certain love, requires truth. And they are what they are, but you only know what they are in time. When a man knows he would die for a woman, not to be noble, not to be manly and ideal, but only knowing the heaviness of his sacrifice, fearing oblivion, knowing she will move on and he is not guaranteed paradise, only an existence as a memory visited on rare occasions for brief moments, then that is love. To die as service with no promise of being remembered is the greatest expression of love and therefore must come from true love. When a man can face his greatest fear, that he is weak, that he is helpless, that he cannot control the universe, and still face his lover with eternal kindness and never abandon her for the self-indulgent fear of not being good enough, then I think that is love too. A love that tears walls down, and a man who is strong and brave enough not to seek another shelter–that’s love. But since women often love so insecurely, spinning excuses into romance, then you can probably get away with a lot less and have it called love. Does that answer your question?’

‘I think it does,’ replied Abel, unsure of which kind of love he fit into while being certain that another universe lived inside of his companion.

Carmine plopped his spoon in the container and brought an assortment of fruit, carried in his folded arms, from the refrigerator. He spread his arms and the second course of their breakfast rolled onto the counter, the metal making a grave but hollow sound like a drum. Abel took up an apple.

Carmine started to peel an orange: ‘Those are just my ideas. They don’t apply to you. Your nature is to sacrifice. Whoever this girl you’re uncertain about is, you would die for her. You would die for me. You would die for anyone. You only struggle to live so you can sacrifice again. Sometimes, the choice is to be miserable with your true love or content with someone else. The problem is that you would be miserable with someone who wasn’t your true love, if it meant saving them. And people are all inherently selfish, so you are probably hoping to save yourself. Even if you already consider your soul damned, if you are alive, then there is some part of you begging for redemption.’

Abel turned the apple in his hands, between fingertips caked with dirt. He was nervous, like a child about to ask for a cookie, but afraid of being denied.

‘Could you do it,’ he asked, ‘love someone even if it killed you?’

‘Stupid people, romantic people, say yes. They even yearn for that nonsense. But when faced with death, or worse, unhappiness, they turn away. The fact that I think I wouldn’t makes me afraid that I could. But a part of me wants it, which makes me think I’ll be okay.’

‘Because if a part of you wants it, then it’s a fantasy. And a fantasy can never be lived. But what if you’re punishing yourself?’

‘Why would you say something like that?’ Carmine had torn the peeled orange into halves, then quarters, then slices. He now looked at Abel, expecting an explanation. He felt Abel was trying to say something about him.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Abel. ‘It just came to me.’

‘You’re lying.’ Carmine leaned over, looking at Abel as he continued to watch the apple that was still in his palms. ‘And I mean a deliberate lie. What do you want?’

‘Don’t get def–’

‘Don’t turn this around on me. What is this really all about?’

‘I could ask you the same thing. No one asked you to spill your guts to me.’ He threw the apple across the room. It smashed against the wall. He looked at Carmine with a deadness in his eyes. Carmine did not back down:

‘What do you want from me?’

Abel’s fingers curled with a tension that rippled throughout his body. He was relieved that Carmine had not walked away. He wanted the moment to be over, and he feared that it would be. He wanted to go back to eating ice cream and talking about nothing. He was afraid everything would mean nothing. Was he being a template now? Was he trying to push everything back into a mold? He was so close to something so sweet, so deliciously bitter, that he tasted the salt on his dry lips. He felt a mass in his chest, a growing denial at risk of turning his soul from dark light into a glowing fog. He could burn, or he could be lost. He could find a searing truth, or continue to live in a fantasy with blurred boundaries. Or was it the other way? He felt clearer in the haze. He went to school. He hung out with friends. He hunted demons. This was simple. This was understandable. This moment, on the edge of falling back into a daze that felt real once in its bowels or moving forward to live on a new black moon that promised nothing but the heartache of truth–this moment was what he needed to run away from.

‘Honestly,’ he said, ‘I want us to tell each other everything even if it makes us hate one another.’

‘Deal,’ said Carmine. And he walked away, leaving the slices of his orange uneaten.

X.

Amparo sat in his cubicle, tapping his foot against the taut, gray carpet. His research spread around him, a book opened on top, he looked into the air, occasionally peering over the partition at the open front door. When Abel arrived, he yelled for his assistants to get out and told Abel to shut the door. He had already pulled a second chair into his office space. They sat, unofficially going over the details of their case.

‘So?’ asked Amparo. ‘Did the monkeys use my ingredients?’

‘No.’

‘Brilliant. Tell me. How did you kill the gorilla? Where is its body?’

‘I had to burn the ape.’

‘Fine. Then give me its ashes and bits of bones.’

‘The monkeys made me bury them. They will curse anyone who touches them.’

Amparo’s head fell back as he yelled in frustration. He swung himself back erect and clapped his hands. ‘Alright, alright.’ He shook his hands, smiling as if a feast had been laid before him. ‘Start from the beginning.’

‘The monkeys brought me some plants. I had to grind them, stew them, add three drops of my blood and–’

‘A poison that kills the daemil.’

‘Yes. They sacrificed their own to lure in the gorilla, and I had to pour the tea down its throat.’

Amparo lifted the book on his desk, rummaged among the papers, and found a page with blank space on the back. He slapped it down in front of Abel. ‘Write the ingredients.’

Abel did as he was told. Amparo snatched the recipe and read it over, speaking to himself. ‘I wonder if it has to be your blood. Or any blood. Or an exorcist’s blood.’

‘We’re not reporting this,’ said Abel. ‘A friend owes me a favor. He will handle Carmine’s reversion.’ Amparo was still reading, muttering to himself. ‘Amparo.’

The diabolist waved his hands. ‘Yes. I get it. And it will be better this way. No need to wonder if some paranoid prick will suspect something amiss.’ He returned to his thoughts, and Abel took his leave.

Norton Amparo, the prodigy, had written a paper concerning the use of the daemil for defensive purposes. He designed a fortress grounded with supernatural energies. The most revolutionarily outlandish prospect consisted of using wood frogs to control time. The Tolesect had reviewed his research, stamped it with REJECTED in red ink, and returned it to him. When he pressed his superiors for information, they claimed that his ideas worked in theory but not application. The rituals he designed to sympathize the daemil to the intents of their controlling agents did not work. They concluded with a dismantling of his wood frog theory.

Amparo was too arrogant to believe that any of his inspired ideas could be so thoroughly invalid. He knew the Tolesect was making use of his research and not crediting him. His greatest desire was to capture his own daemil, but he could never see them. They never revealed themselves to him.

The monkeys were not geniuses, or their genius was not in the grand profoundness of their ideas. They were simple. They took the advancements of superior minds and exercised a creativity that compounded them into something complex in its simplicity. They took Amparo’s paper and stitched it into a book, an encyclopedic record of the daemil and their observed influences on the human world. The monkeys had travelled further and observed more, so their knowledge of the daemil was broader. They combined their experience with Amparo’s own theory to create a trap. Instead of chameleons on box turtles stationed outside of a man-made hut, they had hid hermit crabs retracted in the shells of spotted thorn drupes under the leaves around an ephemeral pool that moved from forest to mountain to plain. They smashed the hermit crabs’ original shells and guided them to those of the drupes. The animal tribe led Abel through the landscape, searching for the water and the wood frogs that lived there. Once they found the pond, they dove into its waters. The life force sensed the threat to its inhabitants and tried to drain itself through the earth. The monkeys positioned the hermit crabs around the pool, hovering around them for warmth. The tribe led the pool under the paralysis of the hermit crabs to the mountains and then, once the frogs froze, to Dunhill Forest. Abel captured Valnesse, and the monkeys completed their spell. The pond lay suspended in a place between existence in the here and empyreal, draining and appearing throughout the world but no longer susceptible to time, Nature’s agent of process. Whether in summer or winter, the leaves, always green, would never dry. The hermit crabs would never emerge. The water would always be cold, its frogs remaining in frost. Valnesse would never awaken.

Unfortunately, Abel felt cursed with the same paralysis of his nature. However, one day, on the merry-go-round, he tried to break free. Pushing Carmine around and around in a field of orange and violet milkweeds, he heard a voice yell out. Nathan stood on the stone bridge in the distance, waving. Abel asked if he wanted to join them, but Nathan declined. He had a study session. Carmine sat on the yellow, red, and blue contraption with his head lowered, covered in Abel’s hoodie, which he had borrowed for the unusually brisk afternoon.

‘I’m surprised you were willing to act like you knew me,’ he said.

‘Well, school will be starting soon. We can’t tell people about gorillas, rhinos, and monkeys, but that doesn’t mean we have to pretend we’ve never met.’

‘Would you tell your school friends if you could? About how you held me? How you saved me?’

Abel stopped turning the merry-go-round. He stood straight. He and Carmine had existed alone for so many days that he had not considered what would happen when they had to go back to living amongst others. ‘Well, we didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything I wouldn’t do again. I mean...’

Carmine felt the merry-go-round slowing. When he passed Abel, he saw his exorcist looking where the bridge disappeared through the hills.

‘Please don’t tell anyone,’ he said, unsure of whom he was protecting but slightly ashamed that it may have been Abel. His exorcist turned back to him and continued pushing. ‘I think we need to exist inside of this bubble.’

‘No, you’re right,’ replied Abel. ‘We can tell each other anything. And I promise I will never get mad at anything you say. Or I will, but I’ll get over it.’

‘We’ll accept each other no matter what.’

Abel jumped on board, holding on to the railing. ‘We’ll accept each other no matter what.’

And the merry-go-round continued its turn, slowing until it was stopped.

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Recumon: The Series

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MICHAEL R.E. ADAMS writes stories in the fantasy and science fiction tradition. He completed his undergraduate studies in English at Georgetown University and his graduate studies in English/Writing at Mills College.

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