WnW 1.9 Say Nothing

I had scared my mom, limping out of my bedroom in the morning with a swollen face. It was impossible for me to track where each bruise had come from, the night had blended into a mess of nightmarish imagery in my memories. Eventually she accepted that I had gotten mugged and didn’t want to get the cops involved. “They never did me any good in my youth either,” she muttered, in a rare display of anger.

The rest of the week she was too excited by Mac and Claire’s upcoming wedding to press me further about it. I’d spent that time agonizing every time the doorbell rang, wondering if HESP was coming to arrest me. But they never came. The week passed without a word from Chase either. I had returned to the places we had met, hoping to run into him, to explain why I wasn’t answering texts, but I had no luck finding him.

Was that it? I thought as I stared down the alleyway. It was hard to picture the Pianist there in the daytime, it looked like a completely different place. No trace of it remained. Was that all I was going to get? A brief foray into a world of monsters, only to lose my only connection to it.

Then it was the day of the wedding. Back home, I let out a sigh as I half-heartedly placed a tie around my neck. The suit was uncomfortable. Maybe they were all like that. But I couldn’t help but feel that I was dressing up for a part I didn’t want to play.

There was a knock on the door and my mom came into the room, wearing a dress and earrings with feathers on them.

She clucked her tongue and touched a bruise on my cheek. “Still hasn’t quite healed. Here, sit down and I’ll do a bit of magic. Luckily your skin tone is close to mine, not your father’s.”

I sat down and she got out her makeup kit.

“Your hair has gotten so long,” she remarked. “It looks good on you.”

“Mom… I was thinking I’ll meet you there,” I said.

The wrinkles around her eyes deepened as she smiled. “Don’t be silly. How will you make it there? It’s an hour away from the city.”

“I’ll take a bus or something.”

She lightly brushed my face with some powder. “I don’t know if there are any buses going to Cerf Morne. It just makes more sense to go together.”

She watched my expression, then sighed and put down the brush. “It’s just a car ride, Nick. You don’t have to talk to him.”

I nodded.

She took out some cream and rubbed my cheek, making the bruise sting. “Maybe it’s time you tried therapy again.”

I shut my eyes. “It didn’t work.”

She rubbed a little more forcefully, making me turn my head away. “It didn’t work one time. That’s just one therapist. And that was when you were a kid. You just need to try a few, find one that gets you. Lord knows, it’s hard for your own mother to get you.”

The rubbing stopped and I opened my eyes again. Mom wore an expression between frustration and sadness. “I don’t regret leaving him. You know I don’t. I’ll support you all the way. And you don’t have to tell me what happened. I’ve made my peace with never knowing. But you should tell me things, okay?”

“‘Kay,” I whispered, my chest felt heavy.

She held up a mirror. “What do you think? I’m pretty good, huh?”

The bruises were invisible. I didn’t look at my reflection any longer than it took to confirm that. “Yeah.”

“I did drag in university, you know. I could make you look like a stranger,” she said playfully.

I gave her a small smile in return.

“Ohhh?” She jostled my shoulders. “Not saying no? I see how it is.”

A car horn sounded from outside. It was as if the sound had dropped another weight on the pile.

“The usual offer stands, as always. Say the word and we’ll find another ride,” Mom said, rubbing my shoulder and then getting up. “Let me quickly finish getting ready.”

I stood and grabbed some old dress shoes from my closet. The offer Mom was referring to was going no contact with Dad. But I had to make the call and I’d done enough. They had already separated because I had started to avoid being touched by him. I knew my mom still loved him. I couldn’t be the reason they never saw each other again. My heart couldn’t handle that guilt. I hoped that one day my body would stop reacting this way, and I could just forget and we would be a family again.

We got into the car and Dad adjusted the rearview mirror to look at me. His car smelled like cleaning solvents. I ignored him and rolled down the window, breathing in the fresh air, trying to ward off the nausea.

“You look good,” he said to Mom.

“Mhm. I still got it.”

Dad chuckled lightly as he started up the car and backed off the driveway. 

The gaps between the houses grew wider as we drove, as if the city was stretching out, trying to keep hold of us. Eventually we broke free and were greeted with open farmland. The fields stretched far into the horizon and the homesteads we passed were often shielded from the winds by a copse of trees, making little wooded fortresses in the flatlands.

A trick of living in the city was that when you looked up in the countryside, the sky felt so much bigger. Today it was a pale blue with a few clouds that looked like they’d been aesthetically stitched into place.

“Nick, can you shut the window? It’s too loud,” Mom asked. I rolled it up, sealing us in.

Dad cleared his throat and I squeezed my seatbelt.

“So, Nick. Are you excited for school starting up soon?” he asked.

“Yeah.” That was a lie. Some of the classes were interesting. But it was hard to feel excited when it all felt so directionless. There wasn’t any pressure from my mom to get a certain kind of job, but that also meant that I had to find that spark on my own. It hadn’t come, and so I felt the student debt grow while I moved through a routine like I was strapped to a conveyor belt.

“Have you made any new friends?”

“No.”

That caught him off guard. “Well… you’ll find people soon enough. Don’t worry about it and just enjoy yourself. It’s an exciting time of your life! Lots of growth to be had. Your mom and I met…”

He trailed off as I got out my headphones and put them in. I scrolled through my music and made a quick playlist. There was no theme to the genres, only noise, as much strange sounds and frenzied rhythms as I could find to wash away the nausea. I kept daydreaming about seeing Chase again. It was hard to believe that the only time I didn’t feel overwhelmed by my thoughts was when I was with him, dealing with monsters out to murder me. The basement was a bit too much though.

Leaving the farmlands, we entered a forest, passing a sign for Cerf Morne national park. Following a line of other cars, we found the wedding location and parked.

The spot was very beautiful, with a wide open grassy area next to a lake. A small restaurant sat a little further away with a patio where people mingled, chatting and laughing. My Dad waved to some of their old friends from university and went over to them with Mom.

I wandered around until I found a path that had a sign directing people to where the ceremony would be taking place. A short walk through the trees led to a smaller clearing of birch trees, where chairs and a stage had been set up. The birch trees made for an interesting backdrop, one where their straight trunks made patterns of white and black.

I was finding some Rorschach images amongst the patterns when someone approached me. It was a sharply dressed man, a bit older than I was. He held a glass of wine in each hand. Strangely, he was wearing leather gloves, despite the good weather.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” he asked. “Should make for a good wedding.” He offered me a glass of wine. I nodded and took it just to be polite. He kept his hand out after I took it, fingers extended for a handshake.

“Percy. I work with Mac.”

I shook his gloved hand. “Nick. We’re old friends.”

Percy smiled. “Ah, glad to meet you in the flesh. Me and Mac went through training at the same time. He kept telling me about his best friend.”

That felt good. Training had taken up the last few years of Mac’s life so thoroughly, we had barely spoken. But he still thought of me during that time.

“What kind of training was it?” I asked casually.

Percy looked regretful as he replied, “Unfortunately I can’t say. I’d lose my job if I did. It was grueling, that’s for sure.”

“That’s about as much as I got from Mac,” I said. “Field work?”

Percy nodded. “Field work. Although I’m more of a tech guy.”

I swirled the wine in the cup, keeping it away from my face so I wouldn’t smell it. “Is it hard work?”

“Yeah, but it’s important work. Mac is good at it. He can keep a cool head through anything. I think that’s why they selected him even though he’s young.”

People started to filter into the ceremony area and we decided to sit down together. Once everyone was seated, the ceremony began. A pianist, a normal one, sat at a keyboard and played the entrance song. Mac entered, looking handsome in a well-tailored suit, his short hair styled, and his smile lit up the area. Things proceeded and eventually it was Claire’s turn to enter. She had managed to keep a bit of her normal aesthetic with a hairpin shaped like a dagger. Her white dress made the surrounding trees look gray in comparison.

I tuned out the wedding official as he began talking, instead focusing on the joy on Mac and Claire’s faces. I was happy for both of them and I felt some of the tension in my body relax as they finished their vows and kissed. Claire clung to Mac and dragged him down a bit. They finished the kiss and Mac laughed brightly as the crowd gave an ovation.

After the ceremony was over, I made my way back to the restaurant, where dinner was going to be served. Music played over speakers mounted to beams on the patio and people were starting to dance.

“Pst,” a voice said, not stealthily at all.

I turned to see Claire, holding a black CD case. She was grinning impishly and held it up for me to see. The cover had a black crow with red eyes on the front, a blade held in its beak.

“Shit, you weren’t kidding about the Crowblood,” I said, chuckling.

“Mac thinks I was,” she said. Her expression switched to mock seriousness in the blink of an eye. “Nick, should you choose to accept this mission, I task you with infiltrating the sound booth and slipping this disk into the computer.”

I took the CD. “Mission accepted,” I replied, matching her energy.

Claire gave me a lightning-fast salute and I saluted back.

Making my way over to the music booth, I imagined Mac’s face when the music changed to heavy guitar riffs and hoarse screaming. I chuckled to myself, scaling the stairs to the second floor where the booth was located. Peeking inside, I saw that Claire had timed things intentionally. The DJ was absent, probably using the washroom or grabbing something to eat. There was a large sound board that dominated most of the space. A small window looked out to the patio and I spotted a computer that was hooked up to the sound system.

Checking the sides, I was unsurprised to find no slot for a disc drive. That was fine, the computer was unlocked and I quickly searched up a track to insert into the playlist.

“Crowblood, huh? Good choice.”

I whirled around. Chase was leaning against the door. He was holding a glass of red wine. My brain stopped working for a moment as I watched his stupid grin. Then it clicked and a cold wave swept down my back.

“Oh my God. There’s one here?” I asked.

Chase took a huge swig from his glass. Some wine dribbled onto the floor. He smacked his lips appreciatively and grinned wide. His teeth and lips were stained reddish-purple as he said what I already knew. There wasn’t another reason for him to be here.

“Yep. Let’s show this place a real party.”