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I heard your voice.
In the coffin, I heard your voice. That was the first time new synapses fired in the clogged vessels of my brain. I was suspended in liquid, tubes running sticky-sharp formaldehyde air down the gutter you made of my lungs, and my first waking thought was you. Imagine my relief – my mind, molasses-slow and agonized, slowly gaining sentience, slowly taking its first thick, sludgy, guttural breaths towards life, the blood of hundreds of strangers coursing through those rotted veins – imagine my relief, knowing you had survived, you had returned to me.
Yes, I heard your voice, and you said his name.
The dog's name. Was it not enough to steal my name? Honestly, my dear brother, I’m beginning to think you lack imagination.
I heard you both talking with the Undertaker, asking about missing children. Mumbled voices, back and forth. The details escaped me then, in my newly awakened, groggy state, straining only for the sound of you.
Then I heard the Undertaker shuffle away, into a back room, just for a minute. And I heard the rustling of clothes above me. Your tiny rear, inches away from my head, sitting on my coffin. The sound, it sounded like a hand reaching between. No – no, I thought – if you were my brother, surely you wouldn't – surely I must be mistaken about the reach of that hand, the location.
Then I heard you moan.
“It appears I didn’t finish what I started,” the beast you named Sebastian whispered.
“That’s because the cab ride was too short,” you hissed back, accusingly.
“Maybe my young master should’ve thought about that before initiating such things,” he answered in that dark chuckle – I knew that laugh too. That was the laughter that echoed through me as it tore my soul apart like confetti, like paper flowers. Calm, mocking laughter.
I thought for sure there was no sound more hideous than that infernal laughter, until I heard your answering sigh.
“Sebastian,” you whispered, pleasure quavering your hushed voice, all putty in his hands. “Sebastian,” you moaned the dog’s name again, like a lustful prayer.
Then the Undertaker returned, and your bodies parted. The demon left and you continued your charade with the Undertaker, but I was too far gone to listen to whatever trick you pulled to make him laugh. The best joke of the night had already been told, not to him, but directly to me.
Where'd you learn to coo and moan like that, dear brother? Not from him. Remember how they made us dance for them, slotted our little bodies together like dolls, made us kiss and cry and pretend to cum? You moaned like that for me first.
When he pulled the lid off the coffin that night after you left, he rejoiced to see my eyes open for the first time, glassy little marbles covered in sticky residue, blinking slowly. The blood, he said, the blood is the secret. Was it the blood, or was it you?
What right do you have, to take my ring, to sit at my table, rule my earldom?
I felt his hands on me too, remember. You are not special, even in this. Yes, when the knife went in, I saw his black mouth, his teeth all around me, I saw his thousands upon thousands of glistening red eyes. Do you think yourself special, that he keeps you around to suck and paw at like this? You are the Eve from my rib, remember, it was you who was made in my image and not the other way around. You are my shadow, my copy, you fucking liar. Remember, I had him first.
If it was me – it should've been me –
But instead, you let him take you out of that cage, you lived and you lived and you ate and drank and slept and killed and fucked and called his name, the way you called mine, while I lay here?
And still you walk straight on ahead, into the blinding light of the unknown, knowing only one thing – he will have you in the end. Would you like to know how it feels to be eaten alive? Would you still strut, head held high, wearing my ring, wearing my name, if you knew as I know the bite of those teeth?
How does it feel, to bring him into your bed – our bed, need I remind you, our bed! – knowing your brother’s soul fills his beastly stomach? The way he can wait, and tease, and bide his time, playing your games, playing your butler, playing your lover, because he’s gorged himself on me. Don’t you see where his unnatural patience comes from? He’s not starving, brother. Like a snake, he’s still digesting me.
If it was me, however – If it was me who lived – well. Is that worth even imagining? It was only the toss of a coin that allowed you to live, nothing more. I wonder, would your soul have even called the demon? He answered your cry, yes, but his passage was summoned by me. If fate had unfolded another way, we might not even be here.
If it had been me, though, and had he still appeared – what sort of deal do you think I would have made? What wish would I spend that pretty penny on, of my baby brother’s life? Do you think I would have accepted his terms, stared into his thousand, million, horrible eyes, and shook that clawed, demonic hand? Perhaps I would have the strength to say no, to choose my brother over the monster that feasted on him. Perhaps. Do you worry I would not weep for you, if our tables were turned? I would have, then. I am just as good a liar as you, after all. The whole world would see my grief, have no window into my secret comfort – that at last my poor, sickly, unfit brother was finally put out of his misery.
But alas, I cannot say what would have happened, had the coin landed on my side. The heir was dead, and the spare filleted him like a fish, stole his candy, and left his body to burn. It was only by yet another small twist of fate that I ended up like this, and not charred bones gathering dust atop a ruined altar.
The Undertaker, he worked on me day and night, like a dog with a bone, like a master at work. “Like Michelangelo with his chisel,” he said to me, laughing. “Carving David from marble.” That man, I knew not then whether he was my savior or my captor – I still don’t know.
He has brought me to life, but at what cost? What world have I returned to, this one the demon set you loose upon, where you two rule as the Queen’s guard dog together?
He let me see the fire you set. The destruction you caused. The children you burned, like you tried to burn me.
Months of silence then, in between, to think of you, to worry over those thoughts like bruises, like loose teeth in the mouth, flicking them with the muscles of your tongue to feel the raw pinch of nerves.
On that ship we met again, rocked by the waves and muffled by the sound of thousands of other corpses. Does it surprise you that I could hear you there too? Didn’t you know that the longer you spend in darkness, the better and better your hearing gets? The blind’s senses compensate. I learned I could hear your voice, over the rush of waves, the creaking of the thousand coffins. When you were on deck. When you were at dinner. When you were in your cabin. When you thought you were alone with him.
You giggled like a bride for him, bashful and sweet.
When the Undertaker came to check on me later that night, I flew out of that coffin in a blind rage, biting and hissing, clawing at his arms. It was no good, though, it needed to be you. I needed to sink my teeth into you, soak up your blood, the same flavor as mine was before it dried in my veins.
It had to be you. It has to be you.
Do you wonder why Lizzie looked down on you with such disgust, why she refused to return? it’s because i told her your little secret, the one about you and your dog, the one i’ve been forced to hear in every ghastly detail. When she saw me she asked about you, still cared about you. So I told her the truth, the first truth she's heard in years.
"He lets the butler fuck him." Oh, how she cried at the news, how disgusted she looked. I thought she might vomit, realizing how close she had gotten to marrying a degenerate like you.
Of course, you know as well as I do, Lizzie is just another pawn to both of us. I didn't let her in on everything, of course. not our little secrets. our little games. Even a half-truth is good enough for her, so starved by lies. but her worry for you, her care, her concern – she’d almost started to like you after all these years. I couldn’t afford that – could you? I nipped that in the bud for you.
“He’s a disgusting little pervert. He’s let that man sodomize him for years, reenacting the tortures we went through again and again. He likes this, likes this game. He likes what they did to us. And he likes lying to you, too, Lizzie.”
Oh, how easily our little pawn toppled after hearing that. You should know by now, I don't care about playing fair, I just want to win. Fortunately, I know you feel the same way.
So tell me, brother, what does he taste like? Does he taste like the men who shoved themselves in you, like stale sweat and piss, that musky smell that clogged your nose until it felt permanently lodged in your sinuses, pressing down your throat, up your nose, into your brain? Or does he taste even worse – like ash, like brimstone?
Do you remember how I taste?
All I taste is blood.