Page 38 of Storm

A stifling voice is in my ear. “Yes. And Mary has already taken Sunny up to his room.”

His words pass through me as my eyes lock on the sunken form of the fairy man before us. The males of the Halo Council circle around with drinks in hand, their dutiful wives beside them. Last time I had witnessed this was at this same event, last year—Lord Belial’s holiday party. Sunny stayed at home with Mary, and Melek insisted I go to socialise. Proof of life, since the residents of Halo probably assumed I was a ghost, since I hadn’t been seen outside of our estate for several years beyond the odd party I was made to attend.

“This holiday season, we are blessed with the bounty of our saviour.” The glint of a bronzed dagger catches my eye. Lord Asmodeus’s wife, a thin rake of a woman with blonde hair and bulging eyes, holds up the arm of the fairy as the lord speaks. My stomach churns into knots. The hand I’d placed in my husband’s pulls away on reflex. “Soon, we will begin anew.”

Lord Asmodeus takes the dagger, finds a raised gash on the purple fairy’s forearm, and slices deeply. The figure in the chair barely twists, the chains around his arms and legs rattling slightly as his arm is moved to capture the flowing pearlescent solence in a glass flute.

The wound drips slowly, and I find myself transfixed on the man in the chair. Two small horns protrude out of his hairline. Scraggly white hair is cut unevenly around his pointed ears. Leaning back, long lashes bat over cheeks, and he sighs.

It’s true when people say you grow used to seeing a thing, accustomed to the onslaught of thoughts and rattling emotions. Eventually, it becomes normal. I never want to see more of this ritual because I never want it to be “normal” to me.

This is and always will be barbaric, savage. I know exactly what these men and women of Halo would call the fairy—savage—so the irony isn’t lost on me when that’s all I see when they pass the flute around the room, taking sip after sip, savouring the taste of a creature sought to extend life and beauty. A bunch of savages. The flicker of the orange flames only serves to accentuate the garishness of their… Ugliness—the absence of kindness in soul and thought. Humanity is not within the humans of Halo, if you can call them that. Human? What does that word even mean anymore?

The faces continue to mean nothing to me. Instead, all I see is one colour—red. Each person is the representation of everything I despise, of every wrong I intend to right. At least, this time, they didn’t torture him. Though I expect this fairy is too far gone to be susceptible to lashings. They give up eventually.

I do too.

I’m gone before Melek can question my disappearance. For a moment, my feet slow, expecting him to stalk after me. He does not. I don’t know if Melek drinks. I’ve never seen that glimmering liquid on his tongue before. Not seeing it is my continual lie. There’s only one way he looks like a man in his prime as opposed to one hitting beyond mid-life.

Looking would make me an accomplice. I can barely stop my own child from witnessing what goes on in this place. Before, Sunny was too young for such things. Now, he’s becoming of age. I can’t protect him any longer.

My time has run out, and I’m heavily pregnant with another.

Despair radiates like its own visceral entity from the beginnings of my soul. All hope is gone. If the fairies can’t fight them, what hope does a swine have? Heading on wobbly legs for the downstairs toilet, I hide, trying to steady my rasping breaths without being assaulted.

Standing before the white basin and oval mirror, I hold on to each side of the smooth porcelain, staring at wide, scared eyes,‌ bright blue. Flecks of silver cutting through, as if to say, look at me, I’m Halo. My pale skin glows under the downlight. No matter how long I stay under the sun, it never browns like Melek’s or even Nix’s. Creases form between my forehead at the thought of my brother. I shut that down. Far down. The necklace. I need to find it before Melek or Mary does.

If I think about him, not even the rage will centre me. Instead, grief will find me and swallow me whole. And I already feel the lingering edges of sorrow, thanks to the ritual. For a year, I let anguish take me under until I sought comfort in using my husband’s body.

Glaring at the dark under-eye circles not even Halo make-up can cover, I allow myself to remember the first time I laid eyes on Melek… The domineering commander, willing to let his keepers hurt and kill factory farmers. He may not have been the one strapping us seronds to Xs, but he may as well have been, in my eyes.

That girl had grit and determination and sorrow, forged by ancestral rage, until the icy water of existence so eloquently dampened her soul.

At that time, all choices had been stripped from me. My half-hollow heritage ensured that. Melek would be my husband. In my mind’s eye, I can still see the exact jacket he wore, down to the embossed snake buttons. I remember looking at them and thinking, what a strange creature. We’ve never had a snake on the lightning fields. They are supposedly extinct. The only times I’ve witnessed them have been within the emblems of ‌Halo and on my own gold wedding ring. It is said the snake symbolises renewal—eternity. Eternity seems like a long fucking time for Halo scum to be running the world.

“Argh.” Holding my ring before my face, I go to rip it off. The snake eating its own tail barely budges, my fingers swollen. “Fuck.” I moan into the small toilet closet. Even this physical reminder of him, I can’t remove.

I should be fucking embarrassed at what has happened to me since falling at his feet.

Melek was right. I lasted exactly one year before I succumbed to him. To this. There have been many verbal tussles since our meeting, and one topic he has never entertained—my family. There was Storm, the lightning farmer. Now, there is Alora, the wife of the Halo lord commander. The only thing I’ve been allowed is my silence, wrought in tears alone.

I always thought he would break first. Melek wanted me, beyond the token wife he needed to placate the council. He has always lingered a beat too long on my body—trancelike. It was unnerving, giving me time to observe him right back. So, I knew he desired me. Didn’t all men want the same thing, after all? However, after entering our home, my commander shut himself away.

He ignored me in the beginning. So, I spent my time ignoring him. One of us walked into a room, and the other left. And when one of us wanted more, we clashed in spectacular fashion. It was always in the air that surrounded us; a disturbance in the atmosphere that could never wait. To many a vase’s dismay. I’ve never been so wilfully lax in the pursuit of precious household objects before. The anger Melek brought out in me was the culmination of years of abuse at the hands of Halo. Not just for me, but every woman before me.

And throughout it all, during that first year, he never touched me. Not a fist in ire, or a backhanded slap when I spoke out of turn, which was often. Melek preferred his jabs through mere presence alone, or lack thereof, when he would walk away from me mid-sentence. He was the ultimate vexation on my soul, and he knew it. I was already in hell. To add salt to the wound, he expected me to sleep in his bed. I thanked an unknown entity—not the hollow god—that Melek’s bed was big enough to house four bodies instead of two, though my husband’s body did account for two. And he continued to keep his word. Not a finger graze or an accidental arm around the waist through the night.

It bugged me, how unaffected he was. Melek was clever. One of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. He knew exactly what he was doing when he made that deal with me. Instead of hating him, it made me hate myself. Irrational sensations I’d never experienced before awakened within me at his constant nearness. I was meant to be his unravelling, but I think he was mine. My greatest temptation.

Holding shaking hands before me, the marks on my palms are faint lines compared to what they used to be. The golden snake band wraps around my old wounds as if to taunt me. When I look up, blue eyes spin grey. The very same that have been the catalyst for every tragedy and now beauty in my life. Hanging my head, I rub a hand over the child within.

“Any colour but grey, please,” I plead to whoever will listen.

TEN YEARS AGO

THE ASTRAL

I don’t want to be here. He knows it. I told Melek as much when we left the house, and again when we got into the black air-conditioned chauffeured car heading towards the city proper. Houses the same as the next, cube after grey cube, flash before us as we drive to our final destination. Once we circle the inner-city park, we are close. The glorified plastic grassed area, filled with metal trees and fountains, contains a silver statue of a glinting winged man, bronze snakes circling each of his arms. The focal point of the illusion. Their saviour.