Unsleeping Prince

He climbed up the paved steps, his sneakers making a shlck sound as they slipped past the rain-wet concrete. Sacha usually tried to stay out as late as he could, tonight was no exception. He’d long since learned that he preferred staying out and hearing about how worried his mom was about him for thirty minutes to staying in and hearing about how worried his mom was about something unrelated for the whole time he was home. Besides, it was Halloween. Of course he’d be out late, even if it rained the whole day. He’d spent his afternoon with acquaintances, hanging out on the covered porch of one of their townhouses. He’d wanted to be walking around, but the kids he was with cared more about not getting wet than by seizing this most auspicious day. He tried to join in and entertain them for a bit, to minimal success. He got the idea. Upon mention of ordering food, he’d stepped into the bathroom and avoided notice enough to not need to pitch in for the pizza they’d ordered, grabbed a slice, and dipped. He spent the rest of the night walking around on his own in the gentle rain, scavenging from the last remaining take-one bowls.

He buzzed the apartment’s buzzer three times in quick succession before he unlocked the door. It was a ritual his mom imposed, one meant to identify that whoever was coming inside was someone she knew. It made him feel silly every time he did it. His mom said it was for a good reason. She had an issue with unexpected visitors. What had happened didn’t justify the paranoia, but it definitely justified the issue itself.

While he was still by the doorway, he took a moment to deal with his rain-soaked Halloween costume. His mom wouldn’t let a sopping wet Good Guy doll track puddles through their third-floor apartment. Next were the overalls, which had absorbed the brunt of the rain and hung heavy on his body. They weren’t dripping, so he settled for cuffing the legs. The sweater underneath, though, was soaked through. Beads of rain still sat on its surface and the creases glistened with absorbed water whenever he moved. Sacha had to take it off from underneath the overall straps, which was no easy feat. He couldn’t tell if any of the fake blood was still on his face, so he wiped at it with the soaked garment. His socks and shoes also had to go. After all that, he pushed his fingers through his wet hair. They didn’t get far, catching in the wet tangles. He had bleached his hair as light as it would go soon after his last lye job, leaving it bright orange and crispier than he would have liked. With some convincing it could still sit in the wavy fanning-out way he liked, but the damage had been done. At least it worked well for Chucky. Once he was as acceptable as he could get, he headed up the stairs. He was shirtless in overalls, hair frizzing out and pressed too close to his head, barefoot, with a pillowcase stuffed with candy and soaked clothes. That was the state he was in when he opened the door to see his mother sobbing and holding someone he didn’t know in her arms.

He was an older man, how old made hard to tell by the contrast between his youthful posture and his appearance. He had deep-set wrinkles in liver-spotted white skin, a face that sagged and drooped, and wiry white hair that made a ring around the completely bald top of his head. He looked tall, easily over six foot, with broad shoulders that made him look like he took up the whole room. Sacha’s mom only them noticed his entry, apparently having missed when he buzzed. She startled, then relaxed. She must have seen his face’s immediately apparent mix of shock and confusion, because she spoke.

“Sacha, it’s your brother. He’s home. Arthur is home.”

Sacha sat on the floor of his bedroom while this stranger sat on his bed. He looked a few years younger than Sacha did, which made sense because he had two years on him. Sacha was barely old enough to be aware of the break-in that took Arthur and his dad from him. The two were talking, catching up after thirteen years apart, but Sacha was more focused on his brother’s appearance.

“-I lived with foster homes for a while because we didn’t know who my parents were. I’d been living with one for a couple months when I got the call that they’d found my mom. I had to go, just to meet her. And you too, of course.” Arthur toyed with a necklace as he talked, an obsidian arrowhead on a leather cord. He talked like he wasn’t completely invested in his own story, he almost droned. Sacha watched him speak intently anyways. He was blown away by how two people with the same parents could look so different. Arthur, for one, was much lighter skinned than Sacha. His hair was still black like Sacha’s, but it was wavy in an effortless, natural way that his own wasn’t. He was a nice bit taller and lankier, too.

“So how’s your life been?” The sticking point for Sacha, though, was his eyes. He stumbled out an answer while he pondered.

“Well, I’ve just sorta lived here with my- our mom. I’m sure your life’s more interesting.” Arthur’s eyes were this painfully light brown that looked almost gold. No, not gold, they didn’t shine. They had a sort of greenish hue, less gold more… Mustard. That was the right description, yeah.

“Hey, I’ll have plenty of time to talk about myself. Why don’t you tell me about what I missed?”

He didn’t like the question. He didn’t like that Arthur wanted to know about his past, or even what he was like at the current moment. He was just a kid who lived with his mom, he didn’t do anything special or go anywhere cool or meet anyone interesting. He couldn’t do that yet.

Sacha dreamt. He dreamt the same thing he’d dreamt every night since Arthur came home.

The sound of a window breaking wakes Sacha up. He stands up in his crib, looking out over the living room. It’s where his family used to live before his mom had them move. A man he doesn’t know storms out from the kitchen. He’s old and so very tall, but he moves like he’s young. The man pushes open the door to his parents’ room and steps through, heralded by a scream from his mother and a shout from his father. There are walls in the way, but the walls let Sacha see anyways. The man makes a move for the other crib in the room, but his father puts himself between the intruder and his infant son.

“You stay away from him.”

“I know what he is, much better than you do.”

His dad pushes the man and lunges for a gun in a drawer by his bedside. The man lets him, standing while he fumbles with it.

“I know what you’re doing.” The man stepped forward.

“Stay back.”

“You think yourself an equal when the greatest thing you’ve-” The man started to take another step forward and was silenced by a gunshot. A hole through the man’s jaw.

“-done is my dirty work.” The man struck out a hand and pushed him to the ground. Thick, ochre pus spilled from the side of his open jaw. It pooled on the floor, joining with a much larger pool of the same substance forming below Sacha’s father. Sacha watched as his father dissolved, first flesh, then bone, into aurous sludge. The man steps over the puddle towards the crib in the bedroom.

Sacha’s mother is completely absent now. He can’t see the man anymore, but he feels like he’s still there. He’s in the empty lot where the apartment used to stand, holding his baby brother. There’s a black stain where his dad’s body used to be. It’s overcast, like it’s just finished raining. His Halloween costume is soaked through and his hair is a mess. He looks down at his brother in his arms, noticing a silvery shimmer encompassing the infant. He watches as a droplet of silvery liquid gathers along baby Arthur’s perfect eyelash and falls upward like rain in reverse. It leaves a cavity in its place. Another droplet forms and rises away, taking a patch of his tightly coiled black hair. The speed increases, Sacha watches as the silver that was his brother percolates upward, leaving less and less in his hands until there’s just the one dark brown eye left. That, too, turns to quicksilver and drips into the sky. Sacha watches it go, turning his gaze upward for the first time. Where there would usually be the overcast dull of afterrain, the sky is all gold. He sees a massive, predatory eye bearing down on him. He sees its snakelike slit pupil and every microscopic detail of the iris blown up to massive proportions. He feels a burning sensation beating down on his shoulders and his sky-cast face. It can see him. He clenches his fists, to a slicing pain in his right, and dashes towards a building. He tries the door, it’s unlocked. He ducks inside to where the roof would block the sickly yellow thing’s eyeline and slams the door shut. He still feels the burning against his neck, his shoulders, his scalp, his back. It can still see him. It makes the walls let it see him. He buries his face in his hands, spreading the cut to his right cheek and pressing old blood into the new wound. Even with his eyes screwed shut, the sensation of being seen sears into him.

Sacha woke up to little fanfare. He was sweating and cold, but he was too exhausted to sit bolt upright like he had the first time he had had the dream. His mom still hadn’t gotten a bed for Arthur, so he had been sleeping on the couch and letting his brother take his bed. It was one in the morning, he hadn’t even been asleep two hours. He couldn’t go back to sleep, though. His heart was racing and he knew he’d just have that same dream again. He’d watch his dad die from a different room and then hide in a different building, but it would be the same. It was already too much. The same dream so many times in one night was the worst of it, but there was more that had changed for the worse. His mom was cheery, happier than she’d been since Sacha could remember, but he barely existed to her anymore. Everything was about Arthur. His brother had sat in with him at school for two days now and he was beloved already. The kids he had barely entertained on Halloween were already calling his brother ‘Arty’ like that was a good nickname at all. He felt crazy, like every bit of paranoia his mom had got put into him while she acted like everything was finally going well. So much had changed so quickly, and Sacha felt like he was being left behind. He got so little sleep he couldn’t think straight and every time he dozed off it was the same nightmare again. He needed to do something.

Sacha opened the door to his room. Arthur was still out with friends, apparently. It was past midnight on a school night with people he’d known for maybe under a day, but that didn’t stop him. He started grabbing clothes from his closet, packing a bag. It felt like everything he had somehow gotten a stain recently. Always some dark splotch or yellowing smear. His overalls, which had dried, had a huge black stain on the front and the back. It didn’t make any sense, and it was the last straw. He sat with the ruined items strewn around him, exhausted. After some time of trying to summon the volition, he gathered all the clothes he planned to pack and carried them through the darkened apartment hallway into the bathroom. He switched on the light and dumped the clothes into the tub, which he then filled partway with water. From under the sink he took the gallon jug of bleach and poured it over them, letting the color seep out from everything he planned to take with him. He sat on the floor while they whitened and then, one-by-one, wrung every t-shirt and long sleeve and both pairs of jeans and the overalls and socks and underwear out before hanging them up. It took a long time, but it felt right. Like he was taking ownership of what he had. Like he was wiping out some infection. Like he was cutting Arthur back out of his life. He walked back into his bedroom, zombielike, and fished something out of the bottom of his drawer. Something he had been planning to do anyways since before Arthur came back. He held his head over the tub, the dregs of bleach still making his eyes water, and worked the purple dye into his hair.

November 3rd, 1993. The day Sacha Vaughan ran away from home.

Spawn 5

Hell 5

Unsleeping Prince