by Shrimp King

Cecil has never been a perfect man.

That much was always made apparent to him as he changed slowly from a youth to an adolescent to a bitter adult. His father, Rhett, punished each of his many mistakes severely – and Cecil bore the scars to prove it. His delicate fingers were marred with the decades, small pains either from the stinging love of his only parent, or the occupational hazards of what he did with his time. He was born into his work, and one could argue that made it something of a loveless arrangement, but that would be far from the truth. His body, soul and work were intertwined, a path set for him even before he was born. Like so many, his entire existence was laid out for him from the start, and he had only ever had two choices: to rebel against it, or to excel at every opportunity. For most of his life, he’d chosen the second. 

The dual moons sink, and the sun hangs heavy in the sky. Hills of green frame the Fernwood estate, hugging the edges of the manicured grounds in picturesque solitude. The manor is not far from the city, but there is a quality about it that makes it feel as if the house is suspended in space and time.  Cecil holds an apple in his hands, cold and smooth, as he reflects. His tall, thin, wiry frame drapes over the countertop, where he lingers in thought amidst his peeling. The kitchen around him is more of a comfort than his own bedroom. Here, the walls are well-kept and painted, the pantry is always overflowing, and his creativity knows no bounds. It’s quite a change from the raw wood closet he spends his nights in. Well, some of his nights.

Once, when he was young, his father had showed him the classics, the food of the aristocracy that he must master to earn his place in the world. Yet Cecil had always ventured beyond that into the unknown, experimenting with new concepts and flavors that surprised and delighted. How many  dinner parties had he catered, bossing around his assistants and the other servants so that they didn’t spill the little cups of butter accompanying the crab, didn’t try to run their fingers through the silken sauces he served with the potatoes like the riffraff they were? He’d lost count. 

They may all be employees of the house, but they were not kin. He was an artist, a creator, with passion and pride around his work. He was the only chef, and though two of the other staff of the house were his on and off “assistants”, they weren’t really part of his world. He avoided most of their gossip and their games, their politics and their bitter arguments. They came and went at times too, with the seasons. Caught stealing from the estate, or sent away by the lady of the house’s jealousy if they drifted too close to her husband.

Once, their tables had been so full. The late Harmon Fernwood would fill the hall with his business partners, throwing banquets and parties to celebrate every little occasion. His wife and the subject of much of Cecil’s ire, Jocasta, would press Cecil for more and more exotic tastes, presentations, and flairs as the years passed. At first Cecil had found it exhilarating. His talent was being put to use, his hunger for novelty well fed. Eventually, he found it somewhat exhausting. It wasn’t about his vision after the first few banquets  – or what he could bring to the table. It was about power, control. When Harmon’s infidelity pushed Jocasta to her limits, she would find her way to the kitchen, hanging herself over her “handsome little helper.” Cecil would tolerate it. He had no choice. His father served their family before him, and he was raised in their shadows. He had been feeding and nourishing the Fernwood estate from the very moment he was able to do more than cry and shit. 

She would press him to make something for her just to show that she could. Just to have control over something, or someone in her house, when she had none over her husband. The food he gave her was the closest thing to love she ever received. And Cecil resented her – but he understood. His situation was not so different from hers. He was …not like other men. Never had been. Ever since he was young, he’d known. He found others like him, eventually – men who took him into tavern rooms, travelers who loved him in the rain and the mud, clergymen who could be seduced with enough batting of his blond lashes. He was not a woman, but he understood what it was to be without power in this world. He knew well what was thought of people like himself outside of the manor he’d been born into serving, just as he had witnessed what it was to be the wife of a wealthy man. They both lived in the gilded cage, but Jocasta was a lion and he was simply a very small, fragile bird with his wings clipped.

She had never threatened to expose him. Yet, the fear was ever present.

He slides his knife through another apple skin. The cutting board is wet from the moisture of the fruit. It’s late, and he has some time to himself. So much of his time is spent cooking in service to others. This time, he is making something of his own.

He was making something for Thiago.

He remembers the first day he met Thiago. He was brought to the house by one of Jocasta’s sisters two years ago, soaked through from the rain. The servants had been abuzz about it for weeks. Thiago Clemente. The name didn’t seem to make any sense when Cecil held it in his mouth. It was Jocasta’s maiden name, but not one he had ever known her by. He props his elbows on the counter as he cuts the apple flesh into smaller pieces, his actions taking on a certain romance to them as he reminisces over that first meeting. 

Thiago’s doctor, nurse, and caretaker met a sudden, bloody end. The stories that Cecil heard changed with each mouth telling it on the days leading up to Thiago’s arrival. One of the servants that he passed in the hall said that it was Thiago that drove a crystal vase into the doctor’s neck and a steak knife to each of the other’s throats; then he heard it was a sword from a decorative suit of armor that he drove through each of their bellies. Cecil, always Jocasta’s favorite, had actually gotten to ask the dark-haired matriarch of the house directly who Thiago was and why such a creature like him would be coming to stay in their quiet little estate, where nothing interesting had happened that didn’t relate to Harmon and Jocasta’s elaborate power plays with each other in years.

“He’s a perfectly fine young man,” Jocasta had promised him. Her hair was oiled back and she stank of jasmine and honeysuckle, dressed in crisp embroidered blue day clothes that she was rapidly shedding. “It was a wild animal attack – quite traumatic for him.” She didn’t say the quiet part that he could take from between her carefully plucked words. She played her tongue like a lute, and Cecil was her favorite accompanist.  He knew when she was being evasive, when she was lying. He knew her more intimately than anyone. He hated her more deeply than even her own husband as a result. She hungered for control over him in more ways than one. Cecil, whose only gifts were in the kitchen and in the bedroom, maintained his status with whatever favors kept him at the top of the pecking order. He gathered the manor’s secrets from his position between Jocasta’s thighs, and in return, Jocasta made it so that he felt like a treasured pet more than an indentured servant. 

He would learn, later, that the scene was so gory that officially, the only thing that the investigators could believe had killed those three people was a bear or a mountain lion. By the time Thiago arrived, Cecil could barely contain his curiosity. 

Thiago had always had something of a feline quality about him. That was the first thing that Cecil noticed about him. Maybe he was a mountain lion, under all that beauty.

His eyes were almost unnaturally gold. His long, dark hair fell in a shag around his shoulders, which made it easy to tell he was related to Jocasta. He shared ghosts of her features – a sure sign of their shared blood. They both had rich olive complexions and he was clearly battered by the sun. He wasn’t soft and delicate, as Cecil had expected. He was covered in scars – not just small ones on his hands and forearms, like Cecil, but a spiderweb of past pains that decorated him like nothing Cecil had ever expected to witness on a man of his status before. If you glanced at him the wrong way, Cecil would swear his canines were a little too long and a little too sharp to be human. Yet, somehow, he was.

Cecil convinced Jocasta to give him the privilege of serving Thiago his meals directly. The first time he came to the boy’s guestroom, Thiago was sitting in the sunlight, staring out into the garden. He turned his head to stare at Cecil when he heard the clicking of the door closing and locking. Cecil put down the tray of barley soup and roasted carrots and watched as the other man took him in.

“Where’s the meat?” It was the first thing Thiago ever said to him. His eyes were on the bowl, but his fangs were bared.

“Jocasta said to take it easy. You’ve been traveling.” He would have been offended, had he not been so distracted trying to parse the creature in front of him. He was unlike anyone he’d ever seen. Nothing like the boys he’d met in the city, nothing like the servants that came and went in the timeless house.

“Aren’t you afraid of me?” Thiago finally asked. His voice was surprisingly raspy, and it seemed as if each word took a great effort to speak.

“No.” Cecil wasn’t sure if that was true, but it seemed the only correct answer. A moment passed. He changed his mind.

“Yes, actually. I am.” 

It was no wild animal that killed those people. Cecil was sure of it. He didn’t have to prove anything to anyone, because he knew the truth. There was something wrong, and bad, and horrible deep within Thiago. Cecil saw in him something rotten that he felt in himself. Something he wanted to reach in and hold, just to know it was real. Just to feel it in someone else. 

Thiago wanted much the same.

Their dinner visits quickly turned into something more. Cecil was careful, so careful, to hide it from Jocasta, knowing their arrangement. His body was always hers – whether it was his labor, or his cheap dance of love. Both of her children had passed in the war, and she tempted him with the idea that perhaps, one day, he would get not the manor – that would go to cousins, aunts, nephews, sisters – but something. Something more than what he had now. He had no intentions of continuing his bloodline, which she felt was a shame. 

“You’re so talented,” she had purred into his ear. “Why let that die out?”

It was actually during one of his foraging trips, looking for new ingredients to entertain Jocasta, that he first had the idea to kill her.

So much of his time in the forest, combing the earth for its natural gifts, was spent on finding things that were safe to eat, that wouldn’t cause any harm. He realized quickly a book that instructs you on how to stay safe also trains you well on how to kill someone. It was the best gift his father had ever left him, a well thumbed through copy of a field guide to the local flora and fauna, scribbled with notes of how Rhett had used this knowledge in his personal recipes.

There were so many beautiful poisons in the woods. He relayed this to Thiago, once, when they were wrapped around each other. Thiago drug his dry, cracked lips across Cecil’s collarbone, kissing him there on the soft flesh of his neck. Cecil’s eyes lingered on the long, ugly slash against Thiago’s own throat, forever curious how it got there.

“Just like us,” Thiago had hummed back in reply. “Beautiful and deadly.”

 Cecil blushed with the idea such a creature found him beautiful.

He was pale, his hair like soft, pale gold, his eyes a blue so delicate as to look nearly white. His most defining feature was his strong nose and tense, thick eyebrows that always gave him a resting sense of being deep in thought. 

“Do you see him too?” Thiago had asked, right after that conversation. For not the first time, Cecil tensed with the knowledge that something dark was about to pass between them.

“A monster …like black oil, or black sludge draped over gray bones, covered in eyes…,” Thiago paused reverently, “He’s like a creature made of nightmares. He’s haunting me, lately.”

“Who is he?” Cecil tried to ask. “Why is he following you?”

Thiago just lifted one hand, pressing against his dark hair, gripping his skull as if he wanted to grab his mind and make shreds of it. 

“In my head, there are these memories… memories of being so many different people. It’s like I’ve lived a hundred times before I became this,” Thaigo gestures towards his wiry body, covered in marks.

 “It’s something the monster understands… and he is watching me. He wants me. I feel it.”

Cecil squeezed him tighter. He smelled like clean-washed skin. His liquid gold eyes refused to meet his gaze.

“He calls me The one who Bleeds.”

The next morning, when he was done being in Thiago and Jocasta’s arms, he found at the foot of his bed a hefty, well seasoned, dried link of venison sausage, wrapped with care. His initials were scrawled upon the rough paper used to decorate it – C.L.

He found a way to ask Jocasta and Thiago both if they knew anything about it. Neither do, though Thiago floats an idea.

“It could be …” He trails off before he even finishes the suggestion.

Cecil decided not to think about it, too much. That was only yesterday. He returns to the present, the apples peeled, cored, and sliced in front of him, unable to shake the sense of being watched.

He starts seeing things, out of the corner of his eye. Little black spots, at the corner of his vision. He gets goosebumps, but he doesn’t tell Thiago. It’s not that he doesn’t believe in the One who Follows, as Thiago calls the monster. It’s entirely the opposite reason that he keeps it to himself. 

Something in his psyche, something in his silly little mind doesn’t want to let the monster know it’s getting under his skin. Perhaps, that is the only power he has in the situation. The only control. It always comes back to that, doesn’t it, in this house?

Thiago has power. So much power. Cecil feels it, humming beneath the surface of his body like a swarm of angry bees living in the spaces between his bones. Right now, he has control, but Thiago tells him every day he gets closer to slipping.

“He touches me,” Thiago finally reveals one night, and Cecil knows exactly who is talking about. “And my mind ..he plays in it. Goes through the memories like you would a menu, tasting each kill, savoring the blood of my past. I lose myself in it.”

Cecil tries to stop the flush of arousal he feels. He shouldn’t.

“Do you want him to stop?” Cecil asks. 

Thiago flashes him a toothy smile.

“I want him to do it to you, too.”

Perhaps the monster can hear, because the next morning, Cecil awakens to strange dreams and another gift at the foot of his bed. This time it’s a selection of small cheeses, piled together and tied in small silk bundles. He feels …different, but he doesn’t know why.

His weeks begin to be marked by the expectation of another strange gift. The manor itself doesn’t seem to change, but Thiago grows increasingly tired of his confinement. Jocasta only takes her kin out rarely, to give him a tour of the garden. Never into town. She says it’s too dangerous. She doesn’t specify if it’s a danger to Thiago, or a danger to everyone else.

He has a tense exchange with Jocasta as they lay down together. It’s spring now, a murky, pleasant season that means almost nothing to Cecil, except for the changes it’ll bring to the woods around the house, the plants he can forage. They are both naked, stripped of their formalities. Her black hair spills across the pillow like inky tendrils of a strange plant. He thinks again. Like an evil, crawling fern? He’ll keep mulling it over.

“You should assign someone else to bring Thiago his meals,” she tells him, and the wrinkles on her face make her beautiful for a moment, even if Cecil knows her soul is so, so ugly.

He tries not to show her his visceral reaction. Instead, coyly, cooly, as always, he tries to respond.

“You deny me a friend? You know that I can’t deal with the other people you keep in this house. They exhaust me.”

She stiffens. He feels his heart beat pick up. Perhaps that wasn’t the right thing to say.

“Why would you need a friend, Cecil? Getting on your knees in the mud and digging around for leaves and roots like a well-trained pig has served you well this long, hasn’t it?”

It is needlessly cruel, and for that, he doesn’t fuck her as good as he usually does.

If she notices, she doesn’t say anything. 

The next day, there’s a knife at the foot of his bed. Wrapped lovingly, as always. It is beautiful. A carved handle, hefty weight, sharper than anything he’s ever owned. 

He brings it to show Thiago that night, trying to avoid telling him that Jocasta is trying to come between them, but knowing all too well that the other man has a way of getting everything he wants out of him and more.

“I’ve decided,” Thiago says, holding the knife in his palm like one would an injured bird.

“I’m going to kill her.”

Cecil manages to convince Thiago to let him be the one to do it. He has several reasons. The first, that Thiago will make a bloody mess of the estate, and that will make it far too hard for them to move on from the kill. Cecil imagines stripping this place clean to the bones of it’s valuables, running away, starting over somewhere. Thiago only thinks of the blood he can spill, haunted by this Follower, haunted by these pasts that Cecil still can’t barely comprehend.

The second, is that if anyone is going to kill that bitch, it’s going to be him.

He finds the things he needs, kneeling in the mud of the forest like the well-trained pig he is. It puts a smile on his face. 

He brews a tea that he knows will be Jocasta’s last, and places it by her bedside.

She’s dead by morning.

The servants are a frenzy when Jocasta’s sister arrives. She is the same withered woman that dropped Thiago off, all those years ago. She is tall and sad and somehow, despite their clear relation, could not look less like his love. She is painfully human, exquisitely plain. In the absence and death of the lady of the house, Cecil has abandoned his duties. He spends all of his time in the master bedroom, which he has claimed for himself and Thiago. They break Jocasta’s things, making a mess of the extravagant room. They parade around in her silk robes, fuck in her lacy gowns and gauzy stockings. Thiago is like a man awakened. They make love over and over, Cecil’s hands in Thiago’s hair, his cock buried deep in his cunt. 

He sees that inky black void at the edges of his vision, and when he cums, he swears he can feel phantom arms, crawling over his skin.

In a matter of days, the family gathers to determine what has become of the Fernwood estate, and what will become of those that remain inside of it. Thiago makes an appearance once or twice, tells Cecil a little of what is happening.  Cecil feels uncertainty and exhilaration in equal measure. He has a vision of Cecil taking over Jocasta’s place; of serving his broken lover until they both are lost to the mysterious, demonic Follower that clings to them both, or time. If only he’d known this would happen. He’d have killed her sooner.

He sleeps with the thought in his mind, and when he wakes, he knows something dire has happened.

He puzzles together that he has been drugged. His head pounds and his body aches, every nerve on fire. He feels that strange, creeping feeling in his head, and loses himself. In a few short, unremarkable moments, he’s not Cecil anymore, but staring through totally different eyes. His mind is consumed, and he feels the presence of that void embrace him, the sweet caress of an easy death. He is a prisoner in another’s thoughts, his body a thousand lifetimes away, and he thinks, for the brief moment he can, that this must be what it feels like to be one of the memories in Thiago’s head.

 Blood. Rot. Wine. A feast fit for a predator, filth laying upon decadence. The table that stretches before the Follower’s oddly bent bones is long, dark, and wooden. It stands on four legs firm as time, a bathhouse of blood and shoe leather filling the dusky underside of it’s surface in silent companionship. 

He is the one who follows, the one who seeks. He has been looking for some time. He who Bleeds is the one he pursues, relentless in his love. The form changes every lifetime, each new flesh and bone another canvas to hang his desire across. Once a butcher, thrice a king. He growls in the anticipation of finding him once more, a force like devotion but so much worse pulling him along an invisible path.

The golden goblets have spilled. The plates have shattered. Chunks of meat and flesh dot the walls. The blood is playful, art. The hands are folded, eerily, across each other. Each man in a silent prayer. The damage is exquisite, and everything he knew Thiago was capable of from the start.

Moving with the archaic pace of deity that has known nothing but time, he absorbs in passing the array of death and admires it. He plays a picture in his mind’s eye; graceful, gentle fingers, tugging steel across fragile necks. The sharp of the chef’s knife he left at the foot of Cecil’s bed, steering into the shoulder of yet another pitiful man. That is what made Thaigo so dangerous. The soul of a monster, set into a cage of mortality, cycle after cycle. To what end? The Follower could only guess that he would never tire of such a game until the very universe itself finally collapsed.

The One that Follows was called other names, before. He was whispered upon lips with the darkest of despairs, passed around like a secret. Offerings of snuffed candle smoke and pale silver coins would call him, a watcher in the night. Yet that was long ago. The people have forgotten about He who Follows, and He who Bleeds.

He follows the trail of blood, the broken bits and bobbles of a struggle. He finds a bedroom, door propped open. On the bed is Thiago.

The double moon illuminates pale olive-toned skin, golden eyes like a cat, shaggy, dark hair that spills across shoulders. He is scrawny and scarred, and He who Follows speaks his name, in a tongue that only the disturbed can parse. Thiago sits on the embroidered duvet, Cecil wrapped in his arms. Thiago’s strong chin tucks into the shoulder of the delicate man in his arms, pressing a kiss to cold, dead skin as he takes in the creature that has come to visit. Their eyes meet, and the game is over. Thiago has finally snapped, like a twig that was bent for so, so, long, slowly turned out of shape until it has no choice but to break entirely. The tears he weeps onto Cecil’s face are the most human thing about him, now.

The chef of the estate has fallen so far. Like a dragon lording over a well-loved hoard, so did the Follower shift through Cecil’s thoughts, admiring the shine of them. He was interesting, for a mortal. His last act of violence against Jocasta had impressed him. However, any mortal can kill.  Only He who bleeds could create such a scene of delicious debauchery. 

The monster reaches out to trace a hand across Thiago’s beloved face.  Thiago seems to welcome his touch, as if comforted by the arrival of a long-sought relief.

The Follower feels a trill in his long-dead heart. He falls upon Thiago like a plague.

His sharp teeth tear into his throat, the crimson welling in the aftermath. He kisses the wound, feeling the boy shiver and moan in his four arms. The top pair prop him up by his underarms, while the bottom pair traces across the muscles in his abdomen. Cecil is shifted to the floor, carelessly, as the Follower savors the taste of Thiago. Their love has survived a thousand years of this game. Thiago will be reborn again, and again, and the Follower will find him, again and again, with only pain in their wake. Thiago forgets Cecil entirely, for a moment, drunk on the joy of this vile reunion. Yet, the Follower saw the passion in those feline eyes, the weight of the other man in Thiago’s arms. It is so unfortunate that Cecil was victim to a revenge plot against him from the family of the deceased Jocasta, who despite Cecil’s assumptions, were not fools. The Follower had watched them creep into the room while Thiago was away, spilling poison drops into the man’s ear. There is a romance in dying by the same poison you kill with, one the Follower can appreciate. The tears he licks from Thiago’s cheeks give him pause, despite this.

Perhaps, the Follower thinks. Perhaps there can be room for another in their game. It has been so, so very long, after all.

Thiago grabs his face and kisses along his jaw, and  the grotesquely long tongue of the Follower slides out over his sharp teeth for the feral boy to worship. Thiago’s human hands palm so delicately over an alien shape. The hollow parts of the follower don’t seem to be of any concern to his lover. His tongue pushes into the boy’s mouth, tasting him. The boundaries of his skull are the only limits to the ways that he can invade him, as his tongue pushes into his throat and he feels the boy shudder around the unkind intrusion. His hands grip the Follower even tighter, and the Follower’s lower arms knead the soft flesh of his ass and thighs in response, eyes focused upon that place between his legs, where the soft curve of his belly meets the pink flesh of his cunt.

He pushes him down against the elegant furniture, two arms pinning his wrists above his hands while the lower two drag claws down his well-worn thighs. He feels the boy choke on him, gives him a moment of air, but only a moment. He thinks of the night he saw Cecil, much the same, touch this precious, temporary mortal body. Instead of jealousy, however, he feels only passion – the arousal of watching Thiago be so thoroughly devoured.

The scars across his flat chest are so beautiful. He sees where the flesh has been carved away, changed. The Follower admires his body, even as he slides so effortlessly into Thiago’s mind.

A thousand years of memory spill out from him, shrouded in pleasure. The Follower clings to the passion, the adoration, of his love.  This is their punishment, their game. To have these fleeting, glorious moments of pure connection, only to begin the cycle of longing anew with each death and rebirth. Each mortal soul born with the bloodlust and timelessness of a god, pushing the limits of humanity until the Follower can find him again, in a new place, a new time, with new blood on his beautiful hands. Sometimes his love knows him implicitly, sometimes intimately, other times not at all. Thiago’s life is but a  journey of losing himself to his violence, a fate he cannot escape. The Follower is merely here to watch it happen, to corrupt him, to please him, to worship him as he falls from grace over and over until their souls are finally put to final rest.

He drags his tongue across the boy’s neck, down his chest. His hard nipples are toys in his hands, the sounds echoing throughout the lavish room. The follower kneads the boy’s soft belly, adoring how soft and simple he is. So fragile. 

He leans down further, and his tongue finds his clit, lashing it affectionately as the boy’s legs curl around his head. The hard nub gets all his attention, while the end of his tongue finds the slick opening just below. He forces his way into the boy’s body, his searching, seeking tongue slipping into his warm, wet, hole. He feels his body stretch to accommodate him, until he hits the wall of his cervix. The one who Follows presses against this, feeling pride when his tongue starts to push past the resistance there. He tongue-fucks the mortal shell of his love, enjoying even his most forbidden parts. 

Thiago screams so much that his voice starts to fade. He drags his fingers across the bites in his neck, smearing the blood across his chest. The bloodloss makes him dizzy, and the lights begin to fade. He feels whole, for the first time. The Follower feels him shudder and squeeze around him, slips his tongue out slowly, to loom over the face he had only just begun to commit to his infinite memory.

“Please,” it is the first time the Follower  hears the voice speak a word directly to him. The Follower feels Thiago’s slowing heartbeat, lays his head against his chest to listen to it. It is such a lovely sound.

Cecil lays crumpled against the carpet. Thiago hangs limply in the followers arms. The house is quiet, and still. The crescendo of the conflict has ended here. Were this another story, these two lovers would be dying in each other’s arms. The pure bliss of finding his love has not yet faded, and He who Follows grips Thiago tight, holds him against the heartless cage of his chest. Please ….so rarely did He who Bleeds ever ask for favors. In the days of the oldest of gods, they chased each other across the centuries, persistence and suffering. Dedication and bloodlust. The incomprehensible march forward of time, and the natural inclination of the world towards its own ruin. Punished for their love with a wicked game that they both loved to play. Thiago is just the last of a hundred incarnations of bloodlust, the Follower, a ghost from an earlier time, haunting him to ruin.

“What will he be?” The Follower asks. It is an important question.

“He who changes,” Thiago is gone at this moment, or perhaps, more present than ever before. He speaks with the authority of his soul now, the mortal worries and fears pushed aside. “Has he not changed us?”

The follower considers this. “Perhaps.”

He can’t say that he didn’t enjoy watching the pair, their secretive nights, their delicate conversations. He watched Cecil in the quiet of the forest, protecting him, even when the other man played his little games, kept away from his reach. He was protecting him because Thiago loved him, or at least, that is what the god told himself. Now, as he ponders Thiago’s request, he wonders if there are other reasons he followed Cecil so closely. For a mortal, he was so full of such anger, such rage, such passion. It was glossed over with a layer of ice that obscured everything beneath it. It had been a delight for the Follower’s senses.

After a moment of thought, he breathes life into Cecil again, even as it strains him to do so. Something of the Follower leaves with the power, the slow opening of the mortal’s eyes weakening him in ways he won’t ever fully admit. Perhaps, the Follower thinks, one does illogical things for love.

In the morning, the doors of the estate will be locked tight, and shut. Thiago and Cecil will pour the wine from the cellar to the floor, and burn it to the ground. They will strip the halls of their gold and glamor, and they will find a place to begin again. The ghostly arms of the ancient god that haunts Thiago will wrap around the pair at night, claiming two souls for eternity. When Cecil kisses a god for the first time in his mortal life, he can’t help but ponder over the unique flavor. He is, after all, a simple artist at heart. He scribbles a note in his father’s book – for posterity. The tome will far outlive him, at least he hopes.

There are times that Thiago seems a thousand miles away. Cecil knows that he isn’t the same, won’t ever be.  Even so, he has never been happier. Their entire future is their own, with nobody to cage them any longer. He still sees the traces of Jocasta in Thiago’s features, and knows he won’t ever escape his past, not fully. Perhaps in that way, they are the same.

 They are but  followers of a path that was laid out for them, long, long ago. Two souls with only two options: to rebel against that fate, or to excel at every opportunity.

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