WHO: Kaden and Hecate WHEN: Wednesday night, while Marcie is with Much WHERE: The Enodia WHAT: Day nine WARNINGS: Self harm thoughts
The stairs in the Enodia were warmer than the rest of the building, the air in the concrete stairwell close and un-conditioned, only freshened when someone opened one of the fire doors. Hardly anyone did. The humidity outside was thick – most people went straight for the elevator.
Kaden, though, took the stairs two at a time, pounding up them till sweat stung his eyes. From the basement carpark he zigzagged up and up and up to the top, where he bent over the railing, staring all the way down, all nine stories. His lungs heaved with exertion, and a few beads of sweat fell when he shook the hair out of his eyes. For a dizzying moment, he watched them tumble and disappear.
And then down down down down again he ran, so fast he could see himself falling, crashing, breaking.
Down to the basement where Tragos’ car lived. At night, it was so fucking creepy. Kaden stayed on the other side of the door to the parking lot, looking out through the narrow pane of glass at the cars and concrete pillars and numbers painted on the ground. It didn’t look magical.
He pushed his hand against the door, just to get a whiff of the exhaust fumes. It didn’t smell magical.
But there were a lot of things Kaden wasn’t thinking about and exhaust fumes and cars were one of them, no matter how much he flirted dangerously with the grief associated with the smell.
Instead: up up up the stairs again as fast as he could, too fast to think of anything other than one foot in front of the other just gotta keep putting one foot in front of the other or he was gonna fall gonna crash gonna end up sprawled on the steps out of breath and too hurt to run, and if he couldn’t keep running then other memories were gonna catch up with him.
Memories of running with a baby strapped to his front.
Thoughts that made him want to climb to the roof and pitch himself off it. No – thoughts that made him want to storm up town, straight back to Soho to tear the door of Melpomene’s apartment and rip Lil T from her arms. Maybe he’d die where Tragos had died. Maybe that would be okay.
Kaden pulled his sleeve down over his hand, balled it into a fist that felt as tight and dense as his heart, and with a short and vicious scream punched the glass of the door between the stairs and the hallway.
It repelled his fist like he’d punched solid concrete. Fire glass, built to stand more than a teenager’s vengeful blows. Kaden shrieked in pain and frustration, reeling back. His desperate lungs sucked in snot with the air and made him choke, and then he was on his hands and knees on the stairs, not so far from the top. He struggled up a few more steps on all fours but gave up before he reached the top, and lay sprawled on them.
For a long time he lay there. All the motivation to run had left him and now he had none, not even to roll over. Not even to look up when Hecate sat on the stair beside him.
He hated how she was a stranger who didn’t feel like a stranger. He barely knew her, yet often when she was around he was struck by the desire to curl up against her side, and the knowledge that if he did, nothing bad would happen. Kaden didn’t trust this knowledge; something bad could always happen, no matter who he was hiding against. Despite that, he wanted to do it now, shuffle his body across the stairs and lean his panting, sweaty, teary, snotty head against her.
He didn’t. He let the stairs be his pillow. There was nothing difficult to understand about stairs, and the terrible angle couldn’t make his head hurt any worse than it already did, full of too much of everything. What did it matter than the point of the stairs dug hard into his cheek. The only thing the stairs promised was that they probably wouldn’t collapse underneath him.
“I don’t imagine you’re used to being stuck inside for this long,” Hecate said at last.
Kaden snorted. Which also hurt his head.
He wanted to tell her that it felt like being back in the Hole when the waters rose. When it had rained so much there was no way out but to wade through freezing, shitty water for blocks till the land started to rise. That ending up painfully cold and disgusting was sometimes worth it if it meant not being trapped inside the house for one more minute.
“It’s been nine days,” Hecate spoke again, when he didn’t say anything. “I think you could use a change of scenery.”
Kaden thought about going to Melpomene’s, the last place he’d seen Tragos alive. He thought about going home to the room he’d packed so hurriedly. “Where?” he asked, his voice croaking out through a throat that wished he hadn’t run it ragged over so many stairs.
“I have another place on Staten Island,” Hecate suggested. “There’ll be no one there, it’s being renovated.” She paused for a long moment before adding, mildly: “there’d be plenty of things there you could smash up if you want to.”
Kaden entertained the idea. Ripping an axe through a wall, hurling a brick through a window. The idea felt good, felt better than running, felt like it might loosen this pent up scream in him.
But to get to Staten Island they’d have to leave the hotel, and then get on a train or a bus with dozens of strangers, or take a car which was worse because Kaden didn’t want to get in a car that wasn’t Tragos’.
“Not as fun if you’re allowed to smash,” he pointed out, muttering, as if this was a factor in his decision at all. With a sniff he sat up, rubbing his sleeve across his face. Even jogging, in this heat, he was still in his long sleeves.
“No,” Hecate agreed, and turned her head toward him. “May I see your hand?”
He thought about saying no. Actually, he thought about saying fuck off. But the feeling. The curl-up-against-her-where-its-safe feeling...
With a long shaky breath, he held his throbbing hand out toward her, and closed his eyes, turning his face away. She took his wrist and peeled his sleeve back so carefully the tenderness made his squeeze his eyes shut tighter, his heart hammering, sick with panic.
Hecate ran her fingers over the knuckles that were going to bruise, gently easing open his hand to test the movement of each finger, slowly slowly and with oh so much care. “How does it feel?”
“I hate it,” Kaden whispered, and then panicked when she lifted her hand from his “– No – no you don’t have to stop.”
Her hand returned, warm on his, and his throbbed beneath it like it had a heartbeat of its own. “It needs some ice,” she said, voice as soft as her hand. “I can bring some into the stairwell, if you don’t want to come back to the room.”
Kaden let out a long slow breath. “I’ll come back,” he said eventually. Sooner or later, someone else was going to want to use the stairs.
Together, they rose, Hecate with liquid grace and Kaden like an injured giraffe. Every time he stood next to Hecate, it always surprised him that he was taller than she was. It felt unnatural. It was unnatural. She was huge in his mind, far more extensive than her physical body, like… like a goddess should be.
But she put ice on his hand, and poured him a glass of ice sweet tea in a sweating glass he put against his sweating forehead. Neither of these things were magic. It made them a little easier to trust, though. Ice and tea. Things anyone could have given him.
Kaden clung tight to the ice and the cold. He curled his legs on the couch beside him, but he didn’t let himself curl into Hecate, no matter what safety the feeling inside him promised. Part of him kept insisting, do it! You know you'll be okay, you know she'll let nothing worse happen.
But he did not move. He did not know it. Somehow, he found it easier to believe in the magic mirrors that hung over the doors turning away evil than he did to believe in real safety, the kind you felt in your heart.