(for @ghostofwho) it was just a nightmare.
He’s in his childhood home. Or, well, he’s on the front porch of his childhood home. He doesn’t remember his parents ever installing flood lights, but here they are — drowning the porch in a pool of blinding white in the complete and consuming darkness of the night around it. Well… it isn’t even night, really, more like… void? There is just… nothing. Nothing past the balcony. No dirt road leading up to the highway, no swaying grass, no cars in the driveway. Hell, there isn’t a single star shining in the skies; let alone the moon. Just… nothingness. This is how Job knows this is a dream. It’s always fractions of life; bits and pieces of memories torn out of context.
It can’t be the good kind because good dreams aren’t spent in voids whether one is or is not being chased by a dream-manipulating preacher that wants them dead. His heart is already racing; Job already feels sick. This doesn’t end well.
He’s just gotten to Englewood not even a full week ago — he’s just found Adam again. The last thing he wants is for this night to end with him terrified and panicked, choking on his own tears as he flees Colorado.
But, well — Job doesn’t have a choice in this. He never has.
He reaches into the pocket of his jeans and retrieves his pack of Pall Malls, knowing full well he is dreaming, that the cigarettes aren’t real — but hoping, in the way dying people hope to find some miracle cure in holistic medicine, that they help soothe him some nevertheless. He fumbles with the lighter as he opens the front door and steps inside, having to pause once more and steady one shaking hand with the other just so he can bright the flame to the tip of the cigarette.
There doesn’t seem to be a living soul in the house. There are no shoes left, neat and tidy, on the little mat by the door; no keys in the bowl on the dresser beside it. The hall is lit with the same spotlight jailhouse lighting as the balcony, casting tall shadows on the hardwood floor; making it seem like one of those old German horror movies he watches sometimes with Théo; grotesque, distorted. It creaks under Job’s feet as he moves inside, each step hesitant and careful, as though something; someone; might lurk behind every corner — but nothing comes. At least not for the whopping four steps Job has made inside.
A strange discoloration in the family portraits hanging on the wall flashes in the corner of his eye and he pauses to look at them. Ma, Pa, Cat, Grace and Noah — they’re all there, happy and smiling at the camera, together or alone — but they do not appear as Job remembers them to be. For one, Gene is missing from the photos altogether. What had caught Job’s eye, though, was the sixth figure appearing in the photographs — Job himself — his face scratched out of every single picture, sometimes with such aggression that a hole has been torn into the paper. That much he can gather through the thin veil of tears that have been collecting in his eyes the moment he set foot inside his old home. His mouth turns down at the corners and Job actively winces at the sight.
“Over here.” The voice coming from the kitchen, however familiar, has him yelping and jumping in his place, his eyes squeezing shut and his free hand clutching at his shirt, as though his heart might leap out of his chest. He swallows a whine as he leans his back against the opposite wall, breath hitched and heart racing, and tries to soothe his nerves; but the voice comes again, the booming baritone of Father Boucher, before he can manage. “I haven’t got all day. Save the stroll down memory lane for another time.”
Job has no voice to answer the preacher with. He merely swallows and sighs and sniffs and tries his best to remind himself that this is just a dream — that Boucher may have found him out again but, for the duration of time spent in the dream world — he cannot harm him (this isn’t entirely true; he has hurt Job in his dreams before; but only because Job had let him, only because he believed that Boucher was hurting him; and the pain vanished as soon as Job sprung awake, as though the preacher had been nothing but a hallucination caused by sleep paralysis). He wipes his cheeks, already wet with tears, over the back of his hands, and bends down in order to pick his cigarette up off the floor, dropped in a moment of terror.
He takes a deep breath, swallowing air — then turns the corner to the kitchen, pausing at the doorway.
Boucher has situated himself in Pa’s old seat at the head of the kitchen table, one leg crossed over the other, and sips tea from Ma’s cherished china. He glances up at Job without surprise or sympathy or any emotion other than, possibly, disinterest or maybe even boredom. He sighs, gently placing the cup back in its saucer, and gestures his head for Job to join him at the table.
Job doesn’t move a single inch.
“Suit yourself.” The preacher shrugs, leaning back in his chair. “This is not a good way to start a negotiation, son.”
“… neg—” voice small, Job chokes, clears his throat; hand paused halfway to his mouth, cigarette pinched between two fingers, “— negotiation?”
“Ah — he speaks.” Boucher is only short of rolling his eyes at his obvious discontent with the younger man. “Yes, dumb boy — negotiation.”
There is no negotiation. Boucher finds him and kills him — this has always been the only offer on the table. If Job makes it easier on the priest, he will die quickly and without much suffering. Job knows this by now, all of Boucher’s little games, to be exactly that — games, with no possible way for him to win. He won’t bite so easily anymore. It’s been fifteen years — even the dumbest, most well-intended and loyal dog would have learned its lesson by now.
Boucher watches and waits for what feels like a long moment; then, in lack of any sort of response from the Edwards boy, gives an exasperated sigh. He pushes the cup and saucer away from himself before unfolding his legs and pushing himself up on his feet. Job takes a cautious step back. Boucher seems wildly unimpressed by this.
“You’ve taken a liking to that skinny white-haired boy, haven’t you?”
Job freezes, his mouth hanging agape. The first question to leap to the tip of his tongue is how — how does Boucher know? But he already knows the answer. He must have been dreaming of Adam. God knows what he’s dreamed; God knows what the priest has picked up on; but mere knowledge of Adam is enough. It’s enough for Boucher to make Job miserable within an instant. It’s enough for Job’s heart to miss a beat and his face to flush red.
“Will you abandon him, too?” Boucher’s brow creases in question as he takes another step forward, both hands held at the small of his own back. Simultaneously, Job stumbles backwards, his hands reached out behind him in fear that his knees might give in. The walls come together and the ceiling narrows, the house crying and creaking as it slowly begins collapsing into itself, slowly begins closing in on them. “You don—”
“Will you, Job? You know that it’s the only way. You know what will happen to him if you don’t.”
Another fat tear rolls down the side of Job’s face as he hiccups, “He ain’t g-got nothin’ to do wi—“
“He has everything to do with this.” The preacher cuts him off yet again, “Don’t play dumb with me — or at least try not to, boy. You know what happens. You will follow the path He has set for you whether you like it or not — and if it costs the life of an innocent soul, that blood will be on your hands. You have a choice — you can give yourself in. You’ve always had a choice. Washing your hands of this will not cleanse you of your sins.”
They have both advanced into the narrowing hall and Job’s back is pressed against the front door which creaks and moans behind him as it slowly shrinks. The cigarette has been abandoned somewhere along the way and the scent of ashes hangs in the air. Ma’s china clinks and clatters in its cabinet. The teacup and saucer left on the kitchen table fall to the floor and break in what sounds like a thousand teacups and saucers shattering all at once. Job’s hands shake violently as they blindly search for the doorknob.
“So what will it be — do you leave, or do you finally find some grace somewhere deep inside that cowardly, selfish, shrunken little heart of yours and sacrifice yourself in his stead — in the stead of all mankind? Hmm?” The preacher is a full head shorter than Job, yet the latter still whimpers as he tries to flatten himself back against the door, tries desperately to turn the knob. The sound only seems to aggravate David farther, only a step away from the younger man as he shouts, “What will it be?”
The lock finally gives and Job throws himself back with all the power he can muster, stumbling out to the porch and falling down on his ass in slow-motion and just as he excepts to feel the hard wood of the porch hit his bony backside — Job’s eyes tear open, a gasp choking in the pit of his throat, his head pressed back into the pillow as though he were trying to get the bed to swallow him whole.
He shoots up out from under the covers at once — so quick to try and untangle himself from both the sheets and Adam’s limp limbs that he rolls off the side of the mattress and bangs the side of his head against the dresser before falling to the floor with a muted thud. It seems to do nothing to slow him down, though — he pushes back up again at once and begins collecting his clothes from the floor, body covered in cold sweat, cheeks dotted with tears, breath hitched and hands shaking. His left eyebrow has been split open at the corner by the dresser, a thin trickle of blood tracing a dark-red path down around the socket of his eye — though he doesn’t seem to notice.
“Get u-up. Get up g-get up get upgetupgetup –”
Post-trauma sentence starters.
