Chapter Text
Two months after being laid off, Kabru had fallen into a routine. It went like this:
- 9 a.m. – Wake up.
- 10 a.m. – Leave bed, have breakfast.
- 10:30 a.m. – Apply to jobs.
- 12:00 p.m. – Gym.
- 1:00 p.m. – Play videogames, have lunch.
- 5:00 p.m. – Open Tinder.
- 6:00 p.m. – Maybe go on a date that he can’t afford. Maybe play more videogames. Have dinner.
- 12:00 to 2:00 a.m. – Stare at the ceiling, wonder about ever accomplishing anything in his lifetime.
Kabru stepped out of his apartment and nearly turned around immediately to go back inside when he got hit by the summer heat. It had to be at least ninety degrees, even with the sun setting.
Going for a walk in the city was in Kabru’s latest budget (free). Kabru liked watching people and guessing what was going on in their heads. How they’d gotten to that particular spot in time to share space with Kabru. A group of women still dressed for work came laughing out of a bar, one of them bumping into him as they passed him by.
“Sorry,” she said, before her friends pulled her away.
“It’s no problem,” Kabru replied. She was already out of hearing. Kabru couldn’t help feeling a little ignored—women were usually more impressed with him. Men, too, when Kabru felt like it.
There were plenty of empty benches in the park, so Kabru sat down. He wrinkled his nose at the shirtless jogger whose body odor was as loud as his earbuds playing Queen.
Kabru wasn’t above admitting to himself that he felt like shit. It wasn’t depression—he’d had that after losing his real mother and seeing his home destroyed, drowning every day. But Kabru had a general bad vibe, like his life had gone outside in the rain and his socks were soaked through.
Helping people at his old job had been rewarding. Kabru had charmed rich people out of their money, getting them to give to charities rather than buy another yacht. He’d just stopped being good enough to cover his own salary. Kabru leaned back, glancing over at two men having a picnic with their dog.
He invented a quick life story for the couple. Things eventually ended in divorce and the dog was the subject of a bitter custody battle. Figuring that he should stop before he broke up more couples with the power of fantasy, Kabru got to his feet and headed home.
Kabru’s mother called while he was in the middle of playing a romance scene with a pretty elf.
He paused the game. “Hey, Mom.”
“My dear, you never call. How am I supposed to know you’re feeling OK?” Milsiril asked.
“I’m fine, I just don’t have any news to share.”
Milsiril sighed. “I have an easy job for you. It’s only for a little while, and you’d be doing me a huge favor. There’s a family friend—he’s only slightly older than you—going through a hard time right now and he needs someone to take care of him.”
“Like what, a personal care assistant? Sponge him down once a day?”
“He’s mostly bathing on his own now.”
“Mostly?” Kabru felt a tension headache coming on. “Mom, how desperate for a job do you think I am?”
“I’m worried you’re running low on money and this pays very well. His parents find it too difficult to see him as he is and he won’t let his brother near.”
Kabru’s bank account was looking terrible; he’d already started wondering if he could move in with Rin or one of his other friends.
“It’s a thousand dollars a week,” Milsiril said. “You could probably negotiate for more.”
Kabru could keep his apartment on that for another few months. The sponge suddenly wasn’t looking so bad. “Why does he need help?”
“He won’t do anything to take care of himself. Won’t eat, won’t sleep. There’s nothing in this world he wants.”
“So, he’s depressed?”
“Yes, but medication isn’t helping and neither did hospitalization. He also—no, he’ll probably tell you on his own. It’s very sad. He’ll do whatever you say, Kabru. I’d rather he be with someone safe than a person who’d take advantage of him.”
Milsiril was playing dirty by tugging at Kabru’s sense of responsibility. This guy would do whatever anyone said? That did sound dangerous.
And, Kabru needed the money.
Kabru wished he’d gotten the wrong house when he pulled into the driveway. He’d double-checked the number on the iron gate, embossed over a metal goat’s head. The house looked like a Halloween decoration, a gray, dark-windowed Victorian that seemed to lean towards the hill it was built in front of.
Anyone would be depressed living there. The heavy rain made the atmosphere even more stifling.
After parking the car in the least muddy-looking patch he could find, Kabru went up to the door. The floorboards beneath him creaked and he could swear that they warped under his weight. He pressed the mother-of-pearl doorbell, listening to the loud chimes.
A woman answered the door. Milsiril had said that someone else was currently looking after his new… what? Ward? That made Kabru sound like Batman. Patient? Inmate.
She smiled and tilted her head, leaning against the doorframe. “You must be Kabru. I’m Cithis. You came at the perfect time—we were just having a tea party.”
“A what?”
Cithis let Kabru into the parlor. Kabru felt small beneath the high ceiling and beside the wide, extravagant staircase. Seriously, who would leave a depressed guy in a house like this? Cithis hummed to herself as she opened a set of sliding doors and presented the next room with a flourish.
There was a table set for afternoon tea. Pink flowers decorated the teapot, which was beside a tiered cake stand loaded with sandwiches and petit fours. The sight reminded Kabru of Alice in Wonderland.
This Alice had silver hair hanging low over one eye, skin only a little darker than the bone-white dress. The dress was so heavy with lace that it looked more fit for a doll than a human. Alice glanced over at Cithis and lifted a teacup to pale lips.
“Mithrun,” Cithis said. “You should extend your pinky finger, like this.” She mimed holding a teacup.
Mithrun copied her exactly.
“What are you doing?” Kabru asked, turning to Cithis. He couldn’t keep his eyes on Mithrun, who was being humiliated.
“Oh, don’t look so righteous. It’s just a pretty dress; he doesn’t mind. Isn’t that right, Mithrun?”
“I don’t mind,” Mithrun replied, his voice flat. Undeniably male, too, unlike Kabru’s first impression of him.
Cithis sat down next to Mithrun and nibbled on a sandwich. “Welcome to your new life, Kabru. You’ll have to learn how to have fun with it.”
“What have you been doing to him—all this time—”
Cithis flashed Kabru an annoyed look. “I haven’t been abusing him, if that’s the conclusion you’ve jumped to. But OK, I did get bored enough to make him dress up while I was waiting for you. Doesn’t he look cute, though?”
Before Cithis could poke Mithrun’s cheek, Kabru grabbed her wrist. Cithis laughed and withdrew her hand. “Fine, I get it,” Cithis said. “You’re no fun. We’ll see how long it takes you before you do whatever boys do with dolls, like make him ride a monster truck or something.”
Kabru choked back the words “are you crazy?” and reset his expression into something friendly. He’d been shocked enough to lose his temper, which was unlike him.
“You’re one of Milsiril’s kids?” Cithis asked.
“Yeah.”
While Kabru mindlessly replied to Cithis’s small talk, he studied Mithrun. The neck of Mithrun’s dress nearly went all the way up to his chin and his sleeves covered his wrists entirely. Only his face and hands were exposed, each so delicate that he seemed ready to shatter.
Kabru’s meal ticket periodically sipped his tea, as if he were responding to an inner timer. Cithis put a petit four on Mithrun’s plate and tapped it. Mithrun ate the petit four in two small bites.
“He needs three meals a day,” Cithis said. “Make sure they’re healthy, don’t just feed him mac and cheese for every meal until he turns the color of Velveeta.”
That was a very specific warning.
“He has sleeping pills for nighttime,” Cithis continued. “You’ll have to make him get out of bed in the morning.”
To stay independent, Kabru would have to sleep away from his apartment temporarily to earn enough money. He hated it already.
“The guest bedrooms are really nice, even though everything in this house seems haunted. I don’t think Mithrun would be seeing half the weird shit he says he does if they put him in a newer house, but he misbehaves even worse when we take him away from here.”
“Misbehaves?”
Cithis couldn’t hide it; Kabru caught the worried look on her face before it was gone. “When Mithrun first became like this, we couldn’t leave him alone with anything sharp. Do you know what I mean?”
Kabru looked over Mithrun’s covered arms, then at the blunt butter knife beside Mithrun’s teacup. “I do.”
“He’s over that now, as long as we don’t try to make him leave here. It was really bad for a while.” Cithis blinked a few times. “Remind him to shower if he gets stinky. You can make him watch TV or read instead of leaving him to stare at the wall, though he doesn’t care about any of it.”
“What did all this to Mithrun?”
“Ask him yourself,” Cithis replied, inclining her head at Mithrun. “You’ll tell Kabru if he asks, won’t you, Mithrun?”
“I will,” Mithrun replied.
Kabru felt ashamed he hadn’t thought to ask Mithrun instead. But Mithrun already seemed like he was blending into the background, a non-entity Kabru couldn’t gather anything from. What wasn’t sad about Mithrun was just boring. All Kabru had been able to notice about him while Cithis talked was that Mithrun’s right eye didn’t move with his left.
How Mithrun had lost one eye was something Kabru wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Cithis ran down a list of the old house’s peculiarities. Some rooms had to be given up on in the summer because they became too hot, air conditioner or no. The water came from a well and wasn’t connected to the city, which sounded like a recipe for poisoning.
“And that’s about all I can think of about this place,” Cithis said. “All the money in the world can’t make it not a shithole. If any questions come up later, text me. Here’s Mithrun’s list of doctors.”
Cithis handed over a slip of paper with contact information on it. A few names had lines through them.
“I crossed out the ones who won’t see him anymore. The medications he takes are listed on the back. Don’t let him skip his pills in the morning, not that they do anything.” Cithis got to her feet. “Take good care of him, OK?”
“I will.”
Cithis patted Mithrun on the head. “Goodbye, Mithrun. Try to get better.”
“Goodbye, Cithis,” Mithrun replied.
Cithis grabbed two pieces of rolling luggage she had at the foot of the stairs and waved at Kabru. “Bye! Enjoy your new career.”
Kabru waved back. There was a sense of finality as Cithis closed the door. Kabru had really committed to this.
“Do you want to change?” Kabru asked Mithrun.
“No.” Mithrun looked at him, seeming to weigh something behind his single real eye. “Are you uncomfortable?”
“I’m not, but—” Kabru put his elbow on the table and rested his chin on his hand. “Wasn’t she teasing you?”
“It doesn’t matter. How many more cakes should I eat?”
“How many have you eaten?”
“Three.”
Kabru took two of the small cucumber sandwiches off the cake stand and put them on Mithrun’s plate. “Eat these, they’re not junk food.”
Placidly, Mithrun started eating. Kabru took one of the sandwiches for himself and chewed. The sandwich was more cream cheese than cucumber, so it probably wasn’t much better for Mithrun than the cake.
“What happened to you?” Kabru asked.
“You won’t believe all of it.”
Kabru gave Mithrun his most reassuring smile. “How can you know that in advance?”
“Because everyone thinks I’m insane.”
What followed was a long, rambling story that Kabru could only follow with difficulty. Mithrun left no one out, even people who seemed to have no relevance. His life had been filled with friends and success, but nothing could overcome his feelings of jealousy and inferiority towards his brother. Kabru couldn’t relate to Mithrun very well; though he hated his own weaknesses as much as anyone else did, it was better to work around them than to obsess. In another life, one where Mithrun was well, Kabru probably would’ve disliked him.
“One night, a goat came out of my bedroom mirror,” Mithrun said.
Kabru couldn’t hide his surprise. A slight, amused smirk crossed Mithrun’s lips.
“It was a demon,” Mithrun added. “It gave me a beautiful dream of the life I wanted, one that seemed to last for years. I finally awoke to the sight of the goat licking its lips. ‘Thank you for the meal,’ it said. Everything that had hurt me was gone, my insecurities swallowed and churning in that thing’s belly. But I was left with nothing else. No desires, anything that would make me want to live. Except for one, one that grew greater and greater.
“I want to kill that demon. I won’t leave this house until I do. The demon returns sometimes, just to watch. It can’t do that forever—I’ll make that fucker choke to death on me.“
Kabru didn’t know what to say. ‘Yes, I don’t believe you’? Or maybe, ‘sorry about the goat.’ Instead, he settled on the blandest phrasing he could think of: “This must be very hard for you.”
Mithrun’s brief flash of expression from talking about the demon was gone. He looked away from Kabru and sipped his tea, clearly not interested in yet another unbeliever. Kabru tried another strategy.
"Where do you think the demon came from?" Kabru asked.
"The infinite, perhaps. I don’t know.”
Kabru turned over the wreckage of Mithrun’s mind in his own. Could it really all be angst over his brother? His illegitimacy? Those were call for a substance addiction at most, not turning into an emotionless doll for others to dress up and order to eat sandwiches. Could depression do all of this? Surely, there had to be a way to get Mithrun at least independent, even if he wasn’t happy. But many others had tried before Kabru, people who had training and degrees instead of mere observation and charm.
When the last of the sandwiches were gone and Mithrun had set down an empty teacup, Kabru started clearing the table. Kabru quickly realized he didn’t have enough hands.
“Mithrun, could you please carry the teapot for me?”
“OK.”
Kabru took a wrong turn before he found the kitchen, originally ending up in a large utility closet. He set the dishes down in the large sink; it was already almost full. Cithis clearly hadn’t cared much. As he loaded the dishwasher, Kabru kept one eye on Mithrun.
Mithrun was staring into space with his fingers still on the teapot. That would have to be hand washed, along with the cups. Kabru was already annoyed about it. Mithrun would’ve helped Kabru without a thought if he were asked. As fair as that would be, it felt too much like using him. Kabru took the teapot out of Mithrun’s limp hands and started to wash it.
“There’s nothing you like to do, is there?” Kabru asked.
“No.”
“What did you used to like?”
“I liked parties,” Mithrun replied. “At the least, I went to many of them. I was the center of attention.”
Kabru looked over at Mithrun, slim in his Alice dress, and tried to see a party animal. “I could take you to a party.”
“I won’t leave this house,” Mithrun said.
“I know,” Kabru replied. Smiling at the absurdity, Kabru said, “We could hold one here.”
“Do whatever you want.”
Kabru suddenly felt cold. He could do anything in this house, or with Mithrun. Kabru remembered Cithis joking about Kabru putting Mithrun in a monster truck. Well, what was Kabru going to do with Mithrun, in whatever misguided attempt he inevitably made to make Mithrun better?
“I’m going to go unpack my things,” Kabru said, dropping the half-washed teapot in the sink. The handle cracked.
Kabru unpacked everything carefully, rearranging his clothes a few times in the drawers of his armoire. But there was only so much he could do with two suitcases. He’d have to go downstairs eventually. Would Mithrun still be standing in the kitchen?
When Kabru went back downstairs, he breathed a sigh of relief at the empty kitchen. He found Mithrun sitting stiffly on the couch in the living room. As Kabru was growing to expect, Mithrun was staring blankly ahead. Kabru took one of the oversized leather chairs and settled with his laptop to play videogames for the rest of the night.
He barely lasted twenty minutes before he turned on the television, desperate to give Mithrun something to pay attention to.