Anthem - Day 9 IC

The darkness overtakes me, all of my senses dwindling and blown out, a smoking candle flame.

I feel too much, I try not to but I feel too much and I always have.

My hands shake over the shattered remains of a crystal glass, blood dripping down my fingertips to mingle with ice and whisky on the wooden floor. It spills out in all directions, a spatter.

Of blood, it's blood.

My blood? No. No, I'm not that colour on the inside. It's their blood. Whose? The children. Firmly. I know it firmly, it's the children.

And I became a Peacekeeper because I wanted to serve and I wanted to protect and I did that, I saved kids from shit fathers and abusive mothers, I saved kids from fires and saved them from gangs.

And now I've just seen to the death of twenty-two of them and I do not think I can handle even one more.

I only have two children left, Stella and Raven and I do not want to lose either. I cannot choose like that. Both are my victor. A wild thought grips me, I could. I could stop it, end it. I could flick a switch and end all of it here. Announce them both, I could, I could, I could, I could save them.

No.

But no.

What would they do to Achilles?

My son.

He's my son. Apollo's blood but always mine.

I pull my phone out of my pocket. It's dead. I don't know how long it's been dead for. I step over the glass on the floor, searching the wall of my office for my charger. Suddenly, it's urgent. I need to talk to my son. I need to tell him I love him before all of this kills me. I need to hear his voice.

Where is he, I wonder.

Why hasn't he come yet to see me.

Perhaps he's given up, perhaps he doesn't love me, perhaps he's angry, perhaps I can just die.

MURDERER.

My phone lights up with the word, a text from an unknown number.

My hands shake, blood smears across the screen. My blood. It's my blood. From the glass, I was trying to clean it up. I squeeze my eyes shut and fall to my knees, the cityscape in the darkness of my office at midnight lighting up the night sky. The anthem sits fresh in my mind, seared across the back of my skull.

Aeson and Finley are dead and I remember yesterday, how relieved I was to finally have the top four.

But now I have become undone.

I am a terrible father, a terrible person. I don't deserve to live but live I must or that would make me an even worse father, that would make me like him, like Apollo.

Apollo. My Apollo.

I bend forward over the light of my phone, doubled over in pain. My head aches, everything aches. I smack my palm against my head, smearing my forehead with my own blood.

Apollo is dead and he left me behind.

I hate him. I don't.

My phone has sixty missed calls from Achilles and a slow seeping hatred for myself fills me. A voice, loud and overbearing begins it's chant in the back of my head, the same voice that's been there as long as I can remember.

you could use the broken glass.

I was a child when it first came, perhaps a rare case. A stranger in my head, casually pointing out all the things in my environment that I could use to die.

I open my texts, searching for Achilles.

you could use the broken glass.

I type out a message to him, hands shaking. I tell him I'm ok. I don't want him to think I've left him, I couldn't.

I used to live for Apollo but now I live for him.

I kneel there dumbly, staring at my screen, waiting for a response, a confirmation that he's received it, anything, and it comes faster than expected.

"did dad teach you how to lie as well as abandon your son."

YOU COULD USE THE BROKEN GLASS.

I let my phone fall out of my hands.

Apollo only taught me how to love and then he took it away.

I am not okay.

I stagger to my feet and step over the broken glass again, out the door and get in the elevator. I need the control room, to be in control, to stand beneath bright flourescents.

But when I get there, all that waits for me is Aeson and Finley dying, over and over so slowly on some channels and so fast on others.

The boys that fell in the raging dark and here I sit on a throne made from blood.

And the survivor will despise me and wish me dead and I will wish it too.

The blood on my hands look out of place in the sterile and modern interior of the control room but I ignore it, gaze focused on the sleeping figures in the dark, my top two.

I do not know which one I want to come out alive, I can't decide.

I can't understand this weakness anymore, this pain. I can't afford to hold it anymore.

I need to be ok for Achilles but I'm not.

I'm going insane.

I can feel it.