Hell is a place on earth// circe&cade

C A D E.

Wet twisted curls sunk into the firm pillow at his backside. The taste of chlorine stuck to the corner of his lips, somehow more bitter than the saltwater he'd known when living on the boat. He thought this to be the venerable choice. Cade didn't want Dad to get in trouble for blacking out at sea. The child services that recommended he stay with his uncle suggested that it would be for his safety. Cade disagreed. Not that he thought Uncle Ollie would be a bad person– what boy would suggest that about his enigmatic uncle– but he'd never felt unsafe on the boat before. Even at that moment, when he steered them home blind in a thunderstorm, sure, Cade was terrified, but the lighthouse would always bring him home one way or another.

Cade turned nauseous in bed. His body was a bottle and his mouth the cap. It had been an hour since Ollie tested him last but with every shift in his position, the liquid still in him felt as though it had flooded his insides and was nearing his throat. His blank stare caught a flash of color in the window and his eyebrow raised to focus in on what it was. Who it was, rather, as he was hopeful Gin might pop her head through the window and climb in to hang out for a bit. But it was nothing but a blue jay, tapping its claws and peering in to bite at the plants by his windowsill.

Uncle Ollie called him a member of the family, but Cade felt like a guest first and foremost. This is temporary, he thought. He was barely seventeen, but he knew that even a man as strict as Ollie couldn't keep a grown man trapped in his mansion. Stockholm Syndrome hasn't closed his mind off yet and Cade promised himself it never would the first time Ollie reprimanded him for trying to leave the estate by hopping his second-story window. He trained to be a career and a fighter now, just like all of his cousins, but Cade mastered the blue-collar mentality of survival that they'd never had to have for themselves, caught up in this mansion.

He heard rumors about a cousin he'd never met before coming back today for the second half of the year. Circe. Surely, Dad had mentioned her once or twice before, Cade knew that, but as to who she was or how she managed to escape the fate of her brothers and sisters felt like somewhat of a mystery to him. He thought of asking her to help him do the same. Cade lived on little more than "enough" for most of his life. If escape meant living off a coastal cavern that bled into the sea on rainy days, he'd spend three seconds considering before taking it on. He wanted to leave and never return. It's just that simple.

Shadows emerged from the other side of the room. They might as well rip the door off its hinges if their rule is that no door can be closed or locked. He sat up, pulling the messy strands of hair back behind his ear. No tears, he thought, holding them shut as the footsteps slowly clinked closer. The steps were eerily distant from one another: when one step ceased its vibration, there was a second of silence before another formed. It was a devil if he had to guess, coming to offer him a deal for freedom. And Cade supposed he might take it if offered.

"Nicky sends his regards." Cade shifted to see who he could only assume was his cousin, Circe. The fact that a distant cousin has spoken more recently to his father than he had made his stomach turn over with jealousy. The illusion of water swaying in his lungs threatened to burst at any given moment. She was sizing him up while she stepped closer. Brown eyes analyzed him, judged him. His mouth, once slightly ajar, clasped shut as if weary she might remark about the gap between his teeth or something of the like. Circe sat on his bed and casually Cade distanced himself to the opposite corner of the bed. "What exactly are you doing here, anyway?"

He pulled the sleeves of his flannel shirt down past his wrists. How nosy. Of course, he'd never say that to her face. Most of the time, especially here, Cade kept his opinions and comments to himself. Given how high and mighty this side of the Murdock family felt, he figured no one would want to hear them. Now, he dwelled on the past, wondering how many times he hurt Gin by saying something he shouldn't have.

"I'm staying here while Nicky–" he stopped himself. His uncle's constant use of his name tripped him up again. He was trying to sever that relationship. "–Dad figures some stuff out with his boat. This is temporary." He spoke like it was a fact but in reality, it was a pleading hope.

He stood up and moved to the window. Cade leaned up against it, bending backward at an angle that dared his feet to uplift themselves and fall. "What are you doing here? Back at your dad's place… and in my room?"

C A D E.

Cade owned nothing in the mansion, yet he felt the air in the room tighten as Circe approached him. He thought of her as a siren, a peculiar girl put into an even more peculiar situation, just as he was. No his, no hellos, straight to business. The aged paint of the window sill chipped as he gripped it harder, leaning further out the closer she got. Cade was used to holding the silence, especially on the boat when it was just him and Dad. The difference between them was that Dad always kept his distance. Why he became buddies with Uncle Ollie's kid who doesn't do the same puzzled him.

"I doubt it. Father has you in his grasp now and he will not let go so easily."

That was the one thing he'd agree with Circe on. Cade picked at the twisted strands of hair as they blew in the outside wind. Uncle Ollie's tentacles made him a possessive creature. Every day, he hoped that someone would have the courage and insight to save him and break him out of the prison he volunteered himself to stay in. Attis or Aria or Gin. One of them. Any of them, he wouldn't be picky for a savior. Cade hoped they might hurry and rescue him soon. Every failed practice of holding his breath drew him closer and closer to the sea, and that terrified him.

To die in the place he considered home, all for what he realized now was some decades-old sibling rivalry that would punish their bloodlined pawns.

"But what was it that allowed him to do so? Does your daddy not love you like he loves me? Maybe I’m just the child he wished he had."

It pissed him off, the confidence with which Circe spoke. As if she knew the truth already but wanted him to say it allowed to feel shame for himself. Cade swung himself back inside, his shoulder pushing against his cousin's arm. "Fucking hell," he muttered, moving to the other side of the room. Surely, she'd follow. Circe was Ollie's kid, after all. The daughter like her father, Cade assumed boundaries, physical and emotional, just didn't exist for her.

Cade knew that Dad loved him. But that night on the boat, Dad terrified him. The glass from a broken liquor bottle swaying back and forth with the tide still comes in waves through his mind. He loved him, but just like Mom, he had his own issues that need sorting. His legs spread out to the corners of the ottoman, claiming the space for himself again.

He shouldn't get off on the wrong foot with his cousin on their first day, but he chose to anyway. "Does it bug you that your control freak of a dad settled for only having you fifty percent of the time? Must not like you all too much if he's giving you fifty and his nephew, who he's spoken to, like, once, a hundred." Clever or not, true or not, the words fell from him. He wasn't used to arguing. Dad never argued, and he was never wronged enough to pick a fight with Gin or the twins.

Cade was passive by nature. The only things he hurt were the fish and lobster he caught on the lines or in the nets. But the unhappiness twisting inside him made him radioactive. "Are you here to be an asshole, or what?"