The rhythmic striking of plastic against silicon.
Click
Click
Click
The sound of the keys being actuated — vigorously, ambitiously — on Ahsira's keyboard.
Thump.
The sound of each footstep…
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
A drumbeat of impending doom. And that impending doom was only getting closer, and closer, and closer, until… "I told you to do the vacuum!" His mother's vociferating voice caused the door to fly open. "Thirty minutes ago!"
"I was—"
"You were going to?" She didn't wait for an answer. Her footsteps — still that same heavy thump, thump — carried her out of his room and down the hall. Seconds later, a dull, subterranean groan rose through the floorboards.
"Maa!" he yelled.
"Why does she always do this?" he muttered to the empty room. Even though it wasn't the first time she'd done this, her guilt trip was still as effective.
He shoved back from his desk and rushed into the hallway in an attempt to grab it off her, but her hands were stuck to it like glue.
"Maa, I'll do it!" he pleaded.
"Now you want to do it? What's the point?" she scowled, as she let out a long-suffering sigh.
"Ughhh," he groaned.
"Go play on your PlayStation… like you always do!" she retorted defiantly.
And before he knew it, someone else appeared in a burst of aggravating cheer.
"Mooommm! I'm home from schooool!"
Still in her new uniform: navy blazer askew, white shirt untucked on one side. And those ridiculous new glasses — round frames she'd begged for because some K-pop idol wore them. The lenses magnified her eyes, making them look impossibly wide and utterly guileless.
"Just great," he thought. But this disgust was just a camouflaged carafe of care — the enamoured bond between Ahsira and his sister Hayla. He didn't want his sister to look up to people who couldn't care less about acknowledging her very existence; he didn't want her to be vulnerable to the shine of strangers.
"Can I go now?" he beseeched his mother.
"Fine." His mother spat the word out as if it tasted bitter.
"Fine?" he thought, a percussive void that demanded he vanish from her sight.
But he saw it as an opportunity. Escape upstairs, sink back into the butt groove worn into his chair, and return to the game.
Fine by him.
He headed upstairs, taking them two at a time just to get away faster. But the second step from the top had always been loose. He knew this. Had stubbed his toe on it a hundred times. But today, his focus was stuck back in the kitchen, replaying the look on her face, that impulsive "Fine".
His foot caught the edge. And for a sickening heartbeat, he was weightless. Then gravity remembered its job.
He slammed into the landing, shoulder first, hip second. Pain bloomed sharp and immediate, radiating from his right side where he'd caught the corner of the banister. He sucked air through his teeth and pushed himself upright, already checking the damage. A dark bruise was forming on his forearm, just above his wrist. "Great," he thought, "just great!"
"Ahsiraaa!"
Hayla appeared at the bottom of the stairs, eyes wide behind those ridiculous glasses. She rushed up, uniform still askew, backpack abandoned somewhere behind her.
"Are you okay? What happened?"
Her hands hovered in the air as if she were reaching for a way to pull back the last ten seconds of gravity.
"Let me see—"
Her fingers darted toward his arm, but then slowed, suspended in that helpless flutter of someone who wants to help but is terrified of making it worse.
"I'm fine."
He wrenched his arm back; the fabric of his sleeve hissed against his skin.
"Just tripped. It's nothing."
"But you're hurt—"
"I'm fine, Hayla." He stood stoic, brushing past her.
"Go bother Maa."
She lingered on the stairs, watching him retreat into his room. He didn't look back.
He settled into his chair, pulled his headset on, and adjusted his grip on the mouse. But as soon as he laid his right arm across the desk to reach for the mouse, a sharp, localised ache flared just above his wrist. He winced, pulling back. The landing had been unkind; the banister had caught him exactly where the bone met the desk's edge.
He tried again, easing his arm down, but the dull throb was insistent. Resting his weight there was impossible. To avoid the pressure, he had to hunch forward, sliding his keyboard and mouse further up the desk into an awkward, unnatural sprawl. It felt wrong — his centre of gravity was off, his reach was too long, and the muscle memory that usually guided his fingers felt sluggish and disconnected.
On top of that, the image of Hayla lingering on the stairs, small and innocent, flickered in his mind.
Sigh.
He stared at the screen, begging the game to bury the guilt. In the reflection of his eye were two silhouettes on the sand: one was standing, the other was not. First his knees, then his face. His body stayed there, folded wrong, one arm flung out toward the gun he'd dropped, fingers curled like they'd frozen mid-reach. The blood beneath him wasn't spreading anymore. The sand had already had its fill.
Slade.
Meanwhile, the kid stood there. Just… looking. Watching the way a hungry child would unzip a banana peel back in their hands. And with this hunger, he took Slade's knife, adjusted the pommel, aiming to feed death yet another body.
But just as the blade met Slade, the screen faded into darkness…