Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 162
162
The way Banno looked at her, it made her skin crawl. It was different from a normal look. Even a bad look you could understand, as long as it was something you knew. You could tell if the person giving you that look was angry, or scared, or sad, because you could feel it for yourself. You were familiar with it. But this look Banno was giving her right now, this intense stare, was something she had never known before. She could tell it was a hungry kind of look, a yearning look, a look of desperate wanting, but a wanting of what? She didn't understand! Was it her he wanted? Why? What did he want to do with her? And why did he want to hurt Daddy and Luke and Tim? She just didn't understand!
Was she the cause of all this? Was this somehow her fault?
She held the tip of the glass right up against one of the four scabs Banno had left in her neck. The tip was freezing cold.
"What are you doing, Valery?" Banno asked. His voice was stern, like the time Daddy caught her playing around the well, walking along the rim with her arms held out for balance. He had been angry with her then, he had said, because he didn't want her to get hurt, and this was eerily similar. Banno was angry because she didn't want her to hurt herself. But it was also vastly different. Daddy had been angry because he loved her. Banno was angry because he... because he...
Because he wants me.
Valery did not fully understand this thought, but she knew it to be true. Banno wanted her all to himself. He wanted her in the same way a greedy pig wants every last scrap of slop. He wanted her the same way a magpie wants shiny things. He wanted her the same way a starving seed wants water. None of those were quite right, but they all touched on the essence of it. The hunger. The desperation. The obsession.
Banno wanted her, and he would do anything to get her, even if that meant killing everyone close to her.
Leave us alone... please just leave us alone... Valery wanted to say it, she wanted to say it so badly, but instead she whimpered like a baby, her nose and throat coated with slime. She swallowed, tried to speak, but could only cry. Tears flowed down her face and across her neck, as if to mark the best place to cut. It was just like the red streaks across the pretty vixen's face. Valery remembered seeing her from time to time, back when Mommy was still alive, walking down the roads, running errands, talking and smiling. That this was the same one... the same vixen now lying on the floor with her dress all torn up, not moving, her head tilted to the side and her mouth slightly open, two shallow scratches going from her eyes and down across her cheeks like crimson tear tracks, was unthinkable. But why? Why was Banno doing this!?
Her eyes roved across the room, trying to make sense of this distorted nightmare, twisted and blurred by tears that would not stop flowing.
Tim was lying face down by the fire, right where Jonah had shown them how to fold all those cute paper animals. There was blood in his hair, and another spot against the wall where he had bumped his head. Luke was lying further away. His hand... his poor hand was all bent at the wrist. It was horribly swollen and there were bloody palm prints all over the floor where he had tried to get back up. There was even more blood coming out of his mouth.
And then there was Daddy. The blood was spreading across his chest like an evil cloud. He wasn't moving. None of them were moving.
But Banno was. His face was changing, going darker. His empty eye didn't even have an eyelid anymore, but it still felt like the blood-soaked space there was looking at her somehow, like there was an invisible eyeball that never blinked, that would always look at her, no matter where she was. "Put that down, Valery," he said. "You'll hurt yourself."
She shook her head and stifled a gasp as the tip of the glass sliver went just a little bit farther than she anticipated. She felt a sharp prick against her skin, frightfully cold, followed by a warm line of blood flowing down her throat.
They were all bleeding. Every last one of them.
"Valery..." There was blood coming out of his empty eye. Blood and... something else. She didn't want to look at it, but she couldn't look away. It slowly dribbled down his cheek, following the curvature of his muzzle, and dripped down onto Daddy's face.
"Get off him!" she screamed. "Get off my daddy right now!"
"Why are you doing this, Valery?"
"Get off!" She was verging on hysterics. She knew that. She wanted to stay calm, but how could she? With her entire family bleeding on the ground, perhaps even dying, how could she not go into hysterics?
Daddy, oh gods, Daddy, please wake up, I don't know what to do! You have to tell me what to do, please!
Banno slowly stood up, gesturing with his palms as if he were trying to placate her, like he was a loving parent trying to soothe a screaming child who had just woken from a terrible nightmare. And why did she keep thinking of him in terms like that, like he was trying to be some kind of parent to her? He was the farthest thing from a parent, but the way he acted... it came across like he was trying to be something to her, something she didn't understand. Closer than a friend, closer than a brother, closer than a father, and the worst part was that he seemed to think she wanted the same thing.
"Valery..." His voice, although raspy and clogged with blood, was soft, almost gentle, as if he wanted to comfort her. "Valery... it's okay... I'm here... I'm finally here..." He took one step closer, then another. His limp was worse than ever before, and his entire upper body shifted with every forward lurch. "We can have our moment now... Valery... We can have our climax..."
Valery didn't know what 'climax' meant, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. The way his eye was fixed on her, and only her, made her feel horribly exposed, almost naked.
"Are you talking about... biting me?" Her voice cracked, and she clearly felt those teeth sinking into her flesh yet again, as if the barrier of time separating her present and past selves was melting away.
Banno smiled and big, ugly drops of blood dripped from his mouth.
How are you not dead? Wouldn't you rather be dead? Doesn't it hurt to be alive when you're like that? Why would you want to be alive when you're like that!?
"I can smell you from here..." Banno said, tilting his head. "You are so real, so real, my darling little Valery. All you have to do is come to me. Let me hold you, let me feel you, and we can be together forever... You can live as a part of me... Just let me..." Banno took a step closer, reaching out with a hand dripping with her father's blood. "Just let me_taste_ you..."
Valery had never been this cold in her entire life. Even when Luke carried her through the river and the icy water sprayed over her bare feet it wasn't as bad as this. That had been an outside cold, but this was an inside cold. When Banno looked at her, it felt like his gaze was trying to get inside of her, through her mouth and nose and down her throat and into her body.
"There's nothing to be scared of..." Banno said, inching closer and closer. "I'll be gentle..."
Valery backed away and her feet crunched over broken glass. She was too terrified to run. Too terrified to even speak.
Banno licked his lips. "We'll just leave your shell where it drops, like I did with Vallah. You'll like her, I think. She's been waiting for you for a very long time. And if we're lucky, we might even get a third before morning comes. But she's sleeping right now, so..." Banno held his finger up against his shredded mouth, not that Valery could have spoken even if she wanted to. Banno had said many things, but the one thing that kept repeating itself in her mind was: 'We'll just leave your shell where it drops'.
Just leave it where it drops...
He was talking about her body. About her corpse. He was talking about killing her.
Valery didn't understand why she felt so surprised. She had known Banno intended to kill her the moment she first felt his teeth around her neck. But to hear him speak of it so... lovingly... like the act of murder was on par with a hug... it twisted her stomach and made her want to vomit.
Her back hit the wall, and as flakes of snow blew in from the shattered window and melted in her hair, spreading a shock of coldness through her body all the way down to her toes, she knew she could put this off no longer. Daddy would not wake up and save her. Luke and Tim would not sweep her up and carry her off to safety. They've worked so hard to keep her safe, and now it was her turn. It was her turn to protect them.
"Banno, I-" her words caught in her throat like a fishbone. She swallowed and tried again. "I understand what you want to do. And I'll let you... I'll let you do it. More than that, I want you to do it. Everything you want to do to me, it's what I want, too."
Banno exhaled in excitement, his tongue hanging from his mouth. He started towards her and Valery made a show of putting the sliver of glass to her throat again. "But only if you promise to leave my brothers and my Daddy alone! Do you hear me? You can have me, just... just promise me you won't hurt them anymore!"
Banno stopped in his tracks and glanced back at all the destruction he had wrought; the broken bodies, the pools of blood, the shattered bones. "Why?"
It was just one word, but it rocked her to her very core, the notion that someone could even ask such a thing, that someone could not understand what was, to her, the most basic, most fundamental part of being alive.
"Because I love them," Valery answered. "Because they're my family."
Banno shook his head. "No... they're not." The look on his face... was that pity? Was he actually pitying her? "They're just sacks of meat, Valery. Don't you understand? They're not real. None of them are."
"W-What?"
"They move, they eat, they sleep, they push out babies, they grow old, and then they die. All of it is just to create the illusion of life. That's the way they work. It's the way the world works. It's all in the rules, Valery. That's all it is. But those rules don't apply to us. It's what makes us different."
Does he really believe that? Valery wondered, absolutely horror-struck. Does he really, truly believe that?
"But you have family too, don't you?" she asked, refusing to believe that anyone could possibly live in a world as dark as that. "You talked about them so much, how worried you were about them, how much you missed them... was all of that a lie?"
Banno looked at her for what felt like a very, very long time. "I had a father..." he said finally, staring off at a spot somewhere above her shoulder. "But I think he died... I can't remember... and a mother... and two brothers."
"And you love them, right?" Valery leaned forward. "You love them because they're your family, and they love you. That's the way it works."
Banno looked at her with such confusion, she couldn't stand it. It was like watching a small animal caught in a snare, thrashing and flailing, biting wildly at the rope tightening around its neck, unable to understand what was causing it so much pain. That was what gouged at her the deepest. Not the fact that he didn't_understand, but that he _couldn't understand.
He couldn't understand...
Banno shook his head. "No... I never loved them, and they never loved me. But..." He looked at her, looked at her with his bloodshot eye and his empty socket both, looked at her in that way that made her feel completely naked, looked at her like he just wanted to grab her and eat her. "... I love you, Valery. That's all that matters."
"If you really love me," Valery said, pressing the glass against her neck as tightly as she dared, "then you'll leave my family alone, or else I'll really do it. I'll cut my throat and then you won't get anything from me. Just a broken shell with nothing in it. That's my rule."
Banno frowned and a soft growl issued from deep inside his throat. He looked down at Daddy, then up at her again. She could tell he wanted to do it. Even though he thought they weren't real, he still wanted to kill them. He was like one of those nasty boys who liked to tear butterflies' wings off, and if you asked them why, they shrugged and said 'just because'. It made her so sad that, for a moment, her pity was strong enough to displace her fear. Wasn't Banno like one of those butterflies not so long ago? An injured creature, alone and afraid, just waiting for death to come so it wouldn't need to feel so scared anymore? Or was she just a fool, thinking that Banno felt the same things as she did? Or that he was even capable of feeling the same things as she did? Maybe he didn't feel anything at all. Maybe he really did see the entire world as a stage play, and maybe everyone in it was just an actor, playing along, reciting the proper lines at the proper times. Maybe he saw them as even less than that. Maybe everyone in the world was, to him, no more than a paper animal; a dead piece of dried out wood pulp that had been flattened and folded into the shape of something that was only good for make-believe. If that was true, was it any wonder he didn't feel anything at all for the Foxes who had worked so hard to save his life, who had taken him into their home, who had shared everything with him? Did he really lie in that bed, day after day and night after night, seeing their kindness as nothing more than a bunch of game pieces moving across a rigid grid, bound by a strict set of rules?
If that was true, was it any wonder he was looking so hard for someone he could see as anything other than a paper cut-out?
Valery already had many tears running down her face. Most of them were for her father and brothers. Some were for her mother. She even had a few for the pretty vixen whose name she could not remember. But in that moment, a tear was born that was different from those that came before it and different from those that followed after. It was a tear for Banno.
Because if he really did see the world that way, if his life really was as empty and as lonely as she thought it must be, then she truly and deeply felt sorry for him.
Valery began to edge her way towards the door, and Banno followed her slow progress, never taking his eye off her neck and the single line of blood drying into her fur.
There was something wrong with him. Something that should have killed him long ago. She wasn't thinking about the hole in his head or the innumerable cuts and gashes. She wasn't even thinking of the puss boiling out of his body or the rotting stench of infection. There has been something wrong with him from the very start, maybe even from the day he was born, maybe even before that. There was something missing, something vitally important, something that made him different from everyone else in this world.
She knew what it felt like to hug her daddy. To hold him tight and be swept off her feet, to laugh and scream as he swung her around. She knew what it felt like to play and argue with her brothers. To scold them for doing something stupid. To watch as they scarfed down a meal she had prepared for them with her own two hands. She remembered what it felt like to peek over her mommy's shoulder at whatever she was drawing that day. She remembered being booped on the nose with a finger smeared with blue paint. The smiles, the laughter. The warmth of family.
Love.
It was something Banno had never felt. It was something he could never feel, no matter how hard he searched. There was something missing. Something broken inside him.
Something different.
"Come on, Banno..." Valery said, stepping on top of the flattened door. It shifted slightly beneath her weight. "We're going outside."
Away from my family. As far away as I can possibly take you.
Banno narrowed his eye, but came willingly enough, lurching along on his crippled stump.
"That's it. This way." The wind whipped through her hair and sent icy fingers crawling down her back, carefully searching for any exposed flesh to caress. She was still wearing the same clothes she had had on her back on the terrible night she was forced to flee into the woods with her brothers, the night she almost lost her daddy. Just a simple set of children's night clothes, light blue, and her brothers' socks. Going outside in the middle of the night, with a storm as strong as this raging through the valley, would be the same as drawing this piece of glass across her throat, except slower.
But how long would Banno last? That was the question.
Am I really doing this? Valery thought, horrified, not just at what was happening, but at herself.
Was she really thinking of murdering someone?
She backed out onto the porch, then carefully down the steps, and finally into the freezing maw of the night. Already the house was turning into the hulking shape of a monster, with dim squares of firelight for eyes. She could feel the snow sticking to her brothers' socks, to her clothes, her hair, sapping the warmth right out of her, trying to get at what was underneath.
I'm going to die out here. If Banno doesn't kill me, then the cold will...
No, she corrected herself. The cold won't kill me, and neither will Banno. All I have to do is outlast him. And if I can't...
She grasped the sliver of glass with numb hands, oblivious to the blood running through her fingers and down her sleeves.
He was standing in the open doorway, a black shape surrounded by light, as if someone had taken a pair of scissors to the light itself. He had dragged the pretty vixen along by the hand, like a child dragging its favourite doll through the house after bedtime, too afraid to brave the empty hallways alone.
It was strange, to think of Banno as a child, but in certain ways, he was.
He was.
"Vallah... ree..." His shadow fell across the porch and slunk down the steps in a broken zig-zag before enshrouding her shivering body, stealing away her warmth even faster than the snow she was standing in.
"Banno, I'm cold..." Her voice was barely a whisper, quickly snatched away by the wind slicing across her cheeks. She opened her arms wide, her bloody palms streaked with frost. "Will you hold me?"
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