Monster [malexmale]

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

My whole body was racked with unbelievable pain.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd been in this much pain. I'm pretty sure I had several broken ribs and my wrist was twisted an angle that also told me it was broken. My nose had managed to heal itself so it wasn't broken, but it was still prone to oozing blood on occasion. My body was taking its sweet time trying to heal the rest of Epimetheus's damage, but right when it was close to being healed again, he'd beat the living shit out of me.

And worst of all was that I couldn't get up and fight him back. I hated this feeling of being helpless and it just succeeded in enraging me further. I just wanted to rip the bastard's throat open and bathe in his blood. But I could barely manage to get a few gulps of air into my lungs. Even worse was that Epimetheus never fell asleep, so I couldn't attack him in his dreams where he was most vulnerable.

But he was tired, I noted. His beatings had slowed down after the first six hours. He sat in a chair right next to me, one leg folded over the other. He'd shift every so often and when his head started to slump to the side in sleep, he'd jump back to his feet and kick me, then start pacing around.

It'd been a total of twelve hours since Epimetheus had captured me, and still no sign of Hannibal. A wave of relief swept over me. Epimetheus could beat me to death and I wouldn't give a shit, so long as Hannibal stayed at home. And it hurt so much, knowing that I would probably die and he would never know that I hadn't meant to leave him there alone for so long.

I told him thirty minutes.

And it'd been twelve hours. He probably thought I had abandoned him again and that hurt far worse than any beating Epimetheus could give me. My thoughts were a scrambled mess of questions.

Was Hannibal okay? What was he doing? Was he hurting himself again? Was he sleeping, eating, dreaming even? That gave me a sliver of hope.

If Hannibal was dreaming, if he was asleep, maybe, just maybe, I'd be able to get to him from here. I hadn't tried long distance dream walking before, but I knew it could be done.

With that thought in mind, I closed my eyes and expelled a long breath as I tried to relax my body. I tried not to alert Epimetheus, who was still scrambling around the mill to try and stay awake. He reminded me of a very wound up squirrel. I ignored the sound of his feet shuffling across the floor and his cloak dragging across it. I focused on the lulling silence of sleep, the cool caress of darkness, before I envisioned the glittering gold bridge that stretched out from my subconscious mind all the way out to where Hannibal was, but suddenly the bridge cracked and broke, making me wince.

He wasn't asleep. He was awake. But what was he doing? That worried me further.

My eyes flickered open as I watched Epimetheus approach me, glaring down at me in irritation. He didn't say anything, just glared at me, then stormed off and started off on one of his rants. That was one thing I had learned about Epimetheus these past twelve hours. He loved to talk, but it was hardly anything positive. It was always some kind of tangent about something completely stupid.

This was probably why he was the god of afterthought, and the fact that he was spilling out a few secrets that Prometheus probably would've slapped him for.

"... is fucking ridiculous! Hannibal's always been such a slow little brat. Like the time my father had hired a private tutor for us. That was a stupid move on his part. He made Hannibal go to the first few lessons, but Hannibal was always late or skipped them. Some whiny bullshit about how he was afraid Menoetius would hit him... Which was true, but so did the rest of us. That's not any reason to skip out on lessons! He would just go to the kitchen and cook with mother! And she hated him as much as we did, but she became amused when Menoetius and Atlas started to dress Hannibal up in brightly colored peploses. But it got boring after a while because he wasn't reacting to it, so mother kicked him out of the kitchen and he tried to cook outside by making little fires and those rotten naiads would always come up to try and help him. Naiads helping a god build a fire. What kind of fucking trip is that anyway?"