Satin is Not Silk

7 | STATIC

Red—it's everywhere.

From the bright glow of dusk, reminding you that everything including day has an end, to the burning village in the distance, down to the pools of blood that settled like the red carpet to hell at your feet.

Red—it's inescapable.

Red—it was in the middle of this saturated color a single kid stood, frozen in his tracks. Only fifteen, he stared wide eyed at the monochrome scene before him. He's trembling now, realizing that this was the aftermath of his very own work. He can still hear them. The screams. The pleads. The hysterics. Dropping to his knees, his pants become heavily stained with red. Scalding hot, never ending red.

"Make it stop!" he cries, gripping at his ears, nails digging into skin in an attempt to rip them off. "Please!" More red bleeds from where he pulls.

Suddenly, the red is gone. Everything is black now.

He's falling.

The red is gone, but the screams are not. They get louder, they echo against nothing. The only thing louder than the screams of others is his own. Why won't it stop?

From the distance he hears a soft voice. A faceless voice. A boy—he sounded like an angel.

"Are you okay?" he speaks, tender and all too innocent.

From his black pit he answers: "I'm not! Help me!"

He can hear the boy shuffling in place. "I think he's dead," he tells another.

"I'm not! I'm alive!" He barely lets it out. He tries to say more, but his voice falters, and he can feel something—no, somethings—grabbing at him, pulling him even further, dragging him down to where only tainted souls belong. "I didn't know! They told me—they told me they were bad people! That I had to do it!"

But the boy doesn't seem to hear.

No one ever hears.

He's swallowed by the darkness.

"I didn't know!"

Shouting at the top of his lungs, Ezra shot up, drenched to the bone in a layer of sticky and cold sweat, clenching a fistful of sheets. He was also gasping desperately for air, like if he didn't keep filling his lungs to the brim with oxygen he might just pass out.

"Not again," he murmured. Ezra covered his face with his hands, dragging them so that it tugged his skin down. Still sitting upright, he closed his eyes—not wanting to fall asleep again but too tired to keep them open. He stayed this way until morning.

♬

A few days had passed since news of Anastasia's marriage was finally dropped to the bride herself. Tensions were, to say the least, the thickest they've ever been in a long time inside the Han household. Meanwhile, Alex practically tiptoed everywhere he went, for he was equally as scared of his own family as he was their "special guest".

He wasn't ashamed to admit that he hardly ever left his room anymore, not even to eat. Alex had Ivan bring him his meals, although he seriously doubted his father and Anastasia would be caught happily chatting over brunch anytime soon. He heard a knock at his door.

Speaking of brunch.

"How's my favorite prince doing?" Ivan came in pushing a cart with his meal, all while grinning the cheekiest of grins.

In return, Alex pouted like a child. "I don't know. Why don't you ask him?" With a simple gesture to the room across the hall, he made it clear where he stood on Ivan being put to work for Ezra while he stayed at his home.