The Mist and the Lightning. Part 19
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“Didn’t you say you injected it in your Limit?”
“So what? How much time has passed?”
“No, it will never end!”
“It will end. Soon the body will stop rising.”
“I won't survive if you die!”
“I have been dead for a long time.”
“Nik! Why are you making me emotional?! You endlessly take emotions out of me! Stop eating me!”
Nik lay motionless, his good leg bent at the knee and his bandaged head slightly thrown back, a tousled braid with beads woven into it sweeping the floor beside him. He didn’t answer Kors, as if he didn’t hear him.
Without thinking, in some kind of frenzy, Kors rushed to him, and, grabbing his forearm, jerked him up from the skins. Nik quickly glared at him from the gap between the bandages, but said nothing, remained seated. But that look… Kors’ insides went cold.
“Don’t touch,” said Nik very calmly, and this made his voice sound even more terrible.
“I’m sorry…” Kors whispered, but immediately shouted again in despair:
“How long are you going to torment me, Black Demon?! Seeing how you destroy this body, I am dying together with you!”
“Go away, I won’t touch you, you yourself are rubbing the skin around me!”
“What?”
“You come to me. Why are you here? Do you understand what you are doing now?”
“Yeah, damn it, I can’t get off! Knowing what kind of rubbish you are, I still can’t! You tied me well! Insatiable fucked up rubbish!”
“Go away,” Nik said.
“But you’re sick!" Let me help you!”
“I am the Demon that eats you and torments you, who took away all the people close to you and ruined your life, whom are you going to help?!”
“My son.”
“Your son? A lame fool with a shameful… brand on his face? He doesn’t deserve you. Get out!”
“But where should I go?”
“Wherever you want!”
“Are you letting me go?” Kors didn’t believe it.
“No. I won’t let you really go, don’t hope. Just get out now, otherwise I’ll beat you, I’ll just kill you! Don’t you believe me?”
“You said that you didn’t stop loving me, despite my imperious character, and now it means that you still stopped loving me? Don’t you love me anymore?”
“What the difference?”
“If you reflect my feelings, hear how you torment me. You’re torturing me!”
“Do you think you’re suffering? Am I torturing you? Well, then you still have a lot of surprises waiting for you! And now get out!”
Nik suddenly began to wheeze in a strange way, as if he was choking, and made a sharp movement of his head, as if he was about to vomit, grabbing his throat. Kors watched in horror.
“Get out and don’t show up until I call you!” Nik croaked.
“You’re Chasing me like a dog?”
“Don’t provoke me!”
“I don’t give a fuck! My son lives in you! You are in symbiosis with a human, and you are half a man, you feel bad! What’s wrong with you now?!”
Nik jerked sharply again, holding his throat, as if he was trying to expel something from himself, one, two, three times. Kors remembered too well how sick and nauseous he himself once was.
“Nik, you have overdosed! Damned addict!”
Nik fell back, covering his face with his hands.
Kors was shaking:
“Nik, you’re being mean to me because you’re essentially a child! You have not developed as a person and personality! I have seen you! I have seen how your so-called mother treated you! Little lonely abandoned boy! Nobody needs an orphan, defenseless from the cruelty of adults and their arbitrariness. Dependent on them in his childish weakness. This creature tortured you! Kept you in some kind of closet, as if in a grave!”
“A-a-a-ah…”
“I’m really sorry! You began to take drugs and alcohol in order to forget about the dislike and indifference of others. You never found a core inside yourself, you didn’t even learn how to comb your hair! You are a lost man of the social bottom, and you will never be able to rise to a normal society without support! Drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, perversions, cruelty, lack of honor and dignity…”
“Stop doing that!” Nik literally howled and covered his ears with his hands hidden by bandages.
“Look at yourself! Who do you look like? Who have you become? You stopped listening to me and instantly rolled back into the pit. Without my support, attention and education, you immediately sank down and gave up. Not a couple of weeks have passed since our quarrel, and you again rolled back to where I pulled you from! Instead of stupidly devouring me, evoking emotions and feeding on them and on my blood, you should have obeyed me! A bad demonic essence merging with an equally bad human, why don’t you listen to your father? If you listened to me, everything would be fine!”
“Leave.”
“Okay, I’ll leave, but you know…”
“Get out already, fuck you!” yelled Nik, and, abruptly sitting on the skins, he threw one of his heavy unclean boots in Kors.
Kors barely dodged, rushing out the door.
He was very offended.
Chapter 4
Trembling with resentment and anger, Kors was standing at the threshold of their camping tent in the drizzling rain. In lace and a half-buttoned luxurious camisole, decorated with buttons with precious stones and gold embroidery on the lapels, in pants made of expensive suede leather, and at the same time barefoot. He looked down at his feet. A true black, noble gentleman, the elite of the World without a sky, standing barefoot in the mud, in a rain puddle. Kors didn’t remember at all when the last time he walked the earth barefoot, probably, it was in his long forgotten childhood. And now he was in complete shock. He was simply kicked him out, barefoot, in the rain, in the mud, not really dressed, and dressed not at all according to the situation. Nik kicked him out like a dog! He doesn’t listen to anything! He threatened to kill Kors! And where should he go now? But he won’t come back, if so! To ask to be taken back, to ask for forgiveness, to crawl on his knees again – no!
Barely overcoming disgust, Kors cautiously stepped into the liquid mud, mixed with hay and dung. Afraid of injuring his feet on some loose horseshoe nail or broken bottle, he took a few steps forward. The edges of his trouser legs were already wet and dirty. Probably, it was necessary to immediately pull them up or roll them up, but then he would look even stupider. Where’s his damn horse, fucking Grrkh? Kors called out to him loudly, immediately hearing a whinny in response from quite a distance away. He quickly passed several low tents. Smoke curled over them, for sure there were housekeeping Verniy and Valentine there, maybe even at that moment they were boiling water for Kors. But Kors didn’t want to see them, and even more didn’t want them to see him in such a pitiful state. He found Grrkh tied up under a rectangular canopy set up on tall poles. His horse stood calmly next to Unclean Power and Beauty. In addition to the fact that a roof was built for the horses, protecting them from the rain, Grrkh was unsaddled and carefully covered with a woolen blanket. Next to him, on a clean pallet, lay hay and a bucket filled to the brim with water. “The horse is treated better than me!” Kors thought angrily. He looked around for his saddle, but couldn’t find it, there was not a single saddle at all. It looked like Verniy had taken all the saddles and harness to his tent, away from dampness and rain. “The horses are well-groomed, and there is more order here than in the tent of Nik and Arel! Only you always have dirt, cold and a mess! Well, go to hell!” Still being angry, Kors roughly pulled off the blanket from the horse and jumped on him without a saddle, feeling a strong shiver ran through Grrkh’s body from the scruff of the neck to the tail. The horse twitched under the rider, and neighed, nervously stepping with his hooves, but Kors paid no attention to this. Yelling a command furiously and kicking the horse’s flanks with his muddy heels, he urged him onward to where he had come from the day before, and where his Parky and Adrian had been.