CHAPTER FOURTEEN / VOL. I, NO TREACLE / BURYING THE DOG

THE LOST ART OF MURDER. That's what Ares says—that the intricacies of murder have been lost on mankind. He thinks that death is beautiful, that the battlefield is his canvas and that blood is his medium. He reckons himself a Monet; Will reckons him a five-year old with finger paints. There's nothing beautiful about the way he kills, just blood and flesh torn from the body. There's no dignity in it, just torment.

Beautiful death is a fallacy; any beauty in death is a lovely lie meant to ease the transition. The truth is that death is ugly. No amount of treacle or metaphors could make it something to be admired. You could paint a corpse like the Birth of Venus, but you'd still smell the rot.

Murder is a means to an end. When Will kills, she doesn't think anything of it. Maybe it's worse that she doesn't feel remorse, but at least she isn't making it into something it's not.

          There are worse things to be than a monster.

Monsters don't hide behind a mask, justifying their actions through flowery allegories.

All that the gods have are masks. They find new ways to make themselves into someone else, shape themselves into something better than what they are. They are the meek, the unkind, the yellow-bellied children parading as the divine. Gods and monsters are not the same.

A god learns to save face, hiding behind a veil to cloak their perversion. But a monster knows what it is.

There's no point in trying to disguise herself. She won't shy away from the sharp edges and beady eyes; there's only one form that she truly exists in. Some people fool themselves into seeing something that isn't there. They lie to themselves and create an image of Will that looks nothing like the creature lurking beneath the surface. But Leo has seen her for what she is.

A monster through and through.

And now he's turned the dark mirror on himself. He can't come back from that.

But Leo's still holding the shattered remains of his facade, piecing the shards back together to hide the ugly truth. He's really trying.

He spends all morning sitting in front of that cage with his fingers clutching at the lock with a vengeance. Light starts to creep in past the curtains and Will wakes, leaving them in tense silence, but Leo keeps working at the lock so he doesn't find other ways to bury his anger.

Will goes to the same bathroom as before, perched on the top of the counter with her legs pulled tightly against her chest, chin tucked into her bruised knees. She's got a cigarette pressed between her lips, letting the smoke settle in her lungs before expelling it. It hangs over her head like a dark cloud. She hears thunder but when she looks out the window there's nothing but clear skies and muted white light streaming in. It reflects off of the polished marble and gold embellishments. The room is basked in a blinding glow of light like when god-fearing people pass onto the next life. A bleary tunnel of afterglow.

The burning red cherry inching towards her lips ruins the illusion and the hot ash that clumps at the tip before falling to her leg leaves her jeans singed. She doesn't smoke because it makes her feel good—in fact, it makes her feel rather bad. It's dependency, something she never thought she'd know again. But she needs it. She clings to it like she clung to Luke. That didn't make her feel very good either. She knows it wasn't healthy, wasn't gentle, wasn't good. It was a sickness.

She thought it would go away once Luke was gone, but it didn't. She just found new things to fixate on, looked for different ways to kill herself.

But it wasn't all bad all the time. It never is. There's moments of relief where you think that maybe all this is worth it. You can live with charred flesh and a knife through your shoulder blade, wedged between bone, if it means that you feel loved even for a moment.

It's sad really. More than a sickness—it's sickening. It's desperation if you look hard enough, but no matter how you look at it, it's unbecoming.

Will rubs at her scarred eye with the palm of her hand, the cigarette still tucked between two fingers as the violent movements jostle more ash from the tip. She's still digging with her palm, trying to kill the itch, when it burns all the way to the filter and the heat hits her calloused skin. It falls to the floor, waiting to be crushed by the methodical heel of her boot. When she lifts her foot the remains smudge black ash across the tile and the cigarette butt is pulped into nothing.

Looking at her reflection, Will can see how her eye goes red from the pressure; it starts to burn. The scar running through her flesh looks bright and angry—the serrated skin growing irritated by her prodding. Her pointer finger pokes at the scar tissue, following the depressed lesion. 

Since the quest began, Will has rarely had a moment to herself; Jason follows her like a sad, wounded animal—so meek and hungry for affection. But she doesn't miss being alone. Being alone means being subjected to the all-consuming silence. It means finding new ways to crucify yourself.

She is, in all ways that matter, the spitting image of her father. She knows that. She knows that she carries a dark passenger in her body and she knows it to be her birthright. It is hers before it is anyone else's. But she had never asked for it. He cursed her with it—thrust it upon her as if this were her inheritance; his legacy would live on in her. This piece of her belongs to him. Regardless of her misplaced hopes, this unbridled wrath will outlive her. And though she knew he had never loved her, she was his.

She was his daughter. His. She belonged to him, along with that anger inside of her. Everything that she was came as a consequence of him.

The things she took from him—her fire, her hunger, her fury—and the things that she took in spite of him, like the single thread of humanity that grappled for its life. There was a softness to Will that Ares couldn't even begin to fathom. But the dark thing seeks to smother it, and if she could, she might let it.

Maybe then there would be such thing as beautiful death, and she could have the gall to shed blood and call it an art form. It would stop being something that she does and instead would become something she longs for. It's already happening. She wants to kill. She wants to bring gods to their knees, to cut heroes down just the same. But when she kills, it will not be beautiful or poetic. She will not paint it into something flowery or call it a kindness. She will call it what it is.

It is murder. No treacle—just rot.

          Yes, she thinks. There are far worse things to be than a monster.

PIPER FEELS GUILTY. She feels this way a lot; whether it's about things that are in her control or things that aren't. It doesn't matter. She feels guilty all the same. It's been this way for as long as she can remember. There wasn't a time where guilt didn't eat away at her, gnawing at any soft parts it could find.

She knows that she's not a good person—dishonest, selfish, unkind. There's nothing particularly interesting or impressive about her at all. She spends a lot of time imagining herself as someone else. Standing in front of a mirror, she doesn't praise her reflection—she curses it. Most days, Piper would give anything to be someone else, anyone else. She hates the sad thing staring back at her. There's no sea foam or softness, no remnants of her mother at all.

She's certain that Drew and every other child of Aphrodite has never felt that way. Though she knows it's self-centered, she thinks that she is the only one that has ever felt this way—the only one that has ever felt this alone. Sometimes, she imagines that everyone else is as miserable as she is. She imagines that her siblings look at their reflection and want to erase themselves from existence and that the people who stand so large, take up so much space, feel so small and simple inside. She wants everyone to feel out of place, to feel like they can never belong; mostly she wants them to mirror her.

It's cruel that her mother would be the goddess of love—some twisted joke put in place by the universe for its own amusement. It feels like everyone is laughing but her.

For all of her life, Piper has never felt loved or felt deserving of love. Even still, she doesn't think that anyone could ever love her. At the end of the day she just hopes that someone can. You see, she has this bad habit of falling in love and giving pieces of her heart away to anyone who will have it. She's desperate to be loved, like a dog with a bone, she strips it clean, sucks the marrow until the love is absent. She's very used to ruining things. But she tells herself that this will be different.

Piper thinks that Will is everything. She likes that Will's dark eyes mirror her own. She likes that they see right through her, truly sees her for all that she is. It's such a beautiful thing—to be seen. And when Will smiles, she falls apart. It should be a dark, haunting thing, riddled with cruelty and contempt, but Piper feels so privileged to have seen it at all. Even the slightest slope of her lips makes Piper's chest feel like it's caving in on itself.

It's a good feeling, she decides. Her heart beats faster and the blood rushes to her cheeks; she feels very much alive and it's a nice reminder of that fact. And even though her throat feels like it's closing up and she momentarily stops breathing, Piper decides that she wants to feel this way for the rest of her life.

But then the night falls and the dark thing starts to chip away at her. She feels guilty because above all, she is a burden. Her love becomes unbearable. It's suffocating.

Her love is selfish. It comes with the hunger to be loved back. And then that good feeling turns bad.

          But love shouldn't make you feel this bad, should it?

She spends the next few minutes pacing in front of the closed bathroom door, thumb between her teeth as she tugs at the sensitive skin. She wonders if she's asking for too much. Is it too much to ask that someone loves her too?

          It must be.

Piper has always known that she isn't the prettiest or smartest or most interesting person. In fact, most of the time, she's convinced that she isn't really a person at all. She's a ghost, traversing in the physical realm but holding no real presence; there's no weight to her being that solidifies her existence. She's hardly even here most of the time.

But she wants to be seen, to be alive, even to exist at all. Most of all, she wants to be loved, whether she is deserving of it or not.

          "If you don't stop pacing, I'm going to break your ankle... again."

Piper's looks up in surprise to see Will standing directly in front of her, arms crossed with a half-hearted scowl and an unlit cigarette dangling from her calloused fingertips. For a moment there is unbearable silence. At least for Piper it feels excruciating. She feels stupid when Will finally retreats into the bathroom wordlessly, sitting on the edge of the bathtub by the large window. The light makes her skin look soft, or maybe that's just the lack of blood, but either way, Piper wants to burn this image into her mind.

She used to hate people that were effortless. People that were pretty in the mornings, intelligent without trying, interesting without meaning to be. She hated that they could be all these things and not care that they did it so well. Whereas Piper tried very hard to be all of those things and still came up empty handed. But she didn't hate Will, even though Will was witty and fascinating and lovely without even knowing.

          She wonders if this is love before decidedly thinking, this must be love.

Will pulls her eyes away from the window. Piper wants to bloom under the weight of her gaze, but instead, she withers.

          "Are you going to come in or not," Will asks sharply.

Piper blinks. Once, twice. And then her body is moving—slamming the door a little too loudly in her rush to enter the bathroom. She notices that Will has since recovered from last night's events. Her demeanor has shifted entirely and her words are cutting deeper than before. Any softness is gone. But still, there seems to be a sadness about her.

          "Coach is awake," Piper blurts. She's trying to fill the silence. If it's quiet, she's left with her thoughts and nothing to drown out the voice in her head confirming what she already knows. She wonders if anyone can see her tearing herself apart.

          Will meets her eyes briefly before her gaze flickers back down to the blackened smudge of ash on the floor. "I know," she responds, disinterested.

          "Oh," Piper all but whispers. She doesn't really know what to say next, but her palpable nervousness has a mind of its own. "Like, everything here is gold. It's pretty weird..."

          "Yeah," Will agrees.

Piper just nods, shifting on her feet as she hovers in the middle of the room. She watches with interest as Will places the cigarette between her lips, reaching across the counter for the lighter.

          "I didn't know you smoke," Piper says. Her voice comes out weak and she really hates the way she sounds.

          "Why would you?" Her words are muffled by the cigarette. She clicks the lighter a few times, urging it to light until it holds a small flame. "We've only known each other for three days."

Piper notices how she grimaces when the fire licks at her fingertip. The flame glows brighter, coming to life before Will releases the wheel and it dies out. When the cigarette is finally lit, Will tosses the lighter on the counter, eager to get it as far from her as she can.

          "Has it really only been three days? It feels a lot longer than that." In all honesty, Piper feels like it's been a lifetime. She really hopes that they had known each other in another life. She hopes that in that life, Will had loved her in the same way that Piper does.

          "I agree," Will hums. Piper can feel her heart thrashing against her ribcage, begging to be freed from its confines. That feeling is quickly swallowed when Will speaks again. "It's been way too fucking long."

Piper feels her heart sink. But she plasters a tight smile on her face nonetheless and pulls herself onto the countertop, glancing down at the porcelain sink with a ring of dried blood around the basin.

          "Are you..." Piper trails off, taking in Will's appearance. Before she had been looking at the girl through the lens of obsession; now she looks at the honest truth. No warped perspectives or bleary edges. What she sees is harrowing.

Without the dirt and blood smudged across her cheeks, the dark half-moons beneath Will's eyes become prominent. Her eyes feel less like heavy stones and more like empty holes. At least stones have substance—there is weight to them; they exist. But her eyes hold nothing and her cheeks look hollow when she sucks on the filter of the cigarette, ready to cave in at any given moment. As she hunches over, elbows to knees, Will looks very meek. Not like a warrior at all. She is clinging with desperation to anything that keeps her afloat. They both know the feeling.

          Piper clears her throat with the discomfort of Will's hollow stare and the unsettling revelations. "Are you... OK?"

          "I'm fine. Why," Will goads. "Do I not seem fine?"

          "No," the daughter of Aphrodite says hurriedly before sobering herself. "No. I just—I know the past few days have been a lot."

          "Sure, I guess."

          "Do you want to talk about it?"

          "No."

          Piper grimaces at the sharpness of Will's answer. It cuts through the silence and renders a standstill. And then Piper says, "Well, if you want to—"

          "Are you OK, Oklahoma?"

          "I—what?" She's so taken aback by Will's question that she misses the calculating lilt to the girl's voice. Will is twisting the conversation and watching as her prey takes the bait. "Me?" Piper reiterates, pointing to herself to make sure that Will was indeed talking about her. "I'm good—great! Thanks for asking?"

          "Well, I just wanted to make sure because—you know... the past few days have been a lot," Will coos with rehearsed concern. Still, nothing can hide the cruel undertone as her lips twist up into a jeering smirk. Piper frowns at the way her words get turned back on her, but Will wants to hurt someone, so she doesn't stop there. "But I'd worry more about myself if I were you. I don't know how or why you've deluded yourself into thinking I'm some small, sad thing for you to fix, but if you saw me—and I mean really saw me... I would terrify you."

          "You—" Piper takes an unsteady breath, feeling the emotion start to pool beneath her tongue. She's trying to swallow it but she's never been the type. For once, she doesn't feel guilt. Instead, she feels sorrow because she's learning that nothing cuts deeper than the truth. When Piper finally looks up at Will, blinking harshly and trying to maintain some of her dignity, she's met with indifference—not sadness, just a dull normal. "You're being cruel," she states at last.

          "No," Will disagrees. "I don't think so. I'm being factual. You've convinced yourself—not only that I'm the kind of person that needs to be saved—but that I'm the kind of person deserving of it." She doesn't stumble on her words like Piper does. There's no hesitation that undercuts the severity of the message. "Do you want some advice?"

Piper doesn't answer. She just looks at the blood in the sink, staring at the drain and hoping that she slides down it like the gore that rots in the pipes. Anywhere but here, she thinks. Anyone but her. But she's still here and Will is still the one confirming her worst fears.

          Will doesn't wait long to continue. "Stop caring so much about other people and what they think of you. Do you really think that having people like you will make you hate yourself any less?"

It's not a question that Piper cares to answer. She's too focused on listening to her own breathing, the unbearable loudness of her own body—how it betrays her by closing in on itself instead of saying something. Say something, she thinks. Say anything!

          "It's not some big revelation," Will says when she sees Piper's dazed expression. She mistakes her distress for surprise, as if Piper had been thinking, oh, I never stopped to ask myself. She carries on, dismissing the silence altogether. "No one likes who they are—not really. We know all the worst parts of ourselves. The things that we've done, the lies that we've told, the people that we've hurt. We all hate ourselves for some reason or another. It's just that the rest of us don't fool ourselves into thinking that other people will make that feeling go away." When she says it, there's no malice for once. Rather she says it as if it's a kindness, like putting a sick dog down in the backyard. She's burying it, bullet and all.

It's quiet for a moment while Will watches her and Piper tries to remember how to breathe. She really shouldn't though since the last time she focused this intensely on her breathing, she ended up passed out on the tile floor in the school bathroom. In and out, in and out, in and—

          "Maybe it's more than that," Will ponders out loud. She knows what she's doing. "I've noticed that you've had a difficult time adjusting to being claimed by Aphrodite."

          "It's weird is all," Piper defends, finding her voice though it wavers. What's almost a whisper becomes an echo, sounding unbearably loud in the harsh silence.

          "It's more than that," Will decides. She sounds so objective that Piper starts to believe her. "Your understanding of love is a lot different than hers. The gods love selfishly," she explains, painfully clinical, detached—delivering the blow, putting down the dog. "At the expense of others but never at their own. Being in love and being loved are very different things, you know?"

          "I know that."

          "You were so ready to fix something between you and Jason that was never even there."

          "That's not fair," Piper says weakly.

          Will leans forward on the edge of the tub, bony elbows digging into her thighs. She's watching Piper, picking apart her answers and unveiling the truth—performing a surgery, removing the dark spleen and disposing of the body. She's seeing her for all that she is. "You didn't care that it wasn't real."

Unconsciously, Piper had began to cave in on herself, making herself smaller and smaller. First, she had pressed her back against the mirror—tried to disappear into the backdrop, be invisible once more. Then her legs pull into her chest, knees kissing her collarbone as she mirrors how she feels inside—so small and sad. She feels so small; there's no weight to her.

          "But you're the one that said—"

          Will interrupts her. "You came to me so that I would tell you what you wanted to hear. You wanted me to justify your decision."

          "But it didn't work out and I knew it wouldn't. I knew that," Piper reiterates.

          "But you still wanted it to. You so desperately want to be in love. That's what separates you from Aphrodite. Being in love is probably the most selfless thing anyone could do. Being loved is easy, but being in love sometimes means being in love alone." Will knows that love is too often one-sided, too dependent on selfish people—like how a son loves his father even if he's in it alone. And how love always leads to loss. Someone is always losing. She clears her throat. "It's a good thing is what I'm saying."

          "That's not true," Piper rasps out. "I care more to be loved," she says, but even she finds it hard to believe.

Lies are easier to swallow. The truth goes down like vitriol.

          "No, you don't. Otherwise you would feel more deserving of the love that people do give you. You may want to be loved, but you care more to be in love. You think that everyone else is more deserving than you. See," Will emphasizes. "You care too much."

It was true that Piper fell in love with everyone she had ever been with and even those that she hadn't. It's easy to mistake one thing for another, and under the blanket of night or the soft glow of obsession, one version of love looks like the other. But being in loved and being loved are not the same. She always cared very much to be loved. She wanted to be pretty and interesting, to be cherished for no reason at all. But being loved becomes less and less of a reality with each passing day. She becomes unlovable, unbearable—her desire becomes constricting.

So, she starts to fall in love, regardless of if they love her back. She gives pieces of herself away and never stops to wonder what happens when there is nothing left to give. Loving others is certainly easier than learning to love yourself. Before, all she had wanted was to be loved, to be wanted, to exist at all.

But she had yet to learn how terrible it was for someone to truly see you.

note: had this in my drafts for literal ages. like it's actually been over a year since i updated... this is wild