a betrayal happens to you right in the gut.
CREATURES PART 2 / ACCEPTING
𝙸𝙽 𝙰 𝚂𝙾𝙵𝚃 𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙲𝚃𝙸𝚅𝙴 𝙹𝙴𝚁𝙺, Will presses a palm against his belly. The seam there, under his shirt, beneath the skin or in the skin, over the flesh and delicately woven hardness of the musculature of his abdomen. The latticework of his body. Over it, but in it too—through, where the knife had so carefully parted him. It’s funny. It could be funny. Irony is the origin of comedy, after all. Phallic symbols and a sense of the inevitably ridiculous. Tragedy plus time. It’s not surprising to be confronted with it; anyone might have heard, might have read it in the news. There were certainly enough headlines. The photograph of his freshly-stitched abdomen, his sedated hipbones and pale thighs—all of it had made the rounds. The knife. His colostomy bag. Will assembles the associations around himself for Billy to observe, assuming without analyzing that it’s what he wants to see.
Life is so slender, isn’t it? Sticks set on sticks. Thought and personality, memory and experience and sensory undulations. Latticework. One little stone through the front facade and the whole immaculate edifice comes crashing down. Hardly more than a touch in the right place and the body crumples, or leaks and oozes outward.
Not Will, of course. He’s been carefully preserved. Thinking about it, even briefly, makes him feel lonely. Loneliness floods him with a sharp spike of resentment.
Will slides his hand away from his stomach. It’s private, and it’s not something he likes the idea of elaborating on. His eyes—blue, heavily saturated, blue past blue, maybe—twitch vacantly across the train car while all the time Billy is looking straight at him, imagining that he’ll succeed, or already deciding that it will be easy. Trying to take him apart, thread by thread, and then suck the information out like marrow from the bone. A big, mean child. He’s dangerous, and charming, and Will occupies a dark slip of space almost invisibly by comparison—but that isn’t unusual for him. Charm of a general type has an astringent affect on Will Graham. He drws back from it. This is one of those general types, but there’s something else beneath it. Rough, and large. Volatile but almost warm. Will tilts his head a little, and there’s a flash of interest behind his eyes.
Will had been a mean child, too—but a small one. The difference that such an ordinary detail makes is stark. Now, his dark eyelashes flicker.
“Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.”
He’s too worn out to summon the necessary vitriol. His face changes rapidly in jerky series of fluttering expressions, but settles on a cool indifference. The train rocks on the tracks, and Will rocks with it, his compact shoulders swaying against the creaking vinyl benchseat. He looks petulant, annoyed.
“If you want something from me, just tell me what it is.”
