His Favorite Sin

9.1: WHAT WE ARE

Nine years ago

The bedroom door creaking open was the loudest sound in the quiet room as Ben Dvorak walked in and shut the door behind him. The curtains were only half open, and even though it was midday, the sun was imprisoned by thick, rainless clouds.

His eyes surveyed the room, noting the empty bed before moving to the figure hunched over a desk. Lance sat with his back to him, not bothering to glance up from his writing.

Beside him was a drip stand, the IV tube inserted into his left arm, while he punctured his braille with his stylus in his right. He was still in his pajamas, his hair disheveled as it had been since he woke up.

‘Glad to see you’re finally up.’ His father’s voice came from the other side of the room. ‘A bit dark in here, isn’t it?’ He heard his dad mutter, and the sound of the curtains being tossed aside followed.

Still, Lance said nothing and only rearranged his notebook on the slate. He heard his father’s footsteps again, this time getting closer to him, and his ear perked up at the whispering sound of his dad’s clothes as he walked around the room. He knew what his father’s clothes sounded like when they were work attire and when they weren’t, and that wasn’t the sound of a businessman dressed for work.

His stylus froze atop his paper.

‘How are you feeling-’

‘You’re not dressed for work, again,’ Lance pointed out, noticing that just like yesterday and the day before, his father’s choice of clothing suggested he wasn’t leaving the house.

Ben only smiled at his son as he came to stand behind him, ignoring the edge in his tone.

‘Now what kind of father would I be to leave my ill son and go focus on work?’ His voice stayed smooth. ‘I already cleared out my week and approved Dahlia for her leave, so I will remain here to devote my attention just to you.’

Lance paused, his grip on his stylus tightening.

It had been two days since he made their house a graveyard of crows before passing out. He had woken up late in the evening the next day to find a nurse tending to him, and slowly, he remembered what had happened, what he had done.

‘You don’t need to do that.’

‘But I do.’ His father’s hand came to rest on his stiff shoulder. ‘We all know how you get when you aren’t given enough attention, just like how you used to scare your past assistants with your antics, having the cat attack them, misleading them into the woods, and now this. I thought things had changed. I thought we had come to an agreement. You could have really hurt Dahlia with those birds. And here I thought you liked her.’

Lance stiffened, ‘I wasn’t trying to hurt her...’

‘You sent dozens of birds diving straight for her.’

A malicious smile appeared on his shadowy face as he lifted his head. ‘How do you know I was aiming for her? You were also there.’

Lance listened, but there was nothing, no falter from his dad, no waver in his heartbeat, his throat didn’t make any gulping sound, there was no sign his father believed his words, or even if he did, that he was afraid of him. That smugness from his father, that he wouldn’t be able to hurt him, infuriated Lance.

Ben sighed and moved away. ‘Dahlia was extra shaken by the incident. Poor girl, was as pale as a ghost.’ He was at the window, holding the curtains to stare outside. ‘She was the one who found you, and it’s no coincidence that she suddenly requested some time off. If I’m going to convince her to stay, I may have to up her salary.’ He paused.

‘...or perhaps I should just let her go and terminate her employment.’

Lance’s shoulders instantly straightened, the smile evaporating from his lips just as fast. His father kept talking, as if he were deeply contemplating how to handle the situation.

‘You have always been opposed to the idea of having an assistant with you anyway, so maybe I should start listening to you instead of forcing them on you. You appear to be able to care for yourself better now, and I will try to be around more often-’

‘No!’ Lance voiced, interrupting his dad mid-sentence.

With every word his father said, Lance felt his worst fear coming to pass. Dahlia, one of the few people whose presence he could tolerate, not coming back, and worse, having to endure his father’s loathsome presence more than usual. He would rather have his skull shattered by a hammer.

He hadn’t even known Dahlia had asked for time off. He hadn’t seen or heard from her since he woke up, but he wasn’t surprised she was ready to run for the hills. He couldn’t remember much of what happened that night, but his father had filled him in, and he could only imagine how horrified she must have been.

Would she really not come back?

They were friends, his only true friend. She wouldn’t just leave like that. His heart sank at the possibility.

He couldn’t let his father terminate her job. He had to convince him.

‘I lost control,’ Lance hastily admitted. ‘I wasn’t trying to hurt her. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I just wanted... silence.’ He hung his head, distressed.

He hated his curse more than anything. The torment that always went on in his head, especially when he was stressed, the sounds became too loud, the noises painfully sharp, like they resided in his head; every bang resounded like a gunshot in his skull, whispers from people mixing together like witches gathered together in his auditory cortex, chanting their spells.

Then there was the air becoming impossible to breathe in because he could smell things even sharks couldn’t detect, and the slightest touch on any surface connected to earth only intensified the sensations.

But Lance knew how to block it all out by hiding in the warm solitude his cat’s mind offered.

‘And you took my cat.’ His tone turned accusatory as he straightened. ‘I woke up to the sound of birds cawing. They were really loud, or at least to me, they were.’ He doubted anyone else even heard them.

‘I couldn’t block them out, so I followed the sounds, and that was how I found them. I thought I could get them to quieten down, and I did, for a while. When I got inside their tiny skull, everything was fine at first. I didn’t even know I could connect with all of them at once.

‘I wasn’t just borrowing their sight, I was connected.’

He remembered how different and strange it had felt, being able to survey from different perspectives, switching at will, and bringing them all into unison. It had been... euphoric even.

‘You liked it.’ His father observed the expression on his face before it suddenly darkened.

‘But then I don’t know what happened. They are not like Grandma’s cat. Their brains work differently. It wasn’t quite like I had expected. They have their own thoughts, and they were loud, too loud. I felt their confusion and panic. I lost control, and they turned erratic. I couldn’t escape from the spiral of their thoughts, and so I....’

The last image that flashed in Lance’s mind was Dahlia in her pajamas, clutching a ruined pillow with white feathers strewn everywhere. The look on her face, that was it, eyes wide with breath-stealing panic, legs shaking as she stepped back, that was what had done it. Everything turned pitch black after that.

Of course, he kept this detail to himself, knowing better than to reveal everything to the devil’s second-in-command behind him.

‘I shouldn’t have done it.’ He blurted out, standing up and turning to his dad, his sightless orbs unfocused. ‘I should have remained indoors, locked up with my curse. This is why I shouldn’t use them, Dad! I keep trying to tell you it’s evil, but you won’t listen.

‘It’s a curse. It’s forged from hell, it’s meant to afflict. It’s done more harm than good since you made me break it open. You’ve seen it... what happened with Mum.’ His voice was as low as a whisper at the end as he talked about that which they rarely spoke about.

They never talked about her, his mother. It was an unspoken agreement between them. Even Jonah, despite his innocence, knew the rule was there, and he was careful to never bring her up.

The silence stretched between them as the curtains flapped to the side from the breeze that came in. Ben leaned against the window frame behind him, quietly studying his son before his calm voice broke the silence.

‘When your grandma heard you had broken your curse, she found you that cat as a temporary fix because she thought she understood better, even though I argued differently, and just as I had feared, it has spoiled you, made you even weaker. But that was all it was, temporary, until you finally can control it.’

‘I can’t control it-’

‘Yes, you can.’ Ben was adamant. ‘You think it was all floral and pretty colors when I first broke my curse? No. I was damaged, weak, just like you are now. I, too, struggled because it also came with its own darkness, a darkness I thought I could or should tame at the time. It was only when I embraced it that I was finally whole.’

Lance heard the satisfaction in his voice and gritted back in disgust. ‘I don’t want to be you.’

Ben smiled, slow and knowing, as though enjoying a secret no one else knew. ‘Accept who you are, Lance. You trying to suffocate it is you also denying yourself air. Stop treating it like it’s just a part of you; it is you. Our curses are tailored to be perfect to meet our needs. Without it, you will be helpless, forever leaning on others for survival. Is that what you want?’

It wasn’t what Lance wanted. He hated being at a disadvantage, especially when he was younger, and his older brother was around to tease him.

Ben picked up the potted Christmas cactus from the window beside him and examined it, twirling it in his arms. Its overgrown green vines spilling over the pot, flowerless with winter yet to arrive.

‘The problem is you think your abilities are a curse.’ He picked up the plant, fingers grazing a single stem. The moment he withdrew his hand, a red bud peeked out, then another.

Dots of crimson bloomed across the cactus tips, the petals loosening and peeling open until the plant erupted in vibrant red flowers even though winter was still weeks away, as that was usually the only time such a plant bloomed.

He stared at his work, satisfied with the blossomed flower.

‘You couldn’t be more wrong.’ His gaze returned to his son as he held the plant, his tone cold and cutting. ‘Look at you. Without your powers, you were miserable. Completely useless. Pathetic. You hated yourself.’ It was disturbing how casual his tone sounded, even with his biting words.

Lance tried to show he wasn’t affected, and it didn’t hurt like an elbow was being repeatedly jabbed into his side.

He sat back down. It wasn’t like this was the first time his father used such demeaning words to describe him. The world never saw this part of Mr. Ben Dvorak, just him.

‘You didn’t “break” your curse. You already had it. You were born cursed, deprived of the common ability every normal human was born with. Same was with me and many relatives of ours. But then we get gifted with something far superior because we’re chosen.’

‘That’s not what the story—’

‘The story has been defiled with lies!’ For the first time, Ben’s tone rose a pitch, breaking from his controlled register. ‘Lies told by ignorant men who had limited knowledge of the facts, and now the truth is lost to us all.’ Lance involuntarily winced as a loud bang resonated from his father forcefully placing the flowerpot back down as he pushed off the window.

‘Every tale concocted in the Torah, Bible, or whatever has a constant premise. First came the sin of Cain, then the curse, and lastly the gift – the protection from the curse.’

He crouched beside his son’s chair, clutching the back rail with one hand and the other splayed flat on the desk. ‘Our gifts are our shield.’

He straightened back up, ‘We are what we are, Lance. Hiding away, scared in your room, won’t stop the inevitable. You want to be able to control it, to not hurt anymore or hurt anyone else? Then you have to start discovering your true nature, no matter how ugly it may look,’ he said, letting the words sink in before moving to leave.

‘I won’t be what you want me to be.’ Lance whispered, halting his father before he could leave. He shook his head, determined, ‘I won’t be you.’

‘You will be exactly what I want you to be,’ his father promised.