My Pleasure, Darling

19: PTSD Building Blocks

It's been three weeks since we first arrived to Lionel's dark frown on Elise's doorstep, hoping that she was safe, hoping we would be safe with her. She has not let us down.

Lionel is not an affectionate man by expression but he's warmed up a lot to us, and especially, he indulges Alexandria, which is kind of a blessing, because I still don't know how to handle her. She still doesn't speak often, maybe only once or twice a day. At least we know she can speak. Maybe she was always a quiet child, though I can't see it. When she sits in the living room with a tea set that Lionel has brought her, having afternoon tea with her elephant and a purple lion with glasses on, she really seems to enjoy her make-believe.

Maybe she is pretending. Maybe she is pretending as hard as I am.

I still cry. Every morning, when the sun hits. It's getting hotter, nowadays, the summer is about to hit in full swing. The heat is uncomfortable and you would think it would curb the tantrums. It doesn't. It just makes me more glad for the showers after. My grief never waivers. I'm sure they've all heard it, at one point or another. I can't explain myself to them. I just pretend.

Felix is twenty-four. I asked, eventually. It was awkward at first, but eventually, things went back to normal. He watches a movie nearly every night, and Elise and I watch it with him. I guess it gives us all a good reason not to speak to each other. Sometimes Elise picks a movie. Felix has offered me, but I defer to him, every time. It's not that I don't like movies. It's that I don't think I could bear it to sit here in a house and pick out a movie when I know what is happening outside.

The Mountain is still standing.

The watchtowers are all gone – destroyed, one by one, in utter ruin under headlines of papers. Elise reminds me I can use her computer to get the latest news. I'd rather have the papers. Something about holding it in my hands means it's real. With the watch towers went most of the wall. The Corps have retreated to the main mountain, holding their own there.

I wish I could talk to them. Just once. In fact, no, I don't wish that. It would hurt too much. I just want somebody to tell me who is still there and who is not. Who have I lost? I know, at some point, they will all be gone, and with it, my last hopes, but right now, I want to know. I won't know.

The mountain is not the only thing making headlines. Riots in the streets. Vampires and their friends, desperately trying to take back governmental buildings. Bashed, beaten, shot in the street, all of them. Anybody on the right side of history gave up rioting last week. By now, all of Lamyra is in the hands of HURS. They have set up a parliament of their own choosing, in a pretend ceremony of democracy, and issued law after law. They've appointed their own police commanders and special divisions. 

To be a vampire requires the death penalty. To house or aid a vampire, five to ten years in a correction facility. The papers have been careful how they word it, but I'm willing to bet the conditions aren't good. To be in possession of Bablets, ten years prison. Pro-vampire propaganda, ten years prison. Citizens are subject to random and unannounced control checks.

We watch a riot on the news. They have to be careful how they put it. They can't be seen under this new coup, to be condoning the riots. Even neutral coverage is worded in strange, clipped phrases. We're left with words like violent outburst of renegades and dissidents while we watch images of teenagers and old men on the ground with unmoving eyes open, bleeding down into the roadside gutters.

We watch, well after dark, when Andrea has gone to sleep. The four of us, sitting on the couch and chairs.

We watch people – normal citizens, with no training like ours – pick rocks up off dusty streets and hurl them towards men in riot gear. We watch the rubber bullets go, and then the real ones. We watch in total silence as water cannons are deployed. What few vampires dare show their faces are aimed for with precision. The humans that stand by them barely fare better. They are beaten with clubs when the HURS forces get close enough, electrocuted. We watch a huge man take down a girl – couldn't be over fifteen – and bash her skull in with a crowbar until she stops moving and there's a pool of blood under her head.