Protector, Protector (BL)

There was a knock at the door at 11:30 PM. It was late, and the weather had been stormy and dark all day. Azame didn’t make it a habit to be up that late, but something had had his nerves tingling. Perhaps it had been the thunder that rumbled against the sides of their house and shook the tin roof above their heads. He laid awake in his bed with his blankets all the way up to his chest, held tight in his clenched fists. The knocks on the front door were hurried, almost frantic. He could hear his grandmother and mother arguing in the hallway just outside his room. They were quiet, but Azame could hear. He always could hear. The shadows on his walls grew that night, getting larger and larger until they spilled out onto the ceiling. They whispered to him with thick, hazy voices that terrified him down to the bone. He shook as he sat up in his bed, his eyes turned hazy and distant. Azame could feel himself walking, opening a door and walking further. His hand raised up on its own and he pointed to the door. It was almost as if he could see on the other side like an X Ray machine. He could see the horrible dark fleshed creature that sat in front of him. It’s jagged teeth were crooked into a grin and it cackled just outside of their door. It’s flesh was torn and bloodied from it’s long walk over treacherous miles of horror. He was terrified but he walked closer.  “Azame!” His mother hissed as she grabbed his shoulder. Azame could feel her but he couldn’t move his body. It was like he’d turned into a statue, stiff and paralyzed as he pointed at the door. “Mom, what’s happening to him?”  “Murder. Blood. Hatred. So much hatred,” Azame mumbled to himself as he felt that hazy redness bleeding in through the door. He could see what the creature had done as it stood out on their front porch. He could see the shadows of the bodies it had brought along with it. Lakes filled with blood and bone.  Azame stepped closer and he was just inches from the door. At nine years old, he barely came up to the door handle. He’d always been a small child growing up, always a foot behind all his other peers. So he could see the rotten fingers pushing in through the mail slot on the door wiggling and taunting, but he just couldn’t reach the peephole his father had harped on. His mother stepped closer to him and squeezed his shoulder tightly. Her long brown hair fell around him like a curtain and he briefly could feel her dragging him away from the door. In his mother’s arms, he almost felt safe. His mother always made him feel safe. “Knock, Knock, Knock let me in so I can see you,” Azame found himself saying, but the words were so terrifying his eyes welled up with tears. He had no control over his body as he reached forward and rapped his knuckles against the door with each word he spoke.  “Come on Azame, let’s go back to bed. Mom will see what the stranger wants.”  Big, fat tears rolled down his cheeks. He wanted to tell his mom what he saw. He wanted to scream and cry and tell her ‘Don’t Open the door. Don’t ever open that door’. But all he could do was point and shake like the skeletal trees in the bitter, wintry wind. His mom looked down at him briefly before glancing towards the door. She bit her lip before nodding at his grandmother. “Get 911 on the phone. Just in case,” his mother stated before reaching out towards the door handle. Her hand grasped its cold metal. “Hello, what’s wrong?”  “Help me!” The thing on the other side cried. “It hurts! It hurts so much! I’m in so much pain. Help me! Help ME!”  Don’t open the door Mom. Please don’t open the door. But his mother was a kind woman, a woman of compassion and humanity. She opened the door and Azame screamed. It was an inhuman scream as he faced the creature on the other side, unable to move. It cackled at him and lunged forward. Long inky black tendrils pierced through his mother’s chest almost immediately as the person stepped inside. It cackled hatefully with blood red eyes narrowed in on the woman it’d grabbed.  His mother stared down at the tendrils inside her chest, right as blood bubbled up between her lips. She looked shocked. Her blood had sprayed across Azame’s face, staining it. Azame’s hands shook as he reached up to touch the wetness on his cheeks. His eyes watered, his chin trembled.  “M-Mom,” Azame whispered in horror as the monster shifted behind him. Another set of tendrils struck the ground just a few inches away from Azame’s foot. The monster peered down at him happily and Azame finally realized what stood across from him. What inhuman creature it was. It should have been a man, but it’s skin was paper thin and its chest bare and pale. A mass of dark tendrils sprang up from the center of its back and the thinner ones had curved around its shoulders to strike his mother and himself. The thicker ones were planted right before Azame’s feet. The only reason it hadn’t gotten Azame was because his Grandmother had drug him backwards.  “It’s too late!” His Grandmother shouted as she pushed him behind her. “Leave her, there’s nothing we can do.”   Perhaps, it had been too late. Azame started to bawl, bringing his hands up to his eyes in a feeble attempt to stifle his cries. The creature finally dropped his mother and she fell limply to the floor. It reached forward and thrusted its hand straight through his mother’s chest, pulling out the severed heart from her ribcage. It laughed as it devoured it in one big gulp and Azame fell to his knees in a sob right as it lunged for his grandmother.    Three hours later, Azame found himself lying on a hospital bed with twenty seven new stitches in his chest and wounds that would take forever to heal. He wrapped the blankets tightly around his shoulders and managed to finally sit up.  The hospital was quiet and only filled with the night nurses who were running aid to other patients. They didn’t look at him, they didn’t even talk to him despite how early it was in the morning. He managed to look over at his window and his heart beat furiously against his chest when he saw shadows outside the window. He was nine, he shouldn’t have been afraid of the dark and with the hallway lights seeping in through the door, it shouldn’t have even been that dark. But it was terrifying.  There was a knock at the door and Azame turned his head to see a young boy standing across from him. The boy’s eyes were just as red as Azame’s and he looked tired. He offered Azame a smile before stepping inside the room.  “W-Who are you?” Azame asked in terror, getting ready to get out of the bed and run. He didn’t know where he’d run, but he’d try.  “It’s ok,” the boy reassured and a sense of calm seemed to settle over Azame. “You’ve been through a lot. I’m Ajax.” “I recognize the name,” Azame commented in shock and the boy simply nodded. He came to sit beside Azame. He wasn’t much older than Azame, maybe a few months or so. He had long black hair that fell over his shoulders and deep blue eyes. The boy was smaller and different with copper colored skin and a steady hand. Something a nine year old shouldn’t have. He was odd.  “You should,” he said as he reached forward and grabbed Azame’s hand. He pressed it to his chest and it was like electricity arced between the two. Azame suddenly saw everything, and he saw nothing. Endless, dark, nothing. “I know everything about you. I’ve known you since you were born, but you didn’t necessarily know me.”  “I’m sorry,” Ajax started gently. “It was my fault that your mom and grandmother didn’t make it. I should have gotten there sooner.” “What are they?” Azame whispered, eyes welling up with tears once more. He could see their faces through the shadows now, terrifying faces that had deep red eyes and blood stained teeth. Just like the one that had stood over his mother’s body and tore her heart free from her chest. “This is a lot to spring on you tonight, but my… my mother is waiting to move us somewhere safe so you can heal but…” Ajax paused and he took a deep breath. “You’re not human Azame. But that doesn’t mean you should be afraid.” Being a kid who’d grown up reading comics of superheroes, he should have been hopeful. Excited, even. This was his chance to become a superhero. Instead, he could only feel the cooling blood on his cheeks from the events of that night. He could still see that monster eat his mother’s heart. He couldn’t imagine anything but horror. His hands shook. Ajax reached forward and grasped Azame’s hand in his own.  “I know how terrifying this sounds, but what you faced tonight wasn’t human. It came to your house to tear your vocal cords out and eat them, to sever your heart from your chest and devour it just like…” Ajax paused before shaking his head. “I wish that you didn’t have to see the world like this, but you can't afford to be a child anymore.” “I-I’m only nine…” Azame whispered. “My dad… he’s going to find mom and…”  Ajax shook his head gently. “There’s no one left. You’re alone now, but you don’t have to be. You can come with me and we’ll get you somewhere safe, with others of your own kind so you can learn and get stronger…”  “Dad,” Azame was crying again and he was used to his grandmother scolding him for being such a crybaby, but there was no one to scold him now. Ajax looked at him sadly, but he didn’t speak. Not for awhile.  “Come with me Azame, if we wait any longer, they’ll find you once again. I’m not strong enough to take on a Shadow full on yet. I’m still small,” Ajax replied.  Azame didn’t want to leave. His heart still longed for his mom to walk in the door and run over to gather him up in her arms. For his grandmother to scold him in that knowing tone of hers only for his dad to joke and cheer him up. If he waited long enough, they would come to get him and they’d get to go home.  But the ache in his chest from his wounds reminded him that something bad had happened. Something he couldn’t face and that he was in danger. He could feel the goosebumps rising on the back of his neck. He could feel the way his sweat turned cold as the shadows on the walls seemed to lengthen once more, and how the howling wind outside seemed to be foreboding of his demise. He wanted to stay, but his instincts told him he couldn’t.  “You’ll help me?” He asked.  Ajax smiled at him before patting his own chest. “From the second you were born, we were soulmates. Of course I’ll help you. My only job is to help you. Now come on, let’s get out of here and somewhere safe.” “Ok,” Azame finally agreed.