The Gullibility of Demons by Sakiv Koch

Author:Sakiv Koch [Koch, Sakiv]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Immersive Stories
Published: 2020-06-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11:

The Synthetic Son

Behind terrifying fury came reassuring kindness. Maya rushed into the library. She was flustered and in a tearing hurry, but she squeezed Smast’s shoulder in a gesture of support and understanding as she passed him. She went down on her knees and gathered Pragvi into her arms. The old woman began to rock the distraught girl, crooning a song in her ear, as though Pragvi were an infant.

Pragvi cried for several minutes, interminable minutes during which Vir continued to flay Smast with that unsettling half-glare of his, minutes during which, Smast, in turn, gazed steadfastly at the weeping, desolate girl whose happiness, whose wellbeing had begun mattering so much to him he could do absolutely anything to take away every last drop of the acidic guilt that ate at her day and night.

He couldn’t believe that he had known her for just about twenty-four hours. An unnameable, pre-made bond had existed between them from almost the first moment of laying their eyes on each other. It was inexplicable, impossible, but it was there, somehow spanning multiple dimensions of time, which had to include a time yet to come.

I shall come back to her. I am meant to come back to her, no matter what —

Something heavy alighted on his shoulder, making him jump, breaking the train of his revelatory thoughts.

“Don’t be afraid, boy,” Vir said in a gruff but not unkind voice, removing his hand from Smast’s shoulder. “I may look like a malevolent ghost, but I haunt and devour no one. Come, you are not well and you have a long journey to make tomorrow.”

Vir then shifted his hand to Smast’s upper arm and began to steer him out of that magnificent library, down the stairs, out of the palace, and back into the backstreet. Droplets of Smast’s blood left a faint trail in his wake, going all the way back to where Pragvi sat sobbing upstairs.

The man and the boy limped in synchronisation. They stopped at the entrance to the tent. “I am going to request Dr. Sharma to come out and take a look at your leg,” Vir said. “Someone will shortly bring you your dinner. The driver who will take you home in the morning will wake you up at 5 A.M. Our good doctor will accompany you on your journey. Princess Pragvi’s orders.” Vir paused and turned so that the burnt half of his body was hidden from Smast’s view. “You are one lucky boy,” Vir added as he walked away.

In a few minutes, the doctor, the food, and then a tenuous sleep came to Smast.

***

The lonesome, weak moon, with its borrowed light and its pallid complexion, hung back diffidently in the sky. The community of the floodlights living in the backstreet hummed their electric song in an intimate chorus.

Horribly burnt, bleeding creatures with bodies of men and heads of dogs came springing at Smast with bared fangs. He writhed and tossed in his sleep, continually begging an illuminated figure sitting at a faraway desk to forgive herself.

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