DEAN

“It’s working. Our stunts at the temples have succeeded and the people are up in arms about this. They’ll report every Talent they can and we’ll have their votes in the next election. Thank you, sire. We will forever be in your debt. Those Talents don’t know what’s coming for them.”

Dean’s father grinned at the man before him. A man with everything, Dean’s father, the King of Ngai, had never looked so brutal. As though he could hear Dean’s thoughts, his father’s gaze turned towards him. He sneered, ever so briefly.

“Daria, this is my lovely son, Dean, the young prince who will one day be crowned,” he crowed, playing an awful game, beckoning Dean over with a flick of his wrist. Dean would never be the Prince. He’d make sure to commit suicide before that happened.

“Oh!” Daria exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “How delightful, planning on taking up your father’s work, Prince?” His eyes looked eager. His father kicked his shin after a second of his silence. It went unnoticed by Daria, but Dean immediately replied, “Yes.”

“Ah, Bravo! A fine young lad in the making. Maybe he’ll be able to overlook the new restrictions in Chiri, Ay? King of Ngai and the Prince of Chiri, what a team! Wouldn’t have expected any less from you, Your Highness.”

His father grunted a reply. Dean’s stomach was in knots. He never knew why he couldn’t defy his father. Everytime he tried to, it was as though his father had already driven a knife through his heart. As though his father had already won.

Noise suddenly erupted from outside, causing Dean to flinch. The door of the parlor room burst open as two police officers came in, each carrying the arm of a young girl between them.

Dean recognized her. She had always sold him flowers at a bargain price when he got them for his sister before she had disappeared. Seeing her here made him want to turn invisible. Her blond hair was a bird’s nest, unlike the tidy braid she normally wore. Her shirt was ripped open, revealing her undershirt, stained in blood. Her mouth, too, was covered in it, and when she spit at his father when they were in close range, that was red as well.

“You’ll have to kill me before I let one of your bastard men have me as a pet,” She said, her voice no longer high and dainty. Here, she was a cornered beast, ferocious, her eyes laced with fear and fury. Dean felt the same way when he saw his father. It wouldn’t comfort her to know that, though.

His father wiped the spit off his brow and grinned wildly at her.

“Oh don’t worry about that. By the time they’re done with you, you’ll be praying to be on a leash.”

She shrieked, high pitched, so loud that the stained glass windows smashed and their potted ivy browned. She sang to the flowers before. He had thought she was pretty when she did. He had almost asked her to go with him to walk in Albersi Garden, but then convinced himself out of it. His father would kill him.

“Take her to the dungeons for now,” he said to the guards. Then to her, “Kisin is a bit full right now, but not to worry. A new wing is being constructed as we speak.”

At the name “Kisin”, her face paled, and screams rippled out of her, one after the other. Dean felt blood dripping from his ear as they came, pleas, cries for help. Then nothing. A guard had shoved a rag in her mouth. She was led away to her cell. His father sighed.

“This is the second time we’ll have to repair our windows this week.”

Later that night, Dean slipped to the basement, biscuits poking out of his pockets. He had done this ever since their first prisoner came. They asked him to rescue them, to defy his father. He tried to find his words, to explain why he couldn’t, but his voice failed him. Their fingernails dug into his wrists.

The dungeons were nothing like the cells they kept average criminals in. These were all white, padded and the door thick and heavy. Once, he had asked a guard about it.

“They’re modelled after Kisin,” he had said, “The white is so they can see their own blood clearly, and understand why they shouldn’t exist.”

Dean had cried that night, for the first time in ages. Mourning over white walls.

None of the prisoners looked up as he passed the biscuits through to them. Some hadn’t eaten since they’d come. The new girl threw it hard against the padded wall. The biscuit slid down, crumbs jumping from their attacker.

She looked up. Recognition flashed in her eyes, mixed with hope, and then finally, disappointment. She had discovered the cold hard truth that bubbled out of him; he was just as much a prisoner as any one of them. He rubbed his neck as if feeling for the T that should be there, but was not.

He returned to his bedroom, or cell, that night, even more angry with himself. The ghosts caught his hands as he went, most with T’s on their necks, vacant eyes and furious, cold hands. The mother and her child were at the window, looking at the city below.

When the mother turned, half of her face was missing. She put a finger to her lips and Dean wanted to scream. She was the thing of nightmares, a ghoul screaming endlessly into his ear each night. He had asked her numerous times for her backstory, why she screamed, and even how to evade his father. Each time, it resulted in more screaming.

He wondered if his father was responsible for her death, like so many of the other ghosts that roamed the halls. They had told him their stories and ignored him once they realized he was unable to commit revenge in their name. This ghost was unique in that the only sounds that had ever left her lips were endless screams. There were some nights he felt bad for her; other nights, his ears were practically bleeding due to the noise.

He had once tried to escape the house- right after his mother had disappeared and he began seeing ghosts. He knew his father was aware of his Talent, and didn’t want to stay any longer. Though his father didn’t yet have the dungeon, he had his strong views on Talents. Pests of Ngai, he called them. He put all his investments into Kisin. Dean had made it to the open market when a buggie had pulled up beside him. Two men dragged him into the car and dumped him in front of his father. You will never leave again, he had said. Dean woke up broken and bloody in his bed the next day.

He never tried to leave again.