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[CENTER]2
Weak[/CENTER]
“Do you want your medication now?” Llewellyn asked gingerly.
I nodded without words, Llewellyn’s suspicious eyes flickering toward my direction. Llewellyn brought me little white pills for me to swallow like a good boy. Yeah right; I didn’t want to care for my health. I was going to die anyway, and my father wanted it that way. Why try?
I swallowed them anyway, not because I cared about myself, but because I cared about Llewellyn.
I nodded in silence again and Llewellyn gave me a look of question.
“You’re lying. I’ve been your doctor for fourteen years and I know that when you’re sad, you don’t talk.”
He dropped down to my height and put a hand on my shoulder. I shivered; I wasn’t used to physical affection. My father and oldest brother Kristopher were against it. My middle brother Jagger was affectionate, but those times were few and far between.
“Tell me, Xander- was it your father who broke your wrist?”
After a moment, I nodded. I wasn’t mourning for my broken wrist, but for Llewellyn’s inner conflicts. Llewellyn’s allegiance to my father was indefinite, though I knew he wanted to take my side. In truth, he hated my father.
I could understand why, but although, I couldn’t blame my father for being so cruel. I have Silver’s Disease, the sickness where you could easily die from transforming. ‘The Silver Monster’ as the pups called it, was a disease that randomly shuts down vital organs during the transformation process. If the disease were to attack my heart, for example, I would go into cardiac arrest. Therefore, it would disable me from transforming.
I frequently blamed myself for my condition, though the pack was already doing it for me. I never told anyone, not even Jagger or Llewellyn, for the fact that they would tell me it was not so. I didn’t want their pity, or their kind words for the fact that I didn’t deserve them.
Our people say it was the bidding of the Mistress Moon- only the weak get Silver’s Disease. Therefore, the strong would get stronger and the weak would get weaker. I was the monster in the closet to the pups, which was why they’ve never interacted with me.
Llewellyn’s words snapped me out of my stupor.
“Are you alright, little one?”
I would always growl at that name- Little One. That was, in my mind, what you would call someone who was weak.
When he would ruffle my hair, which only made me growl more, he would say another Eastern proverb about pride as he organized my father’s pills. I never asked Llewellyn about my father’s sickness, thought I wanted to.
I got up from my spot on the examination table and helped the doctor prepare others’ medications. In a way, I owed Llewellyn more than the world.
I felt like hurting Llewellyn, even emotionally, would be the worst thing in the world because he seemed untainted. He was the kind of person whom I could never degrade, because he never degraded me. It didn’t matter to him that I was totally consumed with anger for my condition. The only thing that mattered to him was that I was his friend, and somehow, we both filled a void for each other.
For taking the position that my father left behind when he found out I was of no use to him, I was eternally grateful to Llewellyn. I never asked Llewellyn about what kind of ‘void’ I filled, and why he’d chosen me to become friends with instead of a stronger person. I knew how it felt to be on the other end of a tender subject being brought up, and I would get a chilling sensation whenever I remembered the feeling of being asked about my condition. So, no matter how much I wanted to know, I promised myself that I would never ask unless Llewellyn brought it up himself.
That was my vow, second to never crying again. I’d done enough of that, and being nearly fifteen-years-old, I was tired of being weak.
“Is there something bothering you, little one?” Llewellyn asked me. “If your heart is hurting, you can tell me.”
Llewellyn was sweet, sickly sweet. Compared to him, I was jaded; it made me feel unworthy of his kindness. But he was right- my chest was compressing, making me experience an entirely new sensation that I’d failed to push away. That particular sensation, I’d found out later, was sadness. Though, it was unnecessary sadness.
I looked into Llewellyn’s eyes to see if he was serious or not. But when I did look, I realized that he wasn’t serious- he was sincere. I pulled my eyes away from his, my unruly bangs covering my eyes to hide my vulnerability.
“I’m not hurting, Llewellyn.” I lied. “I’m just angry.”
“To let your anger consume you is to burn an innocent man, whether it be you or someone else.”
There was seriousness in his voice.
“Believe me when I say this, little one- you don’t need any more fire in your spirit. Sometimes, it’s good to put it out.”
Llewellyn’s voice was gentle after he’d said that. It made me nearly paralyzed, or at least in so much shock that I didn’t even notice him leaving the infirmary. But as he was exiting, something stopped him.
“Oh, I almost forgot.”
Llewellyn left a letter on the examination table. The letter was in an old-style envelope, and it was sealed. To verify, I read my name in the center- ‘Alexander Richardson’.
Though, intrigue led me to see what was inside. All of the friends and family I had were within the pack, and I lived in the same house as all of them. I couldn’t think of a reason why they would want to send a message to me by letter.
“It was in my mailbox.”
“Who gave it to you?”
Llewellyn scratched his neck. “I don’t know. I never saw anyone put it in, and it doesn’t have a return address.”
When Llewellyn left the room, I shrugged and opened the envelope. The stationary was made out of yellowing paper. The words were etched in black ink, and they were in cursive. Whoever had written this letter had very girly handwriting. With a scoff, I decided to read it.
Dear Alexander Richardson,
If you think that you are a monster in the closet, you don’t know what a monster is. I am the one who hushes the livestock, who feeds on fear and who lives for that one final kill. That one final kill will be your father…tonight. If you alert anyone who might have the power to stop me, you and all others involved will be exterminated. There is nothing you can do. You are a diseased weakling who will die if you try to stop me.
Sincerely,
X
That’s all it was signed with- a big, black ‘X’.
My hands were trembling, and I was starting to laugh nervously. “Jag’s such a jerk. He’s trying to pull a prank on me. Figures- I am the ‘pup’ after all.”
The letter was, though I didn’t realize it at the time, a warning. I had tucked its words in the back of my mind, and there it would manifest into the truth.
