Sanctuary - 2. Chapter 2 - Hel

Hel ran his hands through his hair and closed his eyes. For the first time in two months he was warm, safe, and alone. It was also the first time in a long time he had been completely naked, because washing in restroom sinks and public toilets was risky at best and also usually pretty cold. He’d just washed the bits that showed whenever he could, and every now and then stripped off his top to scrub his chest and back. He hated doing it though, because every time a mirror would show him how skinny and emaciated he was becoming. Aki’s bathroom however was now so full of steam Hel didn’t mind so much as he stepped out of the shower, feeing clean for the first time in a long time. One look at his old clothes made his nose wrinkle in disgust, because Hel could see in the bright light how filthy he had been, and in made him want to be sick – not that there was anything in his stomach to throw up anyway. Instead he wrapped himself in a towel so fluffy to the boy’s raw nerve endings that it may as well have been a cloud and stood at the sink and brushed his teeth.

He hadn’t missed little luxuries like being clean and having good teeth for a while, because the things that made you itch, or ache, or be generally uncomfortable were very quickly overtaken by hunger. When you were hungry, being cold didn’t seem so bad, because all you could think about was being hungry. Hel had been hungry for so long he had almost forgotten what it was like not to be. Now he stared down at himself underneath the towel and tried to focus on the deep gnawing sensation that seemed as much an unwelcome part of himself as the four foot creature in his mind, and wondered what it would be like to be free of it.

Hel wrapped himself in a second towel, stepped over the bag of his clothes and trod softly across Aki’s landing. The house was small, and a lot like the one he had grown up in with his foster parents; the sort of handy-homes which had carpeted huge swathes of surrounding countryside during the nineties. Hel wondered if his foster parents or his old friends would even recognise him now. He was skinny, more than skinny, and Hel felt the bony width of his wrist between two fingers as he went downstairs. He certainly wasn’t the boy he’d been before… Hel shivered. No one would be asking him to Captain the under sixteen’s cricket team again anytime soon. He was just thankful he had found the house, and he wouldn’t be spending the night shivering in an alleyway somewhere.

“Hey,” Aki was standing in the kitchen, examining the back of a frozen pizza box as though it might contain the answers to important questions about the primal existence of the universe. “Feeling better?”

“Thank you,” Hel glanced up at him, and then stared at his bare feet. He couldn’t bring himself to smile.

“Food’ll be a minute,” Aki ran his fingers through his hair and sighed, “so…”

Hel shuffled on the lino floor and pulled the towel tighter around him. He was suddenly very aware that he was naked underneath it, and once again he was not alone. Aki didn’t look dangerous, but Hel knew better than most that appearances could be deceiving. You never knew what was hiding under the surface, and Aki looked perfectly human, but underneath the heavenly pizza aroma, he smelt like burnt things.

“Right, clothes…” Aki seemed to be completely unaware of what Hel was thinking about him, and moved around the boy without much notice for how close he came. Hel automatically turned to watch him, never showing the young man his back, and stepping back on toes and front pads of his feet: Hel didn’t want to flee out into the night in just a towel, but he knew he would if the other option was more suffering. “They’ll be a bit big for you, but they’re clean,” Aki held out the pile of folded fabric to Hel, but the boy didn’t reach for it, “Hel?”

“Thank you,” Hel was very aware that he hadn’t moved. He really wanted to step forwards and take the clothes: they looked warm and soft and comfortable, but he didn’t dare. Once upon a time he’d had all the confidence a teenager could wish for, too much in fact, and now he was scared of what might happen to him. When Aki took a step forwards Hel wrinkled his nose. “Pizza’s burning.”

“Shit!” Aki dropped the pile as he fled to the oven, and Hel scooped up the clothes.

No sooner did his fingers touch the soft fabric than he let go of his towel and began to pull them on. A thick and baggy hoodie, a pair of loose fitting boxers, and some slightly too long in the leg sweats that had seen better days; but to Hel they were perfect. It was the sort of thing he had tended to wear before… back when county cricket championships were the biggest stress in his life, and he’d had no idea what it was like to be on the receiving end of a fist.

“Sorry,” Aki was slicing pizza on the counter top, “I’m not exactly what you might call ‘culinary proficient’.”

“You don’t say?” Hel quipped. The moment the words were out of his mouth, he clapped his hand over his jaw in shock. Aki just raised an eyebrow at him. Apparently it hadn’t taken more than a shower and a fresh set of clothes to have him feeling even a little like himself again.

“I could always let you order takeaway, but then there would be the question of how you’d pay…” Aki took a breath and Hel could see him calm down. He knew he’d never been perceptive before either. Instead of answering, Hel hung his head and shuffled his bare feet, feeling stupid for what he’s said. To his surprise, a plate of unequal pizza slices was pushed under his nose. “Eat up kid. You still look like a stiff breeze could blow you over.”

“You’re not going to kick me out?”

“For being a prat?” Aki scoffed, “no, I won’t be. Anyway, looking after you is sort of my job now: you did claim sanctuary.”

Hel blinked at him several times, hardly daring to believe his ears.

“Come sit down, Hel. I ain’t gonna bite you.”

The boy followed his new companion back into the lounge and sat on the sofa where he had woken up. It had a lingering smell of his filth and fear, but the hot dry scent of Aki was a lot stronger in the room.

“What are you anyway?”

“I’m a Rectory Officer,” Aki replied shortly, “and anyway, I could ask you the same thing, though I get a feeling you’re not going to tell me.” Hel shook his head violently, and began to wolf down the pizza like it might vanish if he didn’t. “OK, another question then: how long have to been out on the streets.”

“Three months. I think,” he didn’t know exactly what day it was, but he had a very clear memory of the day it had happened, “I just sort of ran.”

“From what?” Aki perched on the arm of the sofa at the other end, “you don’t have to tell me, but it might help if you do.”

“You don’t wanna know my problems.”

“I told you already,” the burnt-flavoured man sighed, “it’s my job.”

“What is a Rectory Officer anyways?” Hel asked, head to one side. As soon as he noticed the gesture, he flinched upright again: he’d always done it, and now that he knew why, he hated the gesture.

“It’s a-,” Aki blinked at him, “what? How do you not know? You came here, remember?”

“Just before I ran away, I met this old woman,” Hel frowned as he tried to pin the memory down; it had seemed so clear before, “at least, it might have been an old woman. She said if I ever got into trouble, I had to claim sanctuary. But not at the house of god.” Hel shook his head, “I thought she was nuts at the time. She had a shopping cart full of random crap.”

“But how did you find the house?”

“It…” Hel paused. He had been dead tired, cold through to the marrow, and so hungry he’d barely been able to put one foot in the front of the other. He didn’t remember actually finding the house, or settling on the step. He remembered knocking, scratching pathetically against the painted wood, but he hadn’t remembering being asleep until Aki had woken him. He didn’t know what had made him say the word, but it had felt like… “Instinct. Thank you for taking me in Aki.”

“You’re welcome; now let’s make you up a bed. You know how to put pillowcases on, right?”

“Yes dad…” Hel rolled his eyes.

“And whatever instinct that is,” Aki growled, “get a leash on it. I am so not old enough to be your father.”

*

Hel opened his eyes and looked down at his sleeping body. It had happened again, completely without warning, and Hel was only glad it was some stupid time in the early morning, and at least Aki wouldn’t find out he wasn’t in control of his body. Hel flexed his toes and watched the shining blue pulses that made up his shape move and glow like stars in the dark. Things were different in the spirit world, and Hel looked down at his body through a filter that sapped the colour from everything. Even knowing that, he was shocked by how dead he looked. If it hadn’t been for the very faint rise and fall of his chest, Hel could have easily imagined he was lying dead in the bed Aki had made up for him. His body, his solid, human body, might have been thin and weak, his skin pale and without softness, but the shape he inhabited now was drawn in a series of bold lines and pulsing points of light, and Hel glanced across the room to the mirror, and saw the shape of the ethereal wolf he inhabited, standing over his human body on the bed. He sighed and lay down, his shape of light passing through the flesh and bones of his body so that the wolf was actually curled up in part of his own chest cavity. Hel could feel, with senses finer than touch, the heartbeat of the boy he wished he was. It was perfectly in time with the pulse of the blue light making up the wolf. Hel laid his head on his paws, and wondered how long it could last.

The second time it had happened, Hel had remembered what they’d been told in sex education classes since primary school: at puberty the body changed, and because of the hormones, sometimes you didn’t feel in control of it. But by comparison, this was an awful sick joke. Hel felt lucky that he had separated from his physical form whilst he slept, because otherwise his human body would have simply crumpled to the floor as the wolf leapt out from it. It was debilitating not to have any sort of control over the process, to watch in horror as his body fell to the floor. He’d hit his head the first time, and by the time he’d come back had a mild concussion and a lot of questions to deal with: and that hadn’t even been the worst one.

He was tired, but he wasn’t sleepy, so Hel left the bed and paced towards the door. The spirit world was weird, because whilst the bed had been solid under his paws and his body not, he could push his way through things if he concentrated hard enough. Now he put his shoulder against the door, his nose brushing the carpet, and hoped that he managed to focus his energy sideways rather than fall into the kitchen below. Hel grunted, and then padded across the hallway on his silent feet. The burning scent was stronger with the wolf’s nose, and Hel followed it by slipping through the wall into Aki’s room as though it wasn’t there.

His host was in bed, asleep. Hel blinked at him. The real world was washed of saturated colour, but Aki glowed. Just under the surface of his skin, and brighter in his hands, there was fire. It moved like lava touching the air, a slightly blackened deep red crust constantly cracking and shifting to expose fresh glowing hot fire underneath. There were many more cracks in Aki’s hands, but the heat didn’t seem to be having any effect on the surrounding soft furnishings. Hel could still make out his host’s features, even in the filtered light of the spirit world, and so he noticed when Aki’s eyes flashed open in the dark. The wolf didn’t move, but he didn’t panic. He was a spirit, and so far he’d been invisible to everyone in his glowing blue shape. But Aki smiled at him.

“Well, that’s sort of interesting.”