Chapter 8.4: Lemons and Bleach

Gabriel drank more juice boxes and hid outside in the balcony, listening to the shouts and laughs of people down below, the thumping of stereos, and watched them dance, wanting to join in.

Everything was different now that he was aware of the past few months.

He was mortified .

Gabriel pushed his back onto the wall, and slowly slid down as he recalled all the people he ate, all the weird conversations he and Carlos had staring into each other's eyes, and he sat down on the warm balcony floor, hugging his knees close to his body, and trying to push the memories out of his mind.

It was impossible.

Every time he closed his eyes, all he remembered was his obsession with Carlos, and he didn't want to go back to the insanity, he wanted to be his own person, but he was afraid that there wasn't a lot of Gabriel left.

Carlos opened the balcony door to check in on him and gave him a soft smile.

Gabriel looked away in disgust at his fangs, and Carlos quickly shut his mouth.

"We're going out, and I think, just possibly, you might be able to handle coming out with us in a crowd," Carlos mumbled.

"Because she made me her drone, right," Gabriel replied.

"I've been able to control you this entire time, but I've been unable to stop your hunger, she's helping you out," Carlos said.

"It doesn't feel like it."

Carlos shut the door behind him and sat next to Gabriel on the ground, which just caused him to tense up, and shirk away.

"Now that you're… better," Carlos said, trying to choose the right words, "let's talk."

Gabriel talked about the unspoken things that none of them spoke about because it was easier to pretend that they were not miserable living forever, that they were not miserable addicted to sex, food, or killing, or whatever new obsession they had for the decade.

"You wouldn't want to be human if you didn't feel like nothing was wrong," Gabriel said.

Carlos looked at Gabriel and he truly understood him without words this time.

They sat, but it wasn't an uncomfortable silence, it was just uncomfortable, as the people down below in the parking lot were still playing music and dancing until the police came and cleared them out so they could do it all again tomorrow night.

Now it was an uncomfortable silence because they could no longer talk by thoughts and feelings alone, and Gabriel was still embarrassed, and Carlos could smell it, the smell of lemons and bleach.

Momo opened the door to the balcony, stuck her head out, pushed up her sunglasses, and had bad news.

"I have to go, there's a family meeting in Norway."

"Why would we meet up in Norway," Gabriel asked.

"Me. Just me. Father can come, but you can't, the family is angry with you right now Gabriel," Momo replied.

"I've done nothing!"

Momo shook her head and stopped arguing with him and started to address Carlos.

"You can come if you want, the meeting is supposed to be on the 20th, but it's also the day you have your, you know, devil thing," Momo said.

"You can just tell me, right," Carlos replied. "I want to go, but it must be important if we're meeting up in Norway."

"What's so special about that," Gabriel asked.

"It has the most daylight out of any other place in the world," Carlos explained. "No other family can bother us there; we have entire towns where no one can hurt us."

"Yeah, the castle helps as well," Momo added.

"Carlos let's go. That sounds way more important than almost dying again for a cure that might not even exist," Gabriel said.

Carlos got up from the ground and said nothing because he wasn't the sort of man to argue, and he walked past Momo, gathered a few clothes off the bed, and silently walked into the bathroom.

Gabriel waited outside, and then the sound of the shower went off, and Momo giggled as the smell of anger trickled out of him, burning tires and ash, and Carlos's answer was clear, that he wasn't going to argue any longer when he had made up his mind.

"I'll be back as soon as possible," Momo grinned. "You guys have a great honeymoon."

"Take your time," Gabriel whispered. "Don't be in a rush to come back."

Momo took her time leaving, fretting over Carlos when he got out of the shower and promising she would come back with something to deal with his little issue .

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March 19th

The party was almost at its roaring height, as the clock struck midnight, the streets of Stull flooded with teenagers and young adults and cultists preparing for another party, trying to make it better than the last. Gabriel drank the most juice boxes he ever had in his entire afterlife, trying to stave off the temptation of so much food.

Bare midriffs, arms, and necks exposed on this warm spring night. Young women dressed like sexy angels and demons, men in nothing but speedos and painted in all black, it was a walking buffet, young, lean, meat, and freshly prepared just for him.

No one would notice if a few people went missing, he told himself. Most of them are hooligans anyway , Gabriel continued. Carlos saw his intense gaze and had an iron grip on his wrist as they walked towards the cemetery, and the closer they got to the cemetery the larger the crowd became.

Tall, barbed wire fences surrounded the small cemetery, and three police cars blockaded the only entrance and exit. There was a line of blue chalk drawn on the ground, in a circle, because they had given up on using police tape. After all, it kept getting torn, and they gave up on using the railing because it was also broken, but the chalk could always be redrawn.

So, the thin blue line separated the police from the people, quite literally.

Opportunists were there as well to make a quick buck, and the same man who was selling I SURVIVED THE DOME shirts during the October Massacre was now selling TODAY, SATAN shirts.

Screaming religious protestors chanted while marching in a circle about how hell was real , and that damnation was near. They held up large signs that said things like The Devil Is a Lie, and a picture of a blue-eyed baby, and a caption that said You Wouldn't Sacrifice Me, Would You?

Carlos was starting to think this was a waste of time because it would be impossible to get inside the cemetery with this many police officers outside, and if another repeat of the Cecil Hotel happened, a lot of lives would be put at risk for a few answers.

He searched in the crowd for Gio and his stooges, but he couldn't find them, and Carlos had to admit that maybe they should have left for Norway with Momo. He turned to look at Gabriel, and he was gone, his grip loosened, and he slipped away into the ground.

" Culo. "

Carlos pushed through the crowd and his panic intensified the more he wandered through the streets. Finding a nineteen-year-old in the crowd of other college-aged students, who were dressed alike was impossible, and he couldn't sense him like before when they were linked, and again Carlos knew that another person would get hurt because of him.

He was wracked with guilt.

Carlos screamed Gabriel's name over the dancers, the impromptu parades, confetti, the dancing topless women, and terrible tuba music, but he was drowned out by it all. His guilt deepened, and he blamed himself even more.

If he never let Gabriel run out of the Church, he never would have died.

If he never died, he would have never been turned.

If he had never been turned, Gabriel wouldn't have become, well, so strange.

In desperation, Carlos returned to the hotel, and at the front of it, he saw Gabriel talking to his victim, a young woman in shorts, a halter top, a camera in her hand. Her neck was exposed, her brown hair up in a bun, and Carlos ran, he ran so fast the woman did not hear him approach until he shouted.

"Gabriel what are you doing!?"

Carlos tried his hardest not to look threatening to the innocent young woman, and she smiled back, and replied, "We're just talking of course! Don't I know you from somewhere?"

"No, no I don't think so," Carlos said in a rush.

"Yes. Yes, you're Father Alvarez!"

Carlos looked at the ground and wanted to die, well actually die .

"You're such a sweetheart! I remember at Slater Academy you would run a ton of blood drives for all the sick kids in New Springfield!"

The blood drives were fronts to get his family food.

"Hi, my name is Savannah," she said.

"Nice to meet you," Carlos mumbled. "Sorry but we have to-"

"Savannah and I were just talking about how everything's changed since last year, isn't that right, Father, " Gabriel interrupted.

"Y-yes," Carlos mumbled. "Quite a lot has changed."

He had to chaperone a very long conversation between the two of them, in which Savannah believed she might be getting a handsome young man's interest, told herself to not mind the age difference, and Gabriel believed he was going to get a very delicious meal, but they both walked away with each other's number.

Carlos breathed a sigh of relief that no one had died the first time he had brought Gabriel outside around people.

He slammed the door behind him when they returned to the hotel room, and Gabriel was like a child, caught doing something he shouldn't have done, and he knew it, and Carlos knew it, but he pretended anyway.

It was a lot easier to lie when they couldn't hear each other's thoughts.

"Can you not eat people while I am trying to get information," Carlos pleaded.

"I'm not doing anything, we were just talking, swapping numbers," Gabriel replied.

Carlos could smell the lie, and he was tired of it all, tired of being his babysitter, so he decided to pretend as well, because that was what everybody did, pretend that everything was fine.

"So, you're interested in her," Carlos asked.

"She... is very pretty," Gabriel replied. "I might like to see her again."

Carlos was confused because that wasn't a lie and then he laughed nervously, trying to downplay it, trying not to seem nosy, but the more he spoke, the worse it became.

"Well, mind yourself and don't get caught up in the moment," Carlos said. "Young people forget themselves often when alone."

"I don't worry about things like that, I never think about sex."

That wasn't a lie either and now Carlos was even more confused, but it had to be a lie, because how could anyone never think about sex? Carlos knew that sometimes the Church made people feel ashamed about their bodies, so now he was worried that Gabriel was so repressed that he was lying to himself and believed the lie.

"Gabriel, we are born in sin, but that doesn't mean that we are inherently bad for having sexual desire, it's that we shouldn't always act on it," Carlos lectured him.

" What are you talking about, " Gabriel asked.

"It's okay to think about those sorts of things. Everyone does."

Gabriel gave him a dead look and sat in the chair next to the AC, and he was angry because he thought Carlos would understand. He tried to drop the topic, but Carlos wasn't getting the message, still trying to be a good person, guiding young people in the right direction.

"Even I think about those things, even though I've taken my vows and kept them all these years," Carlos admitted.

Gabriel practically choked on thin air at the revelation.

"I don't need to know this," he shouted.

"I'm just trying to-"

"I think about it okay! All the time," Gabriel shouted.

Carlos was now even more confused as the air smelled like lies, and lemons, and bleach, and Gabriel couldn't look him in the eyes. Carlos pretended he had something to do in the bathroom, when they had no need to pee, and it was obvious he was leaving to avoid another confrontation.

He turned on the faucet, the white noise something to fill his mind, and realized that in all the months he heard Gabriel's thoughts that he never thought about those sorts of things. That when they lived in New Springfield that he always complained about their sexual deviancy of his siblings, how he didn't want to hear anything they were doing.

Carlos concluded that he was repressed, which was the wrong conclusion, and Gabriel came to the conclusion that he shouldn't tell anyone ever again.