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“No, Nik, these rags can’t be called clothes. What is that shabby fur on your shoulders?”
“This is my blouse!”
“Is it knitted?”
“Kiss my ass!”
“Nik, this is the edge, don’t wear it ever again. I gave you good clothes! Or do you now refuse to wear them?”
“No, I don’t refuse. Not only your clothes got wet,” oddly enough, but Nik tried to explain.
He carefully peeled the band-aid from his neck, slightly touching the indentation from the healed “well” with his fingertips, and put the needle of the refilled syringe under the hoop of the golden collar.
Kors turned away.
“Nik, let me help you with your treatment,” he said a little later, waiting for a moment.
“I'm fine.”
“Are you taking the medicines I gave you, the ones the doctor gave you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still have any left?”
“I have.”
“Do you remember that they need to be taken regularly at the same time?”
“I remember.”
“I still have some left to share with you?”
“I told you, I still have some!”
“Can you show me your face?”
“What? No!”
“Show me what’s wrong with your scar!”
“Nothing.”
“What happened to your face?!” Kors couldn’t hide his excitement.
“I said nothing!”
“Is the scar inflamed? Yes? What’s happening? You bandaged your face too much. What’s up with your scar?”
“Nothing.”
“But you bandaged your face for some reason!”
“I got a tattoo on it, okay? Is that all?”
“What?!” Kors froze, shaking his head. “No, no, this is stupidity. Are you kidding? You’re lying? Is this a stupid joke? Don’t joke like that, I’ve always said that humor is not for you!”
“Leave me alone!”
But Kors couldn’t stand it:
“I can’t take it anymore! My strength is gone! I’ll break all your needles! I’ll pour out all your colors! Do whatever you want with me! Blind, humiliate, beat me, I will endure everything, but I will deprive you of the opportunity to disfigure this body, at least now, while we are on the road!”
“I can do it with my own syringe if I want to. Soot, urine and a needle from a syringe – that’s all, I don’t need anything else,” Nik answered calmly, not reacting in any way to the fact that Kors switched to screaming.
“No! You can’t lie, I’m about to die! Be honest! I can’t stand it if you get more tattoos! I still can’t come to terms and accept that your face has a brand on it, like cattle!”
“Yes…”
“People write with ink on paper, and not on the forehead, it would be better to learn this!”
“I can write on paper!”
“Yes?”
“Yes!”
“I didn’t notice that you wrote at least something at least once on one piece of paper during this time!”
“It’s just that you never asked me to write. I can write!”
“Come on, write then!”
“Now I won’t write anything for you!”
“You only know how to write on your forehead! Admit it, you can’t lie to me, were you joking about the tattoo?”
“Yes, I was joking,” Nik agreed.
Kors breathed a sigh of relief.
“Don’t joke like that anymore, it’s stupid. Poison began to come out of your scar, as Cassiel had warned? Answer me!”
“It constantly flows from it,” Nik reluctantly answered him and bent to his leg, slightly lifting up his trouser leg.
“Oh,” barely calming down that Nik was joking about the tattoo, Kors got nervous again, “what is flowing out?”
Nik didn’t answer, carefully examining his leg.
And even now, in spite of everything, Kors wanted to educate him, give Nik a good beating and properly punish him for all the nonsense that he had done. For the fact that he never really obeyed, stubbornly doing everything as he liked. For blinding him yesterday and letting him be hit. And for the way he looked now: sloppy, dirty, dressed in God knows what. Ill, with a bandaged face, but at the same time stubbornly continuing to stick to his line. He jokes stupidly, knowing that he will cause a surge of emotions in Kors with just the word “face – tattoo.” He sniffs with his ringed nose and constantly brings his hand to it, touching and tugging at it.
Ignoring Kors and apparently not listening to his emotions and thoughts about himself, Nik tried to put the needle to his leg. Kors looked at his black tattooed skin and the wide black band of the “bracelet” that went around his ankle just above his foot. The shameful slave stripe was clearly visible and stood out, even though the patterns of other tattoos. Something like sharp teeth was closely adjacent to it. Teeth on the leg, well, only Nik could do such a thing, Kors was no longer surprised. To destroy himself every second was an irresistible craving for his son and the Demon. Slightly turning his foot to the side, Nik injected the drug into the inside of the leg just above the ankle.
“What is the number of injection you have already given yourself?” Kors asked. The way with which maniacal persistence and without respite Nik poured substances into himself began to frighten Kors.
Silence. He was stoned. Already in the morning. How to make him obey? Unfortunately, no way.
“Do you want to overdose again?”
“No,” Nik slightly shook his head in a negative gesture and lay on his back, “I also need water, only another, not rain.”
“Again?!”
“What do you mean again?”
“Didn’t you say you injected it in your Limit?”
“So what? How much time has passed?”
“No, it will never end!”
“It will end. Soon the body will stop rising.”
“I won't survive if you die!”
“I have been dead for a long time.”
“Nik! Why are you making me emotional?! You endlessly take emotions out of me! Stop eating me!”
Nik lay motionless, his good leg bent at the knee and his bandaged head slightly thrown back, a tousled braid with beads woven into it sweeping the floor beside him. He didn’t answer Kors, as if he didn’t hear him.
Without thinking, in some kind of frenzy, Kors rushed to him, and, grabbing his forearm, jerked him up from the skins. Nik quickly glared at him from the gap between the bandages, but said nothing, remained seated. But that look… Kors’ insides went cold.
“Don’t touch,” said Nik very calmly, and this made his voice sound even more terrible.
“I’m sorry…” Kors whispered, but immediately shouted again in despair:
“How long are you going to torment me, Black Demon?! Seeing how you destroy this body, I am dying together with you!”
“Go away, I won’t touch you, you yourself are rubbing the skin around me!”
“What?”
“You come to me. Why are you here? Do you understand what you are doing now?”
“Yeah, damn it, I can’t get off! Knowing what kind of rubbish you are, I still can’t! You tied me well! Insatiable fucked up rubbish!”
“Go away,” Nik said.
“But you’re sick!" Let me help you!”
“I am the Demon that eats you and torments you, who took away all the people close to you and ruined your life, whom are you going to help?!”
“My son.”
“Your son? A lame fool with a shameful… brand on his face? He doesn’t deserve you. Get out!”
“But where should I go?”
“Wherever you want!”
“Are you letting me go?” Kors didn’t believe it.
“No. I won’t let you really go, don’t hope. Just get out now, otherwise I’ll beat you, I’ll just kill you! Don’t you believe me?”
“You said that you didn’t stop loving me, despite my imperious character, and now it means that you still stopped loving me? Don’t you love me anymore?”
“What the difference?”
“If you reflect my feelings, hear how you torment me. You’re torturing me!”
“Do you think you’re suffering? Am I torturing you? Well, then you still have a lot of surprises waiting for you! And now get out!”
Nik suddenly began to wheeze in a strange way, as if he was choking, and made a sharp movement of his head, as if he was about to vomit, grabbing his throat. Kors watched in horror.
“Get out and don’t show up until I call you!” Nik croaked.
“You’re Chasing me like a dog?”
“Don’t provoke me!”
“I don’t give a fuck! My son lives in you! You are in symbiosis with a human, and you are half a man, you feel bad! What’s wrong with you now?!”
Nik jerked sharply again, holding his throat, as if he was trying to expel something from himself, one, two, three times. Kors remembered too well how sick and nauseous he himself once was.
“Nik, you have overdosed! Damned addict!”
Nik fell back, covering his face with his hands.
Kors was shaking:
“Nik, you’re being mean to me because you’re essentially a child! You have not developed as a person and personality! I have seen you! I have seen how your so-called mother treated you! Little lonely abandoned boy! Nobody needs an orphan, defenseless from the cruelty of adults and their arbitrariness. Dependent on them in his childish weakness. This creature tortured you! Kept you in some kind of closet, as if in a grave!”
“A-a-a-ah…”
“I’m really sorry! You began to take drugs and alcohol in order to forget about the dislike and indifference of others. You never found a core inside yourself, you didn’t even learn how to comb your hair! You are a lost man of the social bottom, and you will never be able to rise to a normal society without support! Drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, perversions, cruelty, lack of honor and dignity…”
“Stop doing that!” Nik literally howled and covered his ears with his hands hidden by bandages.
