Aftersacrifice
PG-13. 02/17/2006.

Hood
Sometimes Dylan dreams of his mother as the Grim Reaper: pale as bone, shrouded in black, scythe tucked just behind her shoulder, as if she thinks he doesn't see.

Buzz
Sweeney has grown suspicious of insects--their casual interest, their many eyes--so Dylan kills them for her: her knight, her dragonslayer.

Wish
Dylan does not wish on shooting stars; some nights he is afraid to see the sky at all.

Seasons
He knows the stories, of the summer king, the winter fool, but he will not let the seasons rule him: if he must be myth, let him be a fool, and not a god.

Threat
Though Sweeney warns him all the time, Dylan is not afraid of Professor Balthazar Warnick, because he knows what he really is--a small man, a coward, one who has never known love.

Portrait
Pictures of Angelica unnerve him now, because she doesn't look the same--whether it's his new perspective, or something else, he sees the skull beneath her skin, the animal behind her eyes.

Loud
This is that first time making love to Sweeney: the ripple of fear, of discovery, cold grass beneath his hands, the roar of blood in his ears.

Energy
"You never get tired," she whispers to him, laughing, "like you're not even human."

Purge
Clearing out the other houses is difficult; he can't stand to leave them like his mother's still there, but all the same he feels her presence and it feels like stealing, like rape.

Mouse
Dylan finds a mouse trapped in a bucket in the garden, and they try to tame it but it won't eat, so they agree to release it; but before they do, Sweeney names it Oliver.

Attic
Sifting through old letters from the man he knew as his father to his mother is like reading a child's letters to God: full of hopes and dreams and feelings that are never returned, or relinquished.

Second-Rate
He does not quite feel in Oliver's shadow, but perhaps in Oliver's shoes: living the life Someone deemed Oliver unfit, unworthy to live; and so he does his best to live it well.

Dash
Dylan sits in the back row of Warnick's class, and the minute it's over he runs out; it's not that he's afraid--he just doesn't want to take chances.

Attitude
Soon Sweeney has forgotten she could be his mother, and and becomes the girl she could have, should have been, if not for the things she had seen.

Wisdom
He is content for Sweeney to not tell him things, even important things--if there's one thing he learned from his mother, it's the wisdom to know when not to ask.

Sight
"I see thee better in the dark," Sweeney quotes to him, voice thick with lust, and he shudders and doesn't know why.

Address
After a girl from his class stopped by and asked Sweeney, "Is your son at home?" he suggested that they get their address unlisted.

Minute
Sometimes it takes almost nothing--a smell, a color, a word--and in a minute Sweeney is somewhere else and he isn't quite sure how to pull her back.

Cotton
Sweeney has nothing but faded cotton sheets, and he loves them because his mother would have never let him settle for something that common, that simple, that soft.

Claw
Occasionally he can feel Angelica very close to him, as if she is a black carrion bird, waiting for that first sign of weakness, for that moment when she can swoop down and claim what is properly hers.

Limit
I am living on stolen time, he thinks to himself, because deep down he knows he doesn't really own himself, that someday he'll have to pay back every second he lied and claimed as his own.

Unique
"No one feels like you," Sweeney tells him, and it's true: no one is as real, as alive, as present in the world as he is, though she doesn't know why.

Gravity
They're lying together in her sweat-damp bed, passing a joint, and he says: "I think I can feel the Earth turning, and it doesn't care that it's turning us with it."

Yesterday
Oliver will always feel like only yesterday to her, no matter how much time passes, but Dylan always, always feels like today.

Jungle
Sweeney often thinks that Dylan doesn't belong in a city, that he's some sort of Tarzan, made to be in some distant wild place where the air is green with lushness and untame things sing him to sleep each night.

Garden
The front garden is overgrown and smells strongly of living things: he and Sweeney are within it often, and he is simultaneously attracted and afraid.

Question
Dylan never asks Sweeney if she wants, or if she can still have, a child, and is silently relieved that she never tells him of her own accord.

Text
One of the girls in his biology class asks him to sign his mother's book for her, and he writes, "To Alicia, for Angelica Furiano, from the son who never knew her."

Plastic
When Balthazar looks at Dylan his smile is artificial, painted on: the baring of teeth of some ancient predatory animal.

Block
Dylan doesn't remember much of what Sweeney has termed "That Night": when he reaches for it all he finds is a piercing, operatic sound, as of falling angels or dying stars.

Escort
She musses his hair, laughing, saying, "This is gonna be hilarious--you know they're gonna think you're my rentboy, right?"

Insult
He never speaks ill of his mother; he can sense a well of feeling, about Angelica, inside Sweeney, and doesn't want to be the one who makes it overflow.

Blood
Every time Dylan accidentally cuts himself, he is afraid of unknown offerings, of summoning things he cannot see.

Gold
Sweeney buys him a wedding ring but tells him never to wear it on his finger, that she wants his hands free; so there it is, on a silver chain around his neck that grows cold when he wears it outside his clothes.

Spot
After That Night, Sweeney discovered a birthmark on his inner thigh, a tiny port wine stain, and when she remarked on how she'd never noticed it before, he had to tell her it was new.

Melt
It is one of those liquid-hot days where they don't leave the bed, where Dylan can literally feel himself melting into her.

Guilt
It is very odd, indeed, that Dylan should feel guilty for the way his mother's eyes watched him, the way her hands lingered on his skin, but he can't stop--so instead he tries to forget.

Duel
Sometimes Dylan feels like he's fighting a silent war with Oliver, the father he never met--sometimes, when Sweeney's thoughts are just a little too far to reach, when her touch is cool, searching, ghostly.

Stranger
Once he thought he met the woman Sweeney inexplicably calls Oliver: she was stepping out of Handsome Brown's cab, as he climbed in, and she turned to him for just a second, big grin on her androgynous face, saying, "Don't worry, I bowed out of the running long ago."

Wait
Dylan wonders if his whole life will be spent this way: each day like a held breath, waiting, waiting for the storm that has already passed.

Glow
Now and then Sweeney seems to glow, eerie, full of moonlight like a faceted stone, and Dylan has to apologize, get dressed, and leave.

Action
Some mornings she'll wake up and he'll be showered and dressed, waiting, and when she is ready he'll whisk her off to some mystery place; Sweeney will inevitably think, Oh, Oliver...

Chain
It is as if he is literally tied to his mother, and he can only go so far away from her in his thoughts before he is yanked back, consumed.

Bitter
When he asks Balthazar to tell him everything, and still gets no real answer, the taste in his own mouth is repellent.

Lock
Dylan is almost disappointed at Sweeney's lack of protest, the day he locks the office door and tells her to take off her pants.

Order
"Hurry it up," Dylan says, not afraid of being insolent, when Balthazar starts droning on about the Benandanti and its importance, its legacy, "I have a date to keep."

Friends
Dylan never makes friends in his class--they will never live up to what Sweeney, Oliver, Angelica had--and he is almost glad of it.

Prison
In his most philosophical moments, one puff too many, Dylan wonders whether it is his mother who is imprisoned, or if she is the only thing left free.

Journal
When he was a little boy, Dylan kept a journal, writing down every important new sensation--his first taste of fresh peach, the shocking dryness of snow--but when he found out his mother had read it for years, had even orchestrated what he would next write, he burned it and scattered the ashes in the sea.

Zero
He often wonders, whether or not, despite everything, Sweeney was lucky: if it was better to live a non-life, one long observation, than to live a life that was completely out of your control.



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