All you have to do is conform to standards while slightly rising above normal, and repress your true nature.
At least, in daylight.
Night time, however, is a gray area.
I roam my gaze over the mansion’s first floor, filtering through the college students’ drunk skinny-dipping, cocaine inhaling, and vain fucking lives. Their jumping to the loud music is no different than a crooked version of monkeys on crack.
I’ve been at this party for a whole ten minutes and I still haven’t spotted anything that’s worthy of my attention.
And it’s being held in my fucking mansion.
Well, I share it with my brother, cousin, and Jeremy, and it’s all due to our leadership status in Heathens—and the amount of money our fathers pump into this college’s veins.
In fact, we own it. Every single part and person in it.
The property might be vast and with enough rooms to start a brothel, but it feels so small sometimes.
The whole world is.
A body clashes into mine from behind and a tattooed arm, full of skulls and ravens, snakes around my shoulder as I’m assaulted by the stench of alcohol and weed.
Nikolai.
“Yo, Killer!”
I grab my cousin’s arm and throw it off without masking my reaction to the blasphemous act of touching me.
He slides beside me, leaning on the wall that’s near the bar but hidden enough for me to pass under people’s radars.
“Hey, motherfucker.” He taps his jeans and produces a joint, then rubs it against his lips before he shoves it in his mouth and lights it. “What’s with acting disgusted?”
“Why? Are you disgusting?”
“On most days. Not today.” He grabs me by the shoulder again and I’m ready to break his fucking arm.
The black dots appear in my mind’s eye, heightening, pulsing, fucking multiplying into tinier, more miniscule ticks.
I might get off on touch, but only on my terms and when I’m the one who controls every aspect of it.
And this asshole is digging his own grave.
I wonder if Aunt Rai will cry too hard if she loses her son in a mysterious disappearance incident.
The tricky thing is that she’s identical twins with my mother, and if she cries, Mom will definitely cry harder. At least Aunt Rai is part of the Russian mafia. Mom is a believer of everything sunshine and could—would—be hit harder by her nephew’s disappearance intonowhereland.
All in all, the whole ordeal isn’t worth letting my impulse loose.
Repress.
Repress.
Nikolai shakes my shoulder with the hand that’ll be in a cast if the motherfucker doesn’t read the atmosphere.
He’s about my age and has long dark hair that falls to his neck if it’s loose but is now held in a small ponytail. The whole look is finished with pierced ears—and dick—because he thought he suffered from trypophobia, and the genius figured the best way to get rid of that was to drill holes in his body.
Turns out, he doesn’t actually have it, and it was a phase. Like the tattoos, the hair, the style.
Sometimes, he goes all grunge, denim with jeans. Other times, he dresses in weird fashionable shit that gets him all the attention and more.