Word Count: 500 - 1200
Genre: Dark Fantasy
Word: Bones
Ranked: TBD
“Still too squeamish to gather them yourself?” William Hadish said with curled lips before taking a sip of scotch. “It really is true what they say.”
“What is that, Father?” Jacob Hadish replied, grabbing a small wooden box from one of the many servants of the Hadish estate.
“The first generation creates an empire. The second generation respects the work their parents did. But the third generation…” William let out a wistful sigh. “They think getting something handed to them is hard work.”
“I did what the book said. Nowhere does it say I must extract the bones myself.”
William gave a gentle smile and a slight nod as he put a hand on his son’s back and escorted him through their trophy room. The marble floors and dark wood walls were barely visible beneath a menagerie of exotic animals that were immortalised and posed to show them in their prime.
“You took to the killing part like a duck to water,” William said as they strode through the morbid zoo. “But you were always so put off playing the butcher. You wouldn’t talk to me for an entire week when I made you extract the whale vertebrae.”
“It took me a week with nothing but an axe and the muscles of a thirteen-year-old.”
William nodded and gave Jacob’s bicep a squeeze.
“You have always been a bit slim. I blame your mother’s genes for that.”
When they got to the end of the room, they stood in front of three large clocks taller than both men. Two of the clocks were made of bones with ornate carvings displaying scenes of human decadence and little imps in jubilee. The third took a more modest art déco form and was missing its hour hand.
“The last piece,” William said with a smile. “Are you excited?”
“I am, but I would like to wait for my grandfather.”
“He is not coming.”
“What do you mean he is not coming?”
“Well, once this attempt fails — and I assure you, it will — we decided to have something ready for you.”
Jacob took a deep breath. His father had taken pleasure in goading him since childhood, claiming it would put hair on his chest.
“Why would you ask if I’m excited, then immediately say this will fail?”
William replied with a single raised eyebrow and another obnoxious smirk.
“I loved Rebecca,” Jacob said, taking the scotch from his father’s hand and taking a long swallow.
“No, you loved fooling around with her.”
“We were together for two years,” Jacob hissed.
“Time does not make you love someone. You grew used to having Rebecca around, and you mistook that for love.”
“How the hell do you know how I felt about her?”
“If you loved her, you would be mourning her, not forcing me to come here immediately after killing her to celebrate,” William said while patting Jacob’s back and taking back his drink.
Jacob opened the small box to see the bleached bones of a thumb wired together and displayed on a black velvet cushion. He could tell from the way that it was curved that it had belonged to her left hand. The hand he would hold on walks, the hand he would kiss every time he saw her. The same thumb that wore the ring he had bought her from a street stall in Milan, the one she had teased was too big. He thought the sight of her dismembered finger would make him feel guilt. Instead, he felt nothing, and hated himself for the emptiness.
He placed her bones in a groove on his eternity clock that marked the hour hand.
Jacob felt the light of the room slide off of his skin as an unnatural frigid darkness replaced it. Something in the void acknowledged him, then vanished just as quickly, leaving only disgust behind. The heat in the room was sucked back in when the light came back. Jacob was shivering as his father came back into his vision.
“As I said,” William huffed. “You just enjoyed fooling around with her.”
“I would like you to know before we go in that your father and I are doing this out of love,” his grandfather said when Jacob stopped by later that evening. “It pains us to see you grow frail.”
Jacob sighed. He often relied on his grandfather to be the least annoying member of the family, but today he seemed to side with his father.
“Your generation is getting married in their thirties and having children in their forties,” his grandfather continued. “I blame dating apps.”
Once his father arrived, they headed into his grandfather’s lab. His grandfather spent a lot of time studying other aspects of the codex other than the eternity clock. Every time Jacob failed a hunt, his grandfather would create him something absurd. Once, even making him a monkey with the wings of an albatross that died three days later when its heart could not pump enough blood through its altered body.
Inside his lab, the usual screen was up, and the familiar beeping of medical devices echoed off the sterile walls. His grandfather handed him a revolver, something the patriarch considered a consolation prize. If he could not keep it, he might as well enjoy killing it.
“Before I pull back this screen,” his grandfather said. “I would like you to know this was your mother’s idea.”
“My mother?” Jacob asked while studying the cylinder of the gun, preparing to kill whatever abomination his grandfather had made. “She was never supposed to know about this. You told me she would die if she ever found out, and that’s how the contracts work. You also have not talked to Mom since William and her split shortly after I was born.”
“The contracts are inherited through the paternal bloodline,” William replied. “We cannot maintain close relationships with people who will age while we never do. We only told you that so you didn’t blabber about it.”
“Dozens of servants know,” Jacob replied, annoyed to be further in the dark.
“Yes, but we threaten to kill everyone they love,” William said dismissively. “It’s easier to see for yourself.”
His father and grandfather parted the curtain screen like auctioneers revealing a painting. In the center, an older woman was displayed on a hospital bed, connected to cords and tubes.
Jacob felt his stomach drop. If it wasn’t for her long golden hair and the freckles on her nose he doubted he would have recognized his mother.
“What did you do?” Jacob shouted as his fear quickly turned to rage.
“I did what she asked,” William said with a smile. “You have about four hours to kill her yourself before she dies on her own.”
Jacob unloaded all six rounds into William. The gun drowned out his own screaming.
“See,” William said as the holes in his face healed and he pulled himself off the floor. “This is the correct response to losing someone you love.”