A Dissection of Desire

Note: This is as far as it goes, Dietrich's point of view, and done.

I pretended to ignore him, pretended that I could care less about anything he had to say to me. If I’d been too interested, ever, he would have known something was up. I was a little tired, but it was worth it to watch Isaak, he was about to give up on me, and slump his arms, maybe fling his hands in an irritated gesture, then go engross himself in his music.

Isaak had hardly been a father. From the beginning he’d had me demonstrate my puppetry, he’d made up courses and tests, making me practice for hours everyday. He taught me how to kill in more ways, in better ways, but he never taught me to love, because that was something he didn’t know. He’d tried, sometimes. If he hadn’t been thinking about it, and I’d busted my knee, or something, Isaak would almost act parental, almost like he cared, but a part of him never thawed.

It was the devil in me that made me want him.

I’d never gotten the love a child deserves, and by now I was ready to settle for any love at all. I wanted to see emotion in Isaak’s eyes, I wanted to see him feel something about me. I wanted to make him happy.

I slumped into my chair as the organ began to blast away. I began squirming, imagining Isaak’s slender hands. There are some things you just don’t do.

How could I proposition him? How could I possibly approach the man that had raised me, and expect my fantasy to be enacted? In a moment of misery, I pictured Isaak standing naked in the moonlight, his hair silver looking beneath the sky. I groaned, and had to run to the bathroom.

With the frequency I do this, it never takes very long. In almost eight years, I’ve watch Isaak so much that I can picture him doing anything, and if it’s anything he does, I’ve seen him do it. I imagine a million things, a thousand things, I picture Isaak, and I want him to love me. My hand runs back and forth, up and down, and I play my own strings. I tangle while I touch myself, every sensation lighting up a pang of guilt.

It is fantasizing about him biting me that does it this time, pushes me over and beyond. I moan and twitch, automatically wiping my hand off, automatically returning to my serious face. I would be too ashamed if Isaak knew I thought of him when I did this, and I worry that if he knew he would throw me out, and I’d be alone in the world again.

Besides, Cain would kill me.

Cain hadn’t been around too much in my earlier years, preferring probably to have little to do with a human child. The only times I remember seeing him back then he seemed so impatient, my presence slightly interfered with his time with Isaak, lowering Isaak’s full attention span. I could tell that after the first three years, Cain regretted having saved my life, and having allowed me to stay.

I was never much of a son.

I cannot imagine a normal relationship that involves magic and corpse manipulation. I was probably fifteen when I realized that most people would never understand me, could never hope to. That only Isaak listened to my illogical ramblings, not judging. He was the only one I knew that didn’t act like I was crazy, the only one who thought about all the ways to kill everyone in the room too.

That was when I started to really fall for him.

After four years, I feel like inside me there is a black stain, and that if Isaak were to touch me finally, to press himself against me, my inner darkness would stick to him like tar, and pull him down and into me, and never let him go. It is an infatuation that could be the end of us both, and I know it.

I sit upside down in my chair, my feet crossed at the head rest, my hair hanging to the floor, and the blood rushing warmly to my ears. Isaak finishes his song, and will move into the next one the same as always, playing the same set over and over, and who knows for how many years before I came.

I wonder what Isaak would do if he found me in his bed in the morning, naked and waiting. Or drunk and in the bath. I’ve been making up every scenario for years, and I still don’t know how to breech the subject. Use my strings and show Isaak what I can really do? Beg?

I sat up quickly, letting the blood rush run through my face, trying to push my feelings down. The organ had stopped playing, and I knew that if I turned Isaak would be standing in the doorway, about to say something about needing to have more candles in here.

I didn’t wait for it, I stood up and lit two more, and turned to watch Isaak pick a book. I know he doesn’t need the light, I think he wants me to join him, every night when he sits down in here and reads a book, he wishes I would do the same. The study has long been my favorite room because of this nightly ritual; many times have I caught new expressions, and satisfied little noises of Isaak’s by watching him read.

I am tempted to sit on his lap, for the first time, nineteen years old. Ask for presents, and take my clothes off. Instead, I scan the rows of books, inhaling as I hear Isaak strike a match, anticipating the thick cigarillo scent to come. I don’t find anything I want to read, and I pout, and slouch down on my overstuffed chair in the corner. Isaak glances up at me over his reading glasses, his stare half asking me what I want, and half daring me to make a whiny noise again, and so help me if I do.

“I’ve read most of these. You’ve read them all. Four or five times.”

“More than that. Go away if you’re going to be like that, I’m reading.”

“It doesn’t count when you already know the next three pages verbatim. Can I have some money?”

He sighed, his quiet angry sigh that was the oldest thing about him I can remember. The sigh that said “Yes, shut up shut up shut up, yes, you can have it, whatever you want, shut up.”

Four bills were counted out and set on the desk, Isaak holding one end of them still. “You’re going to leave me alone. This should be more than enough to keep yourself entertained for at least two days, so can you go away now?”

I laughed while I snatched the money and headed for the door, but inside I knew I was never going to be anything more than a snotty little rich kid, wanting more than was offered, wanting everything always. Wanting what I could never have.