disciple (ch. 10)
by Tom Stuckey
10
Love Island was in its final episodes, the favourites had been outcast by the majority of the group, and now they spent their nights together contemplating their mistakes, for now they did not have the freedom to roam and mate with any other. Olivia was not talking to me; I messaged her, probably for the fifth time in the last hour, and still nothing. In any other situation, this probably would be moving into the harassment area of things, but this was an unusual circumstance in unprecedented times. F had informed me that Thomas had taken to The Catacombs but also that he had been spotted in the hospitals of Rome performing miracles. Some blurry images had gotten out of Thomas at the theatre, but like all blurry things on the internet, they would soon be forgotten. I messaged Olivia again, He will be fine again after a few days. It will all be forgotten. I did it to protect him. I waited for the reply and turned back to the TV; the favourites, now outcasts, didn’t know what to say to one another, the game was up, and they had no moves left. Soon, they would also be bored of fucking. I could now go anywhere in Rome, I could dine in the finest restaurants, meet its highest society, but it all seemed irrelevant. I didn’t want to leave the room and felt an enormous weight on me, and it was called guilt. Guilt had made me a liar in my choices. I had thought that I wanted one thing, but my body was now telling me differently: I was not eating; I struggled to sleep; and I was angry because I knew (given a fresh chance) there was a high probability that I would make the same mistake again. My phone vibrating nearly made me fall off the bed. I picked it up with lightening reflexes to find it was F, and I threw it back down. The outcasts, now, were not even sleeping in the same room; she had even stopped putting on makeup. All they could do was listen to the mating sounds of the others from a distance. My phone vibrated again; it was Olivia! I sent up a little prayer and opened the message. Come to my room. My suits no longer seemed appropriate, so I went to gather some of my older clothes from the back of the wardrobe. After picking up a pile of them, I noticed that someone had scratched some words onto a piece of plastic slipped between two wrinkles shirts: I don’t know what it was like for you.
Olivia opened the door, grazing my knuckle as it hit my hand. She must of been waiting there. “Why did you do it?” She looked different, sad, and angry.
“I’m really sorry but just listen to me before you right me off. Before I came here, I was very lonely, I had no-one, I lived alone, ate alone, believed in nothing. Rome has given me so much, things that I had only read about in books or seen on the T.V. When someone like me gets some of the things that he thinks he has missed out on, it has effects and not all of them are good.”
“You turned on Thomas for validation?”
“I have not turned on him; I made a mistake.”
“A mistake that now has him in The Catacombs.”
“I will fix this. I swear.”
“How can I trust you now?”
“I will have to earn it and show you. You and Thomas both.”
“He said this might happen.”
“I am a man.”
“I am drawn to you, the man, but I AM SCARED, and I hate what you have done, and I hate that I’m drawn to you, and that I feel I will die with you.”
“Sometimes I think that I have seen all that Thomas could not bear, in order for him to be a saint.” She looked at me and then looked away.
“You are his shadow. This is your burden, and I should not be angry with you for I know it is not your fault. I love you both.” I did not understand these words; they were foreign and made me want to run head first through the window to understand again.
“Come with me to The Catacombs. I want to meet Thomas.”
“OK.” She replied.
We had taken the metro and were already underground, but we had to get off at Arco di Travertino to find the entrance to The Catacombs. Luckily, this type of information was readily available on the internet, and it wasn’t long until we found the door located along the track deeper in the tunnel that led there. I felt nervous, like I was about to lose my virginity or get into a fist fight for the first time, Olivia held my arm, and it felt good, old-fashioned. At the same time, truth be told, I was scared and glad that I was not alone. The ceiling was low, walls narrow, and the stones loose under foot – the smell of death lingering. My iPhone torch led us deeper down some steps where loculi, the mausoleum-like hollows, appeared on both sides; I did not want to shine my torch into them, but I did. Every sound was coming from us, our movements, but that wasn’t all; there was also the silence, the space that went on forever. As I shined my light into one of burial niches, a white figure appeared; he sat motionless as if silent meditation. It was Thomas.
“Fuck! You scared the shit out of me!”
“Sorry, I didn’t think shouting would help.” Thomas eyes shone in the dark, stars in an otherwise empty space.
“I didn’t want our first meeting to be like this.”
“Mark, so we can be clear, you have been following me for a year, but I have known you all my life.” I felt shocked, so shocked I was dizzy.
“You mean you know that I have been—”
“Yes, and I am sorry for all that you have had to go through. It wasn’t my intension for you to suffer so much or to be in the darkness so much. I also had to keep you at a distance for reasons that may never become clear.”
“Yes, I am beginning to see that now.”
“And you two have finally met.” I started to turn red, but it was so dark that it barely mattered.
“Yes, we have.” Olivia put her hand around both our necks; her cool hand felt nice on my flushed skin. She then kissed me, turned, and then kissed Thomas. “Shall we go?”
*Read the next instqallment of Tom Stuckey’s new novella Disciple coming on March 31, 2025, at 6PM CST.
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BIO: Tom is a writer from Devon in England. His work can be found at A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Bristol Noir, Nut House Press, and Pulp Magazine. He is the author of The Canary in the Dream is Dead and The Sun Marches upon Us All. Learn more about Tom Stuckey at www.tomstuckey.com.