Back to Part One Stories Page Zoo Entrance
Paul got up slowly, carefully standing so that he wouldn't overbalance and end up sitting in the fish pond. "Suneyva, wait." He glanced towards Jesse's room on the second floor and walked a little closer to the older Gangrel. "I changed my mind. I want to see my parents. Could you tell the investigator that I'll visit them tomorrow evening?" He bit his lip and looked up at her..
She was smiling at him, "Sure I will. He'll let them know tonight I'm sure. I'm glad that you decided to do this Paul, it'll be good for you."
He nodded slightly. "I guess so, I'm not quite convinced of that yet. Jesse thought it would be best though...and Tony." Paul watched the color drain from Suneyva's face.
"Tony is dead." She turned toward the front door, about to leave.
"I know that, but he was here tonight and he talked to me. He said he was here to help me; I don't know what that means, but I trust him." Paul watched her spine straighten a little more, but she didn't turn or say anything more to him. Suneyva stepped quickly out the front doors and closed them with a small thud. He stood in the entry for just a moment longer before turning away and running up the stairs; Jesse would know what to do.
*
"I'll be back in a few hours I'm sure, I just don't want them to see you Jesse. I don't know what they'd say and I don't want to share all of my life with them. Just enough to let them think that I'm dying or something and to let them go on with their lives. I just want to close this part of my life forever and move on. It's about time that I got way from this past." He frowned into the mirror and pulled at his collar.
"I know, just don't be too long. I'm worried about this. I know that I encouraged you to visit them, but now that you actually are going I'm getting nervous again. Are you sure that they'll believe you? What if they decide that you need to stay with them?" Jesse's hand shook, but he reached out to touch Paul's cheek anyway; letting his Childe see the anxiety he had for this moment.
"I won't be long, I promise. I'll be fine Jesse and when I get back we can talk. Okay?" He leaned close to the young looking Gangrel and kissed him sweetly, holding his Sire to him for the brief moment. "I promise." He swept away, and hurried out of the house to his car.
The drive to his old home was uneventful and lonely. Paul wished that Jesse had come with him after all, but when he reached the house in the midst of suburbia he knew he was better off doing this on his own. He parked the car in front of the house and locked the doors before walking up the slim sidewalk.
As he was about to knock on the door it opened under his hand and a small woman bounced out to hug him tightly. "Paul. I was so scared that you would change your mind and not visit." She held him away for a moment before leading him inside.
"I almost did. I don't understand why you want to see me after all this time." He stared hard at the carpeting before glancing around the room at the furnishings. "You've redecorated."
The smiled slipped off his mother's face and her eyes got a far away look as she answered, "Yes. Bad memories." She moved forward and gestured up the stairs. "Come down here John, and talk to your son."
Paul looked up and saw his father standing next to the banister and the top of the stairs. "Hello father." He took a small step backwards, towards the living room, and his father started down the steps.
"You don't look well Paul, are you okay?" His mother touched his cheek softly and he flinched away.
"Why, are you going to say that you care again? There isn't any need to lie anymore. Did you get rid of all my things when you got rid of me?" He looked down the hall to the door that used to be his own. "Why did you want to see me?"
"Because we love you Paul, you are our only child and we made such a big mistake. We want to make this up to you. Will you let us do that?" His mother moved a step away and his father came forward, out of the shadows, to reach out to him.
"It's too late to make everything better. I don't know if I can forgive you." He paled a little. "Can we sit down? I'm not feeling very well." His arm was caught by his mother and she led him into the living room. He swayed slightly as they sat on the new white couch.
"Are you ill? Maybe you should have waited until you felt better, then perhaps you wouldn't say such things to us. I am glad to see you Paul we both are, but I would rather you were getting better and thinking more about your words." She touched his forehead briefly and he pushed her hand away.
"That isn't necessary. I don't have a flu or a cold and I would speak this way even if I were the healthiest person on Earth. I can't wait until I get better cause I'm not going to get better...I have AIDS." He smiled thinly. "Maybe I like shocking you, but that is the truth and this is what I have to deal with in my life."
His father touched his arm briefly, blushing faintly. "I knew we should have kept you here. We could have found a specialist, someone who could cure you and this would never have happened."
Paul jerked away rom his parents. "Cure me? You can't cure homosexuality. I'm gay and there isn't anything wrong with that. If you had been able to accept that this wouldn't have happened. If I hadn't been forced into the streets I wouldn't have gotten this disease."
"You mean if you had been a little more careful you wouldn't have gotten the disease. What were you thinking Paul? Didn't you know about HIV and AIDS? Couldn't you have used protection?" His mother's voice always had a certain annoying shrillness when she got angry. Paul winced and moved further away, getting a little more angry as well.
"I knew, but when you are sixteen you don't always have the choice. I didn't have any choices. You kicked me out; I didn't have any money or any place that I could go. What did you think would happen? That I could get a job and have a nice home and be fine without you?" He took a deep breath, "My second night on the street someone gave me six dollars after he raped me. I had to sell myself in order to survive day to day. My body was the only thing I had. And now I'm dying and you blame me for this too."
He stood and moved towards the entry. "If you loved me at all how could you have kicked me out? I needed you, I was only a child still."
"We can be here for you now. If you need a place to stay...I don't want anything more to happen to you. Please come back home and be safe." His mother moved forward, trying to hug him, but he evaded her. "We don't care if you are gay. We can deal with it. We love you."
"No. I have a place to stay and I'm safe there. I'm with someone. He's good to me and we love each other." Paul looked up at his parents for a moment. "I should go home, I don't want to fight right now and I need to rest. I'll call you soon and maybe we can talk like this again." He let his mother kiss him quickly before leaving, but he moved out of the house and got back to the car a little faster than they expected. His father waved from the porch, but he pretended not to see.
He pulled off to the side of the road almost half way back to the Zoo. Jesse would just have to wait a little longer while he tried to sort out his feelings. It was so frustrating to see his parents, wanting to tell them in explicit detail about what he had been forced to endure in order to survive, but he couldn't tell them everything. They probably wouldn't care. He had ended up being too weak and hadn't said anything he planned to.
Maybe that was why he said that he would call, it was an excuse anyway. He didn't really want to see them again. Being in that house with his mother, his father, brought back that closed-in feeling again. The urge to run away and escape the suffocation of everything he was and had desired from life. They just couldn't understand him and even thinking that he was dying they blamed him for their ignorance.
He started the car again, feeling the small blast of heat as the engine turned over. If he wasn't home soon Jesse would be scared and even if he did protest his Sire's attempts to make him talk, Paul knew that it would be best to get this over with and out into the open.
Suneyva watched from above, like she always did. The Kine strutted and whirled beneath her little stage, some looking up at her, but most not even seeing the table she was at. The younglings, her protected children, were about tonight and staying at the club. She had opened the private suites to them and had guards to prevent unknown customers from entering. The Garou that Jakob had lent to her should be able to sense if there was someone unusual being led upstairs and should have the strength and skill to protect any of the children.
She wished once more that she could stop all of the hustling until the one who had murdered those boys was caught and destroyed, but the children themselves refused to obey her warnings. In a small part of her mind she could understand that; they didn't think that anything bad would ever happen to them if she were protecting them and this was their one way of gaining the money they needed to survive a bit longer.
Life (or unlife, she thought with a grin) went on, regardless of the present dangers. She could no more stop it from happening than she could stop the earth from revolving around the sun. Paul seemed to be doing a little better and she was protecting her night children as much as she could with the limited knowledge wavailable. It wasn't quite enough to make her happy, but it was enough to let her stop worrying about each approach of a john and every strange man that came into Illusions, and there were plenty of strange men on any normal night.
She smiled a little to herself, and standing she resolved to stay home with Julianna; this night life was getting to be too much strain and too little gratification. Times were definitely changing and who knew what would happen with what she herself was changing. Suneyva laughed shortly, causing the bartender, Ross, to blanch white. She winked at him as she passed into the darkness of Gothik's streets and he was glad to see her go.
*
the end
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