#RedHanded

Misha looks down at the bloodied King.

His fist caught in mid-strike, raised above those suddenly lifeless, beady eyes. The King had stopped moving a while ago. The reddening puddle behind his head slowly grows across the filthy concrete as the world bleeds back into focus.

Misha’s knuckles have ripped open, dripping red, while the crowd around him melts into a wild rumble of noise and shouts, clawing at his eardrums and pounding inside of his empty head.

Misha has killed The King.

Suddenly he can’t breathe. He drowns in gulps for air, he suffocates on nothing, he inhales solid breaths and all he can see is how red his hands have become.

How disgustingly red they’ve turned.

Sirens blare from far away.

The warehouse erupts into chaos.

But for Misha, the world has stopped once he realizes what he has done. A life, a living person, slips through his fingertips and no matter how hard he tries, he could never catch it and bring it back.

He killed someone.

How could he live with himself?

“Misha! Misha!” Someone is shaking his shoulders, waking him from his trance.

The same straight black hair with the same sharp eyes, just with wrinkles ceasing the corners and making a pattern over his leathery skin. But no matter how menacing this man looks, Misha can finally manage a breath in his embrace.

“Dad I-I didn’t mean-”

“No, right now you have to get out of here. Your friend over there needs to get to a hospital.”

Misha looks at Elias lying still just a few feet away. Crumpled against the filthy floor, his red hair dirted with grime and those freckles slowly beginning to lose color. Misha is too afraid to watch Elias long enough to see if his chest rises and falls.

“I should’ve-I should’ve stayed away from The Midnight Fights like you said, I should have-”

“Misha!” His dad shakes his shoulders again. Hands placed firmly on his arms, holding him up. Misha has to stay upright. No matter how much he wants to make himself small enough to disappear, he can’t.

A nightmare he’s forced to experience with every bone in his body.

Misha can only stare back at his dad. Eyes wide, mouth stuttering over nonexistent words, a numbness spreading over his nerves. He can’t think. Every thought asphyxiates on the fact he’s just killed someone. He took a life.

A life.

The sirens are getting closer.

Misha’s father looks back at the warehouse doors, “You were always sneaking out late at night, I’m glad I followed you today.”

Then rushes to Elias’ side. Gingerly hoisting the limp boy up and onto his shoulder beckoning Misha to help carry him. Misha moves robotically. Gathering Elias in his arms and onto his back. He’s a lot lighter than Misha expects.

Elias’ blood is warm on Misha’s shoulders. But warm means he’s alive.

Then, the man Misha proudly called his dad although most people called him a ruthless criminal, brushes a gentle hand across Misha’s cheek. Wiping off some of the blood stained on his skin, giving him a warm and weary smile, the kind you only wear during a bittersweet goodbye.

Misha doesn’t realize it until his dad moves him off The King’s corpse and takes his place.

That this is going to be a farewell.

“Wait, wait, wait, no-”

His dad cups Misha’s cheek softly. Strong and comforting.

“Misha, I’ve had run-ins with the law before, God knows I’m not a good man, but you. You are so good that it leaks into everything you do so much that I know you didn’t mean this. You don’t deserve this.”

No. No. No.

Misha tries to protest. He scrambles to grab at his father’s jacket and tell him they could make it out of there together. If they both run. Misha would turn himself in, Misha would face his consequences, Misha would willingly go with the police. As long as Elias and his dad could get out of there safely he could live with his red hands. Or he could at least try.

But the man is already resolved.

The police won’t come looking for Misha if they already have a culprit.

“If I can do one thing to thank the universe for my good son, it will be this. Now, go. Elias needs your help.”

He pushes Misha towards one of the side exits in the warehouse, a rusted door that creaks when it’s opened just enough for the two teens to slip through.

Misha has no strength to fight, but he struggles to get back into the warehouse, wrestling against his father’s hands that force him out. All the while screaming that he won’t leave someone he loves so much to suffer for his mistakes. For all his terrible mistakes.

He couldn’t live with this. Not like this.

“Take care of your mother and Gray for me. Get good grades, make nice friends, open a bakery. Enjoy your life.”

The sirens approach the front of the warehouse. Running engines. Heavy footsteps. Flashing lights.

His dad closes the door until his face is just a sliver in the doorframe. Still wearing the same sad smile, still looking at Misha with all the love in the world although it’s all his fault.

This is all his fault.

“Run, Misha. Be good.”

Then the door shuts.

----

“Mimi?” Gray calls from the kitchen. They’re wearing an oversized apron that’s splattered with pasta sauce and waving a large wooden spoon to get his attention. “Your cream puffs are done!”

Misha rubs his eyes. The television plays some mind-numbing news of a car chase on the freeway that he was sure started when he spaced out. There’s a book in front of him, he’s supposed to be finishing it for a school report, but he hasn’t gotten past the first chapter.

He shuts the cover.

“Okay, I’ll be right there!” Misha gets up from his spot on the floor at the coffee table. He feels exhausted with how much he struggles to stand up, he must have been sitting for a long time.

There’s a laugh behind him.

“And you treat me like I’m old.”

Elias has opted for a bright orange apron and has stuck various cooking utensils in its pockets. He’s leaning against the fridge, conscientious of the magnets and pictures decorating the door.

“Hey, don’t bully your seniors.” Misha says once he finally gets to his feet.

Elias laughs and for some odd reason, he checks his phone for messages. Which is something Elias most certainly never did, but for the past couple of weeks, he had been hovering around his phone like a mosquito to a fresh blooded mammal.

The past couple of weeks.

Misha tries not to think of the growing empty space between his and Honey’s desk at Godforsaken High. He tries not to watch her revel in her fights and proud displays of violence. He tries not to look at the crescent hair clip tucked in the bottom drawer of Gray’s hair accessories.

Gray hadn’t been the same after Honey almost attacked them.

Today was supposed to be their break away from it all.

Elias turns on his heel, but his knee doesn’t seem to like that and he awkwardly reaches for the table for support. Misha’s got him before he falls even just an inch.

“Alright now I think it’s time you sit for a little while, old geezer.”

“Mimi, look! We made shrimp pasta!”

Gray stirs their spoon in a large pan full of creamy noodles, showing off a well-cooked shrimp for Misha to marvel at while they wear a triumphant smile.

The break away seemed to be working wonders. For both of them.

“Last time we didn’t even get to enjoy it.” Elias shrugs, steadying himself on the counter and carefully making his way to the vat of pasta currently occupying most of the stove space to add the last of the parmesan cheese.

“I’m going to get mom!” Gray cheers, bounding out of the kitchen and down the hall with more energy than Misha had ever had in his entire teenage life.

Must be nice to be nine years old again.

Elias does his best to stir the pasta as it overflows and inevitably falls out of the pot. A few straggling noodles escape despite his efforts. And Misha had seen him cook before, Elias comes over more often than not, but there’s something about him leaning against the kitchen counter with a light-hearted smile that makes Misha a little speechless.

He clears his throat.

“Eli, I-”

“Look, Misha-”

They spoke at the same time. Both of them wait for the other to continue and Misha nods at Elias to start first. Misha didn’t know what he was going to say. Words just came out of his mouth without a single thought put behind them and he’s glad they interrupted each other.

He’s afraid of what he might’ve said.

Elias takes a breath.

“Misha, I know this is the last thing you want to think about right now, but do you still want to destroy The Midnight Fights?”

Misha feels his blood turn to ice.

That was something he wasn’t expecting from Elias. It was actually the last thing he ever expected Elias to ask and it feels like the floor gave out from under him. Now it’s his turn to lean against the fridge door.

He can’t find any words to respond, everything just stays trapped inside his mouth and his jaw refuses to open. Honestly, The Midnight Fights just tire him out now. But if he has to feel anything towards them, it would be hatred.

Elias takes Misha’s silence as a confirmation.

He shuts off the stove.

“There’s a way to destroy them without becoming King,” Elias looks around the room, everywhere but Misha, like he’s searching for something, but can’t quite find it, “there’s someone who feels the same as we do. They have a plan to get rid of The Midnight Fights altogether and I think we should help them.”

Misha’s throat closes. Although Elias can’t seem to look him in the eyes, Misha stares directly at his freckles, wondering when Elias had got himself involved in such a thing. And why Misha himself hadn’t thought of a single plan like that.

What had he been doing all this time? Focusing on studying. Working. Doing everything he could to pretend The Midnight Fights didn’t exist.

If he didn’t destroy The Midnight Fights before Honey became King, he wouldn’t know what would happen to her.

He didn’t want to know.

Misha swallows. “Is this the person you’ve been texting?”

Elias looks at his phone, he turns it over on the countertop and Misha watches his face fall at the question. Like he didn’t want Misha to ask that, although it was the only question he could think of. The rest of his thoughts come in a chaotic jumble that he couldn’t coherently put into words.

The prevailing thought always returned back to when this would all be over.

“I know you’ll be against it, but hear him out first, okay?”

“Who-”

Gray’s footsteps come out into the hall and their mother seems to follow close behind.

“We’ll be meeting up with him a couple of nights from now. This’ll be our only chance before Honey becomes King.”

Misha stares at the floor. Boring holes into the linoleum surface.

It’s like the two years of his life spent grieving would all be coming to a close sooner than he expected and although it should’ve made him feel relieved, he feels nothing but a dull ache in his chest. Like a scar, he doesn’t want to reopen.

He doesn’t know if he should trust this plan. He doesn’t know why he’s so hesitant.

But he wants it to be over.

He gives Elias a curt nod, he’d follow Elias anywhere, even if it meant straight into danger. If he believed in this plan then Misha would try.

When Misha’s mom appears around the corner, half asleep and smoothing out the strange bed head sticking out from her hair, she sniffs the air.

“Misha, is something burning?”

Misha snaps out of his thoughts.

“My cream puffs!”