Hapi by Cari Waites

In a roomin the house that Jayden hadn’t seen before, Duamutef flung him to the floor.

“Where’s Hapi?” Jayden asked, gasping for breath. His shoulder throbbed—Duamutef had wrenched it dragging him into the house—and his palms stung and his knees hurt from catching himself as he fell. The dusty floorboards were now smeared with mud where he’d landed.

He was in a living room. There was a TV on in the background, and Jayden squinted around the room to see the brother with the scarred face sprawled on an old couch watching it. The brother’s gaze flicked to Jayden and then up at Duamutef.

“Hapi will be pissed off,” he said, his tone mild.

Duamutef curled his lip. “Hapi’s been thinking with his dick.”

“Seems like he’s not the only one,” the brother with the scar said.

“Shut your mouth, Imsety!”

Imsety’s thin mouth curved in a smile. He reached for the remote control that was resting on the arm of the couch, then flicked through the channels. “You want to make him mad, Du? You be my guest.”

“It was my turn to find the ba!”

“Then maybe you should have been trawling the river instead of Hapi,” Imsety said. His dark gaze found Jayden again. His eyes shone with what might have been delight. “You snooze, you lose.”

Duamutef muttered something in their foreign language, all angry bitten-off sounds.

“Where’s Hapi?” Jayden asked, his voice wavering. He inched away from the couch toward a sofa chair with a torn fabric cover. Duamutef seemed content to let him move for now, and Jayden sat on the floor with his back against the side of the sofa chair. He drew his knees up and hugged them.

“He’s in town,” Imsety said, “buying groceries.”

Jayden wanted to laugh at how absurd that sounded. What kind of gods needed to buy groceries? How could they even buy into a delusion like that when it was paper thin? Gods who shopped at Coles. Gods who drove cars. Gods who brushed their teeth in a stained little bathroom basin every night. It was insane! Why couldn’t they see that it was insane?

Duamutef rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, his mouth pulled into a grin as he watched Jayden. “Did Hapi tell you what we’ll do to you?”

Jayden flinched.

Duamutef crouched in front of him, his big hands hanging in the space between his thighs. “We will cut you apart, ba, and take the parts of you that belong to us.” His eyes shone. “I have a jar ready for your stomach. I like them when they’re still warm. I like to lift them out with my fingers. I like the smell of them.” He leaned in and sniffed, his eyes fluttering closed. “I like the taste.”

Jayden’s blood turned to ice and he hugged his knees more tightly. Duamutef’s breath was sour and hot against his face.

How did this happen? How had every choice in Jayden’s small, unremarkable life led him here? It wasn’t fair—and Jayden shouldn’t have been so shocked by that because when had life ever been fair? It had always made some kind of sense, though, before now.

Duamutef sat on the floor, and then he gripped Jayden’s ankles and tugged his legs out. He watched Jayden carefully, possibly wondering if he’d fight back, but Jayden didn’t. What would be the point? He leaned back against the side of the sofa chair, his gut churning. Duamutef shuffled forward so he was sitting in the V of Jayden’s legs. Duamutef’s legs were crossed, and he rested Jayden’s calves over his thighs.

Jayden’s breath caught in his throat, as though Hapi was squeezing it.

Duamutef leaned forward and peeled Jayden’s damp T-shirt up. He pressed his palm below Jayden’s ribcage, on his left side. “There. Under your flesh and muscle, there is it.” He shifted his hand lower, to Jayden’s abdomen. “Most think it is here, but here are your intestines. I have no interest in those, but my brother Qebehsenuef will draw them out of you like a spooling thread.” He moved his hand again. “And Imsety will take your liver.”

Jayden darted his gaze to Imsety, who was flicking through the channels again. He didn’t even appear to be listening.

Duamutef pressed his index finger against Jayden’s stomach, and without warning, jabbed hard. It hurt, and Jayden grunted and jerked forward reflexively. A second hard jab in the same place as the first had him whimpering, the pain spreading so sharply that he was afraid if he looked down he’d see that Duamutef had somehow pierced his flesh. He imagined Duamutef’s finger curling inside him and his stomach roiled. Bile rose in the back of his throat and it burned.

Duamutef pushed him back against the chair with his free hand and jabbed sharply again.

Jayden tried to squirm away. “Don’t!”

A third jab, this one as hard as a punch, and suddenly it wasn’t just bile rising in Jayden’s throat. He retched, vomiting water all down his front. His eyes streamed with tears, and he tried to spit to clear his mouth, but Duamutef jabbed him again.

He flung himself sideways, suddenly panicking that he’d choke as another wave or vomit rose in his throat. His injured shoulder hit the floor hard, and Duamutef’s laughter echoed in his ears as he retched and coughed and spat.

Duamutef grabbed him and pushed him over onto his back. Before Jayden even knew what was happening, Duamutef’s teeth were fastened on his stomach, and they were tearing him.

Jayden screamed, the sound ragged and raw, and tried to push Duamutef off him. He felt his skin rip as he did.

He scrambled away on his knees, one hand pressed to his bleeding stomach. He scuttled around the chair, keeping it between himself and Duamutef.

Duamutef laughed, showing bloody teeth.

Suddenly all of Hapi’s rough treatment seemed like a picnic. At least when Hapi had put his hands around Jayden’s throat and squeezed, Jayden had mostly felt panic. Any pain he’d felt had been because he’d fought back, and he was learning not to do that. And there was a connection between them when Hapi did that: the way he watched Jayden, intently savouring every moment until Jayden’s panic gave way to total submission; the way he kissed him afterwards. Duamutef was just brutal, and there was nothing intimate about his brutality. He was just a kid pulling the wings off insects to laugh at the way they struggled.

“Don’t touch me,” he said as Duamutef reached out to him. “Don’t touch me!”

From somewhere close by he heard a bang and registered it as a door slamming against a wall a fraction of a second before Hapi loomed in the doorway. The other brother, the tall one, was with him. Hapi dropped his green bags and cans of spaghetti rolled out onto the floor.

Hapi strode into the room and wrenched Jayden to his feet. Jayden cried out but turned into the protection of his embrace.

“He’s mine,” Hapi growled out. “I fucking told you that!”

Jayden’s heart fluttered wildly, and the wound on his stomach throbbed with every beat. His legs felt weak, and he shook in the cage of Hapi’s arms.

“I was just playing,” Duamutef said. He wiped the blood from his mouth. “Just getting a taste of the fresh little ba.”

Hapi growled.

“Told you he’d be pissed off,” Imsety said.

The other brother picked up the dropped groceries wordlessly.

“He’s mine,” Hapi said again. He sat in the sofa chair and pulled Jayden down with him.

“No,” Jayden whispered in his ear because he didn’t want to stay in this room with the brothers, but a gentle touch to the side of his throat made him silent. He sat sideways on Hapi’s lap, with Hapi’s arms around him. He buried his face in Hapi’s shoulder, squeezed his eyes shut, and concentrated on the feeling of Hapi’s arms holding him.

* * *

It wasnight when Hapi took him back to the shed. The dogs shadowed them. It was still raining, and Jayden heard frogs singing. He walked with a hand pressed carefully against his stomach. The bite marks were only shallow, but they’d bruised badly. The wound still throbbed, and Jayden’s gut churned.

“Don’t leave me,” he said when they reached the shed door. “Please, not tonight.”

Hapi held his gaze in the darkness, and for a moment Jayden imagined he might have swayed him. That maybe there was something there under the delusion, and Jayden had snagged it and could draw it out of him. That maybe Hapi cared. That his anger at Duamutef hadn’t just been because of a proprietary claim on Jayden and the ensuing pissing match, but because it mattered to him that Jayden had been hurt.

But Hapi only grunted and nudged Jayden into the shed.

“What’s ba?” Jayden asked, anxious to keep him there as long as he could. He turned to see Hapi silhouetted in the doorway. “That’s what Duamutef called me. What does it mean?”

“You are ba,” Hapi said. “You are a soul.”

“Am I?” Jayden asked.

“You are a soul,” Hapi repeated and closed the shed door. Jayden heard the chain rattling into place.

He picked his way through the darkness toward his mattress and eased himself down carefully. He lay on his back and peeled his shirt up. He used the damp fabric to dab at the wound Duamutef had given him, glad he couldn’t see it.

There had been no hesitation in Hapi’s voice when he’d confirmed that Jayden was a soul. Maybe in some other place, in some other context, Jayden could have taken comfort in that. People always talked about souls as eternal things, right? Except that wasn’t what it meant here with Hapi and his brothers. If Jayden was a soul, that meant that he wasn’t a person and his physical body was nothing. Or, it was just the husk to be peeled back so that his journey to judgement could continue or something. No, there was nothing comforting in the sons of Horus’ idea of the eternal soul, not when Jayden was a living, breathing human being.

Hapi wasn’t going to save him, Jayden knew, at least not in way Jayden needed saving.

He pressed the bruise around his wound and winced.

He was going to die here, and Hapi wasn’t going to do a thing to stop it.

Jayden breathed through the sudden rush of panic that rose up in him at the realisation.

It was okay. This was why he had a Plan B.

He reached for his water bottle and sat up to drink. There was no sign of the cat so far tonight. He finished the water and then stood and made his way over to the wall he’d levered away. He sat down in front of it, cross legged, and reached for the star picket.

He was in bare feet and he had an empty water bottle, a tent peg, and a star picket. But fuck it, his chances out there were still better than waiting here in the dark to die. He shivered as he thought of the dogs and wondered if they really would hunt him down. Still, it wasn’t like he had a choice, was it? He could either get ripped apart by the dogs trying to escape or he could stay here and get ripped apart by the brothers instead.

Hapi had said that if he gave himself to him, he’d make sure it didn’t hurt.

And Jayden had believed that. Maybe he’d even been a little seduced by that painless option, if his death was inevitable—but Hapi hadn’t protected him from pain today. He hadn’t been there when Duamutef had hurt him and bitten him hard enough to draw blood. Hapi wasn’t going to save his life, and he’d proven today that he couldn’t save him from pain.

So what choice did he have?

He had to get the fuck out of here.

The sudden rattle of the chain against the shed door gave Jayden enough warning to get back to his mattress. He lay there, heart pounding and hoping like fuck it was Hapi and not one of the other brothers.

Bright torchlight hit him in the eyes and he lifted his hand to shield his face as he sat.

“Lie down,” Hapi said, and Jayden obeyed.

Hapi set the torch on the ground and angled the beam away. Jayden’s heart skipped a beat as the beam briefly illuminated the section of wall he’d been working on, but it kept moving and settled at last on the claw of the harvester, throwing a monstrous shadow against the far wall.

Hapi knelt down, plastic rustling. He took a bottle of Dettol and a wad of tissues out of the plastic bag he held. Jayden met his gaze and lifted his shirt. He winced as Hapi applied the Dettol, and his eyes stung when Hapi leaned down and blew on it to take the worst of the sting away.

Who had taught him to do that? Had he been a kid once, with skinned knees and a parent who remembered to blow on them? It seemed impossible.

Hapi drew Jayden’s shirt down again and reached into his bag again. This time he produced a sandwich, wrapped in a piece of kitchen towel, and handed it to Jayden. Jayden’s stomach growled in hunger, but the movement reminding him of Duamutef causing him to throw up, and he wavered for a moment before taking the sandwich. If he was getting out of here, he needed his strength. The sandwich was cold lunchmeat and mustard pickles, and the first bite was all it took for Jayden’s hunger to overcome his lingering nausea. He wolfed the sandwich down. His throat hurt when he swallowed, and the sandwich sat heavily in his aching gut, but it worth it just to eat.

“Slower,” Hapi chided. He set a fresh bottle of water down on the floor.

Jayden grabbed the water and discovered to his delight that it was cold. He rubbed it over his face before cracking the seal and taking a sip.

The corner of Hapi’s mouth quirked, and Jayden smiled in response.

He saw through it this time, though. Thinking Hapi cared for him was a trap. It wasn’t even that Hapi didn’t care in his twisted way, just that the scope of his caring was no use to Jayden. The trap was that Jayden had misinterpreted how far he could manipulate the way that Hapi felt and he knew now that he couldn’t.

The sudden lack of choice left him feeling oddly free.

He studied the planes of Hapi’s face, committing them to memory. He lost himself for a moment in Hapi’s dark gaze—nobody had ever looked at him the way that Hapi did. Hardly anyone had ever noticed Jayden at all. He set his water bottle down, spilling some, and Hapi clicked his tongue and screwed the cap on.

Another oddly caring gesture from the man who wanted to take his lungs and spread them out like wings. After this, if he lived, Jayden was going to have to take some serious time to unfuck his head.

“Horus is coming,” Hapi said. He held his palm against Jayden’s cheek, and Jayden leaned into the touch. “Soon you will pass into Aaru.”

“Without you, though,” Jayden said, and Hapi’s expression tightened for a moment.

“Without me,” he said at last, and he leaned down and pressed his mouth against Jayden’s forehead.

Then he rose and left.

Jayden listened to the rattle of the chain as Hapi locked the shed. He sat there in the darkness and counted to a hundred to give Hapi time to get back to the house. Then he did it again, just to make sure.

At last, when he was as sure as he could be that Hapi wouldn’t hear him, he scrambled on his hands and knees to the back wall and wedged the star picket into the gap he’d made in the seam.

And he pushed.