The Observer: Always Watching

Death and crime were all Aleksandr Baptiste Petrov had ever known, he was brought into this world by death; his poor mother had paid the ultimate price for bearing him. He knows nothing about her or where she came from; only that she was French. His father refused to talk about his mother and instead did what every widower does; blame his kid, drink, gamble and screw hookers. They barely made ends meet and his father had to go and blow the precious amount he managed to make, he always found a way to blame Aleks. A child. If Aleks hadn’t “killed” his wife then they’d all be living a life of luxury. Thinking back on his mother Aleks knows he has her eyes; green like the moss that grew on the long-abandoned house next door. His father had dull blue eyes that reminded him of dirty water. He did have the same platinum blond hair as his father, that was about all he had from the man.

Aleksandr and his father had lived in Russia until he was about 10; until the Big Change™️. His father had debts up to his neck and could no longer avoid the collectors, he had no money to give and nowhere to hide. They couldn’t just up and move to a new village, they could however move to a whole new country. And they did. Contact was made with extended family in the US and arrangements were made. Aleks never got the full story, he was told that his extended family in the US didn’t even know he existed. His father told them he had the money. Their extended family had set up a meeting to essentially get them smuggled out of Russia and into America. How much would all this cost you may ask? A lot. How did his deadbeat father pay for it? With his son’s life. His father sold him to the smugglers; a Russian crime family that operated out of the states. They dabble in everything including human trafficking and a child of his age was valuable for many things. 

Once they made it to America his father took off and he never saw him again. He hopes he died in a gutter somewhere. After that Aleks grew up in the Petrov family, it became his “family”. It was very rough at the beginning but eventually, thankfully, he discovered he had a talent for memorizing things. It was as if he’d just witnessed a scene unfold even if it had happened weeks or months prior. The head of the family, known by everyone as Papa Petrov, took notice and boom instant promotion. No more long hours spent… doing other things. He would be a watcher, an… observer, for Papa Petrov. He was obedient and trustworthy by this point, thoroughly brainwashed after 6 years with the family. It’s not like he had anywhere else to go or anyone out there waiting for him. He was 16 and taking down detailed reports of the comings and goings of whatever job he was sent on; disposals, drug deals, prostitution exchanges, interrogations and so on. 

He didn’t care much for anyone in the family and they really didn’t care for him, especially after his promotion. He was very detached much of his life but finally being allotted a little more respect and freedom had given him time to think about so much. His gender for one, was the most important, he was told he was a girl for so long but it always felt wrong. Like trying to wear shoes that are either too small or too big, walking through life with a painful stumble in every step. He had a phone, they all did for “business” purposes, and the internet gave him so much. He learned what he was and went crawling to Papa Petrov begging him to be understanding and allow him to live as a man. Asking his permission to be happy. Papa Petrov didn’t care, the only things he cared about were results and money, a girl calling herself a boy meant nothing to him. Alyks was happy to be given permission for this and he wasn’t stupid, he knew Papa Petrov had no respect for people like him. But he was useful and he helped bring in money.

For the next few years, he was satisfied with what he was given, and he continued on with life. But when it seems like life has left you to rot it turns around just to throw you the hardest curveball it can manage. Void was his curveball, not even the crazy things that followed after could hold a candle to his Void. He was 20 and working a clean-up job, disposing of a body and its remnants. The job was at an abandoned community building by a forest preserve in Colorado. The target was wanted by the boss for ratting and running. He was inside the center, scrubbing the old cracked tile floor of blood and gore when he heard footsteps from the balcony overlooking the floor above him. Out of habit, he looked to see which one of his work partners it was, it had been none of them. On the balcony was a masked person kneeling on the dirty floor with their head resting between two bars and hands on either side, gripping two more. They were just looking at him and after a few minutes of returning their stare, Alyks quickly stood up, pulled his gun from his jogger's waistband and shot at the intruder. They hadn’t even flinched at the sight of his gun and Alyks hit the person square in the head, they violently jerked back from the impact before falling back and out of sight. Alyks wasted no time in running up to the second floor to confirm his kill and what he saw or rather didn’t see had him doubting his own eyes. The person was gone, he swore he nailed them right in the head, he had to of. His adrenaline was high and he could hear his heart hammering in his ears as he looked around the area. There was a small puddle of blood but nothing else. The others on the job with him wrote him off, it was a long night and he must be tired. The blood was probably from the target; he did give them a chase. That wasn’t the last time he saw the masked person who, amongst a deluge of other information, would learn they were a man only a year younger than him. But none of that was as valuable as seeing his real face, he’s swooning now just reminiscing about it. How fucked up is it to have met your future romantic partner while cleaning up blood from some guy you helped murder. Void had later told him that he hadn’t moved because he was so taken with Alyks and forgot where he was at that moment. Sap. As much as he loves his Void the shit he got pulled into was all because of him, he could protect Alyks from the woman that he worked for and from his brothers but not from the other weirdos out there and oh boy were they something else. Especially his new Papa.

About a year or so into his strange new friendship with Void, a few months after his 21st birthday, things started to get a bit strange. Out of the corner of his eye, he’d sometimes see a faceless human shape as tall as the ceiling, it didn’t bother him at first as he always had a poor sleep schedule coupled with the stress of everyday criminal life. Lights would flicker more often at odd hours of the night but again it was nothing too odd, the warehouse they used as a main hub for living quarters was old and kind of run down. The most annoying of these occurrences was the random popping of static on the radios and other devices Alyks used for listening to music, ebooks and podcasts. Reading in English was still kind of hard for him to manage so these things gave him access to more activities and having that interrupted was grating on his nerves. His usually calm demeanor and saintly patience were being tested to their limits until he couldn’t take anymore and demanded Void tell his “mother” to lay off a little or at least leave his devices alone. Void had assured him he would try to broach the subject with her but he couldn’t promise anything. He was warned about this beforehand, if he wanted Void in his life then he would have to deal with it. After a few weeks, nothing had gotten better, in fact, it was getting worse he would get migraines, but thankfully they didn’t affect his work too often and on a few rare occasions he would get nosebleeds. He once again confronted Void about all of this and what Void told him concerned both of them. He had spoken to his mother and she had cut down on her visits, whatever was happening now was not her. Void refused to ask his mother about the occurrences as he knew she would do nothing about them and might even see Alyks as some kind of sickness that might infect Void himself and that meant the end of their friendship. Permanently. So together they tried to find solutions for the problems, Void supplied him with medication for the migraines and cotton balls for the nosebleeds. Alyks resolved to wearing his hood inside to protect his eyes from the flickering lights and block his peripheral so he couldn’t see any more tall people. There wasn’t much to do with the static on his radio and other devices which was the most dissatisfying result for him but as the years went by he adjusted and got used to it until he barely noticed it anymore. It would all come to a head though, an explosive one that would paint the walls in blood.

Void had confessed that he and his brothers got wrapped up with a bunch of other strange people that lived in an old mansion in the woods and one of the “residents” might have been responsible for his paranormal problems for all these years. Alyks wanted answers but Void, looking absolutely ashamed, told him it was all his fault and there was nothing he could do to fix it and worse of all Void had to stay out of it. He told Alyks to just let it happen, don’t fight it, it would be easier. He was 24 and spent nearly every day waiting for something to happen, waiting for the boogeyman to rear his ugly head and drag him into the endless pit beneath his bed, leaving nothing but deep gouges in the floorboards behind left by nails. His nails. That didn’t happen but sometimes he wonders if it would have been better, more favorable than this. He and a few other family members were staying at a small safe house in Wisconsin, they had been tasked with tracking down a debtor who had run out of time. They would never find him and the men that were with him would never find anything ever again. It had all happened so fast and he was disoriented from being violently awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of breaking glass from three separate places in the house. Banging on the walls followed, the sound of people running around the house while one of them laughed. The men he was with began barking orders and threats, it didn’t take long for someone to get trigger-happy and start unloading through one of the windows into the pitch-black night. They didn’t hit anything and instead, it amplified the activity, the people outside taking it as their queue to really start their fun. Alyks remembered looking towards the window near his cot as it was shattered and he saw what might have been a man in a dull yellow hoodie and balaclava with a red frown and eyes stitched into it. Said man held a crowbar in one hand and a camcorder in the other, he took his time to scan the room with the recorder like he had all the time in the world. He finally landed on Alyks’ form and after a few seconds, he began to climb into the window prompting Alyks to haul ass out of the room but not before grabbing his gun and slamming the door behind him. He had run to the rest of his men and relayed what happened to them. They insisted on staying together in the living room so as not to be snuck up on. From the busted living room window he saw another man casually walk by and look him directly in the face or he assumed he did. The man was wearing a mask with blacked-out eyes and feminine features, he tilted his head every so slightly before ducking out of sight. Alyks didn’t have long before one of his men screamed out in absolute agony, when he whipped around to see what the hell had happened he saw a hatchet embedded in the guy's shoulder. The man slumped to the floor in pain, his gun arm now useless, he screamed and swore and was answered with maniacal laughter. He had caught a glimpse of a third man running away with what seemed like bright orange eyewear. His heart was pounding in his ears, how many were there?! More gunshots rang out but Alyks couldn’t seem to make himself do anything, he was frozen and everything around him slowly began to be drowned out by the muffled sound of static that slowly escalated into a piercing shrill squeal in his ears that made his brain vibrate. His eyes began to blur with unshed tears as the tall faceless figure he’d seen in the darkest corners of his vision formed in front of him for the first time. It looked like a man in a suit but the suit looked wrong almost like tattered tree bark. Long tendrils writhed about from its back and a red slit down its chest glowed faintly and seemed to draw him in. It had no face, no mouth but it spoke to him from the deepest recesses of his mind. He could make out a tendril reaching for one of his men, the one on the floor, it seemed to go in slow motion or on purpose like it was testing him to see what he would do with this looming threat. His body managed to move out of instinct and as the tendril went for the man it pierced straight through Alyks chest and then blackness. He had passed out. As he lay there on the floor, something warm and wet bubbling out of his chest, he would groggily come in and out of consciousness only to hear the sound of men screaming, gunshots and something making wet thudding noise, the sounds of wet tearing, splattering, cracking and giggling. The only thing he could vaguely make out around him was red and the last thing he saw were three masked faces looking down at him amongst a mass of black tendrils.