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The Lord Is My Shepard: Chapter Two
Title: The Lord Is My Shepard

Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own, never happened, permission less.

Rating/pairing: R (kind of graphic images, though not sexual ones yet.) Davey/Jade.

FYI: Just for the people waiting around, I've got Jade in the next chapter. This is more introduction and stuff. But the people I had read this really enjoyed it. So you know. I like reviews.

Dedication: malyssaaa and atheistbrat, and I believe you guys know why? <34.


Chapter One

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“He’s in mourning, dear, these things take time…he lost his father,” Davey recognises the voice belonging to his neighbour, an elderly woman that his mother has become close with over the past few months since his father’s death.

“He’s become reclusive,” Davey’s mother pauses, as if musing over her own words. “It’s morbid,” she says lightly, while Davey lowers himself on the stairs, his eyes trained on the glass panels flanking the front door.

The voices float down the foyer from the kitchen, and he imagines them sitting at the breakfast table, huddled over their cups of hot coffee, his mother causing a continuous clink with her spoon as she stirs her drink.

“All teenagers go through a reclusive stage. It’s nothing to be worried about.”

Davey draws his knees up, straining his ears to catch the conversation, his arms resting across his thighs. He keeps his head down, feeling his cheeks flush as his heart beat increases. He isn’t sure if he is angry or not, but he isn’t pleased to be the topic of their conversation.

“Davey’s always worried me,” the younger woman says softly, meaning this to be kept in confidence. “He’s so sensitive, not like the other boys. I don’t even think he has friends anymore. I don’t think he even wants them, he’s such a loner. It’s not healthy, is it?”

Davey bites down on the inside of his cheek, knowing this was not something he was meant to hear. Rain is pattering against the roof and the street outside, and Davey rests his shoulder against the wall, staring out the thin windows by the front door. The lawn is muddy and slightly over grown, while the house feels cold and grey.

“You need a change, I think. The three of you. When my husband died, I moved here,” the older woman pauses, her chair legs scraping the linoleum as she rearranges herself. “You got that job offering.”

“It’s so far away, we’d…” she trails off briefly, trying to collect her thoughts. “It’s a long way from home.”

Davey huddles on the stairs, listening to the voices drifting from down the hall, his molars digging deeper against the soft inside of his cheek. The house around him is polished wood and smoothed down corners, the furniture dappled in shadows from the rain smeared windows. The hardwood floors are slick slabs of ice beneath introverted footsteps and around every darkened corner is Davey’s father, crouched and waiting to grab him.

Davey can smell the musky graveyard and his father’s cologne. He imagines slimy hands wrapping around his arms, the skin slipping off the bones in wet chunks to reveal coagulated lumps of blood and flexing tendons, worms and insects squirming and tunnelling through the embalmed flesh.

Davey can see the collapsed cartilage of his father’s face, one eye missing while the other looks deflated like a dead fish’s. He thinks of the tattered, damp clothing rotting off in large sections to reveal the messily stitched up chest, originally cut to insert the embalming tubes, the skin strange shades of green and blue and milky whites. He thinks of the hair hanging off at an odd angle with part of the scalp still attached like a haphazard wig.

He can hear his father’s voice in his ear, the tone gravel and dirt, “This is the after life. This is what we all become. We just rot. We’re just a big pile of steaming, dying, organic matter, and we all rot, we rot, we rot in our little coffins of wood and earth, we rot and wait and our fingernails keep right on growing.”

Davey keeps imagining this, or having nightmares about it, or hallucinating it. It’s haunting his every move within the walls of his house. Every detail is clear and concise to the point where the only reason he knows it hasn’t happened is because there’s no such thing as zombies.

He’s not stupid or anything. He’s not quite delusional. He’s guilt ridden and obsessed with the death of his father, blaming himself or the house. He blames his weak eyes and awkward tongue. He blames every clammy surface in his house from the smooth bathroom tile to the soft fabric of his bed sheets.

He can feel his father breathing down his neck, clumps of dirt and loosened insects dropping to the wooden stairs, his tongue and cheeks thick and vibrating with maggots.

Davey’s waiting for it to happen. He’s waiting for his father to jump out of his closet or fall from the attic atop him or slip from the pantry when the door is pulled ajar. Davey feels haunted and pinned. He’s afraid to leave the house, in case his father comes for Mikey instead.

Davey’s not sure if he’s protecting his younger brother or if he wants to be the one who goes.

Davey wants to ask his father what the dead are waiting for.

“…you should look into it. You can’t spend the rest of your life blaming yourself for what happened, dear. You’ve got two beautiful boys to worry about,” the older woman speaks gently, as if cooing a small animal or a startled horse.

Davey’s heart is thudding harder then ever. He’s sure someone is standing behind him on the stairs, but he can’t bring himself to look. His palms are getting damp with sweat, his eyes clenched shut. He focuses on his mother’s voice, something that sounds distant and far away, but it’s the most stable thing he’s got.

“I know. I think I will. It’s…hard to live here.”

“Of course it is, dear.”

Davey is breathing as lightly as possible. He feels pinpricks running up his spine, his arms trembling loosely.

What are you waiting for?

God to come.

Davey shakes his head hard. That isn’t an answer. There is no god.

What are you waiting for?

He never comes…

What are you waiting for?

So we just wait and wait and wait and wait and wait…

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

Our entire lives we wait. Our entire deaths we wait.

Davey can feel the headache starting behind his temples. He clutches at his knees harder for leverage, his breath quickening, ribs catching against his collarbones. There’s a shrill cry from upstairs while his body starts shaking, almost convulsing.

WHAT. ARE. YOU. WAITING. FOR?

“That’s Mikey. He must’ve just woken up from his nap. Excuse me,” Davey’s mother stands up from the kitchen table lightly, padding down the hall into the foyer. She pauses in front of the staircase, looking at her older son curled into near fetal position on one of the last stairs. “Davey…”

You. Forever. Always. Until the day you die, I’ll be waiting for you.

Davey gives a dry sob, staring up into his mother’s face with a distant look in his dark eyes. She thinks for a moment that he’s not really seeing her at all, but he throws his arms around her neck.

Her own arms go around his shoulders, her knees clapping against one of the stairs, her son’s body radiating warmth and ragged breaths. She runs her hand through his hair and down his back before touching the back of his head again, pressing his flushed cheek against her chest.

“I-I-I d-d-don’t…I’m-I’m s-s-orry,” Davey laments, his mouth and nose making a wet spot against her shirt front. She smells sweet, like cream and rose petals, Davey’s arms staying hooked around her neck. Her skin is warm, but smooth and soft, her hair falling in Davey’s eyes.

“Sweetie…sweetheart, it’s okay…I promise, it will get better,” she pets her son’s bangs back soothingly, rearranging herself on the stairs, her guest temporarily forgotten.

Davey holds his breath, hiccoughing slightly with the effort to regain control of himself. His mother’s skin stays on her bones firmly, her heart beat filling his ear with a low bass thud.

“What’s’matter, Davey?” Mikey asks from the stair landing, looking down on the scene with sleepy eyes, small with a tiredness and hunger about him that is never subdued by naps or food, no matter the amount.

His mother beckons to her son with one hand, keeping the other secured around her eldest. Mikey toddles down the steps slightly off balance still from just waking up, sitting himself down on the stair next to Davey.

“Don’t cry,” the smaller boy lisps, moving his arm around his brother, letting his mother embrace him as well.

Davey’s body shudders, not at the contact but in his desperation to follow Mikey’s request. He doesn’t stop to think that this is his first break down since his father’s death. The moment seems more monumental in his mind for a less morbid reason.

It’s the first time he’s allowed himself to be touched by anyone since the funeral.