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Grian’s damnation begins with a firm knocking on the door.
Him and Mumbo are playing in the living room when it happens, the jovial buzz of their parents chatting in the background over preparations for the New Year’s dinner pauses as Mumbo’s father calls out to the others, stepping into the mudroom to answer the door. The moment is captured in Grain’s mind's eye, hazy in the soft holiday music playing over the speakers in the next room over, and the rough carpet of Mumbo’s living room. Neither boy pay the interruption any mind, too busy with wooden trolleys and worn dolls.
Grian couldn’t name exactly what tipped him off, but even at nine he could sense something in the way the air shifted as the gruff voices of the men in the door brushed their way past its threshold. Mumbo’s father says something, apparently friendly enough to earn a small chuckle from the strangers, but even to Grian’s young ears his cheer is strained. Their laughs, bitter.
Mumbo’s mother slips into the living room. Mumbo opens his mouth to say something but she shushes them gently. She takes the two children by their hands, carefully leading them further into the house, towards the stairs. Grian catches a flash of white trench-coats around the corner and the voices of his own parents, strained slightly but mostly curious as they go to see what the fuss is about.
She places a hand on either of their shoulders, dropping lightly to one knee as Mumbo tugs at her sleeve, mumbling something about “I don’t like new grown ups very much.” Mumbo never did, he was too shy, that’s what Grian was there for though!
“I know dear.” She says to the younger of the boys. “We’re just going to play a little game, see.” Her dark eyes are soft as she looks between her son and Grian, worry caught in the crows feet beside her eyes and the frown lines on her forehead, chiseled too deep for her age.
“Hide and seek.” She says, smiling. “But we’re playing on teams. The two of you are going to go hide upstairs and find the best hiding spot you can think of. Somewhere where even the best seeker won’t find you. Away from the scary strangers.”
She looks pointedly at Grian. “You can find a spot like that can’t you dear?”
“Yes mam!” Grian tells her,puffing out his chest slightly, hands laced behind his back. He’s excellent at hide-and-seek. He always has to choose his second best spot or Mumbo can never find him!
“Good, good. You must be silent as a cat, don’t let anyone but your parents find you. I’m counting on the both of you to win!”
Grian smiles at her, and Mumbo nods along quietly. “And you Mumbo, remember mama loves you. Now run along you two, go!” She plants a small kiss on the seven year-old’s forehead then gently nudges them towards the stairs.
Grian takes Mumbo’s hand and the two of them scurry, silent as mice, up the stairs. They slip into the guest bedroom at Mumbo’s prompting, cracking the door open and crawling into the dusty, crowded recesses of the closet till they're buried in piles of linen, old hanging clothes, and various boxes of toys and gadgets. Grian’s nose scrunches up and he resists the urge to sneeze in the dank and must.
They listen from their hiding spot as tense voices escalate to full on hostility. The shrill, stressed voice of Grian’s mother questions the audacity of the intruders and their acquisitions. Grian and Mumbo’s hands are still linked in the dark, pressed together till they’re clammy and white knuckled.
“Ghouls,” one of the strangers says simply. Like that single distinction is monstrous enough to warrant their damnation. Mumbo is shaking suddenly, pressed against Grian’s side. All Grian can do is pull him closer, not particularly understanding the weight of the single word.
“They’re good people,” Grian’s father says. And that’s all it takes for the strangers to dismiss their humanity too.
Hostile voices turn to shrieks, to strangled cries ‘to run,’ ‘to stop,’ ‘to hide,’ and stomping feet, and the crashing of glass and wood and it’s their parents’ voices calling out to each other. Its primal fear and panic like neither of them have heard before. Mumbo is shaking, sobbing silently into Grian’s jumper, and all Grian can do is shake silently alongside him, hands clasped desperately to Mumbo’s ears.
They’re silent as mice amidst the dust bunnies as they listen to a fight that isn’t so much a fight as a massacre.
And then it’s over just as quickly as it began. Mumbo and Grian’s breathing seem thunderous in the ringing static of their ears, against the gruesome silence of the house. It’s broken as the same rough voice calls out for the house to be searched. The boys listen with baited breath as the strange men stomp through Mumbo’s house, the scraping and turning-over of furniture, the shattering of more glass and porcelain and the creaking of the stairs as heavy footfalls grow louder evidence of their search. The tones of their voices remian casual but irritated.
The door of the room creaks ever so slightly as one of them forces it open. Grian feels Mumbo’s fingers dig into his jumper and skin, feels them both tense as the air they breath suddenly becomes stifling.
Boots scuff on the carpet, desk drawers scrape open and papers shuffle.
Grian clasps one hand over his mouth, clammy and cold and he can suddenly feel every slight brush of itchy wool against hypersensative skin and every sharp corner and bony elbow pressed into his taught body. He resists the urge to shift or itch, willing his own silence to absolution.
A shadow falls across the pale, duty light that diffuse through the closet door, and the air leaves his lungs completely as both of them go stalk still. He can hear the slight click of the handle turning.
Silent as mice . He reminds himself.
Another pair of boots stomp into the room. The newcomer barks something about being called out for a new job, Grian can barely hear over the blood in his ears and chest, but it’s doesn’t matter because the closet door doesn’t open and both sets of boots recede from the room and down the stairs.
They don’t find the boys, and as quickly as they came, they’re gone.
Grian and Mumbo don’t move for a long long time. They stay perfectly still even though they both ache, even though the must of the closet gives way to the tang of blood, and Mumbo must pass out for a while, as his shaking quiets and stills as the initial shock and adrenaline wears off. It’s not till hours later that they pull themselves out. Grian begs Mumbo not to look as they navigate a labyrinth of wreckage and blood stains, the only indication where the bodies of Mumbo’s parents fell. His own parents are still there, bodies broken and bloodied and he doesn’t quite get it as he falls into his knees, shaking his mother’s side desperately as if she’ll wake despite the hole through her stomach, begging her to come too. But she’s cold and pale as snow and he sobs. Great wretched sobs that shake his body as the adrenaline fully wears off. His father is in more pieces than he can bring himself to look at —save for a single glance which is all it takes to burn an image of a slack, glassy-eyed face into his mind— and then Mumbo is tugging at his jumper, begging for them to leave.
They leave. They run. Keep running, hands intertwined, and at some point, huddled away from the cold in a dark alley, Mumbo tells Grian that he’s what’s called a Ghoul. That humans hate them for what they have to eat to survive, that he swears he’d never hurt anybody, that his parents haven’t. Mumbo shows Grian his kagune, black and red marbled into a breathing organ that stretches outside his body to wrap around them in a cocoon that can protect as easily as it can hurt, and Grain thinks it’s beautiful.
Grian decides that he doesn't think the Ghouls are all that monstrous. No, it was humans who damned them both after all. It’s not till he’s 15 that he learns that those humans are called the Doves however, that white coats signify the sort of monster that hunts innocent ghouls for sport, that rip families apart; that the reason the corpses of Mumbo’s parents were gone is so that they could be defiled by the Doves, beautiful kagune’s twisted into artificial weapons. It’s about the same time he promises that Mumbo should never ever have to hurt anyone. About the same time he makes an oath to himself. One that swears to raise hell against any Dove that’s unlucky enough to cross his path.
The crisp air and heavy sky above promises snow to a city lively with the cheer of string lights and billboards. Despite the clouds, the sky is bright, blooming with rapid chemical reactions and brilliant combustions crying and shrill as they ring in a new year. And Grian is still, bundled in red and black, the colors most suitable to mask bloodstains, as he perches on the roof of a local high rise. His eyes spare only the occasional glance to the fire in the sky as they meticulously scan the streets below him; he can be patient. His prey is en-route if his source is as reliable as it has been for the last year and a half he’s been making use of it, and it's only a matter of time till he will have the chance to stave off the remaining bite of winter with the heady warmth of adrenaline and straining muscles in his familiar little game of
cats and mice
.
His lips pull into a cruel smile beneath his beaked mask. Perhaps raptor and rodent is more accurate than a cat and a mouse. Regardless, he's made sure to always fly on silent wings.