Post by dillon on Jun 20, 2013 14:09:04 GMT
OVERVIEW
It would be raining that day. It’s like the weather gods conspire against him; laugh behind his back and play their petty and spiteful games. Is it to teach him humility? Or is just to see if they can break him? He turns away from the window and dresses in a dark suit that is custom made. The fabric looks slick like oil and is darker than midnight. His shirt is white and looks like silk but it’s not. Everything is water resistant but designed specifically not to look like he’s dressing in rain gear. The tailor had thought he was eccentric. Eccentric served him well.
He put on waterproof socks before he slipped his feet into black shoes. His gloves look feminine, fitting till well passed his elbow, but under the cuffs of the suit they don’t reveal their secret. He would have added a hat, but it would have ruined the camouflage of his elegant outfit and perhaps betrayed their secret. Look, Dillon Zissis is wearing rain gear! He’d be worse off than the naked emperor…or maybe not. The scarf he drew around his neck was scarlet like fresh blood and felt like rubber against his skin. He sighed, gave himself a final once over in the tall dressing mirror before moving quickly through his New York City apartment to the front door.
Sunlight glimmered through a break in the clouds, dove through the windows like laughter and danced on the white envelope that had been stuck, at some time in the night or early morning, under the door. As though only wanting to tease him, the sunlight vanished. The skies outside seemed the darker for that brief ray of light, but at least the wind hadn’t started to blow. He hoped that the cemetery would be as tranquil and that his mother would let him stand under the eaves of a tomb while she visited his father’s grave. It was an anniversary of sorts and one that he couldn’t miss. Demetri Rhodes Zissis had been dead five years now, but his mother behaved like it was only yesterday that she’d lost him. He bent down and picked up the envelope intending to toss it aside, perhaps even forget about it, when he felt the weight in it. There was a key inside and he recognized the dark shape. It was a safe deposit box with a local bank. He owned a similar key.
Curious he opened the envelope and the key fell out. There was nothing else. The key had a box number on a simple key ring with the bank’s logo on the opposite side. The envelope itself was blank. He shoved the key into his pocket, took an umbrella from his large collection beside the door and left the apartment to brave the rain and the misery. But he had a mystery to occupy his thoughts and it kept him from thinking about the cold shiver running down his spine.
###
It took him a while, after the clerk left him alone with the safe deposit box, to open it. The box had been registered in his name seventeen years ago. Seventeen. The number of years that separated him from the Undersea Palace. It couldn’t be a coincidence. His hands trembled when he lifted them to open the box. Inside there was less than he had expected. There were no answers in the box, no grand revelations or even, so far as he could tell, a hint or a clue. There was a title deed to a house in a town called Manuka, Maine. He’d never heard of it. But the house was registered in his name. There were documents detailing a bank account also in his name that had been opened in the same town on the same day as the house had been purchased. The twenty-first of October. That couldn’t be a coincidence either. Seventeen years ago, on his birthday, someone had purchased a house for the recently adopted and newly christened (water free and only on paper of course) Dillon Rafe Zissis. It was a mystery that he couldn’t possibly investigate…but as he sat there reading the papers over and over again, he found himself thinking that he couldn’t possibly not.
FRIENDS
He didn’t have friends though his world was full of people. It was a little bit of razzle dazzle that he didn’t even need to sing for. He was wealthy, he was eligible and New York City was a social ecosystem designed to churn ever on into eternity with every day and every night new faces to crowd the spotlight. He was always meeting new people and he only had to remember their names for a while. It was the perfect cover for him. No one would ever dig beneath the surface, no one would ever discover his dark secrets. And no one blamed him when he didn’t have time to meet them twice, to have another luncheon at the new best thing in cuisine. He was busy. Perhaps next week… Perhaps next month… Perhaps at that New Years Eve party that everyone was going to be at. New York isn’t that big, he said. We’ll meet again. So easy to keep everyone at a distance without seeming to, without Dillon even having to try. It was almost too easy to be everyone’s friend and not have to spend very much time with them at all. It was perfect. Everyone knew his name, everyone knew his fairytale persona and no one ever snuck beneath the surface to root around in the sordid shadows of his soul.
It’s different in Manuka. Nobody knows his name. Everyone isn’t inviting him to their parties and he’s drowning in the silence that swallows him and spits up rough memories and dark thoughts; the silence that is throwing his broken psyche up to the surface and forcing him to bear witness. He needs the distraction of New York, but he’s going to have to settle for anything he can get in Manuka, or he just may unravel at the seams.
ENEMIES
It is ironic that working so hard at being somebody, he’s come out the other side not really being anybody. He casts a large shadow but that is all it was, a trick of the light and without any substance. He was a fairytale figure; a prince who couldn’t be tied down by anyone. Dillon Zissis, the desirable wealthy bachelor still escaping everyone’s clutches. He didn’t seem to be running. He didn’t seem to be blowing anyone off, but it’s hard to cling to a mirage once the world turns and the stage resets. You can’t hate something so ephemeral and while there’s always petty jealousy and unrequited love, Dillon has never inspired the kind of deep, dark passions that turn people into enemies.
But life in Manuka might as well be a million miles from New York and where you find yourself suddenly forced into making friends, you find yourself making enemies too…
LOVERS
Love doesn’t live here. It’s not a case of anymore. It never did. How can you love when you’ve never let anyone stick around long enough to creep under your skin? Lust has substituted for love all his life and he’s told himself it’s all he ever needs. Lust was there at the beginning, shining in eyes at the Undersea Palace, and lust is all there will be at the end. If love was real, why wasn’t it there, waiting for him before the tank and the pretty prison chamber? Still, deep down Dillon yearns for it like everyone else, for that one soul who will crash through his superficial layers and find the core of him and not, by some miracle, run way from it.
FAMILY
His adoptive mother is the only family he has left/knows about. There are distant relatives of the Zissis family in Greece, but he has never met any of them and as they would share none of his blood (or his supernatural heritage) he doesn’t care to reach out to any of them. Dillon’s mother lives in New York City. He has no idea about who his biological parents may or might have been.
OTHER
Dillon Rafe Zissis is new to town. He’s not unaware of the war in supernatural circles because life at the Undersea Palace exposed him to some of it. He’s lived his life since becoming the son of Demetri Zissis as a human and has avoided being drawn into that war. He considers himself neutral because how could he be a bright example for any who champion the light and how could he allow himself to become as dark as the unknown figures behind the world he was born into, the seedy Undersea Palace where he himself was worse than a slave… No one should be a pet. Remember the Undersea Palace and never forget…
