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ATLAS
(tw: child abuse)
AS OF RIGHT NOW, if the opportunity ever came a-knockin', Atlas thinks he'd politely decline the offer to become a drug dealer.
Sure, it's an honorable lifestyle. You get hella cash, hella clout, the excitement of potentially being murdered by your clients or spending the rest of your life incarcerated. Above all else, he thinks, you can give yourself a cool street name. Like Wolverine, or maybe Bartholomew.
But if it means having to live like this, it can't be worth it.
He looks up at the apartment buildingâif you could even call it that. It seems more like a biohazard zone, like something out of a sci-fi movie. Like Godzilla came and leveled the place but left the meth lab up and running.
His sneakers sink several inches into the bubbly mud, and his jeans are splattered with something that smells suspiciously like human shit. The entire world smells like human shit, in fact, and the smell seems to be coming from the apartments. And it's not just normal human shitâit's, like, Taco Bell naked chicken chalupas human shit.
A couple feet in front of him walks the most beautiful woman in the world, his mom. A big gray hoodie hides her curls, and she keeps flipping something small and sleek and black back and forth in her hands. A gun or a knifeâAtlas can't tell. He guesses, probably, a knife. They make for a much cleaner kill: no noise, less room for error, less chances of getting caught. If you do it right, hit the vein just so, go straight for the jug, it can even be quicker.
An amateur could do it, but Eva Alessia Villa is no amateur. Neither is her son, though he would like to be.
His mom has no idea that he's there. If she did, she'd turn the fuck around and whip his ass to hell. Well, maybe his punishment wouldn't be as dramatic as that, but you get the point. Even though she'd be pissed to know he'd secretly tagged along, she's too sweet to so much as raise her voice at him or his siblings. She'd probably just take away his phone for a week.
But Atlas has to stop her. He just has to.
He can't let her do this, can't let her take someone's life for a couple extra bucksânot when they're so close to stopping. Not when they're so close to getting shut down for good. Not when the Villa Pizzeria is so close to becoming nothing more than what it should be: a pizzeria.
Ever since the end of the world, his mom and Cain's dad had been on a sort of hiatus in their little hitman side business. They'd stopped taking on assignments. They'd stopped killing people for spare change, stopped robbing banks and businesses and stealing candy from babies for their hirers. Atlas didn't know why, but he wasn't about to complain.
Thisâwhat his mom is about to do, the man she's about to killâis the very first assignment they'd actually accepted since the rift had collapsed. Atlas doesn't know why they agreed to it. It's nothing special like a political assassination or anything; it's just getting rid of a rival drug dealerâsomething they used to do all the time.
Maybe his mom's into meth and she's doing her dealer a favor, wiping out the competition.
That had to be it.
Meanwhile, back in reality, his mom is ducking inside a door. He speeds up a bit to catch up with her, his legs screaming in protest, because, like, the only physical exercise he's used to doing is running for his life, not power-walking. Oh! And the occasional pleasure of the flesh.
(That's what Wonder Woman called it in her banger of a movie. He's not into vore.)
He tugs on the handle of the door. It doesn't budge. And the handle is dripping in some greasy oil, like someone tried to deep fry it. "Goddamnit," he mumbles, grabbing it with his other hand as well and pulling with all his might.
And then the door is pushed open from the inside, and Atlas goes flying backwards onto his ass. From the ground, he looks up. His mom stands there, her hood beginning to slide backwards off her head, staring at her son.
"Atlas?" She asks, holding the door open with her hip. "What are you doing here? And did you just say goddamnit?"
"No!" Atlas exclaims, staying there on the ground like a big dumb idiot. "That must have been somebody else. Also I'm hungry."
She narrows her eyes like she doesn't quite believe him. "You're hungry? That's why you're here?"
"I thought that maybe you were going on a secret McDonald's run and I could tag along and get some nugs."
"Christ, did you drive yourself here?" Worried, she leans out the door frame, glancing around the grounds as if searching for his car. "Get up. Go wait in my car, all right, baby? I'll be out in a couple minutes, and I'll drive you home. I'll come back for your car later. Gotta stop by the car wash on the way, and then we'll get some Micky D's. I know you love that place."
He almost listens to her and almost turns around because God, he really does love the car wash. Always has. He likes to pretend he's on a sinking pirate ship, but he's some superhero like Aquaman, so he'd already saved all the drowning people. They're safe on some luxury cruise liner that came to their help, and he's chilling down in the wreckage for the hell of it. And the swirls of colorful soap are always so pretty, and the whirring noises so gentle and soothing, and it always seems so odd and peaceful inside of it, like the rest of the world doesn't exist. And he really does love McDonald's chicken nuggets.
But he stands his ground, getting to his feet, because this is bigger than he is. Bigger than his car wash, bigger than his nugs.
"No, Mom, Iâ" Atlas's voice cracks. He coughs into his hand. "I wanna stay. I wanna help."
His mom lets the door swing shut behind her, and she moves just in front of her son, cupping one of her warm hands around his cheek. "Sweetie, you really don't have to. Is it because of Cain? Is it becauseâ?"
"It's because I want to do it." Atlas places his hand gently on top of her's. "I wanna get back in the swing of things."
"You're out of practice." She looks like she doesn't quite believe him, but she sighs, knowing this is a fight she'd never win. If she doesn't let him tag along, he'll go with someone else, someone dangerous. "So you're to stay behind me, out of sight, and watch. Nothing more. Do you understand?"
"Yep. Absolutely."
So she pulls the door openâeasily, like it's made of paperâand the two of them step into a lonely little hallway. The world, inside, is lit by a single lightbulb swinging on a corded string. There's a rickety staircase to their right and a corroded elevator directly in front of them. Atlas's mom presses the button for the elevator, and it opens with a ding a second later. The two step inside. The doors shut behind them, locking them off from the outside world.
"This looks more like a death trap than an elevator," Atlas notes, crinkling his nose. A pungent, skunk-like smell overbears his senses. "It smells like weed."
"My job isn't all butterflies and murder." She presses a button labelled in the Roman numeral III, and the elevator lurches a bit before shooting upwards at the pace of a snail. "How do you know what weed smells like?"
Atlas doesn't know how someone could not know what weed smells like. "Mom, I'm in high school."
His mom crosses her arms over her chest, her toe tap tap tapping away. "I knew I shouldn't have let you go to all those parties."
Atlas tries to make it sound as if he's saying something really obvious like The sky's blue or I'm pansexual. "Nobody smokes weed at parties."
"Please. That's the entire point of high school parties." She sticks her nose up in the air like she's trying to smell it. "Is it Cain? Does he make you smoke weed with him? I knew he was a bad influence on you . . . "
Atlas doesn't know what her deal is with Cainâused to, she and him got along just fine. But ever since they started dating, she's taken to accusations. It's like nothing that Cain can do can ever stand up to the expectations she has for his boyfriend.
It's not that she's homophobicâAtlas came out to her a couple weeks ago, and she hasn't treated him any differently since. She just doesn't trust Cain. Thinks Atlas could do a lot better. Wishes he was dating sweet little bisexual Silas instead because Silas is like a fucking puppy and Cain's like a mountain lion with a chainsaw.
He thinks that's a load of horseshit. Really, the most wild thing they do together is go to Waffle House in the middle of the night and, sure, sometimes smoke a little weed or drink a little beer, but is that really all that bad? His mom seems to have herself convinced that they're snorting crack off each other's bodies.
Really, Atlas wonders, can't this elevator go any faster? They only have to get to the third floor . . .
Not wanting another lecture, he decides the best course of action is changing the topic and takes a shot in the dark: "Momma, you can't kill him."
His mom is silent for several moments as she stares at him, the light flickering along her face like a flashlight held in a shaky hand. The elevator dings, alerting them that they've reached the second floor, and keeps on crawling along. "Whyâwhy can't I?"
"Because you can't . . . " Atlas is whispering, now. Something about this elevator makes him feel afraid to speak. "Because you can't keep killing people for your own personal gain!"
"I'm not killing people for my own gain," she huffs. "Ever since your father diedâ"
"Ever since I killed my own father," Atlas corrects.
Someone's life is on the line, he reminds himself. Someone's life is on the line and that's the only reason why he has the guts to talk to his mother like this.
She gives him a murderous glare, wringing her hands. "Ever since your father died, I haven't accepted just any assignment. Abusers, murderers, rapists . . . I only kill people deserving of death."
"And you think you get to be the judge of that, like you're some sort of vigilante of violent justice? Like you're Batman? Mom, do you think you're Batman?"
"I don't kill for my own gain," she decides, like she has to convince herself of it. "I kill to better soceity."
"Mom, answer me: do you really think you're Batman?" Atlas pressures, but decides to drop it. He has more important things to be asking her. "Do you make any money off of these supposed morally just kills?"
She responds in a simple nod.
"Then you kill for your own gain. You kill for money, and you kill for the satisfaction that you're bettering society, when, in reality, you don't do smack to change it."
"You're too young to understand, Atlas."
"I'm old enough to understand that what you're doing is wrong and you're just as bad as the people you kill! You want to better society through murder? Great, amazing, absolutely fantabulous! Kill corrupt people with power. Kill terrorists, kill dictators, kill literal Nazisâkill someone whose death would actually mean something. Don't kill a drug dealer. You're not gonna change squat."
Somewhere between when he opened his mouth and closed it, the elevator doors slid open. And now, it seems, the two of them areâquite literallyâstaring down the barrel of a gun.
"Whatcha talkin' 'bout killin' a drug dealer for?" asks a gruff voice.
Before this moment, Atlas never really imagined dying in an elevator.
Atlas's mom pounces for the buttons on the elevator wall, trying to slam the big red one labelled CLOSE DOORS, but it's too late. The gun fires off a round with a resonating BANG. A bullet embeds itself in the wall just above his mom's head.
The duo both instinctively duck, throwing their hands over their heads and squeezing their eyes shut. A second after the shot, Eva Alessia Villa throws her body in front of Atlas to protect her sonâonce a momma bear, always a momma bear. But she needs to do something else unless she wants them both to die.
So, naturally, she shoves her foot into the man's ankles, sending him tumbling to the floor. Then, naturally, she begins to kick himârepeatedly and in the face, digging the heels of her boots into his eyes and squishing them around in there. But, unfortunately, she'd forgotten all of her basic training and gotten tunnel-vision for this one guy without even considering that there might be more of them, because the gunman is dead and she's got to make him deader.
"MOM!" screams Atlas, his warning a second too late.
Another manâbigger than the first, easily twice the size of Atlas's tiny but mighty momâgrabs hold of her foot, knocking her over and dragging her body over the fallen one of the gunman. She screams and thrashes out with her free foot, trying to kick the guy, but he just grabs hold of her free foot with his free hand. Specks of panic flushing her cheeks with color, she tries to sit up, tries to reach him with her arms, but her arms are too short to even poke him, much less do any substantial damage.
"MOM!" Atlas screams again, and he decides that he's not going to watch another one of his parent's die. So he braces himself, gets a running start, andâ
PHWOOSH.
By all laws of physics, a 5'4 teenage boy that weighs maybe 120 pounds shouldn't be able to do any damage on a Rock-sized man. However, when Atlas does a full-out football-style tackle on this guy, he manages to catch him off guard and knock him off his feet, and he really isn't one to question physics. He just stands there, panting, reveling in this tiny victory. And then he realizes he doesn't know what he's supposed to do next.
Sure, he reads a lot of comic books and watches a lot of action movies and has beat up his fair share of headasses at school, but this man has the body of a professional wrestler. Atlas knows he just got lucky with his tackle. He isn't so sure he'll get another chance. But he also knows he doesn't exactly have to fight this man off, not necessarilyâhe just has to distract him for long enough for his mom to escape.
"Momma!" Atlas yells. "Get out of here!"
Meanwhile, the Rock climbs to his feet, drunk on battle and blood. With a sadistic grin, he towers over Atlas, cracking his knuckles. Atlas yelps and shields his head.
"Leave him alone, you bitch!" Atlas hears his mother yell, and he looks up just in time to see her full-out karate kick him in the chest, but he's only knocked back a step. She punches, aiming for his neck, and he sidesteps. Desperate, knowing this is a battle she can't win on strength alone, she pulls her knife out of her hoodie pocket. Atlas watches in horror as the silver blade plunges into the man's gut, leaking blood over the sleek black handle. Finally, this seems to slow him down, but it doesn't stop him. He moves to retaliate, readying his fists, and Atlas's mom easily slits his throat. With one last gasping breath, he falls.
Atlas's mom takes a step back, out of breath, her hands clutched to her chest. Atlas knows this isn't goodâsuch a messy death, so much blood, so much collateral damage. They'll have to burn the bodies and the murder weapon, they'll have to clean up all the blood.
For a second, they just stand there in silence. Then his mom kneels beside one of the bodies.
"I checked beforehand. There aren't any security cameras in this place." She pulls her hair back into a messy knot. "I brought some bleach, matches, and duffel bags in my car, just in case. Run and get them for me, will you? We need to hurry."
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ATLAS'S MOM MAKES HIM drive himself home. After everything he's been through, he doesn't even get to have his car wash or his nugs. He gets home an hour before she does. While he waits for her, he flips through some Spiderman comic he'd left open on his coffee table, perched nervously on the edge of his couch, ready to run or take flight in a heartbeat. His two huskies, Pepper and Cinnamon, curl up beside him, sound asleep, and he hears loud music coming from his sister April's room. He tries to pretend things are normalâhe focuses on that, on his dogs and his comic and his sister.
She's already out of college for the summerâshe goes to SNHU for engineering. She's probably working on some project; she only ever listens to Post Malone when shes trying to really concentrate. She's always tried to get Atlas into engineering like her, but he's never really found an interest in science. He'd rather learn about dead white guys in wigs, because come on.
He's almost relieved when his mom gets home.
Almost timidly, she slides her boots off, hanging her hoodie on the coatrack. She's only wearing baggy gray sweatpants and a white tank-top, but Atlas thinks she makes it look like high-fashion. Instantly, Pepper and Cinnamon bound to life to greet her. She gives them each a distracted pat on the head and picks her boots up off the ground, heading towards the kitchen with them tucked under her arm.
Excited, the two dogs trail behind their master, tails wagging and tongues lolling out of their mouths. Atlas pushes himself off the couch and follows.
Once in the kitchen, his mom turns the sink on, testing the water with her hands. Satisfied, she sets her boots down in the white basin, beginning to search through the interconnected drawers.
Atlas awkwardly leans against the refrigerator. He doesn't say anythingâhe wouldn't know what to say, if he's even supposed to say anything at all. Maybe he should just go to his room and pretend like nothing happened and it'll all blow over like a summer storm.
Meanwhile, his mom's found what she needed: a wiry green sponge and a set of yellow rubber gloves. She pulls the gloves on her small hands, wetting the sponge and pumping a healthy splash of chemical-blue dish soap onto it.
Atlas coughs into the crook of his arm.
"How could you?" she asks, casually, as she cleans the blood off her shoes.
"How could I what?" Atlas replies, genuinely confused.
"Everything I've worked forâeverything that you worked forâeverything your father worked for." She scrubs so hard the soap bubbles start flying up in her face. Her chocolate eyes melt like she's on the verge of tears. "How could you?"
"Dad died because of it." Atlas's own eyes burn. "Dad died because of it and you just want to keep on killing people like nothing happened and I didn't murder my own father!"
"Atlas." The way she whispers his name unnerves him, tearing his flesh in two and sending unwelcome shivers down his spineâlike he's fragile, like he's dangerous, like he's a ticking time bomb set to go off any second now, like she's got to talk him out of exploding. "You know that's not what happened."
"No, it was!" Atlas is yelling. He's screaming and he's crying and he wants to tear his body apart piece by piece limb by limb until there's nothing left of him other than his anusâsomething to remember him by. "Don't try to pretend like you know what happened! You weren't there! I was! I shot the bullet that killed him, not you! I killed my dad! I killed him! I killed him! I KILLED HIM!"
She's crying, nowâreal crying. Ugly crying, no tears dripping down her cheeks like melting marble, just a sour face and sobs vomited out of her throat. "You didn't have to!"
"If I didn't, somebody else would!" Atlas shrieks. "You know, you didn't cry at his funeralânot when he died and not when I told you it was by my own hand. You didn't cry you didn't cry YOU DIDN'T CRY!" He pauses. Takes a deep breath so he doesn't completely lose it. "But you're crying over this."
She doesn't respond, just stares at him. And Atlas can see her fighting her tears down in the waver of her chin, in her watery eyes, in her scrunched-up face.
And then Eva Alessia Villa hits her son.
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PACK LIGHTLY.
Atlas knows a lot of thingsâlike that Al Capone opened a soup kitchen during the Great Depression, and that that was the first and (he's decided) the last time his mom ever laid a hand on him. He doesn't, however, know how to pack lightly.
His backpack's big enough to fit an army of Greek soldiers, but it's not big enough to carry everything he needs, everything he wants to bring. For the first couple of minutes after he slams his bedroom door and decides to leave, he simply stares at it, overwhelmed. How can he pack every memory this room holds, when some of them aren't tangible? How can he pack everything he needs to survive, when he doesn't know where he's even going?
The world, to him, has never felt so foreign, so vast and unwelome, so dark and so coldâ4,000 miles, 7.6 billion people, and nowhere he feels like he can safely go to. Maybe he can bring Bob Ross back from the dead. He's the only person he feels like he can really trust.
He throws in the necessities: clean clothes and toiletries and electronics, several flannels in case it gets cold. All the food in his room: a half-eaten bag of Takis, two packets of M&M's, several empty plastic bottles he fills with room-temperature water from the ensuite bathroom's sink. A pocketknife, in case he finds danger lurking in a brick-lined alleyway. His favorite book, the first in the Percy Jackson series.
But what about his comic collection, and the rest of his Rick Riordan books? What about more clothes, more pairs of pants? Or maybe bugspray or sunscreenâwhat happens when summer hits New Hampshire full-force and he's broke and totally unprepared and simultaneously comes down with ebola, malaria, and skin cancer? What about tampons, in case he gets shot and needs something to stop the blood? He can always steal some of April's . . . But what about McTeddy, the teddy bear he's slept with since he was three? (Coincidentally, he named McTeddy after McDonald's.)
Leaving all of his stuff behind makes him feel like he's leaving a part of himself behind, and maybe he is. But he really can't bear to leave McTeddy, so he lets himself have this one thing and shoves the bear in on top of all his other junk.
Really, though, the hardest part of leaving is knowing he's never going to see his dogs again. A part of him wants to take them with him. But he knows they'll be better here and him there.
He won't even get to say goodbye to them. His pride's too commanding to let him even crack his bedroom door.
He waits until night falls to leaveânot so late that everyone out there's asleep, but late enough that his family won't be able to look out their windows and see him sprinting across the yard.
Silently, he pushes his window open, grabbing a pair of safety scissors from his desk to cut the netting out. It's pitch-black out, so dark even the stars are hiding. The moon's nothing more than a sliver of light in the black night sky.
A tree guards his window, a branch strong enough to support his weight reaching out to him. His bag slung over his shoulder, he bids his room adieu and shimmies out onto the branch, praying he doesn't fall to his death. Once he's fully on the tree, he climbs down to a lower one and a lower one until he can hop to the ground without breaking an ankle, like he would have if he'd jumped from his second-story room.
He hits the ground running, roots through the garage until he finds his old bike, and kicks the kickstand up.
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CAIN ALWAYS TELLS ATLAS TO "just come on in", that he doesn't even have to knock when he comes over. Atlas is pretty sure that that rule's only in effect when Cain invites him over and knows that he's coming, and also when it's not the middle of the night.
He hides his bike in their bushes, knowing that if his family notices his disappearance, this would be the first place they'd look. He doesn't know what brought him to Cain's houseâmaybe instinct, maybe panic, maybe longing, maybe something deeper. Really, it was probably just since this was the only place he knew to get to without using GPS, and he'd turned his phone on airplane mode.
He'd been hesitant to leave his phone, and, even though he wasn't some tech geek, he was pretty sure that that would make it impossible to trace.
After hiding his bike like some common criminal, he heads to the front door, knocking briskly. Inside, Cain's dog, Cerberus, starts yapping his head off. Atlas can see the little demon looking up at him through the window.
After a couple of seconds of Cerberus's yapping, the door's pushed open by Bianca Mendoza, who doesn't look like she was expecting any visitors. She's in an old t-shirt from some barbecue joint, and she's holding a frying pan in her clasped hands like it's a deadly weapon.
"Hey," says Atlas, casually. "What's with the frying pan?"
"I thought you were a murderer. Jesus, you scared meâI wasn't expecting anyone." She composes herself, glancing over his shoulder as if worried something's chasing him. "What's up? Are you all right?
Really, a frying pan? Living in this place, she must have access to all sorts of deadly weapons, and when she thinks a murderer is breaking in, the first thing she grabs is a frying pan?
"Yeah, I'mâI'm fine." He really doesn't feelâor soundâfine. He wonders if she can tell. "Is Cain here?"
"No, he's at the Villa. You can wait here for him to get home, it shouldn't be too long. Or, if it's too important to wait, I can drive you there. Here, come on in." Bianca takes a step back into the foyer, motioning him inside. "What happened, Atlas? Were you in a fight?" Her voice doesn't hold any accusations or mocking tones, only concern.
The VillaâAtlas feels his heart skip a beat. Hopefully they're just making pizza over there tonight.
"Could you drive me?" asks Atlas, stepping inside. Instantly, an overweight little Yorkshire terrier begins to ferociously attack him. Cerberus doesn't phase him.
"Of course, I don't mind."
Atlas suddenly remembers that he's covered in blood and mudâhe hadn't changed or showered after what happened today. He halts.
"Actually," he asks, "can I shower first?"