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With a hand raised to shield himself from the sun, Merijn squints at the house in the distance, a little bigger now than it was a few minutes ago. He adjusts his backpack, grimacing when the shirt peels away wetly from his back.
The landscape up to the house is little more than razed corn stalks and a road of cracked stone. It undulates irregularly under his feet. Some trees line the concrete, and Merijn walks from one leafy shade to the next. He misses the familiar drone of traffic and people, and the occasional hum of a distant train. Squinting at the reflection of the sun, he checks the time, then takes a breath before he turns down the gravel road, past the weathered green mailbox and the walnut tree.
“Jesus,” says the short woman leaning by the back door, a cigarette still smoldering in the ashtray on the windowsill. “Merijn.” She doesn't mention how he hasn't been home in over ten years, or that his hair looks different now, or that his ears are no longer ringed with five piercings each. But somehow, his name encapsulates all of that. “You came by foot?”
He kisses her on the cheek. “Hi Mom.”
“You should have called. One of your uncles would have picked you up.”
“Don't worry about it. Is dad—?”
She huffs. “He’ll be back by dinner.”
As he pushes past the fly curtain into the hall that leads to the kitchen, she calls after him, “Hey.” A wry smile rests on her lips. “Thanks for coming.”
* * *
The house has cooled since nightfall.
It is quieter now. On his arrival, Merijn had searched out his sister, briefly acknowledged her husband checking some sports results on the phone by the kitchen table and spotted the kids, too young to understand the situation, running around with the dog. He had tried to avoid the many other people cluttering around the bed in the living room.
They've all gone home since. Merijn still shudders when he recalls his aunt trying to make him talk to his grandma, maybe even take her. Except words are too awkward, let alone with an audience that big, and frail joints and loose parchment skin terrify him. Her skin is too yellow, smattered today with watercolor bruises from the drip. Her freckles are barely visible underneath all that. When he looks at her, he doesn't recognize her.
She is a maker of good memories. As a kid, she had taught Merijn how to skate on ice. In summer, she would encourage him to pluck the cherries from the highest branches of the tree, despite all the things his parents had to say about that. Whenever she wore that look of mischief, laughter would surely follow. But as he sits beside her bed now, he's at a loss on how to find a worthy goodbye.
Clutching a cup of coffee as he contemplates that, Merijn doesn't need to be told when his father returns.
He can feel it.
Like his sister and his mother out in the kitchen, he is well familiar with the warmth that piles into the house. It wraps itself like a fog around him and sends a shiver down his bones. He knows that feeling well.
It goes where his father goes, the wretched man. But mostly, it goes where that which is under his father's command goes.
Even now, Merijn's throat feels dry. He blinks. The arid heat moves him without conscious thought.
He is halfway outside when he snaps out of it.
His father looks up from the kitchen table. The man tucks a small wooden box into his coat in a flash of a second, and the warmth diminishes by a fraction. When he looks up, Merijn thinks that he looks older. More mortal. “Oh,” the man flounders. “I didn’t think you’d be able to make it.”
Merijn shrugs and looks over his shoulder. The bed in the living room is bathed in a soft light. “It’s Grandma. Of course I'd be able to make it.” With that, he pushes past him and into the yard.
The cooling evening air does nothing to ease his discomfort.
* * *
The warmth has been in his life for as long as Merijn can remember. He hadn't paid much attention to it as a kid. Snow didn't stay in their backyard like it did in the others, and in summer the outside was a cooler place than staying indoors. That's just how it was.
The warmth was usually a warning, like when Merijn had made a shelter in the park, nine years of age, and night had crept up upon him. Unannounced, the temperature had shifted around him, and he had known to be in trouble. His father never did manage to surprise him, but his herald did.
Over time, Merijn grew to notice the drop in temperature when his father was out. He preferred that cold. At least when it was cold, he could breathe. When it was cold, he didn't have to try so hard to earn his father's attention. It was a waste of time, after all. His father's focus hardly ever wavered from the box in his possession. To make him look at his children with pride or joy was even more impossible. At least when it was cold, Merijn's failed attempts were not as painful.
In time, that warmth became synonymous with disappointment, until it warped into bitterness instead.
Until one night Merijn broke a plate in the kitchen, and things changed.
He had discarded the plate quickly. Stuffed into the trash and pushed down so that his parents wouldn't see it, Merijn had thought that that should have been that. But the next morning, no plates were missing. And the shards in the trash were gone.
His sister had snorted at her brother hanging over the edge of the garbage bin and laughed that a genie must have taken what he sought. Being a few years older than him, almost everything she said grated on his nerves, but the thought had taken root. And so Merijn had bided his time until he could take the hammer from his father's workbench, smash another plate, and use the shards as bait.
For the longest time, as he sat behind the heavy floor-length curtain in the living room that night, the kitchen had shown no signs of activity. Adamant dedication to figure out the truth slowly made place for sleepiness, and his focus drifted into a sloppy yawn. He almost missed it when the temperature changed.
The heat was dry and cracking as it approached the kitchen. It was also, Merijn realized with a pang as he thought of his poorly thought-out plans, far more intense than the balmy temperature he was used to.
Fingers made of fire took the shards without a sound. The emanating heat melded the seams of the plate, the acrid smell of molten stone wrinkling Merijn's nose, until not a trace of a fracture could be found. The figure in the kitchen opened the drawer without the usual creak, but with faintly the crackle of a dying fire, and the plate was stacked innocuously on top of the others.
Merijn, ten at the time, had stared at the creature fixing his plate with horror. It was taller than his parents. The air wavered around its form like it was impossible to get a grip on its shape. Then suddenly it had turned its terrible, empty eyes on the curtains, rushed up, and pulled them aside in a swift tug.
Merijn would have screamed then, had his voice been able to make any sound. But the creature had stepped back at once and breathed a 'Wait!' in the voice of charred wood, as it held up his hands and shook its head fearfully.
Slowly, the shape shifted. With its eyes closed, it looked almost like a person, and for a brief moment Merijn saw the creature as it truly was; a being made up of more than skin and bone alone, its thick hair as black as the darkest night, with something that burned red hot at the fringes, crackling at its fingertips and its eyelids.
It looked so melancholy. The weight of centuries' worth of memories seemed to press on its shoulders. This was a creature, Merijn thought then as he sat with his back pressed to the window frame, that existed to see the end of all it held dear. And to destroy. The kitchen should have been on fire merely to be visited by it.
But the moment had passed. The next instant, a boy of around his age had stood in front of him, still clutching the curtain. He was aflame still, in a way that Merijn could sense but no longer see, and his eyes were still unsettlingly bright. He was also far less threatening as a boy with tousled hair and in pajamas.
A boy who was just as cautious as Merijn as he offered a nod and tried a smile.
* * *
Like she has been all day, his grandmother is unresponsive.
Merijn has been sitting in the chair beside her since eleven at night, trying to wake over her as he struggles with a churning in the pit of his stomach. He still doesn't deal with the idea of death well.
She breathes more calmly now, and his instinct to run is abating bit by bit. Merijn still isn't ready to take her hand, but he tries to talk at least. "Hey grandma, it's me," he says. "I'm here, I'm here with you. It's Merijn." The words feel hollow to his own ears. He hopes she hears them nonetheless. At the end of her life, she won't be alone. It is all he can do to try and let her know.
It can be days still, according to the nurse. And so he sits by her side, the lamp in the corner of the room casting a soft yellow glow to push back the dark, as the rest of the family sleeps and he contemplates being brave enough to take her hand.
The temperature of the room shifts.
His heart falters.
Silent as if his ears have ceased to work, the darkness on the other side of the room twists and churns. It is too late to leave now. Smoke pushes the shadows beyond their natural boundaries, creeping like tendrils along the wooden floor, and the realm of the unseen becomes tangible in those shadows. The source of the warmth takes shape in the corner of the room.
"You are here."
The figure is exactly like Merijn remembers them, all earthen skin, fire and sand. But they look astonished, and that is new. As if Merijn being here is an impossibility—as if he is something unnatural and by all means unexpected. As though they didn't come down to the living room specifically to see him, while there is no other reason to.
Merijn's blood cools. "Yes."
"For her?"
"For her."
His father must be asleep, and the wooden box unguarded. The man's unwavering attention is nothing short of a set of iron fetters during the day. He is asleep now, he must be. The djinn couldn't have come here otherwise.
They do not move or approach. The corner of the room is still as dark as it was before, untouched by the djinn's light, but their silhouette twists the shadows around them to be full of life nonetheless. Nothing is ever what it should be around them. "You are angry."
Merijn takes a chance and looks up. He immediately wishes he hadn't. In the corner, dark skin and burning eyes bring back far too many memories. Anger, bitterness and shame fight for dominance. "Not here," he grits out.
His grandmother is still asleep. Is it that she looks more healthy now, Merijn wonders, now that the reality of the room has become warped? He breathes out and sighs. "Can you help her?"
The djinn shakes their head.
"She has a few years in her left. Please."
"She does not." When they step forward, Merijn feels like he is drowning. He'll be damned before he shows it. The djinn places a hand on his grandmother's like it's nothing. "She has had a good life, Merijn. A long life. Your father always made sure she was looked after. But every life ends, and I cannot heal old age."
Merijn knows that. Of course he does. Their family never gets sick. No cough or fever ever lasts long, and even the strange illness that had worried his mother dreadfully had disappeared only days after, never to return. For all his father's faults, the djinn under his command has been good for them. And perhaps that is all the more salt in the wound.
* * *
Merijn had expected to become friends with the djinn. He had wanted to. A creature lived in his house, one that could look like a boy his age. They could have done so many things, played every day, and it would have been perfect. But his father's possessiveness was not.
After one failed attempt to borrow the box and place it back later, and the malignance that had taken hold of his father in the days following that, neither Merijn or the djinn were eager to discover how his father would respond to their friendship—to the knowledge that a powerful djinn wanted more than the confines it was allowed.
So they were careful. They had to be.
Sometimes Merijn thought he saw a flicker of a flame in a window, and he would signal back if he could. Many nights, he lost sleep wondering if tonight the boy would come visit him. But more often than not, there were months when they didn't meet. Those times, the familiar warmth had again become a comfort.
At fifteen years old, Merijn's friends decided that Fridays were for going out. Merijn would join and come home drunk beyond capacity with his new eyeliner smudged and smelling of beer and smoke, feeling like he had accomplished things. That was hardly ever before three in the morning. In that state, making it to his bed was a hardship, and crashing on the couch so much easier instead.
For as long as he didn't wake anyone in the house, he soon discovered that it also meant that he was awake when the boy in flames could be. The creature who now took on the shape of a young adult.
Gone was the plumpness in their cheeks. They were taller now, their hair a little longer. The shape in which they appeared wore earrings of gold, and the fabric of their clothes flowed around them like water. Their shape was fluid enough to be anything, although to Merijn the djinn was still a boy his age. A boy who looked so composed and so confident that, in the world beyond the front door, they would never have talked to him.
The first times the djinn had caught him drunk in the living room, Merijn had been a slurring mess. The djinn had grimaced at his manners and his smell, and promptly left. But he had come back the next time. And the one after.
Slowly but surely, Merijn made an effort not to get too wasted on a night out. He was soon sober enough to hold a conversation. And the djinn stayed.
From then on, time in bars was quickly becoming a countdown to returning home and finding out if that night, the djinn was able to stretch their tethers.
If his friends caught on, they said nothing of it at first. But they too must have noticed the change. When the third girl in their circle showed an interest in Merijn—and was disinterestedly rejected—it took only a few weeks before at last the gay jokes set in.
Merijn promptly returned to the alcohol. He once again came home drunk, usually the worse for wear in one way or another. In order to make the rumors stop, his whole intent became to push the djinn out.
Even when the djinn refused to go without a good explanation.
So one night Merijn brought home a girl. With all the intent of a man on a course to break something irreparably, he kept up an act that confused himself most of all, for as long as it took for the djinn to find them. And the tradition of warm nights and pleasant conversation was no more.
Merijn hated it. He hated what he had done, and hated the djinn for being so easily pushed away. But most of all, he hated himself.
He left the house at eighteen.
* * *
"You're still here," Merijn whispers in the din of the light, looking at the shadow sitting in the corner. "With my family."
"I am bound to your father." The djinn looks pained when their eyes meet Merijn's. "You know that."
"It's been years. I thought you'd find a way."
"So you wouldn't see me again?"
Merijn's head whips up sharply.
"It would be convenient," says a deep voice. "Do not lie."
"That's not—" He clenches his fists. His nails dig into the meat of his palms, the temporary pain an easy but weak distraction. It is impossible to explain his jumbled thoughts. Even now, sixteen years later, the words get stuck in his throat, and the djinn probably knows it too. Something snaps. "I hate that box," Merijn says. "I hate that my father found it. If he'd forgotten to buy Mom a birthday gift like he usually does, or if he went to the store a day earlier, things would have been different. You would have been tied to some other household. You would b—"
Footsteps come down the wooden stairs, the creak at the bottom step shutting him up in a beat.
"Merijn?" his sister groans more than speaks, "What are you—? I heard voices." It takes a moment before she looks at their grandmother, and then back again. Her face is pale when she adds, "Oh. Is this a bad time?"
"No," Merijn scrambles to look composed. The room looks like normal in the blink of an eye, all traces of the djinn's former presence gone. Only common sense could lead his sister to the conclusion that Eshai is here. That, and him raising his voice. "It's fine. Is it—", he looks at the sleeping woman, then up at the clock. "Right. Your turn."
"You're weird," she snorts, as if they are both back to being children. "Go get some sleep."
* * *
The air is cold, this time of night. Comfortable. It doesn't leave clothes sticking to his skin, and there's no need for the shade of a tree or an occasional breeze to keep him cool. Up ahead, the night is blotted with silvery grey clouds, covering a backdrop of bright stars. At home, the stars aren't half that bright. After thirty-four years, Merijn still plans to learn all the constellations one day, so that he can point them out on a night like this, even if he knows that some of the fascination that he had as a kid has since faded.
God, he wishes he had a smoke on him.
"I would be tied to another family," comes the voice of soot—a voice that lays bare without effort all the layers of smoldering anger underneath—"and I wouldn't have had to deal with an immature child who cast me away without reason." The djinn throws him a vicious glare. "You will tell me why, now. Come with me."
As much as Merijn wishes to turn back to the house, to find the bed in his old room and to pretend that this is little more than a dream, his feet follow. His are the only footprints on the ground. They cross the yard and a patch of overgrown weeds littered with small mossy knolls, and then pass the wooden outbuildings. At the back of the terrain lies one of the only good places to hide from sight, Merijn knows from the time when he still smoked.
There, between the tool shed leaning against the outbuildings and the fishless pond that waters the plants on hot days, the djinn stops. They rest their weight against the door of nearly rotten wood, and their control drops. Light engulfs the spot.
"Fuck," Merijn curses, and pulls the djinn into the tool shed. "Do you want to be seen?!" As much as it's a great place to get away from his family, a light like this is easy to see from the road. Easy to mistake for a fire, too.
When he closes the doors and turns around, the djinn's attention is immediately on him. "Talk," they command. Their voice is deep. Dark. And so very angry.
"Eh," Merijn fumbles.
"Well?"
Merijn almost says that he doesn't know what this is about, and almost apologizes. The djinn expects something from him, but after all these years Merijn is still unwilling to acknowledge it. It took him only the larger part of his college years, and he still doesn't want to say it out loud. He looks down. "It's," he breathes, "it's good to see you."
The djinn leans back against the workbench unappeased, their corona of fire and pulsing heat an uncomfortable companion to wood chips and sawdust.
"I missed—"
"—You were happy to be rid of me. Don't lie."
The djinn is not wrong, Merijn thinks bitterly, but he is not entirely correct either. It would be easier if he was. The first years of college, Merijn had spent many nights awake on how he had left. What he had left behind. Once, he had woken up from a dreadful nightmare, and the urge to see the djinn had been so strong, so very strong. "Only for a while," Merijn admits quietly. Only for a while, until he had waited too long and returning home had become a terrifying thing. He closes his eyes. "I'm sorry."
A snort opens his eyes. "You're sorry?"
The words lash out like a whip. They tear at Merijn's fragile resolve, and the words on the tip of his tongue turn sour. The only sensible response is a frustrated, "So what do you expect of me?"
"Truth," the djinn demands. They hop off the table. With every stride their figure seems to become larger and larger. "Honesty. Do not think your father has enough control to stop me now. Do not think he ever had." When they reach out, the heat around them becomes truly scathing for the first time.
Merijn's first instinct is to meet the djinn's anger with anger of his own. Perhaps that is one thing that he can no longer muster up however, after sixteen years of having come to terms with himself. "I—," the words finally release themselves from his throat, where they have been stuck for too long, "I wanted you." In hindsight, he wants to laugh at how easy they are now spoken. "But I couldn't want you and be normal at the same time. And I wanted to be normal so badly."
The djinn doesn't speak. The shape they chose in their anger towers over Merijn, but it is slinking now, the heatwave dissipating.
Merijn hesitantly leans forward, until his hand tentatively touches the djinn's elbow.
"And now?" asks the creature of desert wind and smokeless fire.
Merijn no longer cares. He might have given up on fitting into a certain picture a long time ago, but it's easier to accept who he is than to let go of the shame. Oddly enough, whether or not the djinn accepts the apology is not as important as finally having apologized. He looks up. "Now you do with that what you will."
In the midst of hammers and saws, stray nails and old newspaper, the djinn lowers his gaze. Around them dances a fire that doesn't blister, reflected manifold in the tools on the wall of the glorified shed. Merijn waits.
Then, the djinn surges forward, and heat-cracked lips press against Merijn's own cold ones. In the exhale that follows, the cold surrenders willingly.
Merijn doesn't think. Instinct guides him tonight as it should have done many years ago. He doesn't care about the workbench digging uncomfortably into his back. When fingers push their heat into his lower back and then strip him of his shirt, he only takes what he can get.
There is a moment where they can both step away, admit that this was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing, and that that would be the end of it. It would be an acceptable end. But Merijn grins, and the djinn returns sharply, "Get rid of the iron."
"Handle the sound."
Any tools on the table with an ounce of metal in them are swiped off, and then kicked to the side. The cacophony of it should alert anyone in the main house and carry down to the street, but the sound isn't allowed to escape the shed. The djinn's eyes glow. Air wavers around them before it smooths out. He nods. Nobody heard. As Merijn hops on the table, he wonders if the spell of silence remains, and then lets out a startled cry when the djinn glitches and suddenly appears behind him, dragging him all the way up on the table.
Merijn tilts his head back, and is met with something primal.
He wriggles out of his jeans hurriedly, dust sticking to his back, without taking his eyes off of the djinn. One pant leg is absently kicked off. The one is still hooked around his ankle, but not in the way when he spreads his legs as a cheap lure. And it works. Pleased, Merijn clings to leather belts for anchor as the creature crawls over him, and he nuzzles the cock that swells between layers of insubstantial fabric underneath.
Everything is different with the djinn. The shimmering heat makes proximity close to unbearable one minute, but unquenchable the next. It doesn't take long for Merijn to become a sweaty mess. Dust and grime stick to his body like an afterthought, as the djinn sucks him off to an inch of his life, and Merijn can only try to be remotely as competent in return.
The djinn is a spiteful creature though. Just as Merijn has gotten used to the girth and ridges of the cock on his tongue and in his mouth, the thing swells until there's no more room to go. Merijn whimpers. He digs his fingers into the djinn's hips with enough strength to hurt, and the djinn mirthfully laughs around him. They halt their movement for him to adjust, not to slink back. They aren't giving up their impossible size, then.
And just when he is moderately comfortable, his mouth is suddenly left empty. A remnant of smoke fades from where the djinn used to be.
"Eshai," he warns.
The djinn reappears on the ground between his ankles. "Finally you speak my name," they breathe. "Now, on your stomach."
"Ngh?"
They roll their eyes, take hold of Merijn's ankles and roughly flip him over.
Merijn has a moment for his brain to catch up, before slick fingers are prying at his hole. Heat pulses at his rim. Biting his lips as his body is diligently opened up, he wonders what else he can expect. Still, he is entirely unprepared for the tremor racking his body when the djinn pulls out and suddenly breaches him. "Oh, f—!" he hisses a litany into his balled fist, trying to find purchase on the table to look over his shoulder. The djinn's size, as it pulls out, is normal now.
They laugh, and hips push flush against his ass. "I am not without kindness," they offer against his ear before licking a trail down Merijn's neck. "At least, until you're able to take me."
The pace they set is languid and slow, and clearly only for the sake of Merijn's struggling body. He is overwhelmed all the same. No matter how often he has thought about how this would go, even his most inspired fantasies had never been colorful enough to imagine that being with a creature with a fluid form could entail all of this. To be fair, half his fantasies hadn't even gotten this far.
He pushes back his hips. Immediately, the cock in him swells to bursting. He grunts. The djinn stills, and whispers in his ears, "Let me know when you're good."
"Fuck," Merijn pants. "Fuck. Do it."
His rim stretches further around the fleshy ridges, and he pushes his head against his arm, bites his hand, and tries to breathe. "Okay," he says quickly. "Okay. But don't—don't move."
He expects a honing laugh, or a reminder of how little he has a say in this. Merijn knows he deserves it. For all the years he waited, complete and willing submission on a workbench in his father's shed is not too high a penance. The djinn could have him here at their mercy for hours in a perfect revenge, and Merijn would gladly give it to him.
Instead, fingers find their way to his lips and prod past them. Heavy kisses are laid against his shoulders as the slick fingers move down and circle idly around the thick cock stuck inside. He's as slick as he can be already, but the fingers work miracles, somehow, to soothe the strain. "You are taking it so well," they breathe. Their hair cascades onto Merijn's back. Goose bumps and soft whimpers rise underneath.
A sudden snap of their hips draws a sharp cry.
Merijn braces his elbows against the lowered handle of a circle saw. His teeth make marks against his lower arm, his nipples chafing against the table with every thrust. He feels raw, entirely raw, but it's not enough. A bit more strain stretches him out. He wonders how much more he can take when at least the djinn decides that enough is enough, and fills him deeply. They are barely able to pull out at this rate, but the friction is still maddening.
Without thinking, Merijn reaches beneath him and wraps a hand around himself. He is spiraling. Maybe next time, he thinks absently, they will do this right. Next time they will take their time, and find a better surface for sure. But even if there won't be a next time, this is how he needs it now. Messy. Enough to hurt.
The djinn's fingers push from the nape up to grasp his hair. "Come on," they breathe against Merijn's ear. The wood of the table is charring under the desert heat, but somehow the table holds. "You can take it. I'm sure you can."
On the surface, the build-up is entirely quiet. Yet the door of the shed rattles in its hinges, and the scattered tools are beginning to slide away. The temperature of the shed fluctuates uncontrollably. And then everything rises to a new high when the djinn stills, their hands clutching Merijn's hips hard. And they break.
Heat fills Merijn in a sudden flow, thick and wet. A loud exhale follows, before the djinn at last groans. They lean back, breathing brokenly, and pull halfway out before milking themselves for all their worth along labored breaths, pushing every spill back into Merijn. "Fuck," they breathe out. "Merijn."
"Eshai," Merijn pleads desperately. He is still tethered to the edge, his cock dripping. "I'm not—"
The djinn licks his ear. "Hold still," they order as soon as they have caught their breath. They slip out wetly. Come drips down his thigh as the djinn crawls off the table and presses a bite against his thigh. It is as much warning as Merijn gets before a mouth opens against his hole, and a heavily ringed hand wraps around his cock to coax it further.
Whatever the djinn is doing, Merijn feels it through his entire body. He tries to hold himself up so he can look between his legs. It is a lost cause. Warmth spreads from where the djinn touches him, until it flushes his body pink. His blood is tingling, his knees raw, and his mind lost from all reason. He is desperate for more. It builds and builds in him, until there is no more space in him to contain it.
The table shakes as he grabs on, and then it washes over him like a wave. Merijn isn't vocal, not usually, but he is left gasping for air. After his top half crashes on the table, he twists to rest his cheek against the workbench.
When his eyes catch sight of the tired djinn, ever perfect but better now, he smiles. They are honest with each other at last.
* * *
It is hard to disappear from the house unnoticed. Most of the times when Merijn manages it, in between talking to relatives and keeping an eye on his grandmother, his feet take him to the shed. It is easy to look at the poorly constructed thing and worry that they haven't cleaned it up well enough; that his mother or his father will see the place and know. But not even the workbench shows a speck of burnt wood.
His grandmother opens her eyes late morning on the second day, and everyone in the house is immediately summoned by her side. Weak as she is, she sits up and asks to go outside.
For a while, Merijn wonders if it's the djinn. Eshai's warmth is present wherever his father is, and his father spends most of his time in the living room. The djinn has no other place to be.
On the third day, his grandmother's condition worsens.
She passes away in her sleep the next night. Half a day after Merijn held her hand.
The days after that are a blur. His mother arranges most of the funeral, as his father once again withdraws himself from company. Once or twice, Merijn feels the touch of the djinn. And he longs to follow them, to sneak away at night and find a much needed distraction in flesh. But all he does when they find time alone is lean against them and let the warmth soothe away his tension.
The morning of the funeral, amidst a chaos of farewells, having some twenty people in the house, and getting ready to leave, Merijn stops frozen in his tracks outside his bedroom door.
On the cabinet in the hall sits a small wooden box.
He knows the box well. It is the filigreed box, decorated with silver of years long past, that was bought by his father as a present for his mother, and then kept for himself.
A power more appealing to a man than his own children.
A prison to someone else.
Merijn thinks fast where he saw his father last. Outside? By the casket? He can't remember, but he knows that he's not upstairs, and he also knows that only if he hesitates can he give his father the chance to stop what Merijn has been waiting decades to do. And so, before he can think against it, he takes the box, slips it into his jacket, and hurries down the stairs.
The box feels impossible between his fingers. Unnatural. His heart hammers in his throat. The front door is right there, the door that nobody ever uses because the back door is where people come in. It should be locked with more than a bolt at all times, but even on the day of a funeral it is not.
He sets a brisk pace to circle a wide berth around the house.
Merijn's skin is clammy when at last he stares down at the box amidst sawdust on the workbench. Too many memories are tied to that box. Feverishly, he reaches for his pocket for a smoke. His head shakes.
Hesitation is dangerous now.
And so he quiets his thoughts, grabs the hammer from the toolbox, and anger suddenly flares up at him from deep within, as he brings it down.
The crash is entirely unimpressive. It is, after all, just a small box, and the shed is filled with similar scraps. A small splinter jams into the skin between his knuckles and he hisses. The hammer falls from his hand. Merijn steps back.
He closes his eyes and breathes hard.
The familiar warmth fades.
* * *
Merijn turns down the gravel road. It's early January, and winter has sunk its teeth deep into the front yard of his old home as he passes the bare walnut tree and the white-topped mailbox.
"You don't learn, do you?" smiles his mother ruefully by the door. She protects herself from the cold with a new, thick winter coat. He wriggles his hands from his pockets and shows her his phone. "It's fine," he says. "I tell you."
"Sure, sure," she waves her hand, and takes another deep drag from her cigarette, then gestures inside. "Your sister's here already."
It has been five months since he has seen her. The kids look bigger. One of them sits huddled in a corner with a picture book and a cup of cocoa that his mother must have arranged before going out for a smoke, while the other has discovered that the old storage shed attached to the house has an extra floor, and has been exploring the world of dust since morning.
The kitchen heating is switched on too high. Merijn nods to his sister. Before he is ready for the living room, he needs a coffee first.
She comes up to stand by his side against the countertop, pushing a fork away. "How are you feeling?"
He really doesn't know.
"It's weird, isn't it?" She draws a circle on the damp single-pane window in front of her with her index finger, and chuckles when a fist raps on the glass from the garden in warning. "I only get to see you at funerals, these days."
"I should come over some time."
"You should. I'd like that."
They stare at the window. For a moment, all is quiet.
As he looks down at the man in the casket in the living room, a cup of coffee in hand, Merijn thinks that his father looks just not a hair different from when he was alive.
* * *
The coffin looks too new, the lacquer too expensive, as it disappears into the ground. What a waste. It will go into dirt and it will go there like everything else. Merijn looks down at it. He takes the shovel absently, lets the soil fall, and follows the sand as half of it slides to the side.
Being the son, the others give him space for a personal farewell, but there is nothing to say. The man in the ground is a stranger. Yet for all that happened, Merijn wishes that things could have gone differently. This was his father. It was a long time ago, but he loved him once.
Leaning on the shovel, his eyes catch sight of a flicker in the corner of his eye, near the large oak tree that dominates the cemetery.
There had been a fire, his mother had told him. A freak accident. The circle saw had short-circuited, and a spark had set the sawdust alight. But the door of the shed had also jammed, and his father must have passed out before being able to break the window. In the end, he had suffocated from the smoke.
Merijn sees that same spark now, by a headstone to the right. It's a shimmer of light, easy to miss; long hair tied up in a braid and dark skin as welcoming as it is out of place in its wintery surroundings.
A warm breeze envelops him.
He closes his eyes, breathes out, and welcomes it home.