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It’s been getting worse lately.

You’re not really sure when it started. A couple of weeks ago, maybe? A month or more? You’re not too sure. All you know is that what started out as an odd intermittent bug has slowly turned you into a moody, nauseous, tired, sore, bloated boy. There’re only so many months you can put these concerns out of your mind and pray like fuck that you’ll wake up one morning and they’ll all be gone. You don’t want to, but after you throw up for the second time that day, you reluctantly make a doctor’s appointment for the next morning.

#short story #original fiction #it's been a while but hi I still write stuff #I just don't post it #basically a transboy finds out he's pregnant at the clinic and it's very traumatic for him #poor kid: the saga continues

“Yulio?”

“What?”

“Can I come in?”

“No.”

“…Are you naked?”

Yulio sighed. “Yes, I’m just so very naked right now. The only obstacle preventing you from just opening the door and coming in is my bare naked flesh. What a shame. Why don’t you come back later when I feel like putting some clothes on.”

#short story #poor kid: the saga continues #except that this is a different kid #/old old person #more writing stuff #errrrrrrr rated for harsh language against parents aha nah

It was late in the afternoon. The bus crawled its way up the twisting slopes of the hill with the weight of a full house plus the several standing and a wheelchair. He had got on at the very end of Lampton Quay and had to take one of the last seats available; at the front, facing the wrong direction, awkwardly squeezed between a bigger man and a pole right at the edge of his seat. It was the kind of seat that let the orange sun right into his eyes with only brief tree-shadow shelters here and there, with a few dozen tired and sweaty faces staring back at him with glazed expressions. He wondered if perhaps the heavyset people happened to be on one particular side. He wondered what it would take for one sharp turn to flip the entire bus over and off the side of the cliff.

He sat slouched in his seat with his phone in hand, pretending to be doing something of importance or at least mildly entertaining, wary of the girl in the blue school uniform standing over him with her freckled hand clutching the rail right next to his face. He flicked through his messages, begging the question of whether he missed any and forgot to respond to them, even though he knew that he hadn’t just ten seconds ago. He was reading through a txt from his previously close, now distanced friend when his phone began to vibrate in short stops and a green phone symbol appeared besides a red one.

He panicked. He didn’t take his eyes away from the phone but he felt the other three presences seated around him turn their heads. They knew he was getting a call, and the bus itself wasn’t exactly bustling with talk either. He let it ring for a few more seconds until he could collect himself and he slide the option to green, pulling the phone up to his ear with his head still down. He wouldn’t have considered answering it if it weren’t Alex.

“Yeah?” he said quietly and he sat there numbly as he let his brother ramble at him about his day until he stopped to ask about his. “S’okay,” he replied, half-way through a shrug before he remembered he didn’t need to. Alex asked him where he was. “On the bus.” He asked him to be a little more specific. “On the 3. Just going past the…” He looked up at the turn. “Going past the fire station now. Maybe, 10 minutes?” Alex asked him to get off now and Kalian raised his head a little in surprise. “Now?” At the next stop. “Next…?” Kalian turned his head to the window just as they were going to pass The Cellar. He mightn’t have been able to see Alex hanging back there by the bus stop shelter if he had been sitting on the other side of the bus. He jabbed hard and fast on the stop button just moments before the bus glided past the stop and the driver put the brakes on hard enough to have everyone, even those comfortable in seats, grasp the railing. Kalian felt embarrassed and put on-the-spot but it didn’t stop him from scrambling up out of his seat behind the inconveniently placed bar and murmuring apologies as he squeezed past the annoyed standing commuters with his hefty bag in tow, banging and battering legs that he could do nothing about. “Sorry,” he said to the driver as he fixed him with something of a harsh expression and it sounded like he tried to close the doors on him before he’d even completely jumped off yet. His hands flew to his pockets, to the front of his backpack to compulsively check he hadn’t left something important behind. He’d been holding his phone the entire time but he hadn’t hung up yet.

He went over to meet Alex who took one look at him after he’d got off the bus and made an expression of mild surprise as he ended the call himself and put away his phone. Kalian mimicked him and threw his bag over his shoulder, scratching at the strap because his brother’s spontaneity was making him nervous. Alex smiled and said, “You almost missed me, didn’t you?”

“What are you doing here?” he asked. He looked him over a little. He hadn’t come straight from work like Kalian had; he was wearing casual-smart slacks and a dark jersey he only wore to impress the kind of people he said he hated. He had on him a wallet and a phone, no keys. “Have you been drinking?”

Alex grinned. “I plan to.” He pointed in the direction of The Cellar, where he purchased all of his beer and spirits from, and he motioned for Kalian to walk with him. “I don’t know if you ever met Thomas?” Kalian shook his head. “Well, he’s an old friend and he got himself a new place close by so I thought I might… drop in. With a crate of booze, so he can’t turn me away. I was wondering if you wanted to tag along.”

The doors gave a small beep as they both passed through them and into the bottle store. There was a tiny box of a television hoisted up over the nearby counter showing a black-and-white live feed of them moving further into the store. Alex went ahead of Kalian; he didn’t waste time looking for new wines or cheap liquor this time. He was already at the line of refrigerators, pulling out an orange box of locally brewed beer. He looked over at Kalian and gestured to the rest of the orange boxes with his eyes. Kalian did as he asked and grabbed another box but he struggled more holding it. It chinked and clinked as he followed Alex to the counter, feeling the weight of what must’ve been at least twelve cans, and pushed it weakly next to where Alex had set it down effortlessly.

The cashier rung up the two boxes and Alex again looked to Kalian for his answer, as if he’d had more than enough time to think about it. As if he ever had a choice, what with Alex meeting him like this, buying more than he could carry. “So? How about it? Coming with me or are you going to walk home on your own?”

He waited until Alex had handed over a few twenties and had passed one of the now bagged boxes to him before he answered. “I’m never even heard of… uh.”

“Lawrence.”

Kalian shook his head. “Why do you want me to go with you?”

He watched Alex shrug as he strolled down the pavement, in the opposite direction to where his bus had come from. “I just thought it was a polite thing to ask, Kalian, to make you feel included. Besides, it’s not as if you’re a complete stranger. I’m sure they’ll be plenty of my friends there that you’ll recognise.”

“What, Evan?” Kalian murmured and he felt a sharp look from Alex.

“Don’t be cruel, Kalian, you know Evan’s not been doing too well lately. But all of his friends will be there.”

-------

He couldn’t remember how long ago it had happened. Perhaps it was somewhere within the vicinity of seven years ago, between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. Even if he had managed to narrow it down to a specific number it wouldn’t have mattered to him; to do the math and dredge up that memory to find that he was in fact fifteen and not any younger wouldn’t have brought any more relief, any less betrayal. It still happened under the age of consent, under the age of pornographic appearances, years before he was ready to have someone do those things to him. It didn’t matter. It was over and done with and there was not much point in bringing it up now, almost a decade later. It would’ve only cheapened his feelings at the time, the unintended consequences that had remained with him, like turning down the rare sexual exploits that had presented themselves to him out of the blue, no matter how safe or desired they were.

He looked at the house. When he was younger it must’ve seemed bigger because in his memories it had always resembled a castle, with two storeys of dark brick and old-fashioned weak sconces and columns marking the entrance. He followed Alex inside and was surprised to see that everyone there, all the segregated groups standing around laughing and drinking, were dressed in normal everyday clothes. There were no masks, no costumes, no props. It wasn’t a Halloween party this time, and he thought that that might make things a lot more bearable. He watched his brother cut away from him without a word, hailed with cheers into a larger group seated around the living room, and Alex seamlessly chucked down his box of beer and fell into a space that two girls had freed up for him on a grey couch. He picked up the conversation quick and joined it as if he’d been there when it had all started.

He stood there for a moment and stared before he finally just put down the box and went away. It was hypocritical; his brother had harped on about how he wanted him to feel included and yet it hadn’t taken Alex two minutes to abandon him, to forget about him, to not so much as tell him to help himself to a drink. He found himself passing through the kitchen where only slow-moving drunks were topping up their glasses, and he reached over them, grabbing one of the last beers in the crate in the fridge. He needed a drink. He used a sticky bottle opener from the bench and chugged it back, pushing past everyone standing in inconvenient places until he was outside again.

He sat down on the steps and drunk the bottle until it was empty. He’d been thirsty; he’d been drinking it more like water rather than beer, and it wasn’t so bad that he wouldn’t have declined another. But he wasn’t going back in there, not yet. For now he would sit outside and breathe the fresh air and he would try to think of this as the first night he’d ever been here. The first time he’d ever set foot in this house.

He went back inside, hoping to grab a few cans from Alex’s stash without him noticing since he wouldn’t feel comfortable stealing anymore beer from anyone else. He grabbed three and went to go back outside, but more people had flooded into the area all of a sudden, crowding the place, blocking off his exit. He decided he would wait it out until the ebb and flow of the people died down again and in the meantime took refuge leaning on a coffee table against the wall. He stared at the people who passed him as he drank. He hadn’t recognised anyone that night because of the masks, and he didn’t recognise anyone now that they weren’t wearing them. These could be an entirely new set of people and he’d have no idea. The only people he’d ever had a chance at recognising would’ve been the twins.

Kalian felt his body run slow and poisoned just thinking about them. Years had gone by without thinking about them, but now he couldn’t stop trying to remember the small details, scanning the crowd, trying to match them up to the available specimens. He looked for ginger-red hair, he looked for freckles on the shoulders and cheeks, he looked for pasty skin, he looked for lanky figures with no muscle to them. He looked for a brother and a sister, side by side, smiling like they knew what they were doing was wrong but they just didn’t care.

He didn’t see any two people that fit those descriptors and he began to relax as most people cleared out of the area and fanned themselves throughout the rest of the house. He began to entertain the idea that they might not have been there at all, perhaps because they had been caught some years ago and their websites had been taken down and they were currently serving their sentences, living apart with their shame and feeling the weight of it crush them. He liked to think that was where they were. That was why he couldn’t see them.

But since when had he ever been shown any justice?

He thought a little harder about it. They had been missing for hours that night years ago because they had been with him, in a tiny room with a locked door and no windows.

He felt sick. His stomach heaved with the two beers sloshing around in it, the alcohol hit him without warning and skipped straight over the giddiness to the nausea. He had already opened the third can but he left it on the coffee table behind him and dragged himself over to the corridor. People paused their conversation to stare as he passed them, hugging the side of the wall and dragging his feet, but he didn’t care. They asked if he was okay but he could tell by their tone that they weren’t expecting a real answer, nothing beyond a casual dismissal so he could leave and they could keep discussing their business again. He turned down a corridor that was all-too familiar and yet couldn’t have been more different to how he’d remembered it. It was an artist’s rendition, what he had been working off all along. It had been a rough police sketch of a guilty corridor.

One door in particular was giving him that sense of wrong. He laid his hand on the handle and it took a few seconds to scrap up enough courage to open it. The door opened to a room with a desk, no chair, and a mattress, no sheets. And Kalian felt like screaming. This was it, this was the place. The computer was gone and the perpetrators were gone, but it was as if nothing else, no other outsiders, had disrupted this crime scene. The air was so stale and a little musty; he wondered if anyone had ever set foot in here after the twins had taken their home videos and run.

He no longer wanted to scream. It was too tiring, too much effort. He just wanted to cry, but he’d already done enough of that over this. The room was bringing him back to all sorts of memories he had tried to leave behind; years and years of suppression undone in one quiet minute. He made a decision to walk out. And he slammed the door as he did.

He was still scared, that maybe he had just gotten the wrong room. Maybe they all looked like that. Maybe the twins weren’t in prison, maybe they weren’t gone. Kalian didn’t hesitate; he ran to each door in sequential order in the corridor and threw them all open. He only scanned them enough to check that there wasn’t a recording light, a pair of masks, a crying vulnerable boy between them.

All the rooms had been checked. Nothing but emptiness and then the complete opposite: accumulated junk from the decade passed. Kalian fell to the floor, tears threatening to ruin his composure, alcohol in him making everything worse. In a way he was glad. He wouldn’t know what he would’ve done, if he’d found them there, ten years older like him, their new victim just as innocent and terrified as he was that day. He liked to think that he was stronger than he really was. He liked to picture the fantasy that he would run at them with flying fists and vengeful yells, that he would sit astride her neck and punch the mouth that she had used to take all of him in, that he would kick and mangle the penis that he had teasingly almost tore him with. He wanted to put all of his pain onto them and he was shaking just thinking about it. But he knew he never would. He was weak, he was pathetic, and that was probably why he was their victim in the first place. He didn’t want anyone else to suffer like he did, to grow up feeling disgusting and used and painfully aware of the abuse done to him. He would’ve done anything to have saved just one person from the same fate as him.

He picked himself up from the floor. He shut all of the doors with all of the gentleness and slowness he hadn’t shown them when he opened them. He decided it was best not to linger; he just went back to the main area of the house hoping that no one had noticed he’d abandoned his beer. He drunk from it, standing there, halfway between a wall fixture and someone trying to belong in the conversation, until something else dragged his attention away.

Kalian lost the ability to move when he felt most like he wanted to run. They were there after all. Both of them. She’d done something different with her hair, and he had thickened up a bit around the bust, but they were still the same. They still smiled like they were just begging him to do something about it. They smiled like they hadn’t just spotted him, instead like they’d known he was there and looking out for them all along. He watched helpless and rigid as they walked over and came to stand too-close in front of him.

“Hello.”

“Don’t we recognise you?”

Kalian didn’t know if he could speak. He didn’t want to so he never tried. He just continued to stand there, staring at the abusers of his younger self, holding his can like a grenade. They sounded so friendly, so in the mood for conversation. They smiled and waited for a response, any kind of response, and Kalian tried to take a little vengeful joy in the fact that he refused to provide one. They were looking for a sign that they could be on good terms, that they could be forgiven their transgressions and forgotten their illegalities, but Kalian wasn’t ever going to let them have that out. He shifted his wide-eyed stare into something a little more unforgiving, and they noticed.

“Don’t you remember us?”

“From that Halloween party?”

“We had a lot of fun, the three of us.”

He couldn’t hold the resentment in his expression. It slipped into the torment that he felt, the disbelief at their complete lack of sympathy. He felt tears well in his eyes and he wanted them to see and stop smiling like everything was okay, but they were still resolute on their psychopathic beams. Of course he remembered. For the first few months he remembered every single day. He remembered it so well that he couldn’t sleep without clothes on, couldn’t masturbate without crying. It was not something he was ever going to recover from.

The long silences as they waited for a response were at least starting to make them feel awkward. They shared stumped looks between them and the discomfort started to shine through their smiles.

“Not in school anymore, are you?”

“We heard you’re working for your brother.”

“We think that’s really adorable.”

“We’re in a new line of work ourselves, you know.”

“We’re photography freelancers.”

“We have a website and a twitter and everything.”

“Business is doing well.”

He wanted to tell them to stop. He wanted to tell them a lot of things, but he didn’t want to make a scene. He wanted to leave, but he didn’t want to leave them like this. He wanted respect and he wanted a profound, believable display of regret. He wanted a guarantee that the video of him never got around and he wanted proof that it was destroyed. He wanted to have never followed Alex here and just gone home by himself, as blissfully ignorant as he could get.

They didn’t understand; he didn’t see them as people with hobbies and families and jobs and fulfilled potentials and regularly met responsibilities. He only wanted to see them for what they were: monsters.

“So, uh, flick us an email if you ever want our services.”

“We give a nice little discount for valued customers.”

He began to shake and his breathing came out raspy and difficult. He didn’t know what he might do, but they obviously thought not a lot as they made no attempt to placate or give him some distance. They stared expectantly for a long-awaited answer and Kalian opened his mouth and finally let one go.

“Was there anyone else?”

They were baffled. They looked to each other for clarification but not finding it brought them gently back to him. Quietly they asked, “Anyone else?”

Kalian felt contained, like a pillar of fury. “Did you hurt anyone else like you hurt me? At that Halloween party. Has there been anyone else?”

They restored their smiles, smug and self-assured. “We never hurt anyone.”

“We merely introduced you to a world of pleasure.”

“That’s the opposite of hurt.”

“Don’t try to tell us that you didn’t like it when you came twice yourself.”

His hand was shaking so badly. It took an obscene amount of concentration and restraint to set his can back on the coffee table behind him. He didn’t understand. They didn’t understand. He needed to make them understand, somehow, but that shouldn’t have ever been his responsibility. He shouldn’t have had to be the one to say to them that it wasn’t approval, that he couldn’t have given permission, that they didn’t help him to realise that he wanted it.

“Y-You should… die.”

Their smiles fell flat instantly. Kalian had surprised even himself but he never felt the desire to amend his words. It had felt a little good. He wasn’t even sure if he meant it, but saying it had lightened his head at least a little, had taken his thumping heart down by a couple of beats.

“That’s mean.”

“That’s rude.”

“Ha…” It was the weakest laugh to ever pass his lips but still he tried to mimic their ignorant smiles. “You guys… are scum. Why don’t you go f-fuck yourselves?”

They were insulted. That’s all they were, insulted. They looked to each other like they couldn’t stand for this kind of harassment and they began to move away in unison, passing one last judgemental stare-down before they moved on, into the next room. They were as good as gone.

Kalian didn’t know how to feel or if he had handled that at all well. Hours later he’d be thinking about their brief interaction, again and again, over and over, thinking he was too harsh on them, thinking he let them off far too easy, thinking he should’ve just left without a word. It would haunt him, it would follow him everywhere. It was just like the first time he’d ever met them, only now he had that validation that what was done to him was not a big deal and clearly not worth the amount of anguish he felt over it. He felt like complete shit and he wanted to go home.

He looked over towards his brother to see that he was already looking at him. He had a sort of soft concern on his face that disappeared after a few seconds upon meeting Kalian’s eye. He looked like he was about to go back to the conversation when he stood up suddenly, tossing his empty can aside and walking over to him. His body language was avoidant but he was trying to be anything but.

“Would you like to go home?”

The relief was such a rush it had Kalian almost crying again. If only Alex could’ve been nearly as perceptive now compared to that Halloween party, when it had taken literal dog-like begging to get Alex to leave with him. It was relief, but it was also bitter resentment. He tried to let only the relief influence him. He nodded. And Alex said his goodbyes and led him out the door of that sick, sick house.

It wasn’t that dark yet and Kalian realised that they hadn’t been there all that long. He thought maybe he should say something, give some thanks to Alex for giving up that great evening and not even being able to take his booze away with him, but it wasn’t something he could do right now. He was only capable of staring at the pavement and breathing his misery, underwhelmed and forever hopeless.

Alex took his hand and squeezed it. Kalian expected him to let it go immediately after but he didn’t. He continued to hold it, even as they reached a crossing and others stared. Alex hadn’t held his hand since they were kids. Maybe there was something about him right now that just reminded his brother of that vulnerable boy he used to be or, perhaps, still was.

#short story #that's not all that short really #more writing stuff #tw: implied/recalled sexual abuse #poor kid: the saga continues

The first few days were the worst. He spent hours in front of the bathroom mirror that night with his shirt off and his neck sore from all of the craning his head had to do because they didn’t have a smaller mirror lying around. He had to go through drawers of old crusting make-up bags and expired face masks and hundreds of loose hair clips and ties, trying to find cotton buds and a bottle of rubbing alcohol, which only had a few millilitres left. Even so much as a ginger touch to the cuts caused him sharp barbed stings of cold-on-hot pain, but he gritted his teeth and wiped at his tears and followed through for another hour. He was worried they’d become infected somehow if he didn’t do this, and he’d end up having to go to the hospital to let the doctors squeeze out a mound of pus and blood, pump him full of antibiotics and keep him overnight, and always asking him “who did this to you?” He had to do this, he told himself, until his hands were shaking so bad he couldn’t aim anymore, until he winced in anticipation of the pain he was unnecessarily inflicting on himself. He’d been through enough pain that day and the cuts still ripped at his flesh whenever he stretched the skin there, forcing him to move with a rigid upright posture. He looked for just one box of Band-Aids but when he finally found one that was more of a folder than a box, it had only three left in it and not nearly enough to cover even the first letter. And it wasn’t as if the skin-coloured plasters were all that very skin-coloured for him anyway.

He wasn’t sure what to do about his shirt. It was grey and big with the name of Alex’s hall of residence on it and was sort of important to him for that very reason, and it wasn’t as if he’d find another shirt to replace it so easily. If he got rid of it now then he’d be down to just four shirts to last him through the week until his mother did the washing on Sunday evenings, and lately she had started to put it off later and later, sometimes well into the following week. He didn’t want to wear the same shirts days in a row, he didn’t want to wear his jackets and hoodies with nothing underneath them. He thought about going to a Salvation Army store, or a Recycle Boutique or the Warehouse and picking out some cheap clothes that weren’t falling apart and fit him a little better, but he didn’t have enough money for that. The money that he did have and sometimes received he liked to save for outings, so he didn’t look too poor in front of his friends, so he could afford more than small fries when his friends were eating chicken burger combos.

He turned on his bedroom light now that it was well past seven o’clock and he held the shirt up to see. There were dark red dried stains all down the back, where the fabric had been pressed against his skin and absorbed all the blood weeping there throughout the day. The stains came in tiny slivers where it was barely noticeable from a distance at all, but in other areas they were more concentrated, larger and thicker, from the cuts that hurt the most. He wondered if it was too late to wash the stains out but he didn’t seem to have any other options; his mum would get worried if she found that in the clothes basket.

In the bathroom, he put the back of his shirt under running warm water and used the same slab of green soap they’d been using for the past year to help get out the stains. He got the fabric wet and soapy and began to rub out as much of the red as he could. After ten minutes he got most of it out but he wasn’t sure if it was all of it; the wet patch was far too dark to tell. He tried to squeeze as much water out of the shirt as he could and he waved it around the room in a futile attempt to dry it faster, but it only made it cold. He took it back to his room and hung it up on the spare curtain hooks, hoping if he put on a hoodie and left his window open a little, the breeze would do something for it overnight.

The next day he refused to take his sweatshirt off, even as he sat low in chairs with a large wooden back. The weather had been warm in the morning but it was blistering hot at lunch in the sun, where his friends had opted to sit unexpectedly. They were all dressed like summer with short sleeves and loose pants and pretty dresses and sandals, but he was dressed exactly the same as always with his sleeves desperately rolled right up to above his elbows. Friends and teachers alike had told him that he looked a little hot, with red cheeks and a sweaty brow, and maybe he should take his sweatshirt off, but he told them like a broken, cracking record that he was fine, that he didn’t feel the heat that much. He couldn’t wait for the school day to end so he could go home and take his stupid sweatshirt off and give his back some air to breathe. His back was drenched with so much sweat he was afraid that it would seep through even his sweatshirt, but above that he was afraid that it wasn’t just sweat that would seep through. The cuts in his back had been stinging at random times throughout the day, whether that was a good sign or not he couldn’t tell, and he could feel it when he turned his torso too quickly or bent forwards without thinking, he felt like his cuts were threatening to bleed again. Tomorrow, he thought, as he walked home from his bus in the hot summer afternoon, he would wear a black shirt, so even if he did bleed through then no one would notice. He thought he was vaguely starting to sympathise with girls and their period problems.

When he returned to his room at four o’clock, he stripped down to see that his cuts had broken their fragile seals and started bleeding again. It was not nearly as bad as the first shirt, and the blood could only be seen from the inside, but he still thought that he was right not to take a risk and take off his sweatshirt for even one class or lunchtime. The blood was rinsed out even easier than the first shirt and he put it up to dry next to the other one, which had dried quite quickly after hours caught in the sunlight. There was still a faint rogue outline of where some of the bigger splodges of blood were, but he assumed it would look like another other grey shirt once it had a proper wash with detergent.

On the third day, the weather was just as fine and he didn’t hesitate to take off his jacket and stuff it in his locker, and he walked around the school with just his black shirt on with the silver and red graffiti-like patterns on the front that he thought looked cool. But on the fourth period, just before lunch, the P.E. teacher announced happily that she had been able to get the key to the pool and permission to let every student skip their form time. The other kids in his class, including his friends, were thrilled to have a chance to swim after sitting in stuffy classrooms all day with windows that didn’t open wide enough, but he didn’t even so much as smile at the news. Every student had been warned that it was swimming season and they could be taken to the pool at any period, but it was often a false hope, because keys got lost, because other year groups had already booked the pool in advance, because the weather was too chilly, because the teachers didn’t feel like the kids deserved it. He knew that he couldn’t swim now; the chlorine would probably cause him more pain and the cuts at the moment looked ugly and inflamed, like he had been crudely drawn on with black-red gel pens.

It wasn’t that hard to get out of swimming and, while most of the kids enjoyed it immensely, there was definitely a small group of people who would unflinchingly take condemnation from the teachers and willingly sit through weeks’ worth of detentions just to sit on the benches and read books while everyone else had fun. He had never really thought about it before until now, what their reasons might be for escaping swimming in a public place with a lot of people. Maybe he hadn’t been Evan’s only victim. Maybe other students in his class had older brothers who had done terrible things, too.

All he had to do was look apologetic and say to the teacher that he had taken his togs home to wash and had forgotten to take them back today, and that was enough for a detention at lunch. He felt guilty and humiliated for it but he tried to think of how much worse it could be if he was out there swimming with them. Ingrid was with him when he told the teacher his lame excuse and from the look she gave him as the teacher walked away, he thought that she knew he hadn’t taken home his P.E. bag since last week. But if she knew that he had lied then she didn’t ever ask him about it, which he remained grateful for.

He went back to his class for form-time and wolfed down the peanut chocolate-coated energy bar he had on him when the teacher was distracted with one of his student’s essays. Then he went to his P.E. teacher’s classroom to serve a detention that was probably long overdue, and he claimed a desk at the back as a dozen other students miserably filed in for other minor offences, like too-short tops, too-low pants, swearing at the teacher, stealing money, and annoying other students. Most of them remained slumped in their chairs and sprawled across their desks, sighing as they stared at the clock and watched their lunchtime waste away while the sounds of screaming, laughing children rose and fell from the corridors. He had completed only a couple of questions from his maths homework before the teacher dismissed them five minutes before the bell.

The fourth day was not any less unpleasant than the last three days. The cuts on his back no longer split open at random turns; instead they had started to scab over and he had the burning desire to scratch them constantly. He felt the fabric of his shirt brush against them and it inflamed their itchiness more and more until he found himself grinding against the edge of hallway lockers, rubbing against the back of chairs, because a little bit of pain in this case was better than enduring that quiet invisible torture. He put his hand under his jacket on occasion, when he was sure no one was looking, and scratched as hard as he could, not caring if he pulled open the scabs and got blood on more shirts.

It was horrible; one scab was bad enough but there must’ve been at least fifteen good ones in difficult-to-reach places on him. Every scab he’d ever had as a child he had picked at incessantly, peeling off dead skin and the weeping juices. He bled them profusely, always amazed at how much blood he could produce from such tiny wounds, always amazed at how short the complete bliss was between maddening irritation and regretful pain. His mother had slapped at him a couple of times in an attempt to get him to stop, and Alex had warned him that if he kept re-opening the wound then it would never heal, would scar much worse, and it would let in all the bad bacteria and get infected. His mother couldn’t know and his brother wasn’t around to stop him now. He had to stop all on his own and it was hard, so hard, but he managed to get through the day with only a couple of guilty and yet satisfying scratches.

The following night, once his sister was done with her shower, he looked at them again. They looked so easy to peel off but he didn’t let himself do that, at least not yet. He couldn’t stop thinking about swimming class and how much more swimming classes he’d have to skip out on, even when the scabs were gone, even when there was no longer any risk of infection. He didn’t know what he’d do if his family ever wanted to go swimming together, or if his friends ever wanted him to join a beach outing. They definitely wouldn’t let him wear a shirt, and a full-piece swimsuit, if he ever somehow managed to get a hold of one, would probably just invite more scars if he was amongst the kind of people who couldn’t pass up an opportunity to bully someone who was different to them. He wondered if he was just exaggerating and if he stood out at all. Maybe no one would even notice he had scars because who would think to look there if he wasn’t bringing attention to his back by hiding it under shirts and things. Maybe after a few weeks, if he was very careful not to scratch, then the scabs would come off in the shower and there would be hardly any trace of the scars at all.

Except that that wasn’t the problem. It wouldn’t matter if he could just wear his trunks again in the pool and if his friends slapped him on the back without any idea of what had been done there, because he would still know. He would always turn around in the mirror and see those scars there. Even if the scars faded, the memory of it never would. He didn’t even see them as scars – sometimes he saw them for what they really were, their intended identity. They were words. They were hurtful, hurtful words. It was like he was a living, breathing, moving tombstone, a hellish concept, dedicated to all of the terrible things his brother ever did and was remembered by his enemies. He was like the opposite of the black granite tombstone that was to be shortly erected in the cemetery above his brother’s grave. Instead of perfectly engraved gold lettering, he had bloody hand-carved words. Instead of honourable and heartfelt condolences, he had cuss words and harsh truths. Instead of beautiful freshly-cut flowers as offerings, he had blood and sweat and tears.

Perhaps the absolute worst aspect of this, though, was that it was written on his back. He couldn’t get rid of them; even if he scratched and scratched until his back was just wet with blood, he’d still see them there. He loved his brother with all of his heart, more than words could ever say, more than anyone, including Alex himself, could ever comprehend. And yet Evan chose to write “my brother” instead of just the name. Evan actually made it to look like those were his own words.

He wished he could hate him for it but he still couldn’t help remembering that Alex had started it and Evan was only retaliating, in response to the drug-pushing, the lies and the manipulation and the bullying, the eventual death of his little sister. Alex was responsible for all of those things and it was hard to forget that when the reminder of his victims’ pain and suffering and hatred was etched onto his back in the most fitting, Alex-endorsed manner possible.

He wasn’t a person anymore, he wasn’t a brother or a son or a friend. He wasn’t even the messenger; he was the message, and for a man who could never even see it. He was a settled score, a sweet vengeance, a symbol of retribution. It was just another reason to lie awake at night and wish for whatever entity was truly out there to change something, anything, so that it didn’t have to go like this forever because he couldn’t go on like this for much longer.

He scratched those scars a lot that night. He knew he did because there was dried blood under his nails in the morning.

#here have another one #it's a bit more gross #there's blood and scars and scabs and stuff :/#tw: implied physical abuse #short story #in which a boy continues to suffer for his brother even when he's dead #er #high school setting #poor kid: the saga continues

It was an awkward period in his life. He had only just started to recover from that sudden, violent bout of sickness and was back at school for the first time in weeks. He’d been so sick that he almost had to skip the funeral.

He hadn’t told his friends yet, either to their faces or in response to their few but concerned calls, but it was obvious to him that they now knew. The nurse had explained things when they asked after his unusual absence, or a teacher had sat them all down gravely to give everyone but him a long talk on grief and loss. Something had changed in the way they looked at him now. They didn’t used to take much notice of him during the lunch breaks, as he sat there with his science textbook in his lap and stared at the same page for twenty minutes without eating. The truth was, he’d always been doing that. It was only now that something had happened that they could find any significance in it.

The very first time they’d asked him – that they’d asked him anything in over a month – he started to cry. It was his first day back at school since it had happened, and he’d felt the nausea rocking him all throughout the morning, like he was stuck on a broken merry-go-round, and his head felt like someone strong had their hands clamped over both his temples, crushing him, like a watermelon that was about to split in two. As much as he’d tried to hold back, he couldn’t even make it through one day. He couldn’t even have the decency to leave because it was too exhausting to stand. They floundered over him eventually, and they asked if there was anything they could do, anything that he needed. But he just shook his head slow, like an idiot, and put his hands over his face and his face in his knees and wished that everything would simultaneously just stop, go away and come back.

She had started to become quieter around him, he noticed, and sometimes he caught her staring at him. But instead of looking away she just smiled. He had thought maybe she was trying to be respectful of his lingering symptoms, talking less and less and with an appropriate amount of enthusiasm, but then she started to sit closer to him, putting herself in between him and Ingrid. He wasn’t sure what to do, what she wanted from him. They didn’t used to talk together but he started to talk to him, slow and in short cryptic comments, and then suddenly perky long-winded speeches about something, anything that was a good distraction from retreating back into his own thoughts. In a way, he liked it. He had stopped bringing textbooks to their regular lunch-time haunt, in the alcove beside the second-storey stairwell, and he had made an effort not to look quite so miserable all the time now that she had just become one of his closest friends. They never talked about him, really. But they talked about everything else and it was great.

Then, one lunchtime, she put her hand over his. He had jumped but he didn’t move away, expecting her to realise that her skin was touching his and move her hand away, but she never did. And she looked at him and smiled and tried to convince him it was no accident by curling her fingers around his, and he reflexively did the same for no reason that was apparent to him. He tried to meet her eyes but he failed repeatedly, instead flicking his eyes over to where Faye was explaining one of her favourite television series and Jascka was resting on Ingrid’s shoulder. They didn’t notice. Or if they did, they didn’t care. And she squeezed his hand ever so light that he wondered if he had imagined it.

She had invited him to waste time in town with her on Saturday and he agreed, knowing he had nothing better to do. It looked like rain so he put on one of his thicker jackets and picked up his student bus pass and carefully pulled and patted at his hair to make it look a little less unruly. He double-checked all of the bus timetables to make sure he’d get into Wellington station on time as he picked at a piece of bread he wasn’t hungry for and then left early. He arrived at the station a little before her Hutt train was supposed to get in and he sat on one of the cold paint-chipped benches at the end of the nine platforms. It was almost noon and there were few people around. He looked up at the small stretch of sky visible from the open-roofed middle platform and saw that clouds were parting and the sun was casting dark shadows. He awkwardly unzipped his jacket and tried to stuff it into his school bag that he’d emptied of his books. Then he saw the train come in and dozens of weekend-goers filing off.

He saw her instantly, straight off the first carriage. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her look more beautiful than he did in those few moments she skipped towards him. Her long hair flew out behind her, swishing from side to side at her waist like a tail, and he couldn’t help but notice the jiggle her breasts made in her tight-fitting top as her sandals touched onto the ground and pushed off again. She caught the sunlight as she passed under the gaps in the roof and her entire body seemed luminescent. Her skin glittered like gold, her teeth sparkled. She dropped her bag and threw her arms up and around him as he stood to meet her, and she felt soft and warm. He wondered how he could have ever made friends with this girl, much less ended up on a date with her.

As they began to walk down the Quays, he revealed with some reluctance that he didn’t have very much money on him, and she laughed and told him that she didn’t either. He counted sixteen dollars in his wallet and she counted four at the bottom of her bag, which she told him was for the train ride home. So they wandered through town, browsing books and music and clothes they couldn’t afford, staring at a board full of big-screen films they couldn’t watch, watching other affluent teenagers buy jewellery and hair dye and meaty burgers on a whim. At the peak of the hot afternoon sun he offered to buy her an ice cream, and she said she’d thank him by eating it in the most seductive way possible, which involved a lot of long licks and unyielding eye contact. He thought she’d been joking, doing it sarcastically, but there was only so many times he could laugh as she ran her tongue painstakingly over the dripping mess, or wrap her mouth around the tip and pull it out slowly. It was only once he’d stopped eating from his own cup and began to stare at the vanilla smeared on her lips that she giggled and started eating it properly.

After they’d both had their fill at the Chinese canteen section of the food court for only eight dollars, she invited him back to her place for the night, coy but optimistic. He saw no reason to decline and he saw every reason to postpone going back to sit in a quiet, miserable house and wait for the school week to start over again. When they’d made their way back to the train station the sky was already a deep blue with a few purple clouds on the horizon. They’d missed the Hutt train by ten minutes and they had to wait another fifty for the next one but he didn’t seem to mind so long as she didn’t mind. She sat on the bench and gestured for him to sit next to her and she told him all about this series of books she loved as a child. She told him many things about her childhood, using only the small obligatory prompts from Kalian to jump from subject to subject, and he sat there listening to her, happy at how quickly she was making the time pass. She shivered at about seven o’clock and so he unzipped his coat and handed it to her without a second thought. She thanked him and put her arms through it, smiling her appreciation. She said that she thought she must’ve looked pretty funny in a dark rain jacket and a short skirt but Kalian said he didn’t think so at all.

When they were on the train, they held hands. They didn’t say a word to each other but they stared out the same window. It was dark enough outside now that only a few scarce streetlights uncovered by trees were to be seen; most of the time they were staring at the yellow reflection of the train car. She had offered him the window seat and he laid back, letting her see over him, but often found himself staring at her instead.

When they walked to her house from the station, away from the small line of open-late shops, they were holding hands again. She pointed to a house in the dark and said that was where her cousin Cindy lived and she pointed to another house in the dark several more down and said that was where her sister’s ex-boyfriend lived, but he was still cool. She knew a lot of people in her neighbourhood, even in the night, and he couldn’t help but wonder aloud why he didn’t know anybody at all on his own street. She gripped his hand hard and continued walking down the dim streets.

She eventually led him up the short stony steps to a small one-storey house with an old car parked on the lawn and a tree stump with a rope around it to the side of the footpath, and a grated fence around the perimeter. The lights were warm behind flimsy curtains, it smelled like hot potatoes and kumara, and he could hear something bright but muffled. She introduced the place specifically as her mum’s house and she opened up the door to a living room occupied by three people on a sofa watching a television show he didn’t recognise. He watched as they all looked up at him in unison and then rose their eyebrows, nodded their heads once in approval, in welcome, before turning to one another to share comments on the show. He slowed down, thinking Serenity would introduce him, but she only chimed a hello before skipping along a hidden offshoot corridor and throwing open another door. He quickly followed after her and found himself in what he assumed was her bedroom. It had to be her bedroom. She had decorated it exactly how she dressed herself, like how a child would. It was an unmade bed with pink sheets, an overflowing dresser of her too-small clothes, a bookshelf with more of its contents on her bedside table than actually inside it, a floor littered with half-empty Fanta bottles and homework books and shoes. Children’s toys were abundant and looked as old as she was, battered and browned. Pastel lanterns hung precariously over her dresser mirror, giving the room a soft and dim rosy glow. Various make-up bags lay upturned on her desk, spilling out lipsticks and lip-glosses and eye-shadows and eye-liners and moisturises and perfumes.

It was a girl’s room. It was Serenity’s room, her own private space filled with her own personal possessions. But she patted at the bed and he sat down next to her without hesitation, treating a strange and unfamiliar place as if it were comforting, as if it were home. She pulled off his jacket and thanked him again for it, handing it back so he could put it anywhere along with his bag, as she’d insisted. They took off their shoes but Serenity didn’t look like she was about to stop there; she raised her shirt above her head, leaving Kalian just enough time to get a glimpse at her bra before he spun around. He asked, nervousness evident in his voice after a series of forced gulps, if he should go to another room, but she said she didn’t mind. He kept his back turned and remained as still and quiet as he could. He heard the rustle her clothes made as they dropped to the floor, the sound of the zip on her denim skirt, the soft clip of her bra unhooking, the snap of the waistband as she pulled on a new pair of underwear. He felt his face and his body grow hot even though he’d just removed his thick sweater. He wanted to see what she looked like now and he chanced a peek over his shoulders to see if she was decent.

She was looking back at him, smiling. She was dressed in a white cotton singlet with a lace trim at the front and a pair of tiny sports shorts. Her arms were bare, her legs were bare, there was a good inch of skin between her singlet and her shorts, and she looked absolutely beautiful. Kalian wondered if she could read it in his eyes because she came close to him and started to run her hand through his curls. He shivered. He breathed out then in after holding his breath for so long and he finally smelled her, the sweet and tart scent of her, off her hair and off her collarbone and off her clothes and off her hands at his head. The whole room smelled like her; there was no escaping it. He felt like something that didn’t belong, something offensive; the whole place smelled like girl and he probably smelled like a boy. He was afraid to remove much more of his clothing than he had, but she had already moved her other hand under his shirt at his back. He didn’t mind it; it felt nice and she couldn’t feel what was carved there. He leant into her, feeling her lean into him, and his heart started to beat loud and fast as he wondered if anything was going to happen between them. He watched her as she closed her eyes and he followed suit, titling his head to the opposite side of hers. She touched his lips to his and he felt like his heart was going to melt at the taste of her, the scent of her, the touch of her. It was all there and it was so strong. She moved her lips against his and he imitated her, hoping that this was okay, that he wasn’t doing anything wrong or awkward or unattractive. But she kept kissing him, again and again, a little deeper and with more enforcement each time. He felt lost inside her, inside her world. He wanted to be here forever and not just because it was better than nothing; everything was starting to feel solid again, he started to see colours again.

She broke away and smiled up at him, sympathetic and in admiration. He smiled back, looking down then back up again, awaiting her next gentle instruction, in need of direction, wondering where they were going to end up next. She seemed to be asking him something with her gaze alone but he couldn’t work out what it was. Was she asking him if he wanted more? If he thought it was good? If this was an adequate distraction from the miserable monotony of his days? It was a yes to everything. He didn’t know how to convey that with his eyes, or even his smile, so he nodded to a question he never heard her ask. She seemed to get something from that at least.

She took his hand and guided him to her bed. She laid down first, lay down completely, with her hair spread out against the pillow, with her stomach a little flatter than usual and her hips a little curvier than usual. She pulled at him when he hesitated and he ended up half-kneeling over her, holding himself up with shaky hands. He wanted it, it was still a yes, but he was scared. He was used to just lying back and letting others do what they would with him; he wasn’t sure how to reciprocate, he didn’t know how to give rather than take. He leaned down for another kiss and she had put a lot more urgency into it this time. It was an awkward angle and she kept dragging him in further, pushing her mouth against his, desperate and frantic. She started to writhe beneath him and she grabbed his hands out from underneath him so he fell on top of her and she put them on her breasts, on her waist, on her thighs. She wanted to be felt up and he obliged her, slower than she wanted, just feeling the voluptuous shape of her, the smoothness of her skin, the squish and the solid of her.

He felt her hands try to yank the back of his shirt over his head and it was like waking up with a start. It was a jolt, cutting through the sweet haze of hurried and unhurried desire, completely unexpected. Under no circumstances could she see what was done to him and, even though he knew it was unlikely she would like to be behind him, he still paused and took his mouth away from hers and avoided her eyes as he fought her a little, trying to pull his shirt back over his scars. She paused, too, not understanding, and he feared that she might’ve taken it for an insistence to stop. But he didn’t want them to stop – he wanted to keep going until his bones wore away, until his brain melted out his ears, for as long as she would let him. He didn’t want to go back now. He leaned in under her jaw and began to place small kisses on her, again and again, and he let his hands wander up and down the sharpest curves of her frame. He wanted her to do something in return, to show that she was okay with this, and his kisses grew further apart and weaker the longer she took to respond. The thought of her rejection now seemed like a dark and looming vacuum, stripping him off the few characteristics he had and tossing him back out into that void again. He felt like crying but he was determined not to; he couldn’t think of anything less erotic than a stupid boy crying because he refused to take his shirt off. But at some point, when she had put her arms gently around him and held him like he were something delicate and fragile, he had stopped kissing her and started shedding hot tears on her. He was too ashamed of himself to pull back and show her, but she didn’t need to see it; she must’ve felt the quivers in his jaw, the sobs in his chest.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t move, except to run her fingers so lightly over him, and she let him cry on her hair and into her neck. He didn’t know if she was barely tolerating it or if she simply didn’t mind it, and it made him feel horrible, the thoughts that had suddenly entered his head: she was going to throw him out in a few minutes when he didn’t get off her; she regretted ever taking him back home with her; she wasn’t going to speak to him at lunch ever again. He was never going to feel the warmth of her hand intertwined with his, and he never would feel that warmth with another human being ever again. He couldn’t help it; he cried harder. He was only carrying himself towards his own prophecy.

She reacted then. She brought them both to sit up on the bed, side by side, and she started to shush him, quiet and plaintive, and put an arm around his shoulders. She had let him pull away to cry into his hands and he did so with a lot less restraint than before. He didn’t know how this could’ve happened; moments ago he felt like he was soaring and now he wondered how he could have ever thought that he wasn’t walking on eggshells, tiptoeing around an emotional breakdown this entire evening. Even in his most rare and joyous moments he still felt overwhelming stress and under so much pressure, and it was worse to think that it was all in his head. There was just no escaping it. He choked out a series of apologies but she wasn’t having any of that; she told him that she was sorry, and it was all okay. He didn’t understand what she had to be sorry for but he was in no state to ask. He wanted to tell her that if she felt like she’d been too forceful with him, that wasn’t the case. She’d been nothing if not affectionate and trusting, and that was all he’d ever wanted. She shouldn’t have to feel bad; it’s not her fault that he couldn’t give her what they both wanted.

What felt like half an hour of speechlessness and diminishing sobs elapsed between them, and shortly after that he’d stopped crying completely. He wiped away the last of his tears and breathed out deeply, more smoothly. She put a hand in his hair and put her lips to his ear and told him that she liked him. He felt something dissipate throughout him but he wasn’t sure whether or not to trust that it was real, that it would ever stay that way for very long. He said in a small voice that he liked her, too, and she seemed surprised by it for some reason. Then she said to him, as if it were a tiny reminder, that he could talk to her about anything he wanted and she’d listen. He told her his thanks but implied with his ensuing silence that he didn’t want to talk about anything - not that that said that he didn’t have anything to talk about. But he liked that she didn’t try to make him talk. He liked that a lot about her. It was funny; he’d spent so much time with her today and yet he swore that he’d never heard her speak so little.

They shifted down in the bed and laid back against her two pillows, one pillow each now instead of two piled on top of each other. She didn’t make him remove his jeans or anything else in her bed, though, he suspected she treated it about as well as her trash-ridden floor so it didn’t bother her. She just brought the duvet up and over them and flicked a little switch on a white cord that put out the lantern lights. She moved closer and snuggled with him and whispered that she’d walk him to the train station tomorrow morning, and they could get some breakfast at the nearby McDonalds if he wanted. He smiled in the dark at her and said that he’d like that. He felt her move again and he wondered if she was going to kiss him but the kiss never came. So he moved his head closer and, miraculously, her lips were already there and waiting in the dark for him to move that one inch towards her. They shared a small clean kiss and he nodded off so quickly with only her arms around him and nothing lurking in the shadows of her room, no intruders at her window, no enormity swallowing him up and spitting him back out in the morning. He thought only of her and his favourite parts of her and the way she made him feel when he kissed her, and he slept better than he had all the nights in the last month combined.

#welp #something to start us off I guess #kinda tame #...kinda regretting this now #ehhhhhhh #short story #teens in love #er sorta #crying boys and sweet understanding girls #I have a soft spot for it okay leave me alone D:#teeeeeny bit nsfw

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