#brilliant and deviant

[a-for-alternative]

Were you an only child? What was it like?

I was.

It's a double edge sword, though you don't realize it until the time with your parents is tapering down to a point, then only you will be there to bear the brunt of it, especially if you don't walk the straight and narrow... you'll be the only scape goat or return on investment or sunk cost in their little venture.

You're never quite a person unto yourself.

They can't separate you from what you personify.

When you get out of turn, they reveal all the wounds left behind on them by those you're descended from. They will say you are demonstrating all the worst traits of someone that's been dead for decades, especially if you've never met, then they'll say you got that dreadful disposition from the other parent-- they'll tell you all the things they despise about each other, try to excoriate whatever traces of them they see blooming in you and leave you wondering,

'Is this what familial love amounts to?'

'Surviving each other long enough for one to drop dead?'

I was the product of a mistake made by two adults that knew better, but they warmed to the idea of mistaking me into existence anyway-- choosing not to terminate things before I could be burdened with the consequences of their actions.

... Even still... being the singular progeny, you are prized and venerated for the sake of saving face, if only because not doing so would communicate more that they were failed parents than you were a failed child-- ils pourraient vous dire que vous êtes un petit garnement, un bâtard ingrat, ... but they will refuse any such accusations from others,

. . . meme si elles sont vraies...

You're trapped under the subjugation of two people who do not sympathize with you and cannot empathize with you, see no value beyond your utility, see no intent beyond what they assign to your actions.

Solitude, through it's familiarity, becomes a comfort, you adapt but like trying to mature in a tight box, you will grow malformed and... that kind of isolation tends to engender some... eccentricities that are not compatible with social mores.

Fate relieved me of them, but I found adjusting very difficult. Misery and purposelessness replaced the familiarity of loneliness as I became another invisible blight of society, a faceless ward of the system that tucks away all these unsightly human tragedies like me.

I would be lying if I said being brought to this-- to our- institution wasn't a relief-- for a short time, I had returned to a position I felt most suited to; high pressure, high expectations, leniency for the sake of no one responsible for me wanting to admit they may have made a mistake...

Then, .... He came.

You see, they had decided I wasn't enough.

[a-for-alternative]

Tonight we play a game of disrespect the parent: which parent did you hate the most and why

Hatred...

I must be really fucked up for that to feel like infidelity; to feel hatred so ardently towards more than one person... makes me feel like a slut.

But, maybe my hatred comes in different shades of red, manifests to different degrees and with different longevity.

I remember instances in which I would be threatened, brought to screaming shambles— undone by the lack of restraint of these adults upon whom I depended.

They never actually made good on their threats, but at the time it felt like there was no dignity so essential that they believed I deserved it.

Nothing was too great an indignity that I should not be expected to bear it.

Still... in spite of the worst instances of demoralization, castigation, and cruelty, neither of the two that brought me into this world did what our surrogate father, Roger, would...

While he didn't hit me or tell he I was a disobedient little cur,

He replaced me.

with Him .

[a-for-alternative]

What is your earliest happy memory?

Alternative meets the question with an open gape, his lips part without words to form around as though he were just presented with a contingency he had failed to consider.

Suddenly, a pulsing flash like the sparkle of revelation cuts through his dull expression.

For an instant, his countenance appears to tentatively warm to the notion of an antecedent-self. But, almost as quickly as it appeared, the glimmer settles like a dying star in the depths of his gaze — and, Alternative suddenly grows visibly uneasy with its diffusion…

There's an immediate desire to assuage the discomfort, to offer something trite and contrived — anything to placate the question with a prosaic recollection and escape its scrutiny. He thumbs though the romanticized retrospectives of characters from novels and movies but none of them suit his vision of himself, of who he recognizes himself to be. It irks his sense of decency to consider handing unearned accolades to those who feel so unworthy of it. Giving a sympathetic interpretation to his family is an erasure of every sincerity there ever was in his precursory incarnation…

" I vaguely remember the mobile above my crib— moons and stars that had the texture of new bath towels, circling over me with a mechanical, clicking chime …

—I grew to feel an anxiety towards it after a loose flush mount cover fell one morning and struck my mother.

After that, I would point wordlessly when we entered the room, as though I was warning them of a peril they had overlooked or forgotten.

Nonverbal, I was just cognizant enough to recognize that the world is pitiless when it strikes and it does so in ways one least expects it.

—Neither paid any mind to the trepidation I developed when staring up at the web of stars above my bed.

Maybe it was then that I knew no one could be expected to intervene, I was on my own..."

Alternative's gaze grows distant as he evaluates his bygone-self with a detached impassivity, so divorced from the life that existed before the earth swallowed it all up that he can barely find a trace of himself in it.

"… I remember the d r e a d when night fell and my father's absence became inexorably evident, when I let in the possibility that I had reached that terminal point prematurely with my parents.

The house was so still that I could hear the ominous world of dusk through the walls as though someone had carelessly left a door open without a thought spared for my safety.

My universe was contained within those four walls and, suddenly, I found myself adrift in this void between one phase of being and another, both perilous and perishable in ways I couldn't reconcile and too impudent to recognize the intractability of this turn of events.

The…

possibility that they both would have left me was so inconceivable…

—For a few days, I wasn't completely sure I wasn't dreaming."

"Then, I found him, it was no longer speculative …

—p a n i c , real vermillion terror replaced that transitory fugue. It's what I imagine one must feel when they look over the horizon of the open sea or untamed forest and realize, they are lost and alone…

Maybe they oscillate between hopefulness and horror, I'm sure they contemplate escaping the merciless that nature will inflict by devising one themselves…

But, as I took in everything that had been abolished through their absence, I saw p e a c e.

—My mother's incensed slamming of the cabinet doors at midnight, my father's uncooperative ambition, feeling like an assigned project they were reluctant partners in constructing — as though I was to be endured until a particular deadline, as though there is a mercy stroke at the end of being someone's parent, as though they would be granted clemency from the position if only they performed well enough…

I think they loved me…

—in a mangled sense, in a way that didn't speak or move gently over my sense of self, just crawled and clawed and bit like a stray struck by a car that refused to die."

" I was happy that they were dead. "

The candid admonition is delivered with an inexorably artic stare as though all the burning enmity that should live behind it had long since consumed remorse, leaving only silent desolation.

Something in Alternative's confidence wavers and his gaze drifts to an empty corner of the room, his attention lingers there with a sightless focus, a dissatisfied glower barely surfacing.

" After that, ... I was happy when...

... I didn't have to tell him, he already knew my name.

I thought only A could exist beyond this point. I was going to be locked inside this assigned identity where the world couldn't find me, did not look for me, did not know I existed anymore.

But, he found his way in and I felt like I existed to someone, that I wasn't alone anymore..."