#child!oliver

[ikemensengokufangirl]

List of things I want to make child!Oliver do:

1. Sit on Santa's lap.

2. Play at McDonald's Playland

3. Trick-or-treat

4. Play with Legos

5. Go on a pony ride

These are all that I could think of so far.

[ultimatecosmicjoke]

[ultimatecosmicjoke]

                    What little boys are really made of.

Wards often joke claiming they’re made of snips and snails, and puppy dog tails. Oliver didn’t find it funny the first time or any other time after that. This place is one of the circles of hell the Superior talks about during a Sunday sermon; they’re just too stupid or blinded by their beliefs to realize it. Unlike most of the children here, he feels as if he’s well beyond their years. No one is like him, no one is as…self aware…as him. And today, as he stands in the yard—huddled among several other boys against the bitter cold of winter—he’s reminded a little too vividly of the events of yesterday and that this is just another level of hell.

From his perch on the highest step of the rickety wooden stairs, Oliver watches through the balusters, can see the truth of what the boys here are made of. His eyes follow a nun dash back and forth from the infirmary at the back of the building. She’s in a hurry; carrying towels, refreshing water from the pump outside. They don’t know he’s there. At the tender age of seven years old, Oliver already knows this infirmary all too well. He doesn’t like to go all the way in unless he absolutely has to, unless he’s very, very sick.

Watching as a Ward carries the limp body of a boy much younger than Oliver into the infirmary, he subconsciously toys with a metal clasp of his jacket. A nervous habit. Yet he’s indifferent to this boy suffering. His name is Jeffrey. The doctor on call said Jeffrey had something called inanition. The nun’s say it’s a lack of spiritual vigor and mental enthusiasm. The doctor’s say it’s a lack of nourishment. It makes no sense that neither of them know. Rather than watch them bicker over medicine versus religion, Oliver wants to come out of his hiding spot on the stairs, walk right up to them and blurt, “Well? Which is it? Because I don’t think either of you know…”

It’s not that he cares, per se, yet more of a need to sate his curiosity. But he doesn’t ask simply because he doesn’t want to miss what happens. Just looking at Jeffrey, Oliver knows he isn’t going to make it. Their eyes meet. Jeffrey can see Oliver peering down at him from up high. The dark eyes watching him die are the last Jeffrey will ever see and Oliver wonders why he stares into nothingness as he takes his last breath. Strange the way his gaze is enraptured as if something fascinating is happening behind his eyes that Jeffrey will take to his grave.

Every death, they’re all required to come out to the small plot of land behind the orphanage; the cemetery. There they will listen to the Superior ramble a bunch of nonsensical scripture, and place a few freshly plucked lemon mints from the garden over Jeffry’s grave. Often he wonders if the lemon scented flowers are for decoration or to cover the faint scent of decay. Regardless, he would rather go inside, upstairs into the crawl space between the stairs where it’s quiet and warm. It’s where he keeps his collection of books and Sister Carmine’s thimble and a spool of thread, and other stolen articles mostly because he could take them. They are all personal, sentimental effects.

Outside, Oliver watches quietly, an expression of aloofness as the designated slab of cement is laid at the head of the grave. There’s no marker, it’s just an identification number. There used to be grave markers on the first one hundred graves, but he supposes the Wards have either gotten lazy or don’t care. This is a reminder that none of them have names anymore, they’re just a number. Will he join these rows of numbers lined up over the frost bitten ground one day?

The sounds of several younger boys crying nearby reach his ears and he resists the urge to roll his eyes, to glare at their red tear-stained faces. The entire scenario is a little too macabre for Oliver’s taste. But soon they’ll run off and play to forget what they’ve seen. He’s witnessed it countless times and it’s silly of them to think that death can’t touch them when it’s so recently stared them in the face.

One day...he’ll get out of here and put this place behind him. For all he knows, he could he be a kid from another country, but he does know that he doesn’t belong here. He has to. Because although the meaning of the word inanition was never made clear however, Oliver knows the truth of what some of these boys are made of. They’re made of bodies weak with hunger, faces so gaunt their cheekbones are rocky crags, and a skeleton protruding so boldly he swears it’s trying to escape the elastic prison of its skin. 

[althoughidontplayfair]