The Simpson family had been the disgrace of Springfield for as long as anyone could remember. None of them were right in the head, according to the grapevine (because of the grapevine, in one member's case), and all of them were destructive. The patriarch was crude, rude, and obscene, and had quite a penchant for washing down his gluttony with can after can of alcohol. His wife, despite her feminist ideals, was the most submissive woman that Helen Lovejoy had ever met—and she nagged others to a greater degree than that of the Reverend, Helen's husband. Bart Simpson was a hellion, through and through; the boy was dumber than a lobotomized hamster, and was almost certainly the sociopathic spawn of Satan. The girl was bombastic, pompous, and selfish, and walked around town, thick tomes slung under each arm, with an infuriating air of superiority, despite only existing for a total of eight years. Little Maggie… well, she was by far the most innocent—and how could she not be? She was but a year old—but Springfield had already placed it's bets on what sort of repulsive personality she would soon develop under the care of Marge and Homer. If care was even an applicable term.
The town was well aware of Homer's tendency to use violence in parenting his children. Though only Bart bore the trademark pearls of the Simpson family in violet, they had long ago convinced themselves that Homer harmed his daughters, too. Springfield's most terribly kept secret had long ago ceased to be an issue; nobody cared what happened to the man's demon of a son, anyway.
Bart knew this better than anyone. Night after night, he would lie awake in his bedroom, staring out the window and gingerly fingering his own string of pearls. He longed desperately to remove them, but he knew doing so would be futile; a new necklace would replace the old as soon as his neck was freed from its decorative chain.
He had long ago grown to accept the skin-deep jewelry as an inevitable aspect of his appearance. Though he disliked them, they were a part of him, no different from his torso and head. They would be there forever, constant and unchanging, and only with injury or death would they vanish.
He was branded; a hardened criminal walking amongst the innocent. And yet, he took pride in the brand, for it spoke of courage and cunning. It spoke of wit. It spoke of pain and perseverance, of long nights spent sobbing silently into Krusty-brand bedding, of turtlenecks and foundation, sore throats and humiliation. It spoke of too-tight bowties and broken tracheal bones, of chronic neck pains and cords of telephones, of insolence and idiocy, of hurt and hypocrisy. It spoke of his father, and the way he smiled one moment, and frowned floridly the next, eyes trained on his meaty fists and the fragile, fraying thread within them. It spoke of tears and fears and broken mirrors, of inferiority and foolishness and unintentional anarchy, of false smiles and false apathy, of hatred and loathsome self-sympathy. It spoke of tiny hands, thumbprints only on the back; of massive mits, thumbs in front, of many an attack. It spoke of every mistake Bart had ever made, of regular strangulation and his failed plans to evade.
The pearls would remain, forevermore.
Bart supposed it was meant to be.