Author: Kung Fuu
Title: Last Summer
Summary: This is the untold history of Kane and the Undertaker. One tragic night changes both of them forever and shapes them into the men they will one day become.
Author's Notes: I took a few liberties with dates and details. The fire occurs in August instead of the month given in canon, and the events that unfold are slightly different from the scenario the Undertaker once described in an interview. I claim artistic license and the fact that the Undertaker has changed his story about that night numerous times.
Disclaimer:The characters presented in this story do not belong to me. I claim no rights to them nor am I making any money off of this endeavor.
Last Summer
The small town of Fate, Texas had been baking under the sun all week. It was late August, and the month had dragged on for a small eternity. Fall usually brought muggy rain and some reluctant cool fronts, but looking out over the blistered, dry earth that stretched behind their home, Mark wondered if they'd ever get any relief from the heat.
He sat with his brother in the shade of an enormous marble angel, who was posed valiantly, brandishing his sword up at the sun. It was the tomb of the only rich man who had ever lived in Fate, Texas, and it was the focal point of the small, well-tended cemetery. Neither boy was bothered by the fact that they had spent most of the summer hanging around crumbling graves. This was how it had always been. The brothers grew up playing hide and seek behind headstones, and napping in the shade of the white, marble tomb when their play exhausted them.
Their home was tucked away behind some trees at the back of approximately five acres dedicated to the eternal resting places of some two hundred corpses. As far as having them for neighbors, their mother would sometimes jokingly remark that they were at least quiet. As the only cemetery around for miles, the family did well financially, though much of the profit went to Angus Callaway's bar tab in town.
"Shit, it's hot," Glen grumbled, his bare torso glistening with sweat. Both boys were stripped to their shorts, and probably would have taken those off too if they hadn't been afraid of someone dropping by to visit grandma and spotting two buck naked boys instead.
"Go inside then," Mark replied uncaringly. He was shifting through his sack of leftover fireworks with methodical precision. He'd spent all his savings at the firework stand a month earlier, after the Fourth of July celebrations when they went on sale. He'd already used most of the smaller ones to blow up various things he could find lying around, but he was saving the big ones for something special. Glen glanced towards their home, but made no move to get up. He was occupying himself with a pocket knife, puncturing the ground with the blade with no clear purpose. Mark glanced at the knife, to make sure it wasn't one of his. Glen was ruining the blade for no good reason. His brother was such a spoiled brat—he didn't appreciate the value of anything.
"Dad's still home, though, and you know he was drinking out in the shed last night. He's probably madder than a hornet's nest. I don't want to go inside till he gets over his hangover," Glen replied, his voice taking on a slight whine.
"Glen, do I look like your baby sitter? It's not my fault you're bored. What do you expect me to do? Besides, in case you haven't noticed, I'm busy," Mark replied. He carefully placed the fireworks back into his potato sack, making sure not to damage any of the wicks.
"Give me one," Glen ordered, eyeing his brother's sack with a sudden flash of longing. Mark scowled, hastily tying a knot in the sack.
"Hell no. You spent all your money on sparklers like a retard. That's your own damn fault."
"I didn't want to buy sparklers—that's all mom would let me get! Dad let you get the good stuff. It's not fair," Glen protested. Mark stood up, dusting off his black, denim shorts.
"Tough. Did you put the pellet gun back in the shed?" Mark asked. The beloved possession of the two boys, the pellet gun had been a Christmas present to both of them. Mark, being older, less spoiled, and more responsible, was careful about putting it back up and keeping it clean. More than once, he'd nearly flayed the hide off Glen for leaving it out in the mud or propped up against some random tree in the woods. Glen didn't really like the gun, as he couldn't ever manage to kill anything with it, but he desired it simply because his brother liked it so much.
"Yeah. You gonna go hunting?" Glen asked, his mismatched eyes squinting up at Mark eagerly. The tall, dark-haired boy sighed and scowled in reply.
"I'm going down to the creek. You ain't coming with me 'cause you scare off anything that might hold still long enough for me to shoot it," Mark replied. He knew it was a pointless argument. Glen would either trail after him regardless, or if he really did kick up a fuss about going alone, Glen would just run to their mother and then she'd make him allow his brother to tag along.
"Come on, Mark, lemme come. I'm bored. We can go swimming in the creek and cool off."
"Fine, but if you're coming, you're going inside to get us some food." Mark could at least bargain a bit, since it was inevitable his brother would come anyway.
"But I said Dad was hungover!" Glen protested, standing as well. Mark gave the shorter, pudgier boy a smirk.
"Which is why I ain't going inside and you are. If you want to come bad enough, you'll do it," Mark reasoned. His brother's bottom lip pouted out in a very familiar expression, but Mark (unlike their soft-hearted mother) was completely immune to Glen's babyish antics. Glen's stomach made an ominous rumbling sound, and Mark's smirk widened. If Glen was hungry, he'd definitely risk the wrath of Angus to appease his stomach.
"Fine. But I'm tellin' mom to make peanut butter and jelly," Glen taunted, as he turned towards the house. Mark shook his head in irritation and followed after him until the path split and he headed to the left, towards the small shed set slightly back in the woods. Mark aimed his toes at a large clod of dirt, giving it a good kick as he passed. His bare feet were practically black from running around all summer without any shoes.
'Glen's such a whiny baby! He knows I hate peanut butter, and she knows it too, but I bet she'll make 'em for Glen anyway. He's such a spoiled little asshole!' Mark thought to himself. He hadn't always been so easily irritated with Glen. In fact, a few summers before the boys had been inseparable. But Mark was a smart kid, even if he didn't make good grades, and he'd wizened up about the skeletons in his family's closet. As he opened the door to the shed, his eyes landed on the small tower of empty beer cans. Glen was the reason for that, too.
Well, Mark knew that wasn't entirely fair. Not too long ago, Angus had found out that his wife of sixteen years had been having affairs. Nobody spelled it out for Mark, but when he realized his parents were having marital problems, it wasn't too long before he started to wonder if Glen was really his full brother. It would explain a lot if he wasn't—why their mother had always seemed to favor him so much, why she would stand up to Angus to protect precious baby Glen but never to protect him. After all, Mark was a carbon copy of Angus, from his dark hair to his somber gaze and tall, lean frame. It was obvious his mother didn't like his father as much as he'd once thought, so it only stood to reason she didn't like him as much either. By comparison, Glen was shorter and pudgier, with a round, baby face and their mother's unique, mismatched eyes. When Mark had been Glen's age, he'd already had the look of a young man about his shoulders and jaw. Glen, however, still looked fresh out of elementary school.
He'd always thought of his mother like an angel, but now that she'd taken a tumble off her pedestal, Mark had grown closer to his alcoholic father and further away from his spoiled baby brother. He knew it was his mother's fault for cheating, but an irrational part of him blamed Glen. Things hadn't been the same between them since, but dumb Glen kept acting like they were still best friends.
Luckily for Glen, Mark was satisfied with how he'd put up the gun. Lately, he looked for any reason he could find to give his brother a good lecture. He stashed his fireworks on the top shelf, where he knew Glen wouldn't notice them, and rummaged around for the ammo. He smiled when he found a few unopened beers. Angus would never notice they were missing, Mark was certain. Grabbing a plastic bag, Mark filled it with his treasure—the ammo for the gun, two hot cans of beer, and the black, wide-brimmed hat his father sometimes wore. It would keep the sun out of his eyes while he was trying to aim.
As he left the shed, he heard a shout from inside the house. He cursed, just knowing it was Glen's fault, whatever it was, and headed towards the tiny home that hadn't been so happy as of late.
"Damn that boy, if I've told him once I've told him a thousand times not to come rampaging through the damn house like a herd of elephants so early in the morning!" Mark heard his father yell, accompanied by the slam of the kitchen door. Like clockwork, his mother's strained voice replied.
"You leave him alone, Angus! He ain't done nothing wrong! Go on, Glen, honey, take your lunch and go play," his mother's voice floated out of the kitchen window. Her voice sounded different, softer, when she talked to Glen. It never failed to piss Mark off.
Still, he'd been Glen's big brother for a long time, and old habits die hard. Without even really thinking about it, he went into through the backdoor and stared dispassionately at his father, who looked like he'd crawled out of hell. Immediately, his father's angry stare shifted to him, and away from Glen and his mother. Mark knew Glen had been right to want to avoid their father on this particular morning. He looked like an enraged bull.
"Get on outside, Glen," he said flatly, watching his father closely, trying to gauge just how angry he was. Before the affairs, Angus would have never gotten really violent with them, aside from when they'd earned spankings of course, but now he'd gotten increasingly heavy-handed. Mark took the brunt of it, because one hit from Angus would have leveled his mother, and Glen still acted like a baby, crying and wailing if Angus so much as breathed on him wrong.
Glen swallowed thickly and shuffled over to his side, staring up at Angus with his chin jutted out.
"I'm not afraid," Glen replied stubbornly. "I didn't even make any noise!"
"Glen, I said to get and I meat it! Go!" Mark ordered, risking taking his eyes of Angus long enough to push Glen harshly towards the kitchen door. Crying, pressing a handkerchief against her puffy face, his mother slipped into the living room and ran up the stairs, where Mark heard her lock herself in one of the bedrooms. He felt relieved that his mother and Glen were now out of harm's way, and then cursed himself for coming inside at all. He should have just left them to fend for themselves.
Angus stumbled forward, the rank smell of alcohol still pungent on his breath. Mark hoped he brushed his teeth before he went into work later that afternoon. The last thing they needed was for his father to start losing customers at the funeral home because he couldn't stay sober looking.
"God damn it, Mark, you know I've told your brother a hundred times! Have I told him or have I not? I work my ass off for this family, and all I ask is to get some damned sleep in the mornings, and that kid comes through slammin' doors and yellin' at the top of his damned lungs! Look out the window, Mark, make sure the corpses are still sleeping!" Angus ranted.
Mark's eyes widened and his lips twitched into a rebellious smile. His father had no sense of humor, so Mark knew his old man was perfectly serious and wouldn't react kindly to being laughed at, but when Mark was alone, he was going to bust a gut over that one.
"I asked you, boy, if I'd told him or not!"
"You told him, plenty a times. Glen's just dumb and don't know any better."
"He don't get that from me! You don't act the way that boy does—that woman lets him get away with murder! Can't keep that boy quiet, can't keep him from his damned crying all the damned time…"
Mark knew his father was still drunk, but his accusations were true enough. Glen was nothing like their father, and Suzanna Callaway pampered Glen in every way she possibly could.
"I'll take care of him, pops. I'll give him a thrashing for waking you up, and I'll tell him again he needs to keep his mouth shut. Just go on into the living room and lay down on the couch. Get you some rest. I'll keep Glen out of your hair today, and this afternoon I'll go to the parlor with you so you don't have to work so hard," Mark soothed. He was getting fairly good at it.
His father took a few more steps and his hand came down heavily on Mark's shoulder. He had to resist the urge to side-step it and throw a punch. Angus was squeezing his shoulder far too tightly, and Mark knew it would leave bruises, but he reckoned his old man didn't know his own strength. Mark was tall for his fifteen years, but his father still towered a good foot over him. Mark squeezed his pellet gun tightly and tried not to let the pain show on his face.
"You're a good boy—worth ten times that spoiled little brat. You give him what for. I gotta rest. I feel like something's inside my head trying to claw out my damn brains," his father said, loosening his hold and then wandering back into the living room.
Mark watched him go, not smiling, but feeling validated. It was the first time his father had ever said such words to him, and it felt good to hear them.
He grabbed the sandwiches that Glen had forgotten off the kitchen table (peanut butter and jelly, of course) and walked outside, still feeling like a real man for getting some respect from Angus.
At least, he was feeling high until he nearly stumbled over Glen sitting on the steps. His little brother stood up hastily, wiping at his eyes. Mark knew instantly that Glen had heard every word Angus said.
"He was still feeling drunk, Glen. He didn't mean it," Mark said begrudgingly. His brother gave him a tight smile and nodded.
"You didn't have to come help me like that. I coulda protected mom," Glen said, falling into step behind him. Mark pulled down the brim of the hat to shade his eyes and rotated his bruised shoulder a few times.
"Mom didn't need no protecting. He wouldn't have done nothing. It's hard work taking care of a family, Glen. If you ever grow up, you might understand some day." Mark knew, without looking, that Glen had a pout on his face.
"I understand things! And I know he wouldn't do nothing. I wasn't scared or anything," Glen protested. Mark smirked, turning his head to glance over his shoulder at Glen.
"If you weren't scared, then why were you blubbering like a fatass baby?"
"Shut up!" Glen roared, stumbling forward a few steps to try and hit him. Mark just laughed and pounded his feet against the dirt path quickly, sprinting forward explosively, knowing his awkward little brother wouldn't be able to match his long-legged pace. Sure enough, Glen started huffing and whining for him to slow down as they entered into the woods. Feeling a little winded himself, because the heat was still searing and rolling over him in waves, Mark slowed his pace to an ambling walk.
"Whatcha gonna use the fireworks for, Mark?" Glen asked. He was grinning up at him in anticipation, the space between his two front teeth large enough to put a nickel through. He was a pretty cute kid—Mark would give him that much.
"Nonya," Mark replied easily.
"Nonya?" Glen asked, falling for it completely. Mark smirked.
"Yeah, squirt, nonya damn business."
"Jeez, Mark, you're a jerk!" Glen replied hotly. Still, Glen had a reluctant little smile on his face, and Mark knew he was trying to memorize the smartass retort to use later, probably on one of his equally dumb friends.
"I bet, if you gave one to me, I could do something great with it. I'd do something you couldn't even dream of topping."
"Whatever, Glen. I won't hold my breath for you to impress me with a sparkler." Glenn's response was to swat at him half-heartedly. After a few more minutes of walking through the silent woods, the sluggishly moving creek came into view. Glenn let out a whoop of delight and sprinted forward, cannonballing into the muddy water without a care in the world.
Mark huffed in irritation and carefully set the gun down, along with his sack and their lunch. Glen had probably scared off any animal within a three mile radius with his ruckus. With care, Mark hung his father's hat on a nearby tree limb and removed his shorts. Glen might be willing to trek home in wet jeans, but he knew better. At a more leisurely pace, the teen waded into the slightly cool water and dove under, savoring the feel of his skin tingling in relief from the sun. When he surfaced, it was to meet a face full of water aimed at him by his brother.
Glen laughed and tried to splash him again, but Mark caught him in a tackle and dragged the smaller boy underneath the water, mercilessly dunking him. They wrestled in the creek until the worst of the midday heat passed, and then they tiredly plopped down on the soft creek bed, devouring sandwiches with their dirty hands until their guts were stuffed to bust. They had a brief dispute over the cans of beer, but Glen whined until Mark let him try one and then nearly turned purple trying to swallow the stuff. Mark had to admit it was nasty hot, but he wasn't about to lose face in front of Glen. He drank both cans, crunched them in his fists, and pretended like he'd never been so refreshed. Glen watched him sullenly, with a spark of admiration that he couldn't quite hide.
Their meal complete, Mark dropped his father's hat over his face and stretched out under the sun. A few feet away, Glen did the same, dropping a thick forearm over his eyes.
"Hey Mark?" Glen asked. Mark was hoping to catch some sleep, so he groaned in annoyance.
"What, Glen?"
"We had fun this summer, right?" Glen asked. Mark lifted the hat slightly and glanced at his sibling. Glen had moved his arm away from his face, but his eyes were closed against the sun, and he looked happy—like he didn't have a care in the world. Mark envied him. In a few years, he'd start to realize what the world was really like. He'd figure out why their mother cried all the time, and why she was so nice to the men in town, and why their father was drinking himself to death out in the old, rickety shed. He might even figure out that Angus wasn't his father, and that Mark didn't care about him quite as much as he once had. They weren't boys anymore. This summer was probably the last they would spend pretending that they were.
"Yeah, I guess it was alright. Boring as fuck, as usual," Mark finally replied. Glen smiled.
"Yeah, boring as fuck," Glen repeated. After a moment's pause, he asked, "You think we'll always live here? Run the funeral parlor together?"
That was the last thing Mark wanted. As soon as he could, he was getting the hell out of Fate, Texas. He figured he needed to graduate high school, but once he'd done that, he wouldn't be able to drive away fast enough.
"Why are you asking so many questions? You're talking my damn ear off," Mark answered. He replaced the hat over his eyes, and was thankful Glen finally took the hint for once and gave him some peace and quiet.
When he opened his eyes, it felt like only minutes had passed, but the woods were dark. Pissed that Glen hadn't woken him, and hoping Angus didn't remember that he'd volunteered to go work at the parlor and then hadn't come, Mark hastily made his way back to the house.
As he passed the shed, he stepped inside to make sure Glen had properly put up the gun. His bag of fireworks was nowhere to be seen. His keen eye also noticed that Angus had gone to the store to replenish his booze supply at some point that day. There was a new case of beers and a few bottles of whiskey underneath his father's workbench. He glanced quickly out the shed door to make sure the coast was clear, and then he hastily slid one of the whiskey bottles into the back pocket of his shorts.
"He better not have ruined my fireworks. I'm going to beat his ass when I find him if he did!" Mark slammed the door of the shed and headed towards the house, intending to make sure Glen wasn't upstairs strapping a Thunder of Orion to a G.I. Joe, or doing something equally stupid. He was nearly at the house when a pick-up that looked like it was held together with duct tape and WD-40 came rolling up the drive.
Mark flashed a grin at his best friend, who was hanging out the driver's window looking like Christmas had come early. Angus was gone in the hearse, as there was nothing to block his friend from pulling up alongside the house. That meant his old man must have gone over to the funeral home without him.
If he was going to be in trouble either way, he might as well not show up. He ambled over to the truck, glancing at the darkened house to see if the truck and woken his mother or Glen. The lights stayed off, so he assumed his mother wasn't about to come marching out to run off Chase and his loud-as-fuck truck.
"Get your ass in the truck, Mark. My old man left his keys, and we've got a date with the Borden sisters."
"How the fuck did you manage that?" Mark asked, smirking at his crazy friend, who looked like Satan himself due to his devilish grin.
"I have my ways. I know the Borden sisters aren't picky, but at least put on a shirt and some boots. Hurry up!"
Mark nodded and headed to the house, slipping inside quietly. He was momentarily surprised to see his father stretched out on the couch. He must have slept the day away as well. Mark assumed Paul had come by and taken the hearse, then, or his mother had gone into town. Uncaring, he went into his room and put on the nicest shirt he had, changed into a pair of comfortably worn jeans, and tugged on his new, black boots. With his father's hat topping off the ensemble, he thought he looked as good as he ever would. He tried to remember the last time he'd had a proper wash, but couldn't, so he figured dipping in the creek was about the same anyway. Tucking the whiskey into his belt, he left his room and passed quietly by Glen's door.
He thought of checking on Glen, but didn't want his brother to rat him out or wake up Angus—not when it meant he'd lose a rare and precious chance to roll in the hay with one of the Borden girls.
It was a close call slipping back down the creaky stairs without waking Angus, but he managed and was soon riding shotgun in the piece of shit truck. As they pulled out the drive, Mark happened to glance in the rearview mirror to see someone heading out to the shed.
He only got a glimpse, but he knew it wasn't his father.
"God damn, Glen, he better not be getting into shit he's not supposed to mess with," Mark said, over the roar of the radio. His friend passed him a lit cigarette and took a swig of something from a brown bottle resting between his feet.
"Leave the kid alone. The little pyro does some pretty funny shit. Remember that time he lit Old Lady Keebler's crazy ass cat's tail on fire? That fucker moved!"
"You dared him to do it—and my old man nearly bust my ass open over that. I couldn't sit for a goddamned week. Angus told him not to mess around with fire anymore, and he knows better than that now, but the old man's been storing his booze out in the shed. God himself wouldn't be able to save Glen if the old man catches him messing with his hooch."
"Tell me you brought some, or I'm kicking you out right now."
"I got it, I got it. Keep your dick in your pants," Mark replied with a grin. Despite his friend's cavalier attitude, Mark kept glancing into the rear view mirror. Every protective instinct in his body told him to go back home and get Glen out of the shed, but a nasty little voice reminded him that it was time Glen took care of himself for once and cleaned up his own messes. He wasn't a kid anymore, and he caused more trouble than he was worth.
As they drove on, they passed the family hearse and Mark glimpsed Paul at the wheel. He felt a little guilty for leaving the guy to work all by himself that afternoon. The funeral parlor wasn't exactly the place you wanted to spend the night alone in. Mark thought of himself as pretty tough, but even he didn't like being down there with all the shriveled corpses alone. Paul was his father's best friend, though, and if anyone would be tolerant of his father's new drinking problem, it was Paul. Mark was almost certain that Paul knew all about what his mother had been up to around town. Relieved of his worry once he knew Paul was heading towards the house (just in case Glen was getting into mischief) he turned his focus to his bottle of whiskey and the ear-drum destroying music.
~*~
Glen had spent all afternoon in his room drawing up plans for what he would do with the firecracker. He thought about stringing together all his action figures and blowing them to hell and back, and drew a few pictures of this to see if he liked the looks of the scenario, but in the end he decided he didn't want to destroy so many of his toys. He then contemplated lighting the firecracker and dropping it into the creek, with visions of exploding all the lazy fish out of the water and up onto the banks, but hesitated over whether such a scheme would even work. On the plus side, though, if it didn't there was little chance his brother would ever find the wasted firecracker at the bottom of the creek, and if it did work, he could show Mark the fish on the bank as proof of his brilliance.
He drew up a plan, focusing particularly on the big black Xs over the dead fish eyes, but then convinced himself abruptly that the wick would just go out in the water, and nothing would happen.
He needed to do something huge—something Mark would wish he'd thought of doing first. He'd heard Chase pull up in the truck, so he knew his brother had probably left with him. He could have come out of his room and bugged him, but he figured letting his brother go would give him the perfect opportunity to use the fireworks he'd hidden under his loose floorboard.
The idea occurred to him suddenly, and once it implanted in his brain, he couldn't think of anything else that could be better. He'd set the firecracker off in the shed, and blow up all of his dad's old beer cans. If the damage was bad enough, his dad might not even have a shed to drink in anymore, and that would sure make his mother happy.
Plus, blowing up a building was pretty cool. That was the kind of shit they put in movies. Too excited by the idea to even bother with pictures, Glen reverently removed two firecrackers from his hiding spot and crept downstairs. He had to dig around in the shed to find matches, and he worried for a second that his brother or Chase might have glimpsed him leaving the house, but the truck didn't come back so he knew he was safe.
He found the matches and took a moment to assess the layout. The shed was pretty close to the house, but not close enough that it would cause any damage. He'd need to shoot the firecracker into the shed, so that he could run a safe distance away.
He opened the shed door wide and then retreated a few feet backwards, aiming the two firecrackers at the dark mouth of the shed. He struck a match and smiled in anticipation at the flickering orange glow. This was going to be great.
With only a second's hesitation, he lowered the match and lit the fuses. Covering his ears, he ran to a nearby tree and ducked behind it, waiting for the explosion.
The next thing he remembered was coming to and looking down to see the skin melting off his arm like wax. He'd never felt such pain before. He stumbled to his feet, seeing only a sea of fire around him. He was burning alive, watching the flames licking up his arm and his torso.
He heard himself screaming. He was completely in shock, and all he could do was flail around in an attempt to snuff out the merciless red flames. The pain was agonizing. His lungs were full of smoke and still he screamed, screamed until he felt his brain melting, and smelled the stink of his own flesh sizzling.
He wanted to die by the time the heavy coat wrapped around him and Paul put out the flames that had nearly swallowed him whole. The wail of sirens filled his ears, to the backdrop of his unending screams. He was crying, couldn't stop crying, and all he saw was the red meat of his arms, the skin slimily dripping off him, his home a towering inferno of orange and red, and the great clouds of black smoke billowing up into the night.
He was suddenly in an ambulance, and whatever they did to him knocked him into blissful unconsciousness. He suffered no more that night. In just minutes, he had suffered enough for lifetimes.
~*~
The days after his parents' and Glen's deaths hit Mark like a diesel truck. He remembered a furious Paul dragging him to the funeral home in the dead of night to show him the charred remains of Suzanne and Angus Callaway, stretched out like horror movie props on the cold, silver embalming tables.
"You practically lit the damn match, Mark! You lit the match! You're irresponsibility killed them! This is your fault! You should have been watching Glen, not fucking some dirty little whore in town!" Paul had screeched in his high-pitched voice.
He remembered skipping the funeral the next morning, because all he could think was that it was his fault his family was dead, and he was consumed with the irrational fear that they were going to come up out of the caskets and blame him, light him on fire, and drag him down into the earth with them.
He had nightmares, hellish nightmares, in which he talked to a reaper of death and begged for his parents and brother back, begged for a little peace. He promised his very soul to the dark creature, and woke up in a cold sweat feeling like something was missing from his chest cavity. His family was still dead, though, and all he had of them were memories.
Suddenly, the summer morning spent at the creek with Glen was all he could think about. His little brother had died thinking Angus hated him. He'd died wanting to do something that would make his big brother impressed, something that would prove he was worth noticing, all because Mark had been stupid, stupid, stupid. The memory of being secretly glad that Angus had said Glen was worthless sickened him to the point that he threw up again and again into Chase's toilet, until he thought he saw his guts splashing into the yellowed bowl.
He remembered Glen asking him in his innocent, boyish way if they would always spend their summers together, hunting and swimming, as best friends forever. How selfishly he'd wanted no part of his brother's sweet, impossible dream.
There was his mother, too, who saw the angel in Glen that he had so clearly missed. She had made a mistake, that was true, but how could he have judged her so harshly? Why had he expected her to be so perfect, and then hated her when she wasn't? He lay in bed thinking about how she used to sing himself and Glen to sleep, and then how she would lay with them afterwards gently weeping. He thought of how he'd seen faint bruises on her wrists and never questioned how they got there…how long had Angus made her suffer? How long had he blinded himself to her pain because he wanted someone to blame?
No wonder she had loved Glen so much—sweet, bumbling little Glen that lived to please her and make her laugh, while he had only wanted to tear her down. The truly worthless brother had survived, and Glen had perished so senselessly. His little brother had been right in the end. Life was horribly, horribly unfair.
Having nothing and nowhere to go, Mark left Fate, Texas and never returned to the gravesite of his parents. He sealed the memory of his family in the tomb that his heart had become, and vowed that he would never forget the rape of grief, and the battering ram of regret that pounded at his body so violently and unmercifully day after day.
He went nearly ten years and realized that he hadn't truly smiled since that morning at the creek, when he'd splashed and wrestled with his precious little brother in the cool, muddy water, his faithful little brother, with his mismatched eyes and the nickle gap in his teeth. His innocent little brother, all burned up forever in a summer sun.
~*~
Glen knew only Pain. He forgot words, and he forgot people. He even forgot himself, some times. He knew only the daily, agonizing struggle against Pain.
Words in a language he felt like he should know sometimes reached him in his hell. They said things like "The skin grafts from his legs to his torso and face were successful, but he's not healing well." He heard, "The scarring is horrible now. It may or may not get better with time." He heard, "His lungs and throat were damaged by the smoke—he may never speak again."
And in a voice that he thought was especially familiar, he heard, "He looks like a monster. You've turned him into monster."
Ah, yes, that was the voice of Paul, the voice of his real father. He didn't know how he knew that, except someone that sounded like his brother told him in what may or may not have been a dream, but he figured it was a dream, because he also knew that his brother had run away and didn't want to see him ever again.
Because he was a monster, now, so said his father.
But Glen did not think too heavily on these things, because the Pain would not let him for one, and secondly because he didn't want to understand them.
He pretended, in his blissful moments free of Pain, that he was in the water of the creek. He pretended that he was cool, and that he had skin that chilled with goosebumps because of how cold he was. He fantasized about floating in a block of ice, blissfully numbed with nothing touching him except the cool brush of air.
The physical therapists came and he hated them. He wanted to chew off their limbs and spit their blood in their faces. He wanted to set them all on fire so they'd know just how impossible the task was that they were asking of him.
They stopped physical therapy when he bit her, when he bit her so hard he pulled a chunk of her flesh with him when she struck him to the ground, and his world exploded into Pain, Pain, Pain.
Then it was the institution. He kept telling them he was still on fire, and that the skin grafts hadn't worked, and that he was a monster because there was no fucking skin on his face—but they didn't understand his groans. He hated the psychologists that came to tell him it was all just in his head, that he still had skin, and that he wasn't on fire. They looked at him, him burning alive right in front of their stupid faces, his epidermis melting and sliding off his body in globular little fucking puddles and they dared to tell him, "You're just imagining it. You have to accept that your body is healing. You were lucky, Glen. The doctors say in a few years, you'll practically have no noticeable disfigurement. If you're going to be able to enjoy life again, you have to let your mind accept that it's been five years since the fire. You've healed."
His existence broadened beyond Pain to include the hatred he felt, towards everything. Other children in the institution came by his room and dared each other to peek in on him, saying things like "I hear his face is gone. Touch him, I dare you!"
And then it was his father's shit-hole he called a house. The place was dark and filthy, and it smelled like cat piss and cum, and Paul wasn't even there all the time. He'd leave him in a room with a busted couch and a pile of rotting food, a filthy bathroom, and a television that showed him pornography and television preachers and the brother that had abandoned him. He was locked inside the dank room behind a door re-inforced with steel, and with no window, he lost track of time and the outside world.
He watched through his crazy eyes as his brother grew strong and healthy, as he had a wife and a child, as he defeated his opponents and earned the respect and admiration of millions of people that didn't know what an evil son-of-a-bitch he was. The man on television felt no Pain. He didn't even know what Pain looked like. He'd sold his soul to the devil for his strength, but such strength was weak against true Pain.
His strength would punish him. His hands would rip him apart. He would make him burn.