My name is Ciel. And I live in a cage.
I wonder when it all started. Curiously, I try to clamber over the mounds of memories that were piled up from the moment I first breathed. But really, I can't pinpoint the time or place that it all began, and maybe that's because it all began before I was born. Long before my eyes had taken in the cesspool of darkness around me, my fate had been sealed in blood and wishes - or rather, that's what I thought sometimes.
The cage I mentioned is, rather, a house. A warm house, with a sturdy roof and a television. My father sits in front of the glowing box, glasses hiding his eyes with the reflected gleam. And my mother, when she isn't working at some grimy restraunt, is always on the computer with her fingernails nervously clacking against keys in erratic tandem. I sit in the corner, alone. I allow the shadows to swallow me, and in my silence I watch them both, quietly, wondering and waiting when they would see me this time.
When I was younger and had lived in a house filled to the brim with children like me, I had heard fearsome things about foster parents. When they show up, they appear scrubbed clean and all smiles, much like the rumors of Santa Claus being real. But unlike Santa, who never came to visit us, they often did from time to time, and they'd always pluck out one of the trembling children. I remember the faces of all of them, some foolishly smiling and flushed at the idea of having parents, and others just staring blankly, digesting the situation with their empty eyes. But all of them knew the danger of foster care: either they truly loved you, or they truly used you. There was no in between.
I experianced the latter.
"You'll be living with us, now," They had told me, lips stitched up into a banana-spread grin. I noticed how my newfound-father had something black wedged between his plaque-crusted teeth. I should have known then that there was no hope for me. There was no hope for any of us. All we can provide for these money-sucking adults is slavery and checks made out to their name.
"Better the devil you know than the angel you don't," I remember someone saying to me once. And it was true. Because I prayed, steadfastedly, for my life to end. I begged God to embellish a deep sleep to end my suffering, yet he turned his cheek and claimed that he didn't know me. And so I turned from God first. I shut out hope from my heart, blackening my spirit with nothing but apathy. Despair would consume me, and hope would destroy me - so I will feel nothing. I feel nothing but fear.
When his wife goes to work, wherever that is, he turns off Tivo and heads to his room. At that point, I know whats coming next. When he emerges, in his claws I can see a small disc, and I know captured in the plastic there is disturbing images of men touching each other. He hides them when his wife is at home. And then, once the TV fizzles black after a half hour of filthy images, he turns to me and beckons me with his hand.
And that night, this ritual repeated itself once again.
"Pl-please, father," I wept, silenced by sausage fingers shoving past my tongue. He was rough and it hurt and after he left me in a trembling mess all over the couch I could only feel a burning hatred clamp down on my throat. Outside, he was smoking a cigarette that had already stained his whiskers with the musky dry scent, and absent mindedly the pads of my fingers traced the raw flesh he had scrubbed on my cheeks. When he did those dirty, strange things to me, he often rubbed the coarse hairs on his chin against my face until it felt like an open wound.
Then his wife came home.
She never asked him any questions, never argued with him - just walked over to me and slapped me across the face, hard. I thought I was going to die, the heartache billowed up in my chest like a balloon. Can people die because they are hurt emotionally? Most likely not, I considered, since I had been going at it everyday. She slapped me again, and rosy blood blossomed over my lips
I ran outside.
I could hear her screaming at the doorway, shrill cries piercing my ears. I had never left the house before; I hadn't had the chance. Had I fought hard? I couldn't remember pushing her away, I could remember throwing the nearest object - a beer bottle - at the wall so it shattered into glimmering chunks. I just remembered running outside, feet and eyes and skin tasting the fresh world with ecstasy. I could feel the first snow of November tickle under my feet with all its downy softness. It was cold icy wetness, but I ran til I was as far from that house as possible. I expected nothing. I expected nobody. I shivered, I trembled, and sobs kept bubbling from my throat like a dry vomit. My body ached, so deeply and wretchedly, and I cursed god with my breath. I expected to die. I expected to freeze to death. I expected to even end up back in that cage.
I didn't expect a black figure to be waiting for me at the end of the street.
