The church lady's little girl always gave him a care basket usually with fruits, coupons, and toiletries, and he took it each time. She asked his name a few times. She was the only one who asked, really. Everybody else just walked passed him, wearing glass smiles and half frowns. The church basement was a damp place to live, but it was warmer than the ice pickling the streets. He couldn't remember how he landed the pad, just that on most days, he was grateful for it.
"Mikey."
"Is your real name Michael? We call my cat Mikey but his real name is Michael Jingles Samsung. My cousin came up with the last name."
"Just Mikey."
And she would leave a package of candy, skipping back up the steps as soon as her mother called. He didn't want to eat her fruits, or sweets, or simply brush his teeth using her Spiderman toothbrush. The need to be left alone crawled in his blood, but she was too caring, and he didn't want to push her away. He already pushed enough away. Who was the last person, before the girl, to give him candy, he recalled. He came up empty.
Mikey's tears have long dried away, and most nights he listened to AM radio, another gift from the little girl whose name was never mentioned. Or if she did, he couldn't remember. Announcer's voices popped over the static until they were never heard from again, and the nightfall clipped the transmission. All they ever talked about was politics, news, and weather. Sometimes they would play songs, old ones, and one tiny chord, just a certain rhythm, forced him to lower the volume. Two days ago, the girl changed the channel while he was out; a migraine already festering in his brain catapulted his stomach on the bed. He laid there, the vomit caked around his mouth and growing cold on his chest. Anger boiled in his empty stomach, but a knock on his door stopped it from rising. A lady needed decorations. She disappeared by the time the anger completely faded. Women were the only ones who ever came down there; he was glad for the compassion they showed, but his welcome would soon stale. He was okay with that.
The night was as good as any to face it, and a sweet, dry air could shake the mucus from his beak and litter the frosty ground. Then, he was reminded of someone. Raphael: the last person who gave him candy. He zipped up his layers of clothing in haste and knocked over the radio as he headed up the stairs. The choir's scattered voices echoed from the main hall, something he used to enjoy, a calming effect. Tonight, it was haunting and scratched at his back until his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth. Their praise to the Lord flew through the door and dissipated against a cold curtain.
He walked freely through the dark streets, following the same footsteps he took before, circling, avoiding such creatures, dazed, and wandering. He was going nowhere. The little feeling to gravitate towards a manhole had long died. Used to, his eyes would look at one on command; now, only signs, down the sidewalk, or vendors yearning for his attention. Sometimes, they got it.
Mikey slowed his steps and peeked to his right, staring between two teens leaning and talking to each other. They ignored him, but he couldn't ignore what he saw down the alley: two bodies huddled against the wall, not moving. It was always an on-going battle within himself; wanting to care, not caring, over and over. It had been a year. Maybe it was time to start caring again.
Waves of snow and ice adorned the bodies laid thick with tattered clothes and blankets. Were they dead? One body was bigger than the other, cuddling the smaller one. An adult and child, he deduced. A crystallized teddy bear firmly gripped by the child caught his eye. He reached for it, poking, tugging, and wiggling it until it loosened. The child's arm dropped to its lap. A twitch of sadness hit him, and so did something against his arm in a mad rush.
One hand clinging the bear, he used the other hand to push away the awakened adult, slamming it back to the wall. The adult charged at him, reaching for the bear and clawing Mikey's arms and shoulders. Mikey fought back, using defensive moves. The guy had delayed strength, taking ages to push Mikey to the wall. Seconds later, the guy felt a charge in his body and knocked his fist into Mikey's left cheek. Damn. Mikey realized he would need a little more power to subdue the poor guy, and he cracked one good swing and sent the guy bouncing off the wall and sprawling on the ground, knocking over the dead child and shoving it over him.
His fists stung a little. Six months ago, he had wrestled thugs for food and clothes. The smell of death was too fresh for him, and they almost beat him near to it. Here, he fought over a teddy bear. What did that say about him? He turned, ready to get off the streets, but he shifted back to the small family. Steadily, he propped them beside each other and dug the bear deep under his coat.
No one hung around the alley. He could make a clean escape.
"Hey, old prune! Go home and soak your fucking teeth," a scratchy female voice shouted in the distance. Several voices sneered and laughed at the remark. "What's that on your head? Did your mommy buy that for you? Are you a mommy's boy?"
They weren't talking to him; they better not be.
"Now, it's time for you to leave. Take your compadres and scram," a rumbly voice threatened. "Go find somewhere else to cause trouble."
"Easy, Muscles. I have a number if you wanna call me. We could, uh, you know.."
The three guys in the group gagged and begged the bowl-cut tanned skin girl to jet. Four compadres. Four musketeers. While their attitudes were nothing like his family, he watched them anyways. They laughed and pushed each other to the curb. Okay, so maybe a little like his family, he complied. And they took notice of him and headed his way.
"Well, hey there, little fella," the girl cooed, eyeing at her buds to form a circle around him. "Having some fun tonight?"
A freckled face guy with multiple nose rings bent down and peered into Mikey's stone eyes. "Do you want to have some fun?" The other two guys, one with black hair covering half his face and the other wearing white make-up with black markings across his cheeks, whistled and snickered under their breaths. Mikey kept his attention on a flickering neon sign across the street with half its letters sizzling.
"Oh now you wanna ignore us," the girl tapped his shoulder. "You were being all nosy and up in our business," she arched her head and shouted on the last word.
Black hair guy reached and pushed on Mikey's shoulder. "Sup, dirty rag. Rat got your tongue?"
"Fuck this homey!" Make-up guy skid his boot across the ground, almost slipping. His buds laughed at his plight and grew bored of Mikey's silence. "Man, I could have broke my leg. I fucking hate ice. Let's go."
As they bumped passed Mikey, they mumbled a few more curse words and jeers until the wind and traffic drowned their whoops and hollers. His eyes didn't leave the sign. None of his being was angry at the kids, for he deserved such mockery; it was his punishment for attacking a protective father. He pulled the bear from his jacket and glanced at the quiet alleyway. When the wind creaked through his ears, he lost his thoughts to the cold and stuffed it back in his jacket. No use taking it back now.
The rest of the evening he nestled quietly in his clothes and wandered under a sickly, clouded sky. He passed by the fearsome four again, only this time they were surrounded by others, jerking and bullshitting around. He missed laughing and playing games. Just maybe when he got back to the basement, the little girl would be waiting and he could talk more than two words to her. There was no one else. His family's bodies were decomposed, sweeping back to the earth, even to the sky. One he never found, but he was sure she was dead, too. He held out hope for as long as he could, and he searched everywhere. A month, two months, six, and then a year crushed it all. She would never return.
The church had locked its rear doors. The infrequent times he left the building, he used the front entrance. Thankfully, it wasn't too late, and he slipped passed the quiet people, dotted on the pews and some kneeling on the floor. The choir was gone, but he could hear them in his head as he ticked open the side door and tiptoed to the basement. He was used to the way things were set out for him, but tonight, the basement door was locked. Someone either forgot, or he was finally kicked out.
Why was he so surprised? What was the collapsed pressure in his chest, prickling around his ribs and tightening his stomach? His hand vibrated on the doorknob. He rubbed it over and over, and each noise it made between his fingers caught his breath in spurts. A stupid locked door was causing him uncontrollable emotions. Hopes dashed again. Homeless. Alone. He clenched his teeth and lowered his chin so close to his patron, he whistled through his nose. Was that a chuckle seeping out of his throat? Were things so depressing he had to laugh?
He didn't fancy another dip in the cold air. Maybe one of the offices was unlocked. He wiggled on a few doorknobs until one on the far end of the hall clicked. The door crept into a spotted light, tiny office with one chair and a rather tidy desk riddled with photos, a certificate, and horse figurines; on the walls, little construction papers in blues and pinks with Bible messages and personal I love you's. Enough light came through a white-laced curtain for him to sit and study the bear in greater detail. Its prickly brown fur warmed in his hands. It had no eyes and only half of the blue bow around its neck remained, its corner jagged and hanging free. He sighed at the bear; it was homeless, too.
His fingers waved across the icy bear and slinked to the desk drawers. Among all the staplers, paper clips, and Nicotine chewing gum, he found a black Sharpie and closed the drawer, careful not to disturb its contents. A spark of creativity buzzed through the palms of his hands. He rubbed the areas where the bear's eyes would be, applying harder pressure every time. Uncapping the sharpie, Mikey scribbled two circles and two big dots splurged in the middle of them. From there, he continued drawing triangles and rectangles, forming odd patterns and shapes across its face. They were difficult to see, but as long as he could draw from one end to the other, he was fine. It was the most tranquil he felt for a long time, just doodling on a dumb, stolen bear. He was okay with that, too. It was his bear now.
"Sundance," he called to it. He turned it over, rubbed dry patches, and created a network of his own designs, whatever swam across his fingers. The sharpie grew dry as he reached Sundance's toes. He placed the pen on the desk and inspected the toy near the window to his right. The moon's rays glossed through his artwork. Where each shape ended, another began. This was therapeutic, and he wondered why he stopped picking up the pen and drawing from his heart. He could use the massacre and its trauma to do good, instead of wallowing in basements, covered in his own puke and denying a little girl the chance to get to know him, the Real him.
"Sundance, I have a place for you to visit."
The bear's makeshift eyes stared back at him.
"It'll be very messy."
Its little head nodded over his finger.
"I needed time away, yeah," his throat scratched. "I have a home. I always had a home. It's just hard to go back."
He embraced Sundance and snuggled him under his coat. The moon faded off his arms as he lifted to his feet, squeaking the grumpy chair, and felt the door close soft behind him.
Several times, he wanted to turn around: outside the church, at the manhole, the end of the ladder, and the few steps into the sludge and guck. A home for many years and now it was foreign and desolate. Their blood had long since drained and washed down the river. He remembered the way, like a fresh scent to his nose, but his feet kept stopping and his hands rotated in his jacket. He could do the impossible. Enough time had dissolved, flowing with the water under his boots. The water was never the same; each drop and ripple was unique. He pushed onward, ignoring the burn on his cheeks.
When he deserted the Lair a year ago, he left it unsecured. Why would he care who found it anymore? Inside was a total disaster. Sewer walls, antiques, lamps, the arcade machines, and the kitchen table littered the floor so thick one couldn't see it. He crawled over the turned couch, sniffing and cracking through trash. A hole the size of a hill laid on the west, giving a clear view of the old dojo, also in ruins with bricks having crushed across the floor. The wall of tvs were scattered in different corners. There was no kitchen. He didn't dare go near their rooms, if they still had any left.
And to think, he gazed into a broken stereo, most of the mess had been his own doing. Nobody had been there to tell him to stop. Everything smashed from his hands to whatever surface was near him at the time. A calm drift floated through the mess, alleviating his momentary suffocation.
"I told you it was a mess," he mumbled and swam through broken table legs and computer monitors. He stopped, peering into a monitor at his own cris-crossed reflection, and remembered the one room he barely touched and knew was free from most of the destruction: Don's lab. The walk there gave him time to choke back a pull in his chest. Jagged corners of the trash gnawed through his clothes, scraping and poking holes in his skin, but the pain was minimal and forgettable.
As he knew, the lab was almost the way his memory deemed it: the only trash was Don's own, his papers, gadgets, and drink bottles sprawled across the extended desk, all so perfect of Donatello, the packrat. Mikey's feet cracked through light bulbs and black cords on the way to the workstation in the far corner. He reached for the silver lamp, holding back for a second, scared to even touch it, but his fingers felt for the switch and a warm light swept over an empty spot in front of him. His eyes scanned over raw materials of metal, steel, pins, and screws on both sides and ends of the station. What kind of weapon had Don been creating for them? Blinking from the harsh light, Mikey picked up a small blade and saw a crumbled piece of large paper jammed under the rest of the materials. He pulled it from the pile and followed the scribbled notes and directions around a lethal weapon of some kind, probably displaying the same blade he was holding.
Why did Don's hard work have to go to waste? It was a parting gift in a way, and while pressing the paper on the empty space, Mikey decided to give the task his best shot. "I have a long road ahead of me, Sundance," he studied over the blueprints, "and first, I need space to breathe and a reason to keep going."
He resolved that most of the Lair's damage was beyond his capabilities, but he started with the dojo, and other than the heavy parts of the sewer walls stationed around the room, it was still habitable, and he could train again. Raph's worn punching bag hadn't been touched. Many of their weapons hung lopsided on the wall and on the floor. Still there, and another reason to keep living. Leo and Master Splinter would have a hernia over his weight gain and loose stride and deteriorated endurance. "Run!" they would shout. "Run until you're breathing through your ass and toes." Okay, maybe not in those exact words, but some of Raph sneaked in there. He grinned.
Pushing the sofa on its legs again, with one missing and leaving it unbalanced, no matter; Mikey propped Sundance the decorated bear in the middle, facing the entire Lair. "Keep it safe," he patted it on the head and jogged out the door.
Running always gave him the opportunity for reflection. Strange how a tiny reflection, conjured only a week ago, would have spiraled his mental health and sent his stomach writhing. What surely changed, just returning to the Lair and facing the ghosts again or seeing Don's blueprints or exercising for his lost loved ones? He had a goal finally. It sprinkled around his sore heart and soothed the pull in his chest that wouldn't leave. It was a goal he should have taken care of a year ago, but he would have crawled, begging for his life, and died a fool.
That was it. He had wanted to live, after all.
In between his runs, punches, and katas, he obsessed over the blueprints and tinkered with Don's tools. When frustration set in, he stomped back to the dojo and tore through Raph's bag until he crashed on the floor and stared at the ceiling for undetermined lengths of time, and fell asleep. He saw early mornings, or he thought it was mornings, he never checked the time, and drove right back to work on the weapon. He broke routine occasionally, throwing trash to the corner and widening the path from the couch to the lab. A little each day, he cleaned further from the path, but the lab was a magnet over his body and bent him to its will. Finish the project; nothing else mattered.
The days became like syrup and poured into each other. He had no idea what he was building, or why it branded in his mind upon awakening, on jogging to the food pantry, or interrupting his exercises. It was there, and he didn't fuss about its intentions. After two weeks, he screwed in the last of the bolts and fitted the mechanical vest over his left arm. One push under his hand ejected a piercing blade through the lamp beams. His cheeks deepened, squared by a grin across his face. Don wasn't the only one who could invent a gadget. It took him a long time to make it, but it was completed through his own touch and patience.
He stood in front of Sundance, still sitting dopey on the couch leaning a smidge to the right. He hadn't the faintest idea why he picked up the bear and aimed the blade at it. Was Sundance a sore chain to the past he needed to break? His arm and hand holding the weapon were steady, but the bear shivered in his other hand. No, he lowered it, the bear was his reminder to move on and take care of important, personal duties. Sundance had the honor of being his clock and mirror.
Mikey still couldn't enter his and his brothers' rooms. He needed more clothes, and the only option was visiting the church. They were apprehensive to see him again, but he gently accepted his second-hand clothes, including an impressive brown leather trenchcoat he was sure was a mistake, and gave them a sigh of relief as he walked the other way, and not towards their basement. He didn't see the little girl and probably won't again; he had worn out his welcome and would go somewhere else next time. A small thought of giving Sundance to the girl briefly swept through him, but privileged little girls preferred new toys, not ones that look like they've been tested at a sharpie factory. Perhaps when he recovered from the storm of depression, he could think of something better. She might not remember him, but he couldn't forget her kindness and care baskets.
The trench coat was too long for his short, stout body. Leo and April tried teaching him how to hem and sew, to have a different set of skills instead of video games and sports. He didn't pay much attention, of course, but Leo had a sewing machine placed in the den. Finding it was going to be a job and then checking if it worked anymore. It gave him an incentive to clean since one project was completed. Now, he had another goal, multiple ones, and plenty to keep him busy. Quite often, tears lapped in his eyes when he picked up numerous objects and memorabilia, all so empty after their owners disappeared. He stumbled across Klunk's shattered toys and the peculiar water bowl that hadn't been touched. Some dirt and debris stagnated in the muddy water. Klunk had disappeared, more than likely smashed under a boulder he hadn't turned over yet. He needed another pet, something other than a silent teddy bear, but Klunk was hard to replace. More tears dropped out of his eyes; he never fully grieved for his lost kitty, and he felt like an asshole for never looking.
The best and only thing he could do was continue the difficult clean-up effort, piercing the soles of his feet and swelling his chest. When the place resembled less of ground zero and more of where someone could hang their hat for a spell, he gathered enough courage to find the sewing materials through most of what had been Leo's workstation and sewing machine. In the desk, he found half-finished white laced pillow cases, decorated in orange ducks and clouds. He chuckled at the idea of Leo sewing cute duckies for maybe someone like Raph, but he was sure it was for April, or it might have been for him, spritely little Mikey, as he could remember joking with Leo about making girly designs for all the brothers and Splinter as a joke; maybe the loser of ninja tag had to wear it for a week. Something like that.
Hemming the coat was a grueling process; he had rather tossed more trash aside or run through the sewers ten times than fool with it. He poked his chubby fingers with the needle and messed up the threading umpteen times, but when he got the hang of it and avoided pinches, the end result was magnificent, and his chest never stopped swelling. Leo was right: it was a task he really could do and it had been fun.
On a night close to the hums of spring, he strolled the cool underground water and stood looking through the grate at the careless moon. There was no more bloating in his chest and numbness around his eyes now. With Sundance back at the revitalized Lair, a machine on his arm he contracted with his very skills and his trusty nunchunks, it was past the leg of time to hit the new goal on his list. The next pockets of blood running through the rivers would belong to those who, since a year ago, all but forgot the one little roach they left behind to die beside his family.