Disclaimer: lol. Well. Obviously I don't own him or he would still be at county. But…well there's always room to wish…that they'll bring him back right???!?!???!??! *gives the cutest smile to anyone who's reading this, hoping they can do it!!!*
Oh and lyrics are from Sarah McLachlan's Angel.
~*~*~
Some days he stares at the wall, silent looking back at him as though the world was just the two of them.
His worst enemy. Silent killers.
Some days he wonders a thousand things about what could have been and what has become. But there's no use dwelling on the past.
Some days, when he has to, he wakes up. Stops staring at the wall and puts on his clown suit, his smile, to let everyone know he's okay. That the ghosts will not hurt him anymore.
There are birds that fly away every winter to a new resting place, so they can escape the cold of which they are afraid. Before the first snow falls, they have disappeared to a warmer place, where they will be safe. Every winter, Dave watches them fly in the night sky. It is because they have somewhere to go. He wanted to fly as well, but his wings had touched the sun and leaden, he had fallen back to the ground. Flown all the way to Grenada and back: back, in the end, to County, where his past was buried.
~*~*~
21.58. Only…how many more hours to go? Dave sighed, staring at the wall behind the coffee machine. The night time over County had appeared softly tonight, not like the other darkness's that attacked him behind his smile.
In the arms of the angel
Fly away, from here.
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
Everyone has a past. No matter how much we may seem happy, the core that makes us who we are still exists. Behind every façade there is a story of a thousand pieces of shattered glass. Broken glass was the first thing he learnt that could shatter into unmendable pieces. Every night at 10, his father would return home and something would shatter. His mother's screams haunted every night, but he learnt that what makes adults uncomfortable: violence, addiction: was what was ignored. When his father fell asleep by the drunken bottle that kept his insanity, he would creep down and help his mother back upstairs. As a 7 year old, he knew how to bandage broken wrists and cuts in a way that caused her no more pain. His sister would watch out for their father waking up again. And together they would sleep on the hardwood floor, one person always keeping watch, sharing silently as they could the forced love that unsteadily bound their family together.
~*~*~
Dave's past had been his secret. They knew that he took child abuse cases to heart. They talked about him when they thought he wasn't listening, but it was always talk. Like the adults in his childhood, they never did anything about it. Perhaps it was better this way. He wouldn't have to explain to them what they could not understand. He wouldn't have sympathetic glances in his direction all the time: he could be the clown, the joker, and no one would question what was beneath the face. He would always be in his comfort zone. At County the talked about him in the lounge. He knew. But it was mindless. Who his latest girl was. Who's house he had gone to the other night. Children who have never experienced love become addicted to searching for it, as soon as they know about it. Addicted to finding the euphoria that accompanies it; addicted to reliving something their childhood did not offer them. His mother loved him but she couldn't show it. He loved his sister, his mother…possibly even his father. Perhaps love is a complicated word. No one could understand it. His mother never could. His mind drifts to twenty years ago, along the skirting and on the ceiling where his mother took his sister's skipping rope and left them to fend for themselves.
~*~*~
When children came into County with bruises he always wondered why it was still happening. Why no one had stopped it yet. But he never let them see this side of him anymore. Because they were the adults from his memory.
Spend all your time waiting
For that second chance
For a break that would make it okay
His father had not been a monster. Everyone who knew their family thought so, but Dave knew. His father had been treated that way as a child. It was a Malucci thing. Maybe it was hereditary. Dave had vowed not to have children, have a family. Because if he did, would he do the same to them?
His sister had promised to take care of him, and he had silently vowed to take anything their father tried to dish out to her. At 10 though, he could not do anything. Lonely step-children of a father whose wife had killed herself. That night his father had dragged his sister into a room. Her screaming had not stopped the whole night, but she had made Dave promise he wouldn't come out, no matter what happened. The next day, sleepless from listening to her screams, he walked into the bathroom to be greeted by the sight of crimson blood running endless down the shower drain, following the scalding water through oblivion. Blood stemming from a single cut up his sister's arm.
~*~*~
Everyone has a past. Ghosts that haunt our minds, he thought bitterly. The wall that his father had so often thrown him up against, after stealing his sister's innocence and forcing her to leave Dave alone. And he had flown to Grenada, away from everything. But now he was back at County. Silently, he touched the folder, 14 cm thick, that contained all the information about his past. If they had looked they could find out everything about him. Maybe fear had caught up with him in this curse. Child after mother. After father. And now, as he sits staring at the wall, he looks at the blade lying in his hand. After all the scars he has carved, year after year: slashing, cutting: this should be easy. And silent as always, sitting wearing blue scrubs on the floor of a County shower, he draws the blade up his arm and watches as his shattered spirit slowly bleeds out.
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie.
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort there