He is Erik. Not that that name was given to him. It was a name he chose, over hearing it from a man at their door once. He only saw the man's shoes, but he sounded like a nice man. Nicer than the woman who he only knew not to call mother.
OoO
As if the kiss of the devil were not already plain as the day on his face. Her son, no! That creature had the very eyes of the devil itself, great golden orbs glowing in the blackness, or the strike of direct light. Sure, in the light of soft sunlight they were a sea green with blue churning beneath, but she refused to check on him at night, lest she receive that golden stare.
She had nursed the baby at her breast until the midwife left with her glances of pity, the young new mother playing the part of a good caregiver to that loathsome creature, only before snatching her breast from it in favor of the milk from their goat that ate the flowers in their neglected garden. She would not give her body to that creature.
Surely this had to be why her husband was gone from this world! A deal with the devil for a child in her barren body, and his life needed as payment it seemed. Snatched from her side so the Devil could sooner walk the earth and spread his damnation.
She could only laugh bitterly in the darkness with the thoughts in her mind some nights, amidst heaving sobs of grief and revulsion. Just thinking of that thing in the basement made bile well up in the back of her throat as her skin crawled. Whispers in her very soul told her to kill it, but she knew that that sin would only send her to the damned lands of Hell itself, and that was the plan of the creature. It had to be. Sometimes madness would creep in, a brightness that outshone all of the strife that had been present for so, so long, but then the light would fade, and she would be left alone once more, in a crumbling home with a demon in its cellar.
OoO
Erik never knew his mother's name. He knew her disdain for him, her hatred, and the revulsion that accompanied it. But, never her name. She was never even "mother" to him, eventually just thick swatches of linen skirts that he wasn't allowed to touch. It took only so many swinging blows to the head before one learned to avoid a cause of pain. He of course knew better than to look at her face for that same reason. He had only thread bare trousers, slowly unraveling to shorter and shorter cloth as he grew. Those, and the mask. Erik had a mask of course, he could never forget the mask, dark scratchy cloth that he knew better than to take off. His mother's requirement if he should want to eat, much less be in her presence. He knew better than to question it.
The frail boy would steal glances every now and then, peering through the crack beneath the door that lead to his dark and damp home in the cellar, seeing fair skin and long dark hair shining in muted sunlight. When Erik was young and did not yet know to hold his tongue, he compared his hair to hers, only to have her rage consume him, accompanied by a pair of brutal kitchen scissors close to his scalp. The cellar was cold for some time after that, the cold seeping into his bare head through the ragged patches of once thick black hair.
Nothing had ever been worse than when she had asked him if he wanted to see what she was afraid of. The boy had been sitting in the kitchen floor, scarfing down a small plate of dinner, if it could even be called that. She was in her chair by the window as always, watching the horizon for something. Someone, his mind whispered to him. He had leapt at the chance though, ignoring a gut feeling of fear and warning, willing to do anything to indulge in something to learn of this woman. The woman who made him. He didn't have to wait long. Under the illusion of a gentle hand the woman snatched Erik roughly by the arm, dragging him nearly off his feet and into another room he had not been in enough to remember. She shoved him to his knees in front of a mirror, the pain of bone striking wood causing tears to well and a cry to escape his throat. It was nothing compared to the sight that waited for him in the glass after she roughly tore the mask from his face.
He would have scrambled back in fear if he had been able too, but long nails dug sharply into the frail frame of his shoulders, holding him there. Her thumbs pressed hard into the base of his skull, keeping his gaze forward despite his fear. He moved, and so did that image. Tha-That monster was the same as him, it moved and blinked just as he did.
While the beatings had been savage, there was no memory of wounds and pain so bad that could cause the destruction reflected across from him. If he had still had his rich locks of hair, it may have lessened the severity. But with his head shaved near bare, Erik saw the cause of his frequent beatings. A great savagery took over the right half of his face staring his hair line and cutting down the midline of his face, the tissue of his nose on that side angry and distorted. It did not stop there though, for that would be a blessing. His mouth was given no relief from the horror, with thin lips and a great plumpness on the right side, that very corner turned down in permanent sorrow. The skin was ravaged across his cheek and to his ear, the cartilage twisted and shaped so that it barely held the shape of what it should be. His right eye was free of lashes and brow, the skin a stark and pale where it was saved from the deep twists and gouges made by God's hand. It was if his face was wet clay left to soften and distort in the rain.
At first, he thought it was those feminine hands at his shoulders shaking him, distorting his vision, but soon found he was trembling, hard enough for his teeth to rattle within his jaw and his legs to sag beneath his thin frame. The sunlight caught the glass and nearly blinded him, but not before he could see that shining gold gaze that his mother beat him for should she come to see him in the night. After that, he knew only the comfort of blackness, not feeling when his bare body crashed to the floor. It was a blissful freedom of time before he awoke in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the cellar stairs to nausea and the cool soil beneath him. Though now he was captive by another prison, for one couldn't escape their own face.
After that torture, if his mother ever blessed him with a question. Erik always said no.
As he grew though, so did her loathing. She became simply her, in his mind. Erik found himself looking less and less, content with the songs in his head. Occasionally he would steal books in the night, soft, small hands eagerly tracing the artwork in the inches of sunlight that he was allowed when the light fell just so into the house in the days after a calculated escape. She is a chain around his ankle, for he knows that if he should leave this cellar for escape, that she will send something after him until he ceases to exist.
OoO
It is on the anniversary of her husband's death that she has chosen to take no more. No more of this house and the demon in its cellar. She drinks slowly at first, small sips of whiskey she used to sip on the porch with the love of her life. But as that warmth seeps into her, the hatred in her heart blooms like a flame. Soon the bottle is empty, and she cannot find her feet. The bottle smashes against the wall a moment later, a star burst of shattering glass and dripping liquid. She has managed to catch the edge of the lone mounted oil lamp, shattering the globe and spilling the contents across the floor. It should be cleaned a voice says in the back of her mind. There is always the hell of tomorrow she replies.
The room sways dangerously and she briefly hopes that this is it. The end to her suffering and the pain with it.
The mother of the monster falls heavy and retches, body rejecting the mass amount of toxin eating away at her gut. Her head catches the edge of the bedside table, though numb with pain and sickness, she feels nothing as blood pools beneath her head on the rough wooden boards of the floor. A pale arm reaches out for anything and nothing, knocking roughly against the table and smearing blood in a wide arc across the floor. She heaves violently as darkness takes her sight, wondering with a moment of clarity, if it was worth it. As she loses consciousness, the candle on the bedside lists to the side, falling at a slant until it rolls to rest amidst a puddle of oil, the flame licking eagerly against the pool of fuel.
OoO
Erik is five when he is free from her, though he does not know his age, and will not for some time.
It is a noise that wakes him in the night, a noise that is not common at this time in the house. It is a drip coming from above to land on the floor boards just above his head. The floorboards are creaky and loose, and while he does not hear footsteps, he is not surprised about a leak. He knows of rain of course, bathed in its frigid pelts to remove the earth of the cellars before returning to his dirt lined home. He lets the steady pattern of drops lure him off to sleep, and hopes that he does not dream.
The smell is what wakes Erik from his slumber the second time, a film floating into his sinuses causing a sneeze that jolts him into wakefulness. He attempts to scrape the dirt from his hands off on his trousers before wiping his face, but the feeling persists with an acrid taste in the back of his throat. There is a great crackling above him, and he can almost perceive the shifting of the house.
He moves slowly up the rickety cellar steps to the door leading into the kitchen, a buzzing in his ears of combined sounds and pressure. Heat reaches his hand before he can touch the latch, and it's after deliberation before he snatches his mask from its place on his head, thick black matts brushing his cheeks after being freed from the scratchy cloth.
The latch is still warm through the layers of burlap and when he releases it from the catch on the other side of the door, he is met with a wave of heat that makes his eyes water. Erik shields his eyes with a forearm, the sudden brightness of a roaring blaze nearly blinding him. The home has been nearly consumed while he slept, with flames licking their way down the walls from the ceiling above. There is a part of him that knows that his mother is gone. He does not know what to do with that information, or how to feel about it.
The need to survive takes over and he is crouching low over ash dusted floor boards. There is a great crack above him and one of the support beams falls behind his frail body, cutting off any access to the dark cellar that had been his home for so long. A noise of terror leaves his throat, turning into a wet cough as smoke chokes him. The room is growing steadily hotter, singing his hands and the fine hair on his limbs as he scrambles on his hands and knees to what he knew was the front of the horse.
He has the door open after a minor battle with the lock when another crack sounds above him, and he is knocked to the floor by a great weight from above. Stars explode behind his eyes and it is only a moment before pain sears into him like nothing he has ever felt. Nails tear and bleed as he claws at the floor below him, desperate like a trapped animal to escape. With a flailing kick and a cry he scraped from beneath the chunk of structure and tumbles out of the threshold into damp vegetation. With the weight free, he expected the pain to end, but the pain is still present, a stinging burn that feels like the flesh is being pulled from his bones.
Erik heaves a wet gasp as he sits up amidst tall grass, coughing on a noise of horror as he looks down. His right shoulder looks like wax that was left in the sun for too long, warped and angry beneath a cracking layer of blackened flesh. Fluid is already seeping from the cracks in the wound, each drop purging a wave of agony from his battered body. A great clap of thunder rolls over head, a flash of lightning lighting the grass below his body for an instant with a holy white light.
Rain follows soon after, great cold drops bringing a kiss of relief before they roll down with blood to spatter the grass. Looking back, he takes one last look at his home and his prison before he hauls himself onto shaking legs to stagger in the direction of the dirt road he had seen through a window once upon a time.