Amputations

Part One: All your fingers stop at ten.

There was a time when I knew everything, a time when I didn't have to be told what to do or how to do it. It was during those years of my life that I knew what I was doing, that I felt like I had control over where I went and what I chose to do. My family was the fools; they didn't know what was best for me. They told me to be careful, they told me that I had a "reputation to uphold and shouldn't ruin it." But back then, I knew it was all for their sake.

They were so concerned for their own appearance that they didn't pay attention to each other.

We weren't so much a "family," as we were a "unit." We were a unit that functioned in separate pieces, each one performing its own task, a poorly built machine. My father was not a responsible father. He did not try to keep his children close. He did not try to be affectionate. Instead, he was a cold man who distanced himself from us, putting his work first and us fifth (in between was his ego, his image, and any material items he owned). After him was my sister, a girl whose fingers were constantly slashed by paper because of the magazines she flipped through. She was a strong girl, someone who was not afraid to stand up for herself or for anyone she considered close to her. She took nothing for granted, while my brother took everything for granted. He was a true artist; someone who only did things when he wanted to and did not believe in deadlines.

Finally, there was me. I have thought about how I would describe myself if I ever wrote something, as I often had to do in primary school. But all I could think of were those primitive descriptions. "I have red hair." "I have green eyes." "I have an older sister and an older brother." "My name is Gaara." Other children wrote eloquent, praiseful things about their parents or their siblings. But my descriptions were always short, to the point sentences. I did not bother with things like "My mother's name is and I love her so much!"

I've always been different from my fellow classmates and employees. In fact, when I first discovered that I was different, was the second day of primary school. The teacher told us to come in front of the class and talk about our families. I sat in the back of the classroom, forcing myself to pay attention to what the other children prattled off. They all had a father, a mother, perhaps a brother or a sister, and some sort of pet, whether it was a dog, or a cat, or a fish, etc.

When it was my turn, I went to the front and stared up at the clock on the back wall instead of looking at the other students. They were all staring at me.

"I have a Dad who's got a really important job," was how I began, "And then there's my big sister, Temari, and my big brother, Kankurou, and me." I was about to go sit back down when one of the other children asked me a question that I did not particularly appreciate, even as a five-year-old.

The kid wound up being particularly snot-nosed and annoying. He later got what he deserved when we had recess. "Why don't you have a mom?" he blurted, completely unsuspecting that anyone could possibly only have one parent.

Parents were apparently units, also.

All I could do was stand there and stare dumbly at the clock, trying to ignore the kid's words. My father had reminded me day in and day out why I didn't have a mother. I had hoped that no one would bring it up in school. As usual, I was wrong. The fact that I did not have a mother was considered unusual by all the other children in the class. Their parents had all told them that the normal thing was for a Mommy and a Daddy to get children from some stork who dive-bombed their house with babies in white sacks.

Luckily, the teacher defended me. She stood up from her desk and ushered me back to my seat. "Gaara-kun's family is just different," she said as she walked to the front of the room, "But really, his father loves him just as much as all of your parents love all of you." She fixed me with a warm smile, as if she expected me to agree.

I just shrank back in my chair, wanting to sink into the floor and become speckled, tan tile.

From then on, I started to be different than the other kids in my class. It was not just that I didn't have a mother, although that had roused curiosity among them ("Does your dad do mom stuff too?" "Do you think you'll ever get a mom?"), but it was other, more petty things as well. I was much smaller than the other kids. My eyes were so pale the only parts that were truly visible were the pupils. My hair was bright red and always messy. They came to the conclusion that I looked so strange because of the fact that I did not have a mother.

I never understood their logic.

Primary school was the time in which I categorized myself as "weird." I would go home crying, hoping that I could talk with my father, thinking that maybe he could explain what was going on. Every time I tugged on the tail of his suit jacket, he waved his hand at me, like I was an irritating house fly. He told me he could not be bothered with my silly problems and that I was a boy; boys did not cry.

After him, I would go to Temari. When I was five, she was nine. She looked like an adult and acted like one, in my eyes. I admired her, even though she, too, would ignore me or tell me to go whine to Kankurou. So I did.

Kankurou, at that time, was seven years old. He was more concerned with making mud pies and slinging them at Temari than he was with listening to me whine. Once, when I asked him to help me, he told me to quit being a baby and dumped his bucket of mud on my head. He was a typical boy with a penchant for being dirty. That never really changed, although the meaning of "dirty" might have.

So I went to the only person I knew who seemed to like me in the slightest. My uncle, Yashamaru, was the younger brother of my deceased mother. Unlike my father, he did not blame me for my mother's death. He always talked to me patiently and explained everything that the other children said. According to him, they just did not understand what it was like…and people were afraid of things that they did not understand. So I just had to try and prove to the other kids that I was just like them.

I took Yashamaru's words to heart. The next day, at school, a group of kids from my class were playing with a ball, kicking it to one another. I was watching them from a swing set, thinking it would be fun to ask if I could join them. But these were the kids who really hated me. Among them was the snot-nosed brat who had alienated me in the first place.

I kept my eyes on him as he picked up the ball and threw it toward one of his friends but the other boy missed. The ball rolled over to my feet. I looked down at it, seeing every tiny groove and every grain of sand that stuck to its coral colored surface. Now would be my chance, I thought, as I got off of the swing and bent down to pick it up. One of the other kids was yelling at me, telling me to throw it back over to them.

But I wanted to be with them. I wanted to be a part of something. So I took a few steps toward them, thinking they would get the idea.

They did not.

Instead, the bratty kid started shouting at me, telling me to just throw it back to him. He said that I wasn't allowed to play with them because I was not normal. Naturally, his words hurt me.

I threw the ball back with as much force as I could muster, my anger backing it up.

The ball smacked that kid on the head, sending him sprawling onto the grass. I just stood there, watching as his friends crowded around him. They were all speechless. I was oddly satisfied. That kid had gotten what he deserved, I told myself. Maybe now he would realize that I was not just some stupid, small weirdo. Maybe now he would see that I could be just like him.

Fifteen minutes later, I was in the principal's office, sitting on a leather chair that was much too big for me. The principal of the school was an old, intimidating man with a puffy, purple vein on his forehead. All I remember was the boom of his voice and his pointing, accusing, thick fingers.

He only had nine fingers, I noticed. There were all sorts of rumors about why he did not have ten fingers. They ranged from simple ones like, "He was born with a little stub so they just cut it off," to things like, "Before he was a principal, he was in the yakuza and he was disloyal to his boss, so they cut it off, knuckle by knuckle." As he yelled at me, I created my own scenarios in my mind.

Ten fingers was the normal amount. Not nine, not eleven…Ten. I was not the only weird person in the school, after all. But this man was intimidating…and through intimidation, he gained respect. I began thinking that that was what I would have to do in order to get the other kids to like me.

Yashamaru came to pick me up from school early that day, as I was not allowed to go back to class just yet. On the way home, he asked me what I had done and why I'd done it. I told him about the ball, the things the boy had said, and how it had been an accident that the ball had hit him on the head. I told him I was sorry and that I would never do anything like that again.

They were hollow words, though. In the back of my mind, I thought about how funny it had been to watch the boy fall over and his friends stare at me with their wide, dinner plate sized eyes before turning to him to see if he was all right. If I got another chance to do something like that, I would gladly accept it. School had started to get boring…and now I finally had something that was interesting…something that would get me noticed.

That was how I became somewhat of a bully. The other kids at school were scared of me but when I asked for something, they always gave whatever it was to me. I had gotten what I wanted; to be intimidating and respected. They did not tease me anymore. They did not even talk to me until I spoke to them. I kept telling myself over and over again that was how I wanted it to be.

If they did not speak to me, they would not tease me. They would not ask me questions about my mother…and they would never know that I had been the one who killed her.

The first three years of primary school flew by in a whirl of fights, bloody noses, and trips to the principal. My father disciplined me often, shouting at me that I needed to be a normal son; that I had a reputation to think about. Temari said nothing about it; she was too busy painting her fingernails and gossiping with friends. Kankurou was preoccupied with chopping rattlesnakes' heads off with a shovel he'd stolen from the neighbor's back yard.

But Yashamaru always welcomed me into his embrace. He told me he understood and that he still loved me, no matter what the principal or my father said.

And then, on January nineteenth, my seventh birthday, Yashamaru was gone. The police had arrested him.

I remember feeling very strange that day. I had been at Yashamaru's apartment the night before but I did not remember what we had done. Somehow, though, the police had shown up and took him away before I even woke up.

The only person who had ever meant anything to me was out of my life now.

…Until he showed back up, nine years later, as a very different person.

(Author's Note: This fan fiction is inspired by two very different things: "You can Play these Songs with Chords" by Death Cab for Cutie, and a livejournal RP I'm in called "Oshima High," in which I play Gaara.

This is not going to be a happy story or a clean story. It will have references to drug usage, homosexuality, incest, and violence. So, if you don't think you can handle that, please turn back now! 3

The rest of you, I hope you enjoy!)