Marcus was always…different. Not quite there, a bit odd, a little crazy, call it what you want. He was never social, always apart, watching, observing. As a little boy he was the outcast, hardly anyone knew he existed. School teachers would smile their practiced happy-smile, asking him questions and trying to include him. Marcus would glance at them with a fixed stare, his dark eyes holding mystery and a slightly pronounced sneer on his pallid face. It never failed. Every teacher who was the recipient of that look wouldn't ask him those empty inclusive questions again. None of them knew how to describe him- a quiet boy with seemingly no interest in the going-on's of the classroom, yet with a worldly aura that made them feel as if he knew their thoughts. Everyone whom his glance pierced perished under the gaze, and got an odd feeling… almost as if Marcus was looking at a vivisection of their emotions and memories… and they wrenched their gaze away before he could see too much. Teachers handed him his grades quietly, which were average- not stellar, not terrible.
Marcus would walk home skittishly, nervously glancing over his shoulder to check if anyone was watching. After darting around the block for a few minutes, he would slink into an old, run-down shabby house. His mom, he knew, would not be home. She would be out. He would trudge up the stairs and knock on his older brother Alex's door.
"Alex?"
"Come on in, little bro…" came the reply.
Marcus would walk into Alex's room and sit on the bed, Alex next to him. Alex was the one person Marcus would open up to. He told Alex about all the fake-y teachers and children wrapped up in their elementary school drama… of the stupidity of most 4th graders, who were figuring out guy-girl relationships and the what-not's of life. Next, Marcus would ask his ritual question…
"Alex, where do you go at night?" Marcus would ask. He asked every day, but Alex would never tell him.
"I'll tell you when you're older," Alex replied, and Marcus got the answer he had gotten every other night. So he got up to leave, noting the strange mixture of color radiating from Alex's closet, compromising mostly of red hues.
When Marcus was in bed that night, he waited. The first door opening was Alex leaving, as he did every night. The second door opening was Mom coming back. She would go straight to her room, lock her door, and collapse on the bed. Marcus could hear the rusty bedsprings as she dropped. He could hear everything; he had always been able to. When Mom and Dad were in the same house he could remember hearing them arguing quietly. But that was years ago, Dad had long since gone, and Marcus hadn't heard from him since.