"A boy is the only thing that God can use to make a man."
-Author Unknown
Ba-bum.
Ba-bum.
Ba-bum.
Ba-bum.
"Can you hear it?" His hot breath was like sandpaper against my ear. I shivered, trying not to show my disgust.
"Yes." I whispered quietly, stroking the small animal with my thumb, trying to calm its pounding heartbeat.
Do not be afraid.
Please do not be afraid.
"Can you feel it, beating against your finger like a drum?" He placed a hand on my shoulder. I felt my shoulders tense up, and unfortunately, so did he. He stood up rigidly, I didn't need to look at him to see that. "What do you want to do with it?" The man asked me slyly, as though he could since my empathy, my fear.
"I…I…" I stuttered, trying to hold the rat tighter, trying to make it bite me, so that I would have a reason. It didn't take long for the rodent to become increasingly uncomfortable, and to revert back to its primeval sense of self-defense. Even as his dirty teeth sunk deep into the flesh of my finger, I knew I wasn't going to do it. I couldn't make my grip any tighter. So in one motion, I opened my rigid hand and let the rat fall onto the floor. My joints felt like they were made of iron, rusted to the point of no return. My instructor scoffed, looking at the rat, now curled up in the corner of the room.
"You'll never live up to him." He hissed. His hand darted out and grabbed my injured hand, holding my wrist so tightly that my fingertips began to turn blue. "You don't deserve this blood running through your veins!" He then proceeded to squeeze the bottom of my bleeding finger with his other hand, making a large drop of blood form. I whimpered, turning my head to hide my tears. He let go of my wrist, throwing it towards me in disgust. After a few moments of silence, only interrupted by my quiet whimpers, the man began to laugh.
"Cry, little boy. Cry. Tears will not make you a man, will not make you like your father." The large drop of blood he had created began to run down my finger, creating a sticky path. I felt the drop begin to heat up as it went, like the rest of the blood in my body that had begun to boil. With a cry of rage, I stomped over the corner where the rat was now licking its wounds. I couldn't see, the tears in my eyes had become so hot that they were affecting my vision. With all the strength I could collect from my anger, I placed my foot on top of the rat's torso, and pushed until the bones underneath gave way and the rat stopped squeaking. The drop of blood fell off my fingertip and onto the floor. I turned towards my instructor, who only shrugged.
"Your father would have killed in with his bare hands." And with that, he retreated back into the main part of the school, leaving me alone to reflect on what I had just done.
That night, when every other boy in my dorm was fast asleep, I returned to that room and collected the rat's stiff body. And all alone in the cold, I buried it outside the gate, under the yellow peonies that seemed to glow in the moonlight.
•••
"My mother?" I asked confused, looking towards my uncle, but he offered no answers to me, only shook his head. My eyes fell on the woman standing next to him. She was older, maybe a few years younger than my father. Her hair was gray, changed from years of neglect, and I couldn't tell what color it had been before. The wrinkles around her eyes seemed to give them more character than they would have had when she was younger, but the only thing I cared about was the color of her eyes.
Long ago, my uncle told me that my father had dark eyes, eyes, that he claims, are the reason my mother had fallen in love with him. "But that doesn't matter," my uncle had said, "because you have your mother's eyes."
And this woman that claimed to be my mother, she had bright green eyes, maybe the same shade as mine, but I couldn't tell. I didn't want to tell. The woman smiled at me, revealing more wrinkles and a set of perfectly straight white teeth. "Hello, son." She said to me quietly. "It's been a long time." It was as these words left her mouth that I became aware of the numbers of eyes that were currently on me, but I wouldn't look back, not at any of them, because I knew what they would say, and they wouldn't have answers either. The woman took a small step towards me, and tediously opened her arms. "I've waited a long time to talk to you."
As she neared me, I felt my heartbeat quicken, I felt it begin to bang against my chest and close my lungs off.
Can you hear it?
As the woman reached up to put her arms around me, I felt my arm shoot out and push hers away. "Well, I don't wanna talk to you."
The atmosphere in the room suddenly shifted, which made it ever harder to breathe. My heartbeat got faster once again, my head began to spin. I felt all the eyes still on me, only I felt a specific pair bare into my chest and my soul because she knew what I was thinking. Maybe they all knew. Maybe they could all see. I heard my uncle's words rattle around in my head.
Lloyd's mother.
Lloyd's mother.
Lloyd's mother.
The ringing in my ears didn't stop as I pushed myself through them and ran down the hall, trying to find somewhere, anywhere, where I could breathe again. I didn't stop running until I reached the deep hole, and even then, I almost threw myself in because this was too much. Too much to go through again.
I didn't have a father.
I didn't have a mother.
Then I did.
Can you feel it, beating against your finger like a drum?
•••
"They're just bites. Suck it up." That's what the nurse said when I came in that morning, sniffling and covered in hundreds of angry red bites. To be honest, I should have expected this, the first night in my new dorms, with all new boys, but what I didn't expect them to mess with me. None of the kids in my previous dorm did, and as a matter of fact, they wouldn't even speak to me, much less let an entire farm of fire ants out into my cot.
I don't even know why I bothered to go to the nurse in the first place, the only medical license she had being to hand out cough drops, but I was in pain. Not only did the bites itch, they also burned everywhere my clothing was pressing against them, but all she said was to suck it up, so I tried to do just that.
Though never explicitly stated, classes at Darkley were not mandatory. I mean, only good boys go to class, right? So, after my adventure with the nurse, I opted to stay home in bed that day, or rather, in someone else's bed. We didn't have a janitorial staff at this stupid school, so if I wanted the ants gone, I had to get rid of it myself. I wasn't sure I was ready to face that quite yet, I was still licking my wounds.
Unfortunately, I never got the chance.
"Hey Lloyd!" I heard a young voice call from the other end of the dark hallway. I let out a disappointed sigh. I was so close. "I heard you've been itching to get something off your chest!" I turned slowly, crossing my arms to make myself seem more intimidating, though in truth, I was actually a bit frightened.
"What do you want, Brad?" I asked, trying to snarl, but it came out more like a meow. The group of boys behind Brad, including their ringleader, Gene, snickered, looking towards the instigator for a signal.
"Aw, little Lloyd," Gene said in a mocking tone, "do you need to go home to your mommy? Kisses always make me feel better, especially when I get a papercut." Gene Tipe was never too bright when it came to situations like these, and I had a feeling that his comment about a papercut was supposed to be some kind of insult to the minority of my injuries. I could tell the rest of his posse was confused too, because he had to glare at them to get a quick round of weak laughter. I bit my lip, trying to think quickly of what to say next. Just then, I heard the tell-tale beeping of a garbage truck outside. I smiled broadly and cocked my head.
"I mean, I'd love to stay and chat, but it looks like your ride is here, Gene." I pointed my thumb towards the window nearest to the dumpsters, where the garbage truck could be clearly seen. None of the boys said anything after that, and I felt my smiled get even wider. I had won. I had done better at something than "perfectly evil Gene." I was feeling pretty confident in myself, so I took a step towards them. "Well, I guess now you know not to mess with Lloyd Garma..." And Gene hit me. He hit me hard. I stumbled back against the wall, dizzy from the impact. That's when the other boys began to follow Gene's lead, kicking and scratching at anywhere there was bare skin.
There was a word. A word that was often used as a description, one that I was told to inflict almost daily. A word that made a long chill travel from the base of my spine to the back of my neck. I went almost three years at this school like that, having such a strong reaction to a word, of which I did not even know the true meaning. When I heard my professors speak it with such passion and charisma, I knew they themselves didn't truly understand it.
But in that moment, in that one moment, feeling fingernails against my already ravaged skin, feeling my helplessness, hearing the taunting, the constant buzz of pain, I knew. It was like something had clicked in my head. This. This was the definition of agony. And no dictionary could describe what I was feeling in that moment.
To truly be a villain,
A hand finds its way up my loose fitting uniform. A scratch, deep and down my spine. I don't scream.
A master of evil,
I can hear Gene's obnoxious voice, laughing at the sight of myself in a fetal position. A weak attempt to protect myself. I don't scream.
You must be willing to do whatever it takes to win.
I'm silently crying now. My arms feel weak and limp crossed over my face. I'm unsure if the substance coming from my nose is snot or blood.
Play dirty with no regard.
I don't scream.
Have no empathy for anyone or anything.
My left arm gives way, I feel the bone bend and break under the pressure violently applied by one of my classmates. I can't see which one, my eyes are to swollen from the tears. I don't scream.
And above all,
The attack suddenly stops. I suck in a quick breath through my nose. After several moments, I tediously lift my head. I can feel my heart raise with hope. It's all over.
You must inflict pure agony on anyone who dares to oppose you.
My ears are fuzzy, so are my eyes. Gene lifts his knee high in the air. A dark haired boy to his right grabs his arm, I think he's pulling on Gene, trying to keep him back. Gene wrestles away from the boy and raises his knee even higher. I only feel his boot against my forehead for a moment, before the world goes dark.
When I wake up, dizzy, the sun is setting, casting an orange glow over the wooden floor boards. I have to use my broken arm to get my aching body into a sitting position. I whimper. When I look down, I see the wood stained with blood, almost too much blood.
I may not have known it then, but as I sat there, broken, beaten, and alone for the first time ever, I began to contemplate that word. And I realized something, something I wouldn't understand until several years later. What I went through, what I had experienced. On that day, I picked my side.
I could never do that to anyone else.
I opened up my mouth, and I screamed.
•••
The hole was so deep that it seemed to go on forever. And despite leading into what I could only assume was the bowels of the Underworld itself, I could feel a breeze coming up. An incredible mind-numbingly cold breeze. I closed my eyes and meditated on the coldness of this breeze for what seemed like an eternity.
"Peaceful, isn't it?" I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of the voice, though I physically only flinched a bit. I was getting a lot better at hiding my fear. "No, you're not." I signed, hearing her knowing voice answer and once again cut through the dark abyss of the back of my eyelids. When I opened them, trying to ignore their sudden heaviness, she was sitting right next to me. I turned away from her, looking back into the dark hole in the floor.
"What do you want, Aryan?" She made some type of movement, but I couldn't make the motion out in my peripheral vision.
"Just to talk." Her voice had gotten much less course, the condescending tone of omniscience had disappeared. "Actually, to be honest, I wanted to make sure you didn't throw yourself down into this stupid pit." I heard the sound of something hitting the pit wall opposite the two of us. She must have picked up a piece of displaced rubble and thrown it. "What the hell possessed the old lady to dig this? Did she just walk in here one day and decide that this would be the perfect spot to start drilling a hole because there was bound to be something? I honestly need to know what was going through her mind when she made this decision."
"Well, then why don't you just go in there and find out?" I choked on the bile that came up with the sentence, but it was too late to push it back now.
"Because I don't want to." She carried on the conversation like I hadn't just spit acid. "Do you wanna know how I knew you'd be in here?" She waited for a moment in the silence, and I couldn't tell whether she was waiting for my answer, or if she was simply extracting it from my head. "What the hell is your issue today?" She asked, the coarseness in her voice returning. I raised my hands in a sarcastic and overly dramatic shrug.
"I'm sure you could find out. I'm sure you're finding out right now." I said. Aryan said nothing, and for a moment, the room was noiseless, with the exception of the hollow hissing coming from the dark hole.
"Lloyd…" Aryan said, cutting into the silence, "look at me." Her voice was quiet, a tone that could almost be mistaken for gentleness, but I knew better. I kept my eyes trained on the hole in front of me. There was another moment of silence. "Lloyd! We are having an adult conversation and you will look at me while we are having it!" She wasn't kidding around anymore, her tone was angry, the kind of angry that would land me at the bottom of that pit if I didn't watch. I looked at her just as she snapped her fingers in my face. "Don't think like that. See? I am looking in your head, but I'm reassuring you that I won't push you into that hole, no matter how much you may deserve it right now." I glanced back towards the darkness, and Aryan snapped her fingers again, pulling me back to attention. She pointed her index finger right at me. "Now you listen to me, you may think you can act like an arrogant piece of shit because you're upset, but you can't. You're confused and I get that, I really do, but that gives you no excuse. I don't care if you're twelve or twenty, you are not to be rude to other people because you're not handling the situation well."
"Well, how would have you handled a situation like this?" I snapped, trying not to growl. "Would you have magically forgotten? Would you have just taken it like it was no big deal?" Aryan stood up in a movement that was so abrupt and sudden that for a moment I found myself worrying that she would plummet to her death.
"No! I wouldn't have handled it calmly, as a matter of fact, I would have handled just like you are now! And that's the damn problem!" Her voice was getting louder, and it began to echo off the walls of the pit. "I will not have you push away anyone who tries to help you because you don't understand your emotions, because that's what I did until I was seventeen! Do you know how old I am now, Lloyd?" She paused for a moment, but if she was giving me a chance to answer, she was not making it apparent. "I'm seventeen right now! That's my entire lifetime I spent so emotionally detached that I couldn't understand the emotions people felt towards me! Hell, I didn't feel sympathy for the people I save every day until I was fifteen, before that, I pitied them!" She pointed another accusing finger at me. "And I'll be damned if you end up like me."
"Why do you care?" I shouted, raising my hands in exasperation.
"Because you know as well as I that I'm more your mother than that woman will ever be!" Almost as soon as she said it, her expression changed to one of someone who immediately wanted to take it back. She clinched her jaw, but her eyes lost none of the anger she had, the anger I had brought on. I didn't know what to say, I had realized about two seconds after the comment about reading my mother's mind had escaped my lips that I had crossed an unseen line set never to be crossed. Aryan's hand was stretched across her face, hiding her anger and silently voicing her irritation with herself. I struggled to let out a sigh.
"Look," I started, "I didn't mean that. I'm just letting my emotions get to me." Aryan let out a muffled giggle behind her hand before throwing her head back with a large gasp of breath, and falling back down next to me with exasperation.
"That's the problem, isn't it?" She asked, extending her palms to the sky and letting them drop back down into her lap. "We're expected to be strong and diligent. We're expected to make the right decisions in high pressure situations, with no outside influence." She smirked, but it quickly dissolved back into a look of neutrality. "But on the other hand, we're expected to have empathy. To be human, and to make the human decision." She sat there for a moment, letting the silence wash over us. I watched her, forgetting all earlier instincts I had to turn away. "To show mercy to the worthy, or serve justice to the damned." She half muttered this, almost as it she was taking to herself more than me.
Aryan turned towards me, her hair whipping violently though she gently turned her head. Her hair was much thinner and more feathery than her brother's, whose hair, upon this moment of random thought, I realized was much heavier and choppy. Aryan smiled, knowing look returning, before her face got serious again. "Who makes that decision, Lloyd? Who draws the line between worth?" I thought about this for a second.
"God?" I hesitantly asked. Aryan smiled again, but it once again fell.
"In the next world, maybe," she let out a burdened sigh, "but, here, it's ours. Our decision. And we have one single moment to make it." She turned her head back towards the pit, chewing on the corner of her lip in thought. I looked back into the swallowing darkness and wondered what was even down there. What was at the end of an unseen path? I felt Aryan's shoulder nudge against me, and I turned back towards her. "Hey, wanna know how I knew you were in here?"
"How?" Her neutral expression made no movement, lacking the earlier enthusiasm that had accompanied the question. She held up her left hand, fingers fanned out as she pointed to each and labeled them. "Cole." Her thumb. "Kai." Index. "Zane." Middle. "Jay." Ring. "And Lloyd." Pinkie. She gave her fingers one last wiggle, before laying her hand flat against the floor, fingers still spread wide.
With her right hand, she removed one of the several thin knives that remained hidden in the folds of her uniform. She held it so the pointed end of the blade was towards the ground, the rest held loosely in her fist as not to cut herself. Pressing the point into the tile under her left thumb, she gently began to sing as she slowly tapped the tip in the areas between her fingers.
Oh, I have all my fingers.
The knife goes chop, chop, chop,
If I miss the spaces in-between, my fingers will come off.
And if I hit my fingers,
The blood will soon come out.
But it's all the same I play this game cause that's what it's all about.
She continued into another verse about the speed getting faster, but I was more focused on what the last verse had said, as she picked up speed in both the haunting tune, and the tapping of the knife. Eventually, she got so fast I found it hard to keep up, my spinning head finally thudding to a stop as she plunged the knife into the soft dirt between the tile and rubble. After a moment, she held up her hands in questioning. "Do you understand?" I was quiet for a moment, before speaking softly to her.
"But it's all the same, I play this game cause that's what it's all about." I repeated, looking her directly in her eyes. "I understand what you're trying to tell me, but at the same time, I don't." I shook my head. "I don't understand why someone would play a game with such a risk." Aryan shrugged.
"Because I have a knife."
"That's stupid." I said with a scoff. Aryan shrugged yet again.
"But it's true. You gamble your fingers every time you pick one up, so it just makes sense you'd play a game with them." She gave me a sideways smile. "Unfortunately, you and I don't have the option to put our knives down." She laid her hand on my shoulder. "And if that woman really is who she says she is, than you just added another finger." With a quick shift of her weight, Aryan stood up next to me. I felt the confusion spread across my features. I shook my head.
"Wait," I shifted my body and looked up at her, "so what you're saying is that I'm only angry because I have one more person to protect in this game I'm forced to play because I'm… we… have powers?" Aryan stared into the depth of the pit in front of us, not even acknowledging my question. After moments of this uncomfortable silence, she opened her mouth.
"I think I understand this pit now." I felt my mouth hang open in irritation.
"What?" I asked her. This time, she looked down at me.
"You know, men only do stupid things for women, but it works the other way too." Aryan smiled. "Maybe she thought if she could dig deep enough, she'd see your dad." And with that, Aryan turned on her heel and walked towards the door, leaving me alone.
I play this game cause that's what it's all about.
•••
Yes. I am aware that I feel off the face of the earth. It's almost been a year since my last update, and the honest reason for that is because I have been SO BUSY! You may not believe me, but I haven't had a full night of sleep since February of this year, including the summer.
But for all of you who worry, nothing is wrong. Unless you count a chronic case of "Too Busy For Anything Fun."
Anyway, this isn't a new story. I've had these sitting on my desktop for several months, I just haven't bothered to finish them. Same with updates on The Origin of the Silver Ninja of Energy and Savage, I've got half of them, and I'm working as hard and as fast as I can on the rest. However, I've been gone for so long that I completely forgot how to write characters that are usually very easy for me, such as Aryan and Lloyd. These "one-shots" are simply an outlet for me to get back into my characterization and will be completed as I update.
This chapter was actually much longer, but I decided not to bore you with too many words (and not to mention I'm too tired to edit the other half tonight). The next part will be up before you know it.
As always, thank you for your support! Even if I did go ghost on you (Sorry, Cole).
-Legion
