Emersyn Arley Jones would often wish the world would stop turning.
To his disgruntlement it had yet to happen.
He did not enjoy listening to people screech at each other.
That fact certainly didn't stop Malinda and Jamie from doing it.
He hated people who spoke in ignorance.
Just the other day he heard an elderly man announce that domestic violence was nothing but masochistic people asking for it. The man obviously was raised in the 50's or 60's and was too stupid to realize that was an outdated stereotype he was spouting. The moron.
He sincerely abhorred the human race. It was the only emotion he could contribute them. Pure loathing.
He despised adults, they were useless to him, and he couldn't trust one. All they did was lie, drink, and ignore the truth staring them in the face. Children around his age were disgusting, silly, creatures that picked their noses then ate what they had drug out, completely unhygienic. He shuttered thinking about it. Teenagers appeared to be…decent, he supposed. If one forgot how angsty, melodramatic, and stupid think-they-know-it-alls they tended to be, then they were tolerable.
Malinda was a weak, sniveling, cowardly blight on humanity's already dismal record.
His age was within the time of Malinda and Jamie's marriage, yet he wasn't Malinda and Jamie Jones's son. He was Malinda's son. It was a relatively easy conclusion for any mind, no matter how dull, to jump. He himself had learned of it during one of his "parent's" shouting matches just before he had turned six. Jamie had referred to Emersyn as "that goddamned bastard child" and it wasn't that difficult to look up a word in the dictionary.
The smell of alcohol always left him feeling conflicted between running and crying. Not that it mattered in the end; he would always end up crying regardless. By the age of five he had learned how to sob without making a sound, along with how to move in the least painful manner when he had a broken rib or two.
The words "I'm sorry" made him want to make the speaker really sorry. The words were most often coming from his mother's mouth, though he had to admit, she hadn't been saying it as much since he had told her "You're nowhere near as sorry as I am. Why couldn't you have gotten an abortion? I wouldn't've been beat for as long as I can recall. You, Malinda, wouldn't have to cower in a corner, a silent witness to what you know is wrong." She had been so shocked Emersyn had had the pleasure of not hearing her voice for a month. It had been so refreshing.
Despite the adults and snot nosed brats present Emersyn loved school, more specifically the library. As they lived in a rather isolated area in New York State, there wasn't a real need for there to be separate schools for the grade levels. Pre-K all the way through 12th was comfortably crammed into one building, thus sharing a library. During reading hour he would sneak away from the group and camp down in the High School's books. He had taught himself all he could about physics, mathematics, and robotics that he could from the selection they had, and while he enjoyed those subjects Emersyn preferred reading and looking at books about music and the arts. He had already taught himself how to read scales and really hoped one day how to play guitar.
Not that he cared but the art teacher had complemented some of his work saying it was well beyond his age level's normal work. He had also overheard the teacher comment to a collegue that "The Jones kid's work is phenomenal. He could possibly a professional one day, but it's the subject matter that is disturbing. It's so dark. Children should be drawing flowers, stick figures, and sunny meadows. Not battle fields and withering plants, no matter how well done." Along with the other subjects Emersyn would eternally be grateful for the handful of psychology books the library had.
If not for those books he would have been like the children described in them. The ones that blamed themselves when physical abuse was occurring in their home life. Now he didn't question what he had done wrong when Jamie Jones beat him, broke his ribs, forced bleach down his throat, nor when he was refused food, or tied in the shed with a near choking dog collar. There was nothing wrong with him, it wasn't his fault. Miranda and Jamie Jones were the ones in the wrong, not him. It didn't make the situation any better, but Emersyn was relieved he wasn't the one to blame.
There was a saying that you shouldn't wish your life away, and Emersyn wasn't when he started counting down the years and days until he turned eighteen down to the precise second. He was counting down the days till he could escape, till he could actually begin to live instead of merely existing.
What Emersyn Arley Jones didn't know was that his life was about to change, his 'new beginning' was going to occur sooner than he had anticipated.
I
Emersyn was in his room reading when the screaming began, which he would later reflect on as strange, for there hadn't even been a prelude of yelling to warn him. In a momentarily lapse of good sense –correction, a lapse of any sense, good or otherwise- he crept from his room, making his footsteps as silent as he could. Most any other child would have ran to call the police, but he was so accustomed to his parents fights he didn't consider the screams anything out of the ordinary.
He followed the ever growing louder noise to his parent's bedroom and cracked the door open. The sight inside really should have sent him running for help but he couldn't seem to convince his legs they should move. He stood frozen, watching as Jamie Jones held Malinda down by the throat and repeatedly plunged a five inch Swiss army knife into her body. Blood was covering the both of them; splatter painting the walls and white sheets. Malinda's screams had become halting, her forced breathing in between now wet sounding.
Unintentionally, a low gasp escaped him before he managed to slap his hand over his mouth to cover it. The wild eyes of Jamie Jones landed on him as Malinda took her last shallow breath, never to take another. For as long as he lived, which might only be a few more minutes, Emersyn knew that he would never be able to forget the sight of those drunkenly glazed over eyes that seemed to be lusting for blood. They got larger and larger as Jamie stalked towards him, knife poised to strike. He still hadn't been able to force his terror stalled legs to move, and his strangely calm brain was considering praying to a god he didn't believe in. His brain, the only thing working at the moment, was irritatingly deciding that if he did start praying any god would find it insulting or hypocritical, so he would probably end up in an even worse situation if he, indeed, did pray.
Even he couldn't comprehend his brain at moments, and this was one of the times he wondered if he was mad.
Jamie's eyes were suddenly level with Emersyn's, which were widening, feeling the sharp cold steel pressed ruthlessly against his neck. Gulping, he discovered, made the knife break skin, and a small warm, obviously blood, trail flowed its way down his neck.
"You," Jamie said, the man was so close to Emersyn now they were nearly touching noses. The stench of alcohol permeated every sense he had overriding everything: he could only smell the nauseating stink of alcohol and feel the cold blade releasing his blood to meet oxygen. "You're the reason this happened." The knife pressed tighter to his throat the blood flowing more rapidly. "If you weren't here she'd still be alive. Our marriage wouldn't have torn apart. It's all your fault."
He watched, with a detached perspective, as Jamie jerked his head, probably hearing something Emersyn was incapable of noticing at the moment. Whatever it was Jamie jabbed the blade in to his throat soon after.
He knew nothing but darkness.
II
It took a lot to disturb Tony Stark.
There wasn't a thing the press or the public could call him or say about him that would make him mad. Mostly because it was largely about his playboy life style and was the truth. Making his contracts infuriated at him, he could easily brush off because Stark Industries was the best at what they did and no matter how frustrated they got with Tony they kept coming back for the products. So he never really tried to make a good impression with something like being on time, or god forbid, actually showing up at the office before 1:00pm.
But when Pepper had given him the news that some boy had been confirmed as his had been found, he almost fainted for the first time in his life. Pepper along with a weak kneed Tony had gotten Happy to drive them to the hospital where the child was at so they could find out the full story.
Worse still was when a social worker had explained the situation to him and Pepper; he was torn between wanting to rip the dead fucker's head off or vomiting. Pepper had gone as still and hard faced as if she had been turned to stone.
From the social worker they heard that the police had been called to the Jones' home a few days prior due to a neighbor reporting that they had heard screaming while they were walking their dog. When the police arrived at the house Miranda and her husband, Jamie Jones were both found dead, Miranda had been reported to be stabbed to death and evidence showed that Jamie had punctured his heart after he committed the dead. Unfortunately, not before the man slit then stabbed Tony's apparent son in the neck, nearly killing him and successfully damaging the vocal cords in the child's larynx beyond repair.
Emersyn Arley Jones, soon to be Stark if he had anything to say about it, was Tony's son's name he learned. The boy would never be able to speak again.
The more the social worker lady spoke the more Tony's desire to go get drunk kept getting stronger. After Emersyn was put in a drug induced coma so they could repair what they could of his neck the doctors had discovered unnerving signs of abuse. The boy had clearly been starved for most of his life, only weighing thirty-five pounds when he should be weighing 'round fifty to sixty, and shorter than he should be. An x-ray had found many of his ribs had been broken and allowed to be set wrongly, so they had had to go in and re-break them so they could be set properly. While doing that they discover the malnutrition had made his bones more fragile, something that was by now too hard to completely fix, so the child would have weak bones for the rest of his life.
Yeah, getting drunk was sounding better and better by the second.
And that was exactly what he did when he went home upon learning that his son, damn that was strange even in his head, would be brought from his coma tomorrow.
He didn't know that was probably the worst thing he could have done.
III
Emersyn had a new item to add to his list of things he despised: hospitals.
They were too sterile, unnaturally white, smelled of a cross between bleach and disease, and were filled with falsely reassuring smiles from adults. A hospital was the locale for where he found out what exactly had been stolen from him by Jamie Jones: his voice.
When the nurses and doctors had left the room Emersyn had tried in vain to force words out, any sound really, he grew more and more panicked as he continued to fail. He couldn't stop it when his body began to shiver uncontrollably, prickling in the corners of his eyes followed by a trail of moisture down his checks were Emersyn's only indicators that he was crying. Now he didn't even have to try to sob silently like he had before. He couldn't make a sound if he wanted to.
His head turned to the creaking sound of the door opening, and a horrifyingly familiar sent hit his senses.
IV
Tony didn't know what to do. Hell, he didn't even know what had happened.
Tony had just walked into the room his son had been placed in, and he hadn't even been ten steps inside before a whimpering noise reached his ears. Uncharacteristically, Tony tried to comfort the child whom his heart had adored the moment he had laid eyes on the boy. How could he have not the kid was a mini-me for him they looked so much alike if you didn't count the fact Emersyn was more delicate looking which, knowing the reason for it, Tony pointedly ignored. The child was his and adorable, and… still looking at Tony as if he were the devil himself.
When Tony was so close to the child, who had tried to get as far away from Tony as the bed would allow, seeing tears streaming from his face, he reluctantly backed off. He couldn't deal with tears and since his continued presence obviously wasn't doing Tony any favors to endear him to his son, he left to get a nurse.
The nurse stayed in Em's (Tony had decided that was going to be his son's nickname) for over forty-five minutes, leaving Tony outside pacing. The nurse said nothing when she came out, giving him a note before returning to her other duties. Tony wanted to slap himself after reading it. He had just listened to the details of Em's story yesterday and he had already done something to make the boy dislike him already.
It was written in very neat handwriting and it read:
"The man smelled like alcohol, like Jamie always did when he beat me, like the night he killed Malinda. I can't stand the smell. It makes me want to cry and it scares me."
Tony went home and poured over fifty-thousand dollars worth of alcohol down the drain, making note to do the same thing in his Malibu and Los Angles homes.
He made an appointment with his lawyer before locking himself in the lab with Ac/Dc music blaring.
Author's Note: Okay so I hope I did okay writing this. The responses I get determine whether or not I update this so… Please tell me what you think. I am not adverse to constructive criticism as long as it is not downright rude or insulting. Please review.
Word Count (without AN): 2,444
Began Writing: 9/16/13
Finished: 9/21/13