Kurt
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They'd gotten the gun to protect him.
It had taken applications and permits and lying and, when those had failed, an illegal purchase from a Russian immigrant, paying three times the gun's value for it and three boxes of bullets. It had gone in the closet, on a high shelf, in a locked box. The key stayed in the dresser drawer, taped to the side. Where it sat, only Bernd could reach it, shoved into the back corner, too high for his wife without pulling aside the vanity chair, too high for their son, who would not go into closets. Kurt feared the dark in closed places.
Bernd supposed his fear of the dark would leave him one day. And that was why the box was locked.
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"No!"
It was his first word, and for a month, his only word. He would shout it back at them like a parrot, hanging from the rings of the window curtains, squirming and kicking and sometimes biting as his mother tried to pull him back down. When she finally caught him by the hips and pulled he'd scream it, too strong for his age and too fast, slow to talk and quick to climb, dangerous to get ahold of with his teeth out.
He'd say it, stubbornly, when he fell asleep in Ingred's arms at night, still damp and fluffed and smelling of soap, curled like an overgrown kitten. "No." he'd say around the thumb in his mouth, eyes already half shut, dozing against her chest. "No."
It would take another three months to finally call her 'mama.'
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Kurt would go to the roof at night, laying on his back on the sun-hot shingles, the last strip of red gone from the horizon and the porch light glowing beneath him. Distantly, he could see the lights of town on the hill, hidden behind night trees, stretched over the earth like a spiders web glistening with dew. And above it all would be stars. Bright stars. Blue stars. Country stars. He would pick out the constellations he knew, and wonder if there were cities up there, too.
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Company.
It was his mother's aunt, the aunt who Didn't Know, the aunt who Couldn't Keep Her Mouth Shut. It was the aunt who wore long pearls in her photographs, who had hats that matched all of her outfits. She came in a blue car, with her husband, who could never remember his father's name, and she came without invitation. She'd simply called them an hour before, saying she was on her way and she'd been to visit her sister and they needed to talk about her mother's care, and maybe they could all go out to lunch because she was starving. And his mother had tried to put her off, saying they were busy and her husband had work to do, but the aunt had said Nonsense, she only came once a month and they could very well make time for her.
So she'd come. And Kurt and his parents had scrambled around the main rooms, gathering everything that was his, loading it in his arms and sending him up to the attic with a match under his heel, locking the door behind him. He'd bolted it, and he'd put it all down on his desk, and he'd sat down on the chair by the window to watch the dirt road that wound through the trees to their home.
He was still there when the blue car pulled up, when his Great Aunt came stepping out in long pearls, his blue face up against the circular window that looked out from the one place that was his. He saw her and her husband who's name Kurt couldn't remember because it didn't matter, because he'd never met him and never would meet him, come up to the front porch and his parents go out to meet them, talking for a long moment on the front lawn of the house. Kurt couldn't read their lips. Kurt couldn't hear them.
Kurt was in the attic.
His mother disappeared back inside the house for a moment and reappeared with her purse, all four of them going to his aunt's blue car, all four of them loading inside. And neither of his parents looked back at the attic window, because if they looked maybe the aunt would look, and if she looked she'd see his face behind the glass. And she didn't know. No one could ever know, that the Wagner's had a son.
He watched them drive off down the dirt road, turn the bend, and disappear. Kurt dropped his forehead against the glass, and was silent.
Kurt was in the attic.
Kurt would always be in the attic.
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-Stop me.-
-Somebody get up here and stop me.-
He'd been sitting on his bed for nearly an hour now, the door locked, the radio off, the rain falling gently on the roof of the house, making soft, feline footsteps. He'd planned the best way to do this. On the bed, with his back to the wall, so when all was said and done they'd only need throw away the mattress and sponge the wallpaper. No carpet to tear up. No window to replace. He'd briefly considered laying down a tarp, but the only one was over the wood pile, and his father would notice it gone. No tarp, then. The blankets would do.
It would be messy. He knew that.
Kurt had watched those real life crime dramas on television, the ones with photos of little girls with their stomachs ripped open, wives with their skull's blown apart, and he knew there would be blood. But his options were limited. He couldn't do it in the downstairs bathroom, with the razor. They'd find him to fast.
-Somebody get up here and find me. Now.-
They couldn't find him until it was done.
Besides, it had been sitting in his dresser drawer for three months now, hiding under his winter clothes that it was too warm to wear, places his mother wouldn't look. For three months he wondered if they'd notice, if they'd go in the closet and find the lock box forced, the gun missing, and then they'd know. But there'd been dust on the box, so much dust, and he knew they hadn't touched it in all the fourteen years of his life.
Kurt, running his thumb over the serial number on the cold black barrel, took a shaky breath and raised the gun up, holding it at the ceiling. His finger barely fit beneath the trigger guard, he'd have to use his fingertip to press it. It was awkward. He could do it. He could do it.
A rabbit ran in his chest. Beating, beating, beating.
Only for a little while.
"Shit." Kurt said, or squeaked, scrunching his eyes shut and mouth pulling open in a grimace, neat, straight, perfect white fangs bared. His shoulders rose up around his ears.
-Somebody fucking find me.-
-Somebody find me right now.-
The muzzle touched the side of his head and Kurt jerked away, startled by its coldness. The gun was heavier than he thought it would be. More solemn, more impersonal. He'd held it often, these past three months. Cradled it. Looked at it. Pulled the safety on and off, cocked it and uncocked it. Put it in his mouth once. Hadn't pulled the trigger.
Kurt's breath shook and he was making little noises, little animal noises, on the exhale. He felt his heart beat. Beat. Beat. And beat.
Kurt gave an open throated bleat, flinched, and pulled the trigger.
The noise was massive.
Kurt felt white hot pain at the side of his head, blood pouring into his ear, his ear ringing and throbbing and deafened, and his eyes snapped open. Hyperventilating. Bleating. Animal noises.
He'd missed.
Kurt dropped the gun and wilted forward over his legs, lungs heaving, blood running from the scalp wound into his face, into his eyes. Throbbing and red. He couldn't breathe. There were footsteps pounding on the staircase, two sets of them, alerted by the shot, alerted by the noise, the slam of his father's body against the door and his fist pounding.
"KURT!" he bellowed, trying to force the Krieger lock. "KURT!"
Kurt opened his throat and the noise broke out like a water balloon, wailing, high, horrible and infantile. Kurt pulled his legs to his chest and collapsed sideways on the bed, wrapping his arms around his knees and his tail around his feet, bawling and bleeding onto the bedsheets.
His father, cursing, screaming, shouldering the door down.
Pound.
Pound.
Pound.
The hinges gave way first. The door split into the room from the wrong side, sending screws and bits of metal flying into the carpet. Two bodies tripping in, scrambling for the bed, hands grabbing at him, uncurling him, voices shouting and shrieking and pressing blood stained bedclothes to his head.
Kurt's heart beating.
It beat. And beat. And beat.