It doesn't fit quite right.
His skin.
Thin, unforgiving ivory cobras wrapped around every inch of his being,
pressing in, restraining him, holding him prisoner.
His breathing is shallow, as they press on his neck, as they turn his ribcage into iron bars. He rubs at his throat, leaving it marred red, seeking out that too-thin cartilage that prevents the snakes from collapsing his throat.
He shudders in a breath, but there is no room for his lungs to expand. There, at his chest, they overlap, sliding over one another as they try to reach his shaking heart. The pressure makes him ill. His head is drifting away, a helium balloon in a dust storm. His stomach sinks deep, drawn inescapably to the Earth's core. His hands shake and he grips the edge of the bathroom sink, knuckles clenched white.
He can still hear his father's words.
He can still feel the wall hard against his back, the tough, thick forearm pressed across his chest.
He can still taste the contempt, the spiteful words on his tongue.
He shudders and raises his head to stare into the broken grey eyes in the mirror. They gaze back at him from above a soft jaw, rounded cheeks and full lips, taunting him like the curve of the crescent moon.
He wonders when he became like this. He wonders why he became like this. When did he become his own prison? When did his shoulders become too slight, his wrists too thin, his stature too short, his feet too small? When did he become unable to hold his own gaze in the mirror?
Was it last week, when the off-licence refused his ID? "C'mon kid, you didn't really think you'd get served with your sister's ID?" Turning away from the counter, his ears burned with shame as the assistant mumbled "Jeez, they're drinking younger and younger these days." He avoided the glances from the girl perusing one of the shelves. He knew her from soccer. Next Saturday she'd ask him why he tried to use his sister's ID, when he's nearly twenty-one himself. Or maybe she'll figure it out. Maybe she'll tell everyone. It'd make for good gossip. Maybe she's laughing at his back now, sneering at him, as he leaves the store, hood up and head down.
No. Not quite. The memory makes his stomach twist, his breath short and shallow, but it was hardly the first time he'd been so exposed.
Further back. On his eighteenth last summer? It had been his fault. He had taken some shots, he got comfortable with the good company and the cheery pub. In his drunken stupor, he forgot his golden rule to avoid public bathrooms. He was lucky, he got one or two good hits in and stumbled out the door and back to his friends, with only an aching gut and a ripped jacket. He went home early, partially because the two men were eyeing him from across the room, mainly because he still really needed to get to a bathroom.
No. The rage that twisted through his guts and spilled out red, the iron hand reaching into his chest and clamping onto his heart, that was different. That was a different feeling entirely. There was another one, deeper, so familiar he almost forgot it was there. But it was always there. He would awake to it crawling across his skin and scraping along his bones each morning, and he would go to bed with it each night. For every moment between it would hang in the air above him, gliding alongside him like a dark raven, sometimes silent and sometimes biting and clawing at him with a vicious beak, granting him no ease. When did it begin to stalk his thoughts?
Perhaps it was when the young girl had to wear a dress to her cousin's wedding. She sat there, in the car, driving down backroads with staggering views that she, for once, could not care for. The dress was too loose, too thin, too dainty, too wrong. It fed the snakes. It spurred them on. They'd take bites at her, leaving scars on her arms and stomach and thighs. When they arrived, she would smile and hug her grandparents. They would compliment her dress, tell her how pretty she was when she just dressed up a little.
She would imagine hooking clawed fingers under the cuff of the cloth, further under skin and sinew, slowly, painfully teasing it away from herself, leaving her an unidentifiable being of muscle and blood and bone. She would imagine the intricate pattern of arteries and veins, pounding steadily through tough muscle, strong fibres that pull, strong like spiders silk, creating shapes at her command. She imagines her lungs expanding to their fullest, the cool strength of the breath that pulls her up and up and straightens her spine, a spine of steel that arcs and curves when she moves. She feels the heart nestled in her chest, beating with strength and vitality and a desperation to stay living, red as hard ruby, unbreakable. She goes closer still, focusing deeper on the vivid pink and creamed white that lay just below the skin, to imagine the cells, dividing, multiplying, counting up and up and creating her. They say her stem cells can become anything, if given the right instruction.
Perhaps she should change the blueprint they have been given.
Perhaps then nobody would call her pretty.
But perhaps it wasn't the blueprint that brought this on her. Perhaps it all started the very day of her birth. Perhaps it was in the doctor's delight as he dooms her, speaking the words that would haunt her eternally. Perhaps it was in the name her mother cooed, the name of a flower, delicate and nurturing, the name of a gentle woman.
Perhaps they had gotten it terribly, woefully wrong.
Perhaps he knew himself better after nearly two decades than a doctor did after a minute.
Perhaps it just a case of mistaken identity.
But he can still hear his father's words.
They're a sharp and shrill ringing that rips through him like a bolt of lightning, tearing him apart.
He can hear his breath- short, shallow, gasping.
"I'd rather a dead daughter than a tranny son."
A strangled sob rises in his chest, a hoarse howl as his fist punches through the mirror. The high-pitched shatter of breaking glass and jagged pain in his hands centers him. The shards crackle against one another as they fall to the floor. The glass is smooth and clear, the light dancing on the warped edges, and his eyes follow the speckles of red to where minuscule shards of glass are embedded in his skin, littering his knuckles and forearm in cuts. His hand seems to sparkle with the specks of glass caught in ragged skin. He distantly observes the rivulets of blood that begin to run down his arm, following the lines of veins beneath his skin, pooling around old scars that have spilled blood before. He is faintly aware of tears that runs similarly down his cheeks, dripping onto the bandages wrapped tightly around his chest. His breathing has eased. He can't breathe deeply, but the rhythm has become steady.
He can still see one eye reflected in what is left of the mirror. A long crack runs through it, but, even with the sheen of tears, he can see his resolve harden in his unwavering gaze. He steels himself as he picks glass out of his hand and slowly wraps it, tightly wound like a boxer's fist.
It is time to rewrite his blueprints.
He calmly buttons his shirt, the one with the epaulettes that make his shoulders look ever-so-slightly broader, using only his unbandaged hand. Now that he has made a decision, he feels almost at ease. His breaths come light and steady as he packs a bag, selective in what he takes with him. He stuffs some spare clothes in, takes copies of medical records, neatly folded into a poly-pocket, grabs his savings and the wad of cash hidden in the pocket his father's suit jacket. Finally, with the bag nearly full, he carefully nestles into the folds of clothing a carved, wooden lion.
He can still hear his father's words when he gave him the carving.
"You've always had a lion's heart you know. Don't let anything break you 're stronger than the world."
He smiles wanly at the memory, quietly shutting the door as he walks on, leaving his home behind him. He is stronger than the world.