Mush Meyers was a sweetheart. That was a given; everyone knew it. Everyone also knew that Mush was almost hopelessly innocent and more than a little naïve, if not slightly on the simple side of the fence. He never quite seemed to have a firm enough grasp on things, and people passed it off as part of his charm. Sweet, stupid little Mush, never has a clue. So lovable, such an endearing personality.
Everyone knew that.
What everyone didn't know, however, was that they were wrong about Mush Meyers. Completely, horribly wrong.
He had grown up to be a good-looking young man, and no one could deny that. Even as a child, when he came to the lodging house, Mush was exceptionally good-looking. Impossibly adorable and endearing in all his prepubescent awkwardness. He'd certainly grown into his ears, which no longer stuck out, and most especially, he'd grown into his unique, curly brown hair. It went well with his unique, brownish-gold skin tone. He was muscle-bound, but not overly so, and was just tall enough to notice, but not so tall that you'd pick him out of a crowd when you weren't looking specifically for him. Mush was nothing extraordinarily special, to the untrained eye, but to anyone who bothered to get to know him (which was nobody), he was far more complex than he seemed.
His voice was soft and sweet, sounding light-hearted and optimistic even in the most serious of situations. You could've just lost your family, home, and livelihood and Mush could make you feel better just by talking. He had dark eyes that danced when he smiled and smoldered when he frowned, but few people ever took the chance to really look. All they saw was that vague, vacant expression, and handed him a few cents and a kind, pitiful pat on the head in exchange for a newspaper.
If only they knew it was all intentional, an act, a rather ingenious facade.
Mush had learned from an early age that ignorance is bliss. It's also your key to freedom, and to more luxuries than one would think.
By the time he was seven, Mush had seen so much violence and evil that it was a wonder he could function at all in the real world. He'd witnessed his father beat and rape his mother so many times that he'd never be able to count them, not if he had a sea of extra hands. When his father had finally brought an end to Mush's poor, loving, innocent mother, he turned on his wide-eyed, terrified young son.
Imagine that. A five-year-old boy, coldly raped and brutally beaten by his own father, almost on a daily basis. It was almost too much for one to bear. Something like that, you can see on a person's face. So Mush decided to keep it simple, to put up a front and be simple.
But Mush held a secret.
There was one day, a week or so before his seventh birthday, when his father got tired of him wriggling and crying when he told him to hold still.
I'll teach you to hold still, boy.
Those wild, drunken black eyes, glinting as brightly as the kitchen knife did in the flickering, dimming candlelight of the living room. Those eyes still haunted Mush, tormented and taunted him relentlessly every time he dared to look in the mirror.
He remembered so well how he ran that night. How that primal survival instinct had kicked in so suddenly and so strongly that he could feel it pulsing in his veins, icy-cold, in place of his blood. How he ran, screaming, through their tiny, crowded, dirty apartment, with the neighbors thumping on the walls in complaint. How he dove over the washtub, and his father, drunk with rage and cheap whiskey, ran straight-on into it. His knees went out from under him and he went down all in one fluid movement. The knife he clutched in his big, sweaty hand slid in between a couple of his ribs with such ease, but the most terrifying, disgusting noise.
Mush watched as the man who killed his mama, the man who beat him nearly to death regularly and raped him, slumped slowly forward until his sweat-slicked, bald head hit the freezing-cold standing water he had always refused to drain from the tub. Tiny little Mush watched in fascinated horror and absolute relief as his own father slowly bled out and drowned.
He ran some more. He couldn't stop running. Mush ran at full speed, out the front door, down the rickety, dry-rotting stairs, out into the busy early-morning street and as far away as his young, short legs could carry him. He ran until he collapsed, chest burning and eyes streaming, at the feet of a boy, about three years older than himself, carrying a bundle of newspapers and yelling. The boy took pity on him, took him to lunch. He's mushed all his food together and ate it in just a few large bites, and that's how he'd earned his name.
This boy taught him to be a newsie. He taught him to survive on the streets, how to hold his own in the world. He even taught him how to make up a headline, just like the boys he had seen in the streets when he went out with his mother.
A week or two into Mush's new career as a newsboy, he read a story about a man who was found dead and mostly decomposed in his apartment. He appeared to have been stabbed. The man was suspected in the murder of one woman, and the rapes of several others. It also said that there were murmurs of the man having a small child, but the child was as yet unseen and unheard of.
He announced the story on the hot, sweaty streets, gaining the interest of passersby. He played it off so well – pretended it was nothing out of the ordinary, and nothing he was familiar with.
And this being New York, they all believed him.
Murderer, rapist dead in home – stabbed to death. Justified vigilante or tragic accident?
Child of monster missing! Possible abduction?
He prided himself on his fancy words. It was part of his charm of being so dumb – he always managed to make it seem like he just pulled them out of the newspaper, the way he stuttered and mispronounced them.
Sweet, innocent, naïve little Mush Myers. The pretty boy with the kind face and dark, soulful eyes.
A murderer, a rapist.
He was no better.