Concrete Smeghead
Hello! This was going to be a companion piece to another one of my different genre stories, God's Harp, but then I decided Rimmer was better to fit into the role.
SUMMARY: Songfic about young Rimmer and the angst pain he has to go through. Concrete Angel. Suicide
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Red Dwarf, and I do not own the song lyrics to 'Concrete Angel'.
WARNINGS: Beating abuse, suicide. All the angst that if you know me as a writer, I can't get away from.
NOTES: Okay, in the song lyrics, I changed them around a little bit. I changed the 'she's to 'he's. Later, when the song mentions 'dress', please think of it as a broad umbrella term. Dress just means outfit. Lyrics are out of order.
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"Through the wind and the rain, he stands hard as a stone. In a world that he can't rise above. But his dreams give him wings, and he flies to a place where he's loved. Concrete angel."
Arnold trudged foreword, leaning against the wind that threatened to pull him back. The rain beating down on his head wasn't helping. The wind howled and the rain whipped him around, but Arnold kept walking mechanically. He was on auto pilot; his only goal to get to the school on the other side of the atmosphere bubble in one piece.
The stinging cold numbed his brain, which was good, because that meant his mind couldn't think of anything at all. But he was wrong. He started to think about the horrors waiting for him at school, and at home. Arnold wasn't sure that that's what he could call the place where he ate and slept anymore. It wasn't where he lived. He lived in his dreams, where he was in one of Earth's meadows. Where he wasn't beaten; where he was loved. That's what he called home. Home was a cozy place where someone felt comforted, safe, and wanted. He didn't feel any of these.
"He walks to school with the lunch he packed. Nobody knows what he's holdin' back. Wearin' the same dress he wore yesterday. He hides the bruises with linen and lace."
Arnold clutched the paper bag tighter. He wished he had his Napoleon lunchbox instead of the brown paper bag, because the lunchbox showed more of his inner self. Deep inside, though, where a raging storm of emotions were in pitch combat, he knew he couldn't give the bullies another reason to make fun of him. They had enough reasons already. If he brought the piece of loved tin to school, it would not survive to see tomorrow, never mind himself.
He walked past a large group of kids walking to school, too; his long legs easily helping him pass them up. He could hear the muffled laughter and whispered insults. No one knew just how badly they were damaging his soul and self esteem. The hurtful words, the rumor, the whispers. That wasn't to mention the beatings.
He tugged down at his jeans, wishing they were just a bit longer so they could cover his bare ankles. These had been Frank's jeans when he had been Arnold's age. But with the stretching machine, and his own natural growth, he was tall for his age.
His shirt rubbed against him, making shivers run down his spine. The shirt was a girl's lace shirt, that his mother had picked up at a garage sale. Didn't she know that that added fuel to the fire? That they started calling him a girl! This was the only shirt that was long enough to cover his wrists, so Arnold wore it everyday, along with his well loved, and only pair of jeans. They made fun of him, saying he didn't have any other clothes, and other awful stuff. He liked his clothes baggy and long, so it would hide the marks, hits, and bruises from his father, brothers, or the bullies at school. He hated when people found out. The looks of pity, the question, which he either painfully answered, but most of the time shrugged off. Arnold could almost feel himself breaking apart, from the inside and out.
"The teacher wonders, but she doesn't ask. It's hard to see the pain behind the mask. Bearing the burden of a secret storm. Sometimes he wishes he was never born."
Arnold scooted down in his chair, under the curious watchful eyes of the teacher. She had always seen the way everyone else seemed to pick on him, and the way he would take it, and swallow it down. She tried to let it go, because it wasn't really affecting him. He was always soft spoken, but if someone said something to him, he would come to his own defense. He was always aloof and hard, not caring about anything or anyone. That's how he usually acted, so she didn't think anything of it. Little did she know that he was slowly killing himself, always bottling up his emotions, thought, and tears. She didn't know that he wished he was never born, so he didn't have to go through this horrible life.
Being so self centered, she didn't notice that Arnold hadn't said a word today, just looked straight ahead of himself. Depression, loneliness, and sadness keeping him company, as silent tears tried to brake free. He stopped taking notes, stopped caring, as he day-dreamed. He was drifting away.
"Somebody cries in the middle of the night. The neighbors hear, but they turn out the lights. A fragile soul caught in the hands fate. When morning comes, it'll be too late."
The neighbors went to sleep, hardly registering the gasp of pain coming from next door, the respectable Rimmers. The military soldier father, the nice gossipy mother, the three rising sons. They didn't think of the bad apple, the wrong mistake that currently was collapsed on his bed, after a brutal beating from his father. Before, it had been the bullies during lunch, then it was his brothers after school, now it was his father.
They didn't know that the mother was a whore and a bitch, who spread her legs for anybody, and was mean to everything. They didn't know the father was half crazy with broken dreams, torturing his sons to fill his place. They didn't know three of the sons cheated and weaseled their way up to be good, and were spoiled and show offs. They didn't know that the father's brother was shagging up the mother, and was sneakily raising three of the boys, while the last one actually had the father's genes. They didn't know Arnold was the only decent one, that wouldn't do the easy, dirty way about things, like his family. They didn't know he was breaking, that only good one slowly turning mean and dark.
They didn't know or care that Arnold was currently so pained and confused, that he was drugging himself with his mother's birth control pills. When it will be morning, no one will care. It will be too late to save that lost soul, whose surroundings had broken and killed him. The neighbors went to sleep and dreamed happy things as another being slowly floated away into darkness. The darkness didn't hurt him, or beat him, or bully him, or say mean things to him. It actually offered an escape, the teenager couldn't refuse.
"An angel boy with an upturned face. A broken heart that the world forgot."
"Through the wind and the rain, he stands hard as a stone. In a world that he can't rise above. But his dreams give him wings, and he flies to a place where he's loved. Concrete angel."
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I hope you liked it, and didn't cry too hard. It wasn't too detailed about how he died, unlike my other stories. Please review!