The Flower Shop of Insomnia
Chapter 3 ~ All Around Me
Temuujin was late in getting him, so Ivan sat on the side of the rode and contented himself with playing with the ends of his scarf and pouting. His eyes were bright red and puffy from all the crying he had been doing today, his hands were dirty from digging in the dirt. He had created a nice little grave for his dead praying mantis, devastated at her short life that was ended by the cold foot of a murderous boy. She's happy now. He thought to himself with a distant, nonchalant smile painted upon his pale lips, across his face. She was good so she went to heaven. It made Ivan sad to think that he would never be rejoined with her, and all his other bug-friends who had died on his watch. He wasn't a good boy, according to his adopted father, and everyone else in the world, so he must be going to hell.
Sighing, the young boy stood and took a few steps, focusing his eyes on the line between the sidewalk and the street, and trying to walk directly upon it without plummeting off and falling onto the harsh asphalt. That one boy – the sweetie with soft brown hair and lovely green eyes like a meadow's back – had said that Ivan was good, however. He had said that the boy was not a monster. Ivan picked at a leaf that was stuck in the wire of his school fence. He wondered if that boy had been lying to him, and really just planned something treacherous... But, the boy had saved him twice. Perhaps this stranger could be his friend after all.
A wicked and yet pleased smile slowly spread across Ivan's face and he laughed aloud, spinning in a circle and causing his baby-soft blonde hair to billow up into the air, revealing the twisted pink scar on his head. Society was so messed up, in his mind. He didn't understand it. One person told him that a certain thing was wrong, but then another would come along and tell him that it was right – and who was he to believe? The world is stupid. He thought to himself and the smile turned into one of malice as he twisted the leaf away from the fence and tore it into bits with his tiny fingers. Grown-ups are especially stupid. He put the leaf in his mouth, since it was bleeding some sort of white blood, and sucked on it. It didn't taste very pleasant – in fact, it had the faint trace of poison to it's taste – but Ivan chewed it up and swallowed anyways, making a face as it went down.
"Hey!" A sharp voice suddenly called, cracking the air apart with its viciousness, and Ivan whipped around with a look of surprise on his face and leaf juice dribbling down the side of his chin. "Where the hell have you been, boy?" Temuujin asked, and he came closer, his elegant black braid bouncing behind him, rhythmically tapping his tailbone.
Confused, Ivan looked down at his feet. Temuujin scared him, and besides that, his eyes were really ugly and Ivan didn't like looking at them. In fact, Ivan couldn't think of one part of Temuujin that he liked looking at. Maybe his braid, but only when he was sleeping and it wasn't moving around; when it moved around it just reminded Ivan of an ugly black snake.
Fire suddenly burned Ivan's hair as he was gripped by it and his adopted father forced his head up, forced him to stare into those bottomless yellow eyes he hated. "I asked you a question, Ivan!" He snapped harshly, narrowing those putrescent eyes into putrescent slits. "What in God's name is on your face?" He went on to inquire, and then made a long show of licking his finger and using it to scrub the leaf juice away. "What the fuck have you had in your mouth!?"
Because he was terrified of Temuujin, and because he had no idea why the man was angry, it was quite hard for Ivan to force himself to fathom answers. It was difficult not to just stare, like a doll, with empty lavender eyes devoid of feeling but yet Ivan found the strength to answer. "I-I was just waiting her for you to pick me up." He tried to keep his voice steady, fiddling with his fingers absentmindedly, and twirling them against the light pink fabric of his scarf. "And I got bored, so I ate a leaf."
Temuujin abruptly laughed. "A leaf? Idiot boy. You're probably going to die now of some type of rare poisoning or some shit. Not that I care. I'll just have to get a new, better servant since you're such a lazy one. You can't even show up on time for me to pick you up and instead have to come out here and act like an oaf!" He started dragging Ivan by the arm now, to his small black car that was parked in the shadow of a tree.
"B-but...you weren't here yet! I've been waiting for you the whole time -." Ivan began.
"Shut your face. I was parked in the front the whole time and you should have known to go and look." He scolded. Temuujin opened the passenger side door – in the front – for Ivan and let him get in, and then shut it with an angry bang and got in on the drivers side.
Everything in the care was completely pristine, so Ivan made sure his dirty hands remained in his lap the whole drive home. He wished he could have had them moving, or playing with something, however, because the whole while the car bumped along the rigid road Temuujin was scolding him and chiding him, and calling him all sorts of names. Only when they finally arrived at the flower shop, which they lived in a small apartment above, did the man finally seem to cool down.
"Have you done all your chores today?" He asked brusquely, glancing at Ivan over his shoulder as he unlocked the front door, which actually led to the inside of the shop. There were stairs to the left of the cash register, that led up to another door, and when that one was unlocked a whole little house was revealed.
Ivan nodded as soon as he was asked. It wasn't a lie. "Da, I did." He glanced around at the familiar flowers, and approached a beautiful rue flower. Its petals were so soft and delicate, and he closed his eyes in bliss as he ran his fingertips over them. His praying mantis deserved a heaven full of flowers like this, and all the wretched prey-bugs she could eat. "I just have to do my homework, now." The boy added slowly, peering at Temuujin from the corner of his eyes.
The skinny Asian merely grunted, and beckoned him to come upstairs. They slowly made there way the top, where the door was unlocked, and Ivan rushed inside to his home. It smelled like incense, and fresh fruit, and everything was arranged tidily and neatly, as if it had been graphed out of a multitude of neat little squares. Ivan inhaled happily and hung his heavy coat on the coat wrack – not that he needed it for it was fairly warm where he lived – but habit had caused him to keep putting it on every day. Temuujin went and sat on the small white couch next to the window, and picked up a big ball of yarn and two needles, beginning to knit. He was usually in a good mood when he did this, and so Ivan decided he would go and sit beside him while he did his homework. Company always felt nice, even though it wasn't someone he adored.
As he started on his math, Ivan softly said, "I think I made a friend today..." while scribbling numbers on the paper. He didn't really know how to do math well, but he knew the answer had to be a number, so he was set with just writing them in. In elementary school, Ivan had been great with math. He'd even created a whole world in his head just to calculate it, and it always made him giggle. If Ivan had a thousand friends, and he gained five hundred more, he then had one thousand and five hundred friends. However, he'd stopped caring about that world by the time he reached sixth grade. It seemed to...impossible.
"Really now?" Temuujin raised his eyes from his knitting for a brief moment to survey Ivan and a faint smile flickered across his face. "That's all well. You don't have very many friends. It's probably because you eat a lot of candy so you're kind of fat. Most people think that fat kids are ugly." His eyes flashed like knives and the words cut through Ivan as if he were soft, half-melted butter.
Tossing the math away, Ivan took out his English and began to work on that, finding it much more fun to be able to express himself at least a little bit. He wasn't smiling though – Temuujin had hurt his feelings. In retaliation, he told him, "Well, it's that nice boy who came to the flower shop a little while ago. The one who bumped into me on accident. He's really nice." Ivan began to doodle on his paper without thinking, and the face of the boy soon appeared in his unskilled sketches. "Today he met me by the fence and saved me from a bunch of meanies who wanted to hurt me..." A sigh escaped his lips.
Whether it was because he saw the doodle or was already heated from the words Ivan couldn't tell, but Temuujin stood up and took all of Ivan's homework he had laid out on the ground – the math, the English he had in his hand, the science – and crumpled it into tight balls, throwing them all separately at the wall. Ivan knew better to retrieve those papers; he wouldn't have any homework to turn in tomorrow and would again be scolded by angry teachers who thought he was the stupidest thing in the world.
"So that's why you didn't come to meet me in the front of your school! Playing with your little slut friends by the fence, were you?" Temuujin's voice was suddenly ice cold, and if any threats were to come, Ivan was sure they would have complete mirth in them.
"N-nyet! You have the wrong idea!" A gasp fell from Ivan's little jaws and he found himself backing away, his body shaking, until he was pressed against the wall. His heart beat furiously inside his chest until he feared it may pop out from between his ribs and fall onto the floor with a sickening, defeated splat. "I-it was during lunch!" He stammered, desperately trying to assure his adopted father that he hadn't done anything bad in the slightest.
However, Temuujin had other ideas, and his mindset would not be changed. "Don't lie to me you selfish little brat. I can see the guilt in your eyes!" He screamed at him, shoulders going up and down with the velocity of a heartbeat. As he neared, his breathing gradually grew calmer, slower, and more dangerous, and his yellow teeth shone from his opened snarling mouth. "So that's what you had all over your face...you little whore..." Like remnants of rain slowly dripping off a long blade of grass, Temuujin's eyes fell. Ivan wasn't stupid. He knew exactly what Temuujin was implying before the word even left his lips: "Fagot."
This came as no surprise to Ivan – it wasn't like he hadn't been called a fagot before – and he simply started Temuujin in the face with all of the innocence remaining in his tainted, blackened soul, trembling and longing to taste the purity that the child within him once had.
Gripping the tiny boy's arm like a hungry predator, Temuujin dragged the child over to the pristine couch. "Little misbehaving wretches need to be taught a lesson." He said, and the words that were once water falling ominously from a blade of grass turned into ice. He made Ivan bend over the couch and started to take of his belt behind him, the jingle all to familiar to the Russia, who stared ahead at the wall with dead eyes.
A beating wouldn't phase him, no, Ivan got those too often. It would just be the same old pain, falling again and again, until the child could no longer support himself on his own two feet and he could feel the hot trickles of blood falling from his body where the belt slit the skin and made him cry harder than normal. A beating gave Ivan no incentive; it gave him nothing but new bruises to bring to show and tell tomorrow... And Ivan knew that, no matter what Temuujin did, he would still wake up beside the man, cuddling his hand like he was the only person in the world keeping him clinging to life, and sucking on the end of his braid like a child trying to substitute for a mother...because Ivan had no one else. He had no friends. That nameless kid was just another illusion sent by god to test and torment him as he walked the endless tightrope of life, above a pit of burning fire that he was bound to plummet into eventually.
After all, all bad boys are doomed to go to hell.