Erik walked back to his apartment, the driving November wind cutting through his leather jacket. He pulled his collar tight against the hungry ghosts that attacked him at every corner.

The laundromat where Mama had worked, where her boss had kept a bowl of peppermints in his drawer, just for him. The look of disappointment on her face when Erik came in one cold winter day, blood smeared down his torn denim jeans and thin sweater. She had not said anything, merely brushed the dirt off his collar and bandaged his wounds.

It was not until later, when they had returned to their dingy Elmhurst apartment, that she sat him down, mug of tea in hand, and spoke to him.

"Erik, my darling boy," she had said, soft-spoken as always, "Do not let them make you into this. You are better than that. Better than this."

The smell of bleach was overwhelming in the small apartment. It smelled like pride.

"But, Mama-" Erik had said, frustrated at not being able to find the words, "They hate me. I'm-" Different, with his old-fashioned clothes and his accent, a Polak and a Jew, his pale body and his long limbs.

His mother silenced him with a single look. She reached across the cracked vinyl tabletop and took his hand in hers, rough from years of chemicals stripping away layer after layer of skin and dignity.

"Erik, listen to me. They have to teach you how to hate, my son. It is not a lesson I want you to learn, my beautiful boy. You can be so much more than this."

Erik nodded, suitably chastened. "Yes, Mama. I will make you proud."

"Silly boy," his mother had said. "You already have. Look at you, my brilliant American son. Look at what you can do."

What would she think of him now?

"They have to teach you how to hate, my son."

He had learned the lesson well. But- what choice had he had? The boy his Mama had raised, the one she was proud of- that boy had died with her, had wept over her broken body, had carefully covered that bruised shell with blanket so that the police would not immediately see her torn undergarments.

That boy was dead, because he had to survive, and that boy would not. That boy would have screamed when Shaw first branded him, would have wept when he strapped him down, would have meekly swallowed the pills and taken the injections- that boy would have died, anyway, and at least this way Erik had had some control over his death.

He passed Tifereth Israel, where he had attended Torah lessons, where his mother's funeral had been held.
"Yitgaddal veyitqaddash shmeh beʻalma di vra khir'uteh rabba veyamlikh malkhuteh veyatzmaḥ purqaneh viqarev qetz meshiḥeh," he paused.
What was the rest?
"beḥayekhon..." he began, but stopped.

Who was he kidding? He had not set foot in a synagogue since his mother's death nearly ten years ago, and he has long since forcibly forgotten that life. He refused to sully those memories with the horror that followed.

He hurried along the streets. There were too many ghosts, he would pay them no mind. No man yet has died from memories.

It is strange, though, that it is these ones that cut like a knife, rather than the ones with Shaw. He has no problem in Forest Hill- he quite likes it, in fact, but here, among his childhood homes, he feels undone.

They call at him from every turn

"Erik, be nice."

"Fucking Polak!"

"Go back to where you came from, motherfucking faggot!"

"Come here, my darling."

"Your mathematical abilities are exceptional, Erik. Have you considered a career..?"

"Kocham cię, my beautiful boy. Kocham cię."

"I'm so proud of you, my son. Go make your Mama proud."

With a mental cry of frustration, he gives up. He can afford the bus fare, today. Anything to leave this place, which reminds him of all the is and should be. Where his mother's warm, brown eyes and pale skin, weathered before her time by hungerfearhatehope, seem to lie in every shadow.

It is when he is on the bus, gazing mindlessly out the window at the ugly, plastic sided houses, each of which houses three families or more, that he sees him again. A mop of brown hair and a threadbare woollen coat, collar turned up against the wind. He is not sure it is him, at first, until he sees the slight limping gait of the man as he struggles to balance a bag of groceries on one arm as he opens the door with the other.
Charles.
Apparently, he will be seeing a lot more of this place, and its ghosts.

He tries to be angry about that. It doesn't quite work.

The number burns a hole in his pocket.

There are a million reasons to get rid of it, but, as the bus rushed by, he catches a glimpse of the anxious joy that crosses Charles' face as a small, black-haired boy flings himself at his legs, and he can't bring himself to remember a single one.

Suddenly, he can't wait until Tuesday.