Saints & Sinners

Chapter Two

A.N: I'm excited about this. I hope you like my new star: Colin Ford, he's playing my wonderful Sebastian. I hope you guys like it.

Chapter Two:

The last time I saw my mothers, they were leaving me behind.

Yet again.

They'd stepped into their bright green Volkswagen beetle, and drove down the trodden mountain road. They waved, they said goodbye, how much they'd miss me, and that they loved me. I suppose some part of me knew that they did, but I couldn't help but question it. Parents who leave their kids behind, they clearly didn't love me enough, or else they wouldn't leave me to begin with.

In a way, I knew how to translate what people said into what they actually meant. It was something I'd picked up over years of being told excuses and being ignored.

When my mums said they loved me, that they'd miss me, their one and only son, their most important thing in the whole wide world, it was only to satisfy their consciences.

So it was just like that. My mums ditched me here, in some Norwegian village off the coast of Who-Really-Cares, near the lake of Fuck-My-Life, with a distant aunt I hadn't met before.

Somehow, I'd begun to think that my mums only really wanted a child to show homophobes that they could have children and raise them properly; that the only reason I'd been brought into this world was to prove a point. Not that my mums didn't love me, they just forgot about me. I was forgettable that way.

I was the kid at the back of the room, the one that doesn't really talk or stand out, the one you never really notice, or the one you choose to ignore. I'm the kid you see in your school yearbook fifteen years later and think "Wait, who is that kid, again?" That's me.

"Don't look so gruesome, boy," my aunt Agatha had warned me. I let my eyes look her over briefly, trying to read her. What I saw was a grim and pallid face, with a sour look blurred over every feature. I wasn't sure why, but I could tell she didn't like me.

She looked nothing like my mother Freya. In fact, I never would have guessed the relation. Aunt Agatha was older, and more stern. Her accent was thick with the Norwegian tongue, and her hair was black and slickened with grease, tied into a tight bun at the top of her head. Her face remained a constant grimace the entire time, like she wanted to spit in your face or shit under your pillow.

She strained to turn around and face me, like her porcelain body would creak and snap if she moved too quickly. That was what I thought she was, at the time, a porcelain doll. But thinking back, she was probably more like a Russian nesting doll, where a smaller doll remained hidden inside - it was layer after layer of secrets and lies. Even more than me, and I'd had quiet a few back then.

"Get in the cottage and keep shut," she ordered.

She was on me fast, pressing her hand against my shoulders, her grip forceful, her nails digging into my skin. I flinched when she pushed me further away from the only people that should have loved me, and into my new home.

That was when I saw it for the first time. The place I'd be staying, until my parents decided to pop back up and take me away again. The so-called "cottage" blossomed before my eyes like a new summer flower, a massive wooden manor framed with bright red tiles , cradling the top of the mountain. It was more of a palace, watching over the tiny speckle of a village below.

"Where do I stay?" I murmured, running a hand through my hair as she pushed me further toward the manor.

"Don't mess around with your hair like that, it's unattractive and rude, it'll need to be shaved off, all of it. I won't have people thinking you're some kind of hobo. And you'll stay in the attic, okay?"

I watched her as she eyed me with distaste, and pulled from her belt a large set of rusty keys that jiggered and jaggered whenever she moved. She flipped her fingers through them, until procuring an old golden key that unlocked the door. It screamed as she forced it open, and pushed me through the door-frame.

The house somehow seemed larger on the inside. I'd never stayed in an actual house before, we'd been in hotels and suites, pent-houses, guest-houses, resorts, motels, even a few hostels. But never a house. I never really knew what the word home meant, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to, but for most of my seventeen years on this planet, I'd been alone. And I was content that way, I kind of liked it. Although that was only because I'd never known anything different. I never knew what it felt like to be surrounded by a big family, to enjoy Christmas with everyone around the tree, or Thanksgiving around the dining table. My birthdays, I usually got some flashy gift that I'd never be able to take with me once we left anyway.

I'd became an introvert over the years, I guess. I didn't like people because I never had the chance to, moving around so much meant I'd never settled down and I'd eventually grown uncomfortable with the outer world. I was much more myself being alone.

The entire manor was made of wood, the floors creaked on the slightest touch. Everywhere I looked, There was dusty old furniture that looked like it was about to crack and crumble from the slightest touch.

"Up the stairs," Agatha croaked, her voice bitter to boredom. A set of old stairs shot up in the centre of the main hallway, and she guided me towards it.

The stairway spiraled off into floor after floor of hallways that twisted around the dim-lit house, and I was guided to the very top. It seemed rude of her to give me the damp, dark attic when there were obviously dozens of bedrooms around the house free. She was the only person that lived here, after all. It was like she did it just to annoy me, to exact some kind of revenge. Why did she hate me? What had I done to her in the last five minutes of knowing her?

"This is your humble boudoir." She had stopped, I realised, at the end of the stairway. There stood a single door that she tossed open. "You'll be here a month, maybe two, if I can stand you enough. Nothing around here is for you, this place is not your home, so stay in the attic or downstairs when you aren't at St. Seppo's."

"St. What-o's?" The question blurted before I had a chance to ask properly, and I regretted immediately upon seeing the revulsion on her face.

She smiled horribly. "Your new school."

"Why did you say it like that?" I asked.

"Like what?" she asked, smiling that same wicked smile again, acting all clueless.

"All sinister, like I don't know what I'm in for."

"Well, you're not going to any normal school, you silly little thing. You're going to St. Seppo's, where they don't tolerate any kind of dirty business. This school is the real thing, the cure for sin, for any kind of sin. It takes in the most slutty of homosexuals, the most common of harlots and slags and slappers, and it turns them into the gleam in God's merciful, light blue eyes."

I sniggered.

She glared.

I resisted another snigger.

She noticed.

"Be ready to start school tomorrow, Sebastian, you're sure as Hell in for a treat."

She tutted, and left.

By that point, the only thought running through my mind was that I'd been fucked over, and dumped in a shit-hole. I'd been homeschooled all of my life, so the thought of going to a local school was terrifying. If only I knew then, the saints and sinners that I'd meet the very next day.

Sorry it's a small one, the next few will be longer. Hope you enjoyed. Remember to vote and comment if you like the story so far, I love hearing from my readers and I always try to reply! Xoxo, Clay.