Speechless (Muke)

DAY 6:

Michael almost rolled his eyes.

"Why are there so many?"

"Because I like cutting myself,"

"Why?"

Michael finally met the boy's eye when he asked him this.

"It helps me deal with my pain and my mind," the boy responded.

So when he got home Michael found himself in the bathroom holding a broken razor to his wrist and he cut himself hissing slightly at the sudden pain, but soon relaxing into it almost. It put his mind at ease.

Michael was thirteen. A beer bottle smashed inches from his head and he jumped letting out a nearly silent cry.

"What do you mean you like a boy?!" his dad hollered.

"I-I didn't mean to, I'm sorry, please don't hit me," Michael spoke quickly his voice shaking.

"You're unnatural! You're a faggot! I will not tolerate faggots! You are not my son,"

It was the last sentence that hurt the most. And the fists that pummelled him afterwards left the physical proof of his pain. The beating was terrible and exhausting for both Michael and his dad and the words just didn't stop. They never seemed to stop.

Michael was fourteen. He was working four jobs at this point. He was waiting for the doctor to come back with his test results. He knew it wasn't normal to have the voice in his head and he wanted to figure out why it was there.

"Michael," the doctor started when he sat down. "What you have is something called depressive-type schizoaffective disorder..."

Michael didn't listen to most of what the doctor said after that. He was sick. He was sick and that made him a freak and unnatural and bad. Michael was so very, very bad and he realized now he only had his own head to blame for it.

Michael was sixteen. He was out cold on top of the roof of the abandoned building after taking way too many drugs for his body to handle. It was on purpose of course because Michael had never wanted to die more, but he didn't even know the half of it yet.

He woke up a few hours later and after a few disoriented moments Michael broke down as the events leading up to his awakening were brought to the forefront of his mind.

"Dammit!" he screamed.

And as much as Michael hated that he was still alive he promised himself he'd never use drugs or alcohol for anything ever again.

He stumbled towards the ladder after a while and the roof was tipping and swaying under his feet. Or at least he thought it was. When the dizziness had mostly subsided Michael climbed down the ladder but fell.

He cursed when he hit the ground and bit down hard on his lip to stop from screaming. Nobody was around so Michael picked himself up broken wrist and all and trekked towards home cradling his wrist into his chest. He decided on waiting till he was sure the drugs were out of his system before heading to the hospital.

When he finally did the doctor smiled at him and reset the bones in his wrist forcing him into a cast. There was no concern for Michael's well-being or emotional state after Michael lied about the cuts littering his wrists being from the animal shelter he volunteered at. Back then his thighs had taken most of the brunt and his wrists had been passable as angry kittens.

It was nearly four months before he got the cast off and still, nobody noticed his sudden change in everything. He failed to pretend to be okay, he failed to do anything except excel in school because even though he was dead inside part of him hoped that by doing well in school he could make his dad proud again.

Michael was seventeen. He was at the abandoned building with Scott and Liam and a bunch of random people he had never seen before, or at least couldn't remember seeing.

"Is it true you're a fag?" Liam asked.

Michael tensed he wasn't high or drunk he had stopped that stuff a while back when he realized it was pointless, but the cigarette dangling from his fingertips fell to the ground and Liam let out a laugh.

"You're a f*cking fag! Michael Clifford, is a fag." Liam laughed obnoxiously. "How can your parents still love you? How can they look at you, and think 'that's my gay ass son, oh how I love him'?"

Michael's fist clenched. "They don't,"

"Then what do they do?"

"I don't see how that's any of your business,"

And then Liam had Michael pinned on the floor and he was beating him. "You're worthless and you are wasting our oxygen by continuing to breath, Michael," he told him.

But this wasn't his dad or the kids from school. This was Liam some sixteen year old with an attitude and a bad sense of humour. And then Michael was throwing him into a wall and found himself being pulled off of a nearly dead Liam.

So when he went up to the roof nobody followed him and eventually nobody ever dared to go on the roof whether Michael was on it or not. It just became Michael's roof.

Michael remembered what it had felt like to be hurt by everyone, he remembered what it had felt like to cut for the first time, he remembered what it felt like when he told his dad he was gay, he remembered what it felt like when the doctor told him he was screwed up in the head, he remembered what it felt like to give up only to be denied the one thing he truly wanted, he remembered what it felt like to attack someone else, he remembered feeling like his dad in that moment. And Michael remembered hating everything about himself.

And he just wanted to forget. And so he did and Luke screamed and screamed when the doctors told him. He screamed and screamed and screamed. And then he cried.

And for a few minutes Michael was awake. But only a few minutes.