Prom Queen ｡ Michael Langdon

9 - BRUISED CHILDREN

     There was a silence, one that lingered with unsaid thoughts and a heavy elephant. Michael's eyes were stuck on his feet, kicking one boot against the ground. Carrie hugged herself as the sky darkened a little more. She wanted to speak to him, but no words formed on her tongue. Another beat of silence; she bit at her lip and blood bloomed in her mouth. 

     "You hate me now, don't you? Because of my religion," he spoke, his words low and bruised. 

     "Hate you? No, I don't hate you. I don't think I could ever hate you," Carrie exclaimed. Was that what Michael thought, that she hated him? Her heat pulsed painfully with that thought alone. She stepped forward, bring herself closer to the boy with bleeding eyes. "And you have free will, so you can practice whatever religion you want to and I won't judge you. That's not my place." Michael's eyes were fervorous, his lips picking up. He couldn't bear it if one more person he cared about hated him. "But, I need to know something." 

     He nodded. "Anything." 

     Carrie licked at the blood on her lip. The question had hovered in her soul all day, yet she wasn't even sure she wanted a definite answer, but she knew she needed it. "Are you related to Tate Langdon, the boy responsible for the Westfield High Massacre?" 

     Michael cocked his head to the side, the intensity in his eyes sharpening, darkening. Three seconds went by. "Yes, I am." 

     Carrie nodded numbly, accepting this as the truth. "And is he the reason you're obsessed with the massacre?" 

     "Yes." His voice was deadpan but honest. 

     She let out the breath she didn't realise she was holding onto. "So, it's a way for you to know him, right? Because you never met him?" 

     "One could say that," he answered. Carrie could understand that, wanting to be close to someone that wasn't available to them anymore. Even if Michael's obsession was extreme, it was natural too. To want to find some kind of connection with your family, your past. 

     "You never really talk about your family," she mused out. While the pair had talked about a lot over the last couple of weeks, the topics never included his family, his past. Carrie still didn't have the fainted idea of how Michael had ended up with Miriam Mead. Michael didn't reply, just averted his eyes away from her face. "I never knew my father. My mother says he died before I was born, but sometimes I don't believe her. The way she speaks about him sometimes... I don't think he was a good man."

     Carrie never spoke about her father openly like this, and Margaret would shut her down whenever she pried for more information. Carrie often dreamt up little, fictional scenarios about her father. Sometimes it was just as simple as him being around, teaching her how to drive and watching movie marathons with her. Other times he would show up on the threshold of the Moore house and save her from her mother, taking her away. The two would start fresh in a new town, in a new state and Carrie would have a normal and simple life. A good high school experience, good friends and she'd go to parties every Friday night and suck down milkshakes at the local diner with the cute boy in her class. 

     But it wasn't a normal and simple life Carrie Moore wanted, even if she believed it with such conviction. She had always wanted more and her appetite was forever growing and changing. Michael Langdon would be the one to awaken her true desires, to make her realise that she was bored and hungry. Michael Langdon would be the one to show her what she wanted deep down. Rust and ash and blood and chaos—him. One day, she'd ask him for it all and he would give her a kingdom of ruin, a crown of blood and darkness. 

     "My family wasn't good either," Michael announced, his voice ringing with empathy. "At least, not to me." The two teenagers didn't need to express anything more at that moment, because they both knew, both understood, what it was like to be abandoned and neglected by an absent father and a callous mother. Both of them were bruised children, one on the flesh and one in the soul. 

  —  

     Classical piano played softly in the background, but no words broke over dinner in the Moore house just yet. Metal cutlery scrapped against the china plates and every now and then, Carre would look up from her peas and chicken to Margaret across the table. 

     Michael had shared his earphones with Carrie on the walk home and the beat of his heavy rock echoed in her ears long after. But knowing her mother would be home, watching from the windows, Carrie let Michael walk down their street first, and then waited ten minutes before strolling up to her own driveway. With the safety precaution, Margaret hadn't suspected a thing and even allowed Carrie to have a glass of apple juice with dinner; that was a treat. 

     "The ladies at the hair salon spoke up a storm today," Margaret started, spearing a piece of chicken with her fork. Margaret wasn't really one for casual chit-chat, and especially not with her daughter. So, Carrie's shoulders tensed, knowing something was amiss. "They had some gossip about our new neighbours," she added. "Would you like to hear it?"

     No, Carrie thought. "Yes, Mama?" 

     "Someone saw that ghastly woman buying pig hooves at the butchers," Margaret's voice turned, just as her eyes narrowed. "For their horrendous and wicked Satanic rituals." Carrie nearly choked on her peas and scurried to recover. 

     "Satanic rituals, Mama?" She played innocent. 

     "I knew something was wrong with those people the minute the first packing box arrived," Margaret spat out. "Lord, help us, we're living across from evil-doers!" 

     "You don't know that they're evil-doers," Carrie reflected, defence slipping into her tone. 

     "They're Satanists, Carrie! Plaguing our neighbourhood. The church will be very interested to know this," Margaret rattled on, slicing violently at her chicken. 

     "They haven't done anything wrong, Mama," she said, eyes flashing nervously to her mother's knife. 

     "I believe worshipping the Devil is doing something wrong. Wrong and evil," she shook her head, her long beautiful curls shifting around her face. 

     "Everyone has the right to practise whatever religion they want to," Carrie whispered under her breath, half-knowing she should just keep her mouth shut altogether. Margaret paused from cutting up her meat and lifted the knife. 

     "The Lord doesn't speak in whispers, neither should you. Speak up," Margaret ordered, pressing the flesh of her thumb to the sharp edge of the knife. 

     Carrie swallowed the lump in her throat. "Nothing, Mama. I said nothing." 

     "God will protect us from those people clutched by the Devil. He'll hear our prayers." She pressed against the knife harder, breaking the skin. Carrie's watched anxiously as a droplet the colour of carmine slid down the metal of the knife. "You're keeping away from that boy, correct?" 

     "Yes, Mama," she lied with a guilty heart, staring at her plate. 

     "Good," Margaret smiled, her lips lifting up over her pearly teeth, as she lowered the knife sleek with blood. "You bring enough sin into this house as it is." Margaret Moore didn't even know of the real sin and chaos her daughter was capable of yet.