Bree Tyler
"Why do you do that, Harry?" I asked, as he burnt another cigarette in his skin that I gently smoothed my hand over.
"Because," he gritted. "It feels good."
I was fed up with this. There is definitely more of a reason to why he burnt himself with ignited cigarettes and he wasn't telling me. He should trust me, right?
"Harry.." I bit my lip, "there has to be a reason." I blew smoke from the corner of my lips.
"You had it easy, you had no father but I had an abusive one." He admitted, making me pull back from him in an instant.
"Easy?" I questioned, making his eyes drop and roll his lips in his mouth like he didn't mean what he said.
"I didn't mean it in that way Bree, it wasn't meant to come out like that." He tried to get me to forgive him, his words just hurt my heart a little.
Words hurt, Harry.
"Do you know what I've fucking been through?" My eyes started to gather tears, easy. "My mother couldn't get a fucking job, and my father didn't even help her. He just left! I couldn't eat for three weeks as a KID, and I had to wear the same clothes every single day!! A butterfly shirt, bootcut jeans, and white sneakers. I was only in kindergarten. So no Harry, it wasn't easy. Yeah, you may have had it hard but don't push my problems down just because yours could've possibly been worse." I was enraged right now, my life wasn't easy, and I know his wasn't either.
"Bree I didn't mean it, our lives were both complicated as kids and I understand that. Your life was hard growing up too." He softly grabbed my cheeks, making me sigh.
"What did your father do to you as a kid?" I asked, making him pout his bottom lip out like he didn't want to reply. But he was in deep, I spilled my whole childhood out because of him and I was deeply embarrassed.
"He was a fucking prick." He shook his head in sorrow, "fucking hurt my mother. Burnt cigarettes against my fucking already scratched and bruised skin. Aimed guns at me and my big sister, Lea." He admitted in despair. "May I?" He furrowed his brows, slightly taking the cigarette out of my fingers.
"I think you need it more than I do right now." I swallowed, letting him take the cigarette to calm him down while he revealed his childhood trauma to me.
"Thank you." He snarled, taking the lit cigarette between his lips and inhaling with a short exhale from the smoke before he continued tragedy.
"My father, oh that little bitch. He threw me into freezing ass glass showers, forced me to watch Scream, he had a weird obsession with the that masked character. He hung up pictures of him all over the house, it was like his role mod-"
"The CD's." I muttered, not even realized I said it out loud instead of just thinking it inside my head.
"The CD's?" Harry furrowed his brows, like he didn't know what I was talking about.
"In that room, the creepy one where you keep all those Scream masks. There's Scream CD's too." I muttered.
"And I have them because my father forced me to watch the show." He swallowed. "I was too young to see something graphic like that. I was only five years old and that's what our family movie was, I don't know why he made me watch it though. I didn't do anything to him." He sighed, making me pout my bottom lip out in sympathy for him. I've never been mentally tortured, but I have been physically. Harry's been through both, so in a way I know what he needs.
"Let's burn them." I gulped, "till those CD's fucking disintegrate."
"Why would we do that?" He asked, furrowing his brows.
"So you can forget about it, forget about it all. Your father and some of the fucked up shit he did to you. It's all in the past now." I said, grabbing his biceps as he blew smoke out of the corner of his lips.
"Yet it still lives on to the present day in my mind." He sighed, I know his fathers tortures might have a forever imprinted effect on Harry, and the only way we can at least try and get rid of the past is focus on how to fix his present. Starting with burning what haunts him.
"Burn it, it can help wash away your memories if you replace them." I gave advice.
"Maybe you're right." He swallowed, "I should burn them until they are nothing and meaningless."
"Right." I smiled, "treat all that stuff that reminds you of your father, like how your father treated you."
"Like I meant fucking nothing.." he looked down, before looking back up at me again.
"Treat those memories that your father burned into your head, like they mean fucking nothing." I urged, making a cynical and devious smile creep up on his and I's lips.
-
And there we both were.
We both had full laundry baskets of all the memories Harry had been consistently reminded of. Scream masks, Scream CD's, a small gun, one of the shower heads, a sharp blade of glass, five cigarettes, anything and everything that could possibly remind him of his father in these two large baskets.
We stood over a roaring fire pit that was on the side of his house. I hadn't even known he had a fire pit, but Harry has everything I could possibly imagine so when he revealed a glazing fire in front of my eyes I can't say that I wasn't all that surprised about it.
The fire pit was crystallized and the crystals were colored like an elegant transparent black charcoal, the roaring flame bursted up at the seams, the orange ness and red firing up my body with the radiant heat. It was night and about the time of late dawn, which was making the fire look extra pleasant and visible.
He lifted the Scream mask up with his shaking hands, and was about to throw it in the blazing fire before he stopped and put his arms down.
"Bree." He whimpered out in a stressed voice. "Can you help me?"
"Of course." I furrowed my brows, going behind him and pressed my hips against his back. Normally our positrons would be in different spots, or switched. He'd be pressed behind me and I'd be the one in front. Now, it was the opposite.
I leaned my chin onto his shoulder and whispered in his ear, "show your father how you felt."
"Okay." He nodded, taking a swallow.
"Show him what it felt like to be tossed around, be manipulated, taunted, beaten down. You can show him how you felt, just by throwing all these stupid remembrances of him in the fire pit. Can you do that for yourself, Harry?" I egged on, maybe I was being a tiny bit harsh by reminding him of his past. But I hope this will help him forget about his father and be happy without knowing he's not apart of his life anymore.
Maybe he's still tied up by the mountains in zip ties, better yet dead. Who knows?
"Yes, I can do it for myself." He swallowed, making me smile. He was doing it.
"Good. Now watch those fucking memories burn and disintegrate to nothing but ash." I smirked against his neck, making him immediately toss the mask into the fire.
One down, eighteen more to go from what I counted after he put all his fathers traces in these baskets.
The long mask lit up into flames. The black cloak caught on fire, only making the flames grow larger. The plastic ghostly face went to a hot burn, and slowly turned into a gray ash.
"Burn." Harry whispered under his breath, as he threw another one of the masks into the flames.
Fuck, I was so proud of him. This was a big moment for him and he was accomplishing it perfectly and at his own steady pace.
"What should we do next?" I asked, after Harry had discarded all the masks one by one into the fire pit.
"The CD's." He swallowed, making me nod.
From what I remember, the amount of CD's were a lot and were all of the same exact movie, Scream.
I grabbed five of the cases CD's, and threw them in the fire with no regret. Those can burn, any memories of his father that trigger him can burn and never be welcomed back.
They're not welcomed here.
The cases cracked in half and melted from the fire and allowed the disk to glimmer in the fire, like a rare diamond. The discs eventually blew out in the engulfing flames.
Next, were the cigarettes. He held three in his hands and I held two between my fingers, wondering what we were waiting for.
"What is it Harry?" I asked, biting my lip.
"I need to try something," he muttered. "C'mere." He motioned with his hand, I nodded.
He stuck the cigarette between his lips, and I expected him to pull out a lighter but it was something the complete opposite of that. He crouched down and bent his knees towards the flame. He inched his head closer towards the fire and lit tip of the cigarette with the red and large flame.
I did the same thing, I sat next to him and crouched down. Bending my knees forward and lighting the cigarette with the flame, and I felt the smoke enter my throat and fill my lungs.
I was a little confused as to why we were doing this, but something I've learned is to never question Harry.
So I didn't.
"Showing this motherfucker what it felt like." He whispered, standing up and walking over to one of the baskets, pulling out another Scream character mask.
"He never threw all of the masks in the fire pit?" My annoying subconscious spoke to myself.
"I saved it," he whispered in reference to the mask, and I followed him sprinting towards him with a cigarette between my lips. "For this." He chuckled, pressing the burnt tip of the cigarette against the plastic face of the mask. He had one cigarette between his fingers and the mask was hanging down by his hands gripped by the black whisper cloak. My jaw dropped and my cigarette almost fell out of my mouth but it didn't, that was the last thing I expected him to do, but it was one of the best things he's ever done at the same time.
In Harry's eyes, his father was actually the real life version of the fictional character Scream.
And what he did, is just like burning the real skin of his father, I was so proud of him. His father now knows what it feels like, if Samuel doesn't even know what we are doing right now. I hope to fucking god that he feels the mentor.
"Scream Samuel," Harry demanded and shook his head to the side and crushed the lit cigarette farther into the plastic mask, "just like I used to."
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