***Song on the right (Fuel- Hemorrhage) is great for this chapter :]
The door clicked open and Gemma and I turned to see Harry. He looked down at the album and the pictures that were scattered on the bed.
He dropped his bag.
Then he barged over and grabbed a few of the pictures. His hand grasped the first one and it was the picture of his dad in uniform.
“Gemma, why the hell did you bring all this shit?!” he demanded.
“Harry, it’s ok, I wanted to see them,” I told him. I didn’t want Gemma to get into trouble for telling me the truth about their dad, the truth that Harry hid so deeply in his armor.
“No, Angie, it’s my fault,” Gemma shook her head.
I sighed. Nobility must run in the family, well, maybe for everyone except their father.
Harry ripped the picture of his father and let the scraps scatter like snow, except this “snow” had no cooling effect on him.
Then he grabbed the photo album and smashed it against the wall, making the binding crack like a spine and fall down the stairs, like his mother, his beautiful, golden-hearted mother.
“Harry-” I raised my voice calmly.
“GEMMA, GET THE HELL OUT!” he bellowed and he glared at her and his eyes were harder than steel, so menacing that I almost didn’t recognize him.
He yanked at her wrist.
Gemma trembled slightly for a moment. She looked terrified, almost like she was seeing someone from her past, which made her revert back to when she was young and vulnerable and afraid.
I swallowed hard.
When she looked up at Harry, saw his round, hard eyes, his clenched jaw, that mop of vine-like curl, and those hands, those hard, sturdy hands, she saw him. She saw her father.
“H-Harry” I stuttered. When I looked up at him, I had no idea who he was either.
Harry ignored me. Gemma shook her head.
“Angie, it’s ok. I’m used to leaving,” she reminded me and nodded slowly.
My chest tightened and I almost felt something drip from my heart. It was blood and I was drowning in it.
“It’s ok,” she whispered in a broken voice. Then she grabbed her bag and left.
I wanted to run to her, beg her to come or just drag her back myself. I needed her. I needed someone to help me understand Harry, to help me feel comfortable with myself and give me advice. I needed a sister, a mother, an aunt, anyone. I needed Gemma and Harry needed her, too.
“Harry!” I yelled.
Harry blinked and looked at me as if for the first time since he had entered his Hulk-like rage.
“Don’t let her leave!” I shouted and I grabbed the collar of his jacket, forcing him to tilt his head downward and look at me.
He looked into my eyes and scanned my face, as if hopelessly searching for something.
“Harry!” I yelled even louder, but even though his face was a mere few inches from mine, he somehow heard nothing. He heard absolutely nothing because he refused to listen.
“PLEASE,” I begged him. I took his hand and squeezed it, hoping to release the fury and allow the artistry that he wrote his poems with, to surge back in his fingertips.
“I understand, Harry. I know what your dad did,” I told him, but it was the last few words he ever wanted to hear.
“NO!” he growled back and he shoved me against the wall a few feet behind me.
I winced. My head hit the wall hard enough to hurt a bit, but not enough to cause any more damage than had been done in these past 18 years.
Harry slammed his fists against the wall, on either side of my face. I gasped as I felt the wall crackle in fear, crackled as quickly as my heart did.
Harry looked into my eyes and there was a rush of pure fear and embarrassment that left his face a ghastly-white and his hands, a blood red.
“I-I’m sorry, Angie,” he apologized quickly.
He moved his hands from the wall slowly and I saw blood dripping down his knuckles.
“H-harry,” I mumbled quietly.
I reached for his hands carefully, but he held them close to his chest, completely ashamed and yet protective of them.
He went over to the sink, but I wasn’t so sure he was getting bandages. It almost seemed like he wanted to do more damage, to cut his hands off so that he could blame them and them alone for everyone who has been hurt by them.
Harry washed the blood out in the sink.
“Please,” I spoke up. “Let me help you,” I asked of him, but I stood my ground. I didn’t want to anger him any more than I already had.
Harry turned to look at me. He held his hands out in front of himself, letting them drip the remnants of blood on the carpet. Then he took a few hesitant steps toward me.
“This is what I am,” he told me in his deep rasp. But it was broken now, completely raw and exposed. “I’m a monster,” he hissed.
He glared at his hands, his hands which had taken his father’s life, which had taken Liam’s life, which had spilled more blood than I did every month. But they were also the hands that protected me the night of that party and that had protected and comforted my fragile, trembling body. They were the hands that had touched me and found me locked up inside myself.
“No,” I shook my head steadily.
Harry’s mouth hung open slightly, in disbelief. I took a step closer to him.
“No, you’re not, Harry,” I told him again.
I reached for his hands carefully. He held them back at first, unwilling to let me touch them, to let them touch me.
Then I held them up to my lips and kissed his still moist and still bloody knuckles.
Harry stared at me as I did this and his eyes widened in a desperate horror; he didn’t want me to believe him, to trust him because he didn’t think he deserved it. But, at the same time, he knew he needed me to believe, to be the only person that would ever believe his words and not the scars or the black marks on his body.
“I love you.”
Harry nodded. He stared down at his hands as if they deserved every ounce of blame, but also every whisper of praise.
Then we sat down carefully on the couch. His lips clenched together, then they opened slightly and he licked his lower lip as he let his breath recount the most painfully horrific moment in his life…
***
I liked to read and write in my room in between school and Sergeant’s drills. I liked to write because Sergeant never read and he never let me speak more than to say “yes” …or “yes.” And I needed to speak because there were words in my head that clouded my eyes. It was almost like they blinded me and lulled me to some kind of sleep that was eternal, eternal like death.
I wanted to paint people and places on paper. It was my secret and I liked keeping this one secret because it let me defy Sergeant for once and risk punishment. When I was punished, either a belting or a beating, the cuts stung for weeks on end and I did my best to hide them from mom. But, sometimes I wasn’t too careful so I lied and said I was just clumsy. I started to get real good at lying….
Once the cuts went away, the bruises remained and they reminded me that I had flesh, that I was human and alive, even if it was enduring this hell-ish life…
“The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God […] So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception, he was faithful to the end….”
I read those lines over and over, upside and even backwards so that I could memorize them, recreate them, recreate myself and be somebody that Sergeant would never have any rights over.
I set The Great Gatsby down and started writing what was supposed to be a poem.
“There’s gold somewhere, somewhere, not here
There’s an answer out there, out there, not here,
There’s an angel that cares, that cares, not here…”
Then I stopped the poem. I thought about my mom and her warm smile. Sometimes I forgot that I am her son because she was so absolutely genuine and good-hearted; I couldn’t imagine her giving life to something as horribly pathetic and weak as me. And what’s worse, my dad had taken her, stolen her from Heaven. He had cut off her wings and blackened her soul…
Sometimes I wished she had never had me because I couldn’t bear to stand another day knowing that she endured Sergeants demands for me and Gemma’s sake.
I wish I had another angel, one I could protect from ever having to lose her gold or her wings. But I also wish I could have her for my own because I need someone so pure that she reminds me how I don’t deserve her. I’m no better than Sergeant.
I stared at my hands for a moment. They were so thin and frail, unable to do more than hold a black pen and wispy paper. And I wanted to do more with them. I wanted to use them to protect myself, to defend myself and hold them up, showing Sergeant that I wasn’t under his army of one anymore…
“13:00,” he screeched and stomped his left foot.
I jolted up and ran to where he stood immobile, but menacing like an iron scarecrow.
“You’re late,” he hissed and glared right into my eyes with those black pools that sucked out more hope than the A-bomb.
“S-sorry,” I stuttered. I swallowed hard. He hated when I spoke, let alone stuttered.
“Sorry?” he questioned, but his metallic tone rusted away from the stains of yellow whiskey on his breath.
My fingers trembled slightly, guilty of a crime punishable by a leather whip. And Sergeant had many whips.
“You better watch your tongue, boy,” he threatened.
I swallowed hard, wishing I could swallow my tongue, too.
Sergeant clenched his filthy hands behind his back, clasping them tight enough to show that he was fully capable of letting the threat he uttered, make a physical mark on my skin.
Then he took strong strides and circled around me. I held my breath as the whiskey on his breath wrestled my lungs for control.
“State my status,” he commanded casually.
I nodded and bean reciting, just like I did every morning and night.
“Sergeant Desmond Styles, leader of the 13th platoon in the holy war of Vietnam, 1969-1973,” I declared.
I didn’t dare look him in his black eyes for fear he might steal whatever goodness I may still have.
“Correct,” Sergeant acknowledged.
“They called me ‘Messy Dessy,’” he laughed at his old joke.
I shifted uneasily. He ruffled his dark curls back. I pushed a stray curl out of my eyes. I hated how much I looked like him.
“And why did my boys call me ‘Messy Dessy’?” he asked eagerly, even though he’s asked me the same question every day for the past 13 years.
I sighed.
“Because you snap, crackle, popped your grenades,” I recited blindly.
“--Faster than those mother fucking ‘Namese could blink,” he finished. He took a swig of his Whiskey and he a drop of it spilled on my cheek.
I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand.
Sergeant looked down at my hand and his eyes bulged.
I hid them behind my back, but it was too late, he had seen the ink stains.
“You been writing again, haven’t you?” he growled calmly.
“N-no, sir,” I shook my head vigorously.
The tiny ringlets of my annoying curls flopped over my forehead.
“LIAR!” he bellowed.
He grabbed my shoulders and shook me harder than the snow globe mom had given me last Christmas. But no flakes of sparkles fell from me, nothing but the semblance of a tear. A tear that was so deathly afraid of being seen that it crystalized into a jagged bead and fell to my cheek.
Sergeant rushed over to my desk and grabbed my journal. He read it over quickly, then he tilted his thick skull sideways and read it again because there was not an ounce of intelligence, only sheer bruteness inside him.
He shredded my journal to pieces, letting any remnant of the words clogging my head, fall fearfully.
I gasped. Another bead like tear escaped my eyes.
Sergeant turned to me and a fiery determination burned his black eyes. He blinked.
“Are you fucking crying!?” he spat in disgust.
I wiped the tear from my stupid eyes that were so round, you could tell if they were trembling from a mile away.
“You little pussy” he hissed. Then he wiped out his leather belt and struck me across my chest.
I held my arms in front of my chest instinctively, but that only pissed Sergeant off.
“I’m s-sorry,” I mumbled.
“Keep your mouth shut!” he growled and he struck me again, this time getting my cheek, too.
I felt a drop of blood trickle down to my neck. My knees shook as I took a hesitant step back.
“LOOK AT ME WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU!” he demanded
But he wasn’t talking. The infuriated mammoth didn’t know how to speak all he knew was power and pain. He the power and I felt the pain.
“Desmond!” my mother shrieked and she pulled at Sergeant’s belt.
Sergeant ignored her.
“Let go,” he hissed and he pushed her back.
My mom grabbed the belt and yanked it from him.
“You monster! You’re the one that’s been giving him all his bruises!” she screamed in horror.
Then she ran over to me and held my face in her soft hands. She kissed my bloody cheek and moved a few loose curls from my eyes, which were now swollen.
“Mom, it’s ok,” I lied straight through my teeth.
“What’s going on?” Gemma called as she walked into the room.
Oh, God, is this going to be a show?
“Don’t you defend that little shit, you bitch!” Sergeant growled and he yanked my mom away.
“DON’T YOU DARE CALL HER THAT!” I shouted. I almost couldn’t believe the words that I had written were finally coming out of my mouth.
Sergeant stared at me dumbfound.
“We’re leaving” my mom announced and she took my hand and Gemma’s and grabbed her keys and wallet from the kitchen table.
“YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!” Sergeant bellowed back and he threw his bottle against the wall, letting the glass shatter everywhere.
“Mom!” I screamed, but it was too late. Sergeant had yanked her back and shoved her so hard against the wall that she tripped down the stairs and hit her head.
I ran down-- three steps at a time-- to where she lay at the bottom of the steps.
My hands shook as I say her motionless, blood dripping from her neck, eyes staring forward, expressionless. Dead.
“YOU FILTHY ANIMAL!” I shouted with every ounce of rage that I had stored up in the past 13 years.
I jumped up the steps and my hands grabbed the butcher’s knife and lunged at Sergeant. He was drunk enough that he staggered back slowly.
My hands clasped the knife and stuck it deep into his gut.
Sergeant gasped as the knife entered his poisoned body and he looked up at me slowly.
“You’re my son,” he whispered softly and the hint of a gentle smile fluttered onto his wrinkled face.
I stared into his black eyes and there was a gleam of something brighter, something purer.
“Thank you,” he spoke and he nodded slowly.
I pulled the knife out, but it was too late. I saw the life drip out of his hard, dark body.