cassius lennox {capitol}

I never knew how to scream. It was the excuse Uncle Jim used whenever Aunt Darla yelled. Oh he likes it, Sweetie. He'd say something if there was a problem. If it hurt. And they pretended that the bruises flowering upon my flesh was not proof enough. I would have screamed, if I could. I would have begged him to stop the minute my door creaked open in the dead of night but fear ran like ice through my veins and it froze me. I could only lay there, sewing my eyes shut and hoping that it'd be over quickly. 

Every part of me was cold, even when it was over and I regained control of my limbs and I curled onto my side, sobbing into my pillow in the quietest possible manner. I brought my knees up to my chest and I rocked back and forth on the hard mattress gently. I lulled myself to sleep because no one else was willing.  

The whole town knew I didn't belong to Aunt Darla and Uncle Jim. It was the talk of the town for a whole three hours once the news broke. Successful businessman Archibald Lennox knocked up that famous model that was on all the magazine covers and now she had a little bastard boy who neither of them wanted but didn't have the heart to get rid of. 

I'm told I stayed with them a whole two days before Aunt and Uncle took me in. 

They died when I was four, drove out in front of a Semi while plastered. Aunt Darla wanted me to cry for the cameras that came around but I didn't. It was like hearing that your great uncle once removed by marriage got lost in the fields one day never to be heard from again. It meant fuck all and maybe I was glad that crazy uncle wouldn't be showing up at family reunions anymore.

Maybe I hated that crazy uncle for leaving me with them.

Uncle Jim told me I acted just like a businessman. Stone faced and cold, resolute in my apathy. Aunt Darla took me to a doctor once, because they were worried about my behavior but it ended really quick once the therapist called child services and Uncle Jim was barely able to pay them off. They decided that I was just my father's son and that it wasn't their fault I was like this. That's preposterous!  

Why would it be their fault I was a bad kid?

That was their excuse when the teachers called them in. Oh, he's always been like this. We can't force him to do anything. And they pulled me out by the collar. Even when I opened my mouth to scream for help nothing came out. Punishments were always worse that night,after we were scolded by the teachers. Because Uncle would wear rings and press them into my chest. He'd force the air from my lungs and leave bloody red marks in its place. 

I guess I deserved it because I really wasn't a good kid. I simply didn't care. Even when a teacher slapped me across the face because I didn't say just what they wanted it was nothing. Nothing compared to the Hell I was on seven hours leave from. And they hit me again because I laughed but it only made me laugh harder. 

It wasn't long until the teachers just let me sit in the back of the classroom, feet propped upon the desk and fashion magazine clutched within my palms. 

Everyone thought that I was made of stone back then, but really I was crafted from glass. Shattered and put back together so many times that I was nothing more than a disgusting pile of sharp edges and indistinguishable emotion. 

But I felt nothing for so long that I started to believe that I was made from stone too.

I was weak. They could smell it curling off my skin, eager to escape a facade of apathy. I was small and delicate. Easily taken advantage of. And more often than not, their words were like knives against my skin. Arms on either side of my body and whispering threats. Trapping me between foul breathe and a brick wall. 

And I was weak. Because suddenly I was not on the schoolyard but upon a bed, clenching the sheets within my fists and trying my hardest not to smell the cigarette smoke assaulting me. Tearing a brutal path down my body as he hovered over me. I couldn't fight back then and I couldn't fight back at school either. Self-preservation was far too important to me. 

(I just wanted to survive.) 

And I was so transparent that I thought nobody saw me. That I was mere air trapped within the boys's cage because no one came to help me. Not ever. No one cared. Or they were too scared.

He wasn't. 

He broke the lock with a fist full off cloth, pulling the boy off of me and crushing the cage beneath his feet. A hero was an understatement, as through bony knuckles slung over shut eyes I watched him. A light among darkness. 

My heart was broken almost instantly, weighed down by affection and joy I'd never before been blessed with. I love him right away. 

His name was Vee. Vee. Vee.

I repeated the name so often in my head that I almost forgot to reply with my own. In the same polite way Uncle made me practice. His world worked different than mine. Filled with joy. Filled with goodness and justice. 

I wanted to be in his world so bad that I threw myself upon him, small arms wrapping around his shoulders and I asked him if we could be best friends.

He said yes.

And he meant it too. I learned that his name was not Vee, not by birth anyhow.  Raliegh, his name was Raleigh. I was captivated by how it slid of my tongue, gentle like his touch. I had never met someone like him, who would not take advantage of the softness of my body and slimness of my waist.

I was scared of him, at first. Kindness was but a tool, a fable that only existed in stories with happily ever afters and once upon a times. Not for a boy so empty that he could no longer feel his uncle's hands upon his body or his fists burrowing deep into his skin. Not for a boy who hid bruises under heavy makeup and always dressed so sharply that no one payed any attention. A boy coming from such wealth, who looked so put together, could not be falling apart. He was privileged, a king amongst nobles. I deserved no pity, in their eyes. And so Vee's kindness was frightening, his touches soon to turn into something awful like they always had. It was inevitable.

But Vee was not like the others. I should have known that the minute he pulled that awful boy off of me. And if kindness only exists in fairy tales Raleigh was my knight in shining armor. 

We grew together, occasional brushes against skin growing into hands clasped together and then fingers laced, as though we were blankets stitched at the seams. I spent nights at his house, my uncle too frightened I would say something to disagree. We talked about everything and nothing at all, yet the words perched on the top of my tongue were never let free.

Help me. 

I was too privileged to ask for it. I was Cassius Lennox, son of a famous model and a successful business men. And although I had never met them, I mirrored their cold, aloof air. I help my head above everyone else's because that is what I was taught to do. 

But I laid on Raleigh's lap and let him run his fingers through my hair. My pride melted under his touch, the way is sent warmth down my spine. And i think I fell in love with him before I turned twelve, with his crooked smile and his little house and his mom who baked us sweets and treated me like I was something special. Something to be loved. I fell in love with his simple life and his ratty clothes. And I fell in love with who he was, completely and devastatingly. 

I started giving him things, because that is what you do when you love someone. He always looked so torn up with dirty stains upon his pants and hair mussed. I grabbed his hand one day, pulling him upon blue tiled floors and handing him clothes that I had bought with him in mind. And I cleaned the dirt off of his nose and brushed his hair. I gave to him everything I had.

And I could have anything. (How else would uncle keep my mouth shut.) 

On my sixteenth birthday Uncle made me a cake. It had chocolate frosting and white candles. There were four of them, because that's all that was left in the cupboard. And Uncle said he was very sorry that he didn't get me a present, but that he would make it all up to me. He would make everything better as soon as the sun set and Aunt Darla went to bed. 

And for the first time I screamed. I stood and I screamed so loudly that is ripped my throat in half. I told him I was leaving and I told him I was never coming back. I told him to find another toy because I was done. I was done I was done. 

And he extinguished the candles on my flesh. Pinned my arms to the wall and hit me until I could see only white. He told me we didn't have to wait until night fell. 

We didn't. 

And I didn't pack anything. I didn't take any piece of my childhood with me as I ran, bare feet scraping against the pavement all the way to a little house with a little woman and a knight in shining armor. I knocked upon the door, tears mingling with dark red dripping off  of my chin. I leaned against the wood, hand across my stomach and holding my insides in. 

And i waited for him to save me.

He opened the door with the stupidest grin, happiness placed in his palm before his eyes fell upon me and the color drained from his face. I have a habit of doing that. Of ruining things. "SUPRI- Cassi what the fuck?!" That was what he called me, Cassi. It was Cassi that fell into his arms, face buried in the cloth of his shirt with heavy breaths and silent screams. And he knew, he knew in that moment that the bullshit I'd been feeding him since we were kids was a lie slid of a shattered tongue. He knows that I didn't fall. He knows I didn't scrape my knee or cut my wrist upon asphalt.

And I was so scared to tell him that I tried to run away. No. No, I insisted, this was a bad fall. Ignore the bites on my neck and the tear in my shirt. The blood caked upon my jaw and the tears threatening to drown me in their sorrows. No. I wasn't going to ruin his night. Not with this. 

But he swept me up in his arms, like any true knight should. He placed me in warm water, washing the blood from my flesh and I couldn't help as truth spilled from my lips like water through a drain. 

I've never seen him so angry.

And to be honest I think Raleigh might have killed him had I not begged him to stay.

I had watched his mother deteriorate over the years, health dropping like the pounds off of her body. And I had watched Raleigh read hundreds of thousands of books, desperate to save a mother I wasn't sure could be saved. Taking care of me and my wounds and the nightmares that were bound to come, it wasn't worth his time. 

I'd promised my Uncle I'd never come back but I tried to sneak out that night. Perhaps that's why he did what he did, he knew I would always come back. He knew I knew that is what I deserved. 

And I was halfway out the door when Raleigh caught my collar, same half smile he gave me when trying to get his way pasted across his lips. The both of us knew he was cheating when he asked me to stay while looking at me like that. I tried to tell him he needed to care for his mom, that I would be a bother and I should really just go home. I really, really tried. 

"Oh please, my mom has thought we were going to get married since I was like, eight." 

"Why would she think that?" 

"Because I told her."

Maybe I was blind or deaf or dumb, maybe all three, but there was some kind of bright realization that dawned over me. No matter how beaten and bruised and scarred I was, he had been there. And no matter how hard I tried to push him away, he always stayed. I'm still not sure, to this day, how I didn't notice Raleigh was just as in love with me as I him.

I had my first kiss that night. He swept me off of my feet, bringing me back into his room without breaking our embrace. And I kissed him until my lips hurt and I fell asleep within his arms. 

Just like that, I had found a new home.

They didn't look for me, I guess they knew better. I guess they knew that I wasn't going to put up with him tearing my innocence away like a lovesick child would a flower petal. Because I didn't come back, I didn't take the clothes that were sewn with pain and promise to keep silent, I didn't take my favorite blanket or the teddy bear that I'd had since I was born. Of all the material things I had, of all the memories left (the few good and the countless bad) within those oak-laden halls, none of them were as precious to me as Raleigh. As my best friend and the love of my life.

He was good at fixing people, he always was. He grew up taking care of his mother and he grew up taking care of me. Raleigh was good like that, never saw his burdens as just that. We were friends- family. We were everything to him and he would go through hell and back just to make us smile. To make me smile. And although he bandaged my wounds, kissed them as they slowly scarred over and trapped those awful memories within my flesh, it is not that which made me better. Made the feeling return to my long-numb fingertips.

It was his touch. His smile. It was everything about him that was so perfect, so perfect in comparison to my imperfection which he could never see. Because he ignored the nights I woke up screaming and kicking him, convinced I was back in that awful place with that awful man. He ignored the bruises that I had accidentally placed there and pulled me into his chest, promising it'd be okay.

He's a good man, Raleigh is. Became a doctor just to help his mother, to make her better just as he had me. And he took it hard when he couldn't. I think that is the only time I saw a cut so deep that it tore through his shining armor, that ruined him so completely and utterly. And I felt so hopeless because there was nothing I could do to help. I was small and I was weak and I was the hero of no one. So he suffered on in silence and pretended I couldn't see.

We're good at that.

Pretending everything is ok.

Because maybe everything isn't and maybe it hasn't been for a long time.

every heartbeat 
w a s
a scream