n i g e l {6} p a r e a :: fin

Half green. Half brown. My genes were pieces of a thousand puzzles welded together by hope and hanging by a thread. I was supposed to be a stillborn, I never quite knew why they were so sure I would be dead but mother cried whenever she talked about our birth. Her sons were supposed to be dead and yet there we were - a miracle in the flesh - born with stardust pounding through their veins. Half green, half brown- the right was dark and brooding; the left was the color of summer leaves. I was born with constellations sewn to my cheeks, pigmented dots kissing the top of my nose and the underneaths of my eyes. Nothing about me was anything but 'odd', brown hair sticking in tufts out of every hat I used to tame the unruly mane.

Mom used to use the charcoal from spent fires to engrave whiskers upon swollen cheeks, laughing as I roared like the lion I had become. And she tried to turn Norway into a proud beast too, drew the same lines with the same dust, but he was only ever good at appearing a church mouse- quiet and reserved but ours all the same. Mom always told me it was my job to protect him from the crows that ran about our yard. To keep him close so that no falcon could escape with him trapped between their golden talons.

Nor and I were just like her, I think, our eyes were the same close-set shape and our hair the same shade of sun-stained bark. Right up to the freckles that consumed the whole of her face like precious bee-stings, we were her sons. (The bee-stings never ventured past my cheeks, however, so I figured it was some mistake- something overlooked while I was being carelessly molded from clay. I remember trying to draw the rest one morning after she had gone, tearing a ball-point pen into my flesh as tears washed them away.)

She was wise, held an answer to every question that left small lips. I used to tell Norway there was an invisible owl sat upon her shoulder, big yellow eyes filled to the brim with knowledge. I don't know if he believed me but I sure did- I loved to believe. Stories were my favorite pass time- no matter how jumbled and confusing a four year old's tales must have been.

I would have forgotten what mom looked like had I not stolen a photo from dad's precious frames and snipped it into the shape of a heart locket she was supposed to wear when they buried her. (I replaced my picture with hers and now it is Norway and Mom who rest in the dent between my collar bones). I don't feel guilty stealing from her. She would have wanted me to have it anyway.

I think.

Perhaps she hated me in the moments before she died, holding Nor and my head above the river's currents as we were swept into the white rapids. We were sleeping on the shore, curled into our cold mother's chest when peacekeepers found us the next day. I don't remember how we ended up in the river but it was probably my fault. At least dad thinks so.

We never saw much of him before mom passed. He was a phantom, bringing golden coins to fall upon our laps without so much as a word. It wasn't his sons that he loved but the woman to which we were molded after. We were nothing more than a package deal- his own blood and his own bone but it never fucking mattered. We weren't Mom.

It didn't take him long to snap, to scream and cry and rip his hair in bloody chunks from his skull when the news broke. She was dead and we were not. We were alive and she was not. His sons became little more than monsters the day his wife was killed by hungry rapids. We were ugly little things, taking her life for granted. Wasting it with our crying and our swollen hands clasped between hers. We never deserved her.

It eats me alive. Scar tissue dissolves beneath this bitter rain, it's raw again and the pain crawls down to the depths of my very bones. I'm not stupid enough to think that this will be the end of me, that I will drift into an all encompassing sleep and never again will I have to lay eyes upon the ugly thing I have become.

He never touches our face, the one that holds her spirit beneath fluttering lids and swallowed screams. Our likeness to Mom might just be the only thing that's keeping us alive, now that I think about it.

I am a candle, my wax uneven and torn. His flames are clear liquid strong enough to eat through the shirt I so pointlessly wore. It was soft and white, hugging my body and hiding the marred skin beneath. Now he's gone and ruined it, acid seeping through the cloth and into barely-healed flesh. It hurts. It hurts so bad that my vision is floating away, my head is spinning and my heart slows. But my teeth are grit, so tight I can feel them cracking with each and every diamond-laced splatter onto my chest. At least it's not him.

At least it's not him.

At least it's not-

Norway. We were always the same size, the same shape- our eyes were a similar kind of broken. And if my words were velvet, his were sandpaper. He talked with the same stuttering gait of a lame horse, preferring to buried within the pages of a book than the company of others. School was an escape for both of us. Hours spent away from our father's suffocating embrace, from his beds adorned with leather straps meant to drain his sons of dignity and freedom. Norway liked the books, the knowledge buried deep within the pages. I loved the people- the smiles I could so easily coax from pursed lips.

I don't know why we always came home.

Part of me blames myself - all of me blames myself - why didn't I just grab my brother's wrist and run into the forests past that lightning-tainted gate? I was stronger than trudging back to a man whose heart was made of fool's gold. (I was never stronger than that).

Maybe I was a child and maybe I was fucking terrified. Home meant a bed, it meant food. It meant torture and tears and a father whose sanity hung by little more than a thread. But it was a father nonetheless. A home to which I would always belong.

Sure he was a mad scientist to whom we were nothing but lab rats always chasing the cheese, but he kept us well fed and nicely dressed. Beneath all the ugly- he cared for us.

I tried to kill him anyway, filled the room with a gas he could not see. It was my idea, my fault. I fed the hose through the vents, I told Norway to meet me outside. It's my fault the place went up in flames. It's my fault he was still inside.

Norway died alongside my father that day.

I was fourteen when I became an orphan and an only child. I was fourteen when my humanity was destroyed along with all of the family I had left.

But I am not lost wandering these streets.

Because there's no one left to find me.

I am nothing but deft hands stuck into numb pockets. I am nothing but the sidewalks I lay an aching body upon after the sun has sunk below the horizon. I am nothing but the scars my father left and the scars he didn't.

Nigel died that day too, I think.

It's only a ghost that remains.