merlin {district nine}

I’ve never been smart. Numbers, shapes and letters scrawled across parchment paper have always been lost on me, the way that they connect to become something different. A caterpillar turned butterfly that was too beautiful for me to focus on anything but the magic of it all. I always thought they were pretty, the symbols they placed in front of me that made sounds that made words that made up so much of the world that I could not make heads nor tails of it. I used to think that is why dad hit me and that is why mom screamed. Because I wasn’t smart. Because I failed at things that were supposed to be easy and it was my fault.

So I taught myself how to read and I taught myself how to write. With my own hand, I managed to understand what they all meant and I marched to the sound of my own drum but I always did it well. And things were never easy for me but I was so proud. I thought maybe then it would stop. When I hung aced tests upon the chrome doors of our refrigerator with colored letters that spelt out some of my parents favorite words. (Fuck. Bitch. Whore.) The profanities were remnants from their last party, the ones with the pounding music that made my head spin and my heart throb. The ones that kept me up all night long.

But I wasn’t allowed to touch the magnets and I should have known that. Their masterpieces had been ruined, tarnished by a five year old’s spelling test and it made mom so angry that this time she hit me. It was always father who did that, who buried his knuckles into my cheekbone or pinned me two feet off the ground by my throat and left me there until I felt like my head might explode. Her nails were a work of art in their own right, even stained with blood. They had golds and silvers entwined like snakes upon carefully styled things that were perhaps too long and too sharp because they hurt.

They tore at my skin every palm that was placed across my cheek, one that was nothing like the gentle caress that I had read about in the large book of happy endings I had borrowed from the library with no intent to ever return it. (I felt bad for stealing, for being so bad but the cover was pretty and colorful, it was filled with smiles and shining eyes and the happiness printed upon it was intoxicating. I needed something like that because my house was filled with hellfire and it was gonna kill me if I didn’t find some kind of relief.) I don’t remember if I cried. I don’t think I did. My tears were earned by stupid things back then, reserved for when I was too overwhelmed or at an especially bad tale where the queen looked like she was going to win and to take the princess’ heart once and for all.

But I didn’t cry when they did it. When they hurt me. I was too busy feeling everything, the colors that burned like brands across my skin and the way I tumbled into nothingness and back out a thousand times before it finally ended. I didn’t cry because it was my fault anyhow. I had done something, something to upset them and I had to work harder. Had to be better. For them. For my mom and my dad who I loved so dearly although the feeling was never mutual.

They just loved hurting me.

The worst time was when mom tried to drown me. I don’t really know if she was trying to kill me or whether she was drunk and wondering what would happen. Either option would come as no surprise. Her voice was sweet, like the purples that line a sunrise as she called out. “Merlin, dear, my baby boy come here.” And I was never very smart and even if I was I would have gone anyway because I’d never heard such sweet tones before, especially not directed toward me.

I should have known the apple was laced with poison because in an instant her hand was on the back of my head, shoving my face down into the depths as I scrambled and clawed and I screamed until I could no longer breathe. And she did it again, pulled my head out of death’s caress and let me take one staggering breath before her torture resumed. There was water everywhere, soon tainted with a muddy red as her nails tore at my hair the more I struggled.

But it hurt. It hurt so bad and I apologized with every breath she gave me. In that moment, she was god and I her subject. In that moment she was burning away sins that I had never even committed. “I’m sorry mom, what did I do? I’m sorry mom please stop!” But those words were not what she wanted. She wanted me to shriek in agony as water flooded my lungs and to leave it there until spiderwebs crawled into my eyes and I screamed and screamed that I was going to die. "You’re going to kill me! What did I do?! Please it hurts, it hurts so bad." Just like that, she relinquished her cast-iron grip upon my skull and left me to empty the water and most of my stomach’s contents into the toilet.

I think I was twelve then, I don’t remember. Sometimes it all feels like a bad dream, one that I never awoke from. One torture after another, first father’s hand then my mother’s and then father’s and then mother’s. Sometimes it feels like it had no end. For fifteen years it had no end.

Things only got worse when they drank. It seems a weird thing to say, as they rarely hurt me when they were high off those poisons. They threw parties then, caused such a commotion that peacekeepers would come by only to be paid off with sex or money. I wasn’t allowed there, I wasn’t allowed to ruin their fun and sometimes I wonder why they even kept me at all. Sometimes I think it would be better if mother had shoved a pillow over my mouth after I was born and let me die before everything hurt so badly that I was numb. I could die never even knowing pain. That would be better.

Their hands, the physical pain was nothing anymore. I could handle it. I could. But when they locked the door and they forgot that I was there, perhaps forgot that I even existed for days which must have seemed like bliss to them. There was no food, no drink save for moldy water out of our tap. (If they had remembered to pay the bill, that is.) I couldn’t stand it, the hunger. It ate me from the inside out, like some kind of monster growling in the pit of my stomach, willing to destroy me for even the slightest bit of satisfaction. My only company for days, even a week at a time were the fairy tales and workbooks that I hid under the floorboards.

I hated it when they got drunk. The pain it caused was not quick, if it killed me there would be no swift end. I could simply wither away and they could find a corpse where there son once stood.

My first kiss happened during one of their parties. I don’t remember it well, only that I was tucked under my sheets, pillow over my head in an attempt to stop the loud thrumming coming from downstairs. And I almost didn’t hear it over the caucus, over the merriment that was always had without me. The click of a lock coming undone, the creak of hinges scraping against metal and of a metal knob colliding with the wall behind it.

I couldn’t see his face before he was on me, pinning my hands above my head and swiping his tongue around the outsides of my mouth. I had tried to struggle, to ask this stranger, who smelt of booze and whose beard scratched small white marks onto my face as he mashed his lips against mine, why and who and what but I couldn’t. His lips that were bitter and sour and made me want to throw up. The taste of it still does.

Shut up, you know you want it. He told me.

I didn’t, but I shut up anyway. Screaming was too much effort, it was too much to try and reason because maybe he would bite my tongue off if I tried. I was so tired, every part of me was so heavy that I closed my eyes and tried to sleep even with such a weight pressed against me.

My father’s fist woke me. I didn’t expect it, not when my cheeks was still adorned with slimy paths traced by the guy who looked about my father’s age, now that I could see his face. Said man was pulling up his pants, screaming at my father about what I had done, that I came onto him. That this was all my fault. And I tried to tell him that I didn’t know what he was talking about, that the man was lying I really did but when I opened my mouth no sound dared come out. I think I was just a bit broken.

I don’t let faggots around here, Merlin. Lucky I caught you before anything happened. Oh he was so mad, so so mad that just thinking about it makes my hands shake and my head spin. The smell was strong, the both of them. Bitter and sour and oh god I was so scared. Figures you’d be a fuckin’ fruit Merlin, one disappointment after another Merlin fucking Chapman. One. After. Another. That is what he screamed as he hit me. Rage turning me to paper beneath his palms. It was the hardest he’d ever hit me, actually, so hard that I felt things snap under his knuckles, so hard that the sheer force of my body bruised him. And I think I screamed when he bent my finger all the way back because to this day it’s still crooked, even after it stopped hurting and I could move it again. He never actually told me what was my fault but I’ve decided I don’t want to know.

I was fourteen when I had my first kiss and it took me two weeks to get the taste of it out of my mouth.

I was fifteen minus two weeks when I decided to run away. It was a dumb plan, I guess, as I had nowhere to go, no one to run to. No one cared about the Chapman kid that barely anyone even knew existed. And I didn’t leave because I was tired of the pain, because I knew it would end if I never looked back. I ran with every intention of coming home because for once, I wanted them to care. I wanted them to come looking for me and worry about my well being. Maybe they would realize just how badly they had treated me. Maybe they would realize they had been pushing me away. I wanted to be more than their punching bag. I wanted to be their son. Just once I wanted to be important.

But they never came looking.

For two weeks I stayed in the alley behind our house, feeding off of scraps my own mother threw away instead of looking for me, instead of calling out in agony for the little boy she lost. She was silent, black hair tidier and smile brighter. My mother was always stunning but in my absence, she turned beautiful. I listened to the music they played and watched as silhouettes filtered in and out of what was once my room. My home.

After fifteen years to the date, I guess I finally got the message.

They never wanted me.