lucky nachtnebel . d4 . fin

Lucky Nachtnebel (one.)

{"You're so lucky to be a Nachtnebel, Lucky.
In fact that's why we named you so. Lucky."}

He was meant to grow up poor. Dirt poor. His biological mother and father, BioM and BioD, as Lucky labeled them, spent twelve hours in the seas, catching any sort of seafish that they could get their hands on. They lived a life drenched with rope-burnt fingers and clammy palms. There's no way that either of them could dedicate a minute of their lives to their child with work like that. Meanwhile, Daddy worked and managed his set of ships from home most days and Mama only left the house if someone needed medical attention at the docks. They could, and they do, care for him more than any blue-collar couple could.

{"I still can't believe they despised you to the point where they couldn't even give you a name.
Leave it to Mama and Daddy to swoop in and give this kid a bit of identity."}

Lucky locked his arms around his father's neck and let the tears begin to flow. He appreciated the fact that his parents were always so candid with him about his situation, his life. From the moment that he could talk and understand things properly, he knew he was adopted. Lucky knew that BioD and BioM were absent from his life and wouldn't come back. Daddy always made it clear: the couple brought him to their doorstep, only making allowance for a split second of eye contact before spitting on Lucky's newborn head and running off.

"They hate me," his congested and muffled words were understood by his father, even if they didn't sound like much of anything. The two had been in this situation before: Lucky bawling his eyes out to his father about his biological parents' rejection, followed by his consoling pats on his back.

{"They do. It's not right, it's not fair for you.
You don't deserve that weight on your shoulders, Lucky Nachtnebel."}

Daddy grabbed his son's shoulders for a moment and squeezed on them before letting go and listening to his son as he took to speaking.

"They hate me so much. If they find me after all these years, they might just spear me like one of their slimy fish."

Daddy's sympathetic remarks embedded themselves into Lucky's mind to the point that he'd say it before Daddy could even finish what he was saying. He picked up his head to rest his chin on Daddy's shoulders and chose to examine his wall now. The phrase they hate me scattered itself across his bedroom walls, etched into the wallpaper with gorgeous shells that Mama comes back with after he ventures to the docks. Every few days, new bold and jagged renditions of the phrase make their way onto the wall. He couldn't remember when he underlined all of the me's on the wall.

Maybe in his sleep? Sure. Sleep makes people do wild things sometimes. Maybe sleep-doing runs in the biological family! He knew that BioM and BioD hated him, even while they slept, so maybe it's some sort of magical intuition, and Lucky wrote those words and underlined those phrases in his sleep to let them know that he was still there.

They hadn't killed him, but instead gave him away to a young couple with enough resources to turn the tables. He hated BioM and BioD, too, but his side of the hate was accompanied by elegant aim with a trident.

{"I'm going to stop bugging you now.
You need to get some sleep, okay?"}

Lucky rustled around in his bed for a moment to get comfortable and well-situated. Daddy got up, left a glass of water to Lucky's left and the lamp on to his right, where his inscriptions stared back at him from the wall, illuminated from the light.

"I love you, Daddy. Mama, too."

{"Love you back, son."}

Daddy let the door creak obnoxiously on the way out until there was only a sliver of light left for Lucky to see in the hallway. He turned to his side with his lamp and the wall of hatred. Reaching out with his index finger, he scratched at the wallpaper, peeling off enough with his nail to underline me for the fifth time. His reach was strong enough to claw out the words while lying in his bed. It was him tampering with the walls, even if he couldn't remember.

"Hate me, even when I try to sleep."

Lucky closed his eyes and played with the magical merpeople in his head.

He heard Mama and Daddy's faint whispers and chuckles in the next room. Something, something else. Lucky couldn't focus on what they were saying word for word, but Lucky would never turn down a chance to eavesdrop, even if it was incredibly vague.

He only made out with a few mismatched sentences:

{"We have control."
"Young boys are so.."
"He gets it from her, no doubt."
"Stop writing in that book and go to sleep."}

But Lucky couldn't process what any of it meant before drifting off into his own slumber where all he felt was hate.

Lucky Nachtnebel (three.)

Nowadays, Mama and Daddy were both stuck at the docks for most of the day, dealing with some sort of altercation that the pair only managed to discuss with cryptic words and whispers. Over the years, chaos grew to become the new normal as Daddy's workers got angrier. Sometimes, he filled out paperwork regarding injuries at the workplace into the dead of night, and Mama helped those injured by fists and broken bottles into the morning. It left Lucky, for the most part, home alone. He wandered the town from its east gate to the west, wondering what the world might be like if he didn't live care-free.

Lucky's self-established moratorium on places outside his community's gates was driven by his guilt nights before. Mama and Daddy offered him a degree of protection that could not be guaranteed on the outside. They gave him money now, but he only spent it at Nook's or used it to bargain with some of the neighbors. It was the one thing they requested from him, as his adopted parents, to stay safe. BioM and BioD weren't capable of providing that because they didn't want to, but his family, his true family, that is, existed to make up for that.

But being quarantined in a house with such limited space and streets that looked the same no matter which way you looked at them, he found himself lost without things to do anymore. Daddy would cook breakfast, Mama prepped her medical kit for the day, and Lucky, well, he allowed his mind to wander and his mouth to beg for a little more vitality around the abode. "What am I supposed to be doing after school and homework? Just sit into this chair and stare at the wall?"

Daddy skimmed each self-cut slice of bread with a layer of butter, taking a bite out of one to satisfy his hunger for a moment. He chuckled as he chewed the food, covering his mouth and raising his hand to offer a moment to let himself finish.

{"I don't know, maybe read a fuckin' book?"}

The typical parent-child question-response led everyone, even Daddy, to laugh. Read a book? A waste of time, if you asked Lucky.

{"Don, we all know how he feels about books. His teacher won't let us forget it."}

Daddy doused the bread with some weird seasonings, continuing to craft the meal for his family. Daddy was desperate to have Lucky be a cultured kid, with elegance. He'd seen the highs and lows of the community as it grew, as he himself grew up as a child here, and he wouldn't tolerate his son being associated with the lows. That meant Lucky had to live and breathe his books, both fiction and otherwise, along with training to be a fighter, practice his charm for when he takes over Daddy's business, even learn a bit of singing and dancing on the side for less than practical purposes. Lucky was forecasted by his father to be a perfect storm, and he overwhelmed himself by trying to manage each of these expectations and still have time to run around like the stupid-ass teenager he was.

{"I don't know, Luck. Maybe clean the house a bit. Your room's a pig sty, and our's isn't that much better."}

Daddy pointed at Mama, and she rolled her eyes frustratedly.

"Pay me?"

{"Twenty-five."}

"Per room?

{"Sure."}

"Alright, bet."

They ate their breakfast, Mama and Daddy went to work, and Lucky walked to school, fifty dollars richer. If there was one thing he was willing to learn from Daddy's perfect storm, it was the ability to be a good negotiator as he got paid before he even did the job.

--

His clothes draped over the drying rack outside the house. It took an hour or two for him to fix everything up, but the room was finally finished. His room, that was, but Mama and Daddy's still provided a daunting task. Lucky stepped into the room and immediately shut his eyes away from the horror.

Bland and beige. Gave him the shivers every time he saw it. How poor could one's decorative choices possibly get? Regardless, papers, binders, pens, and boxes rested sporadically on the floor. It was a miracle that neither of them had tripped and fallen, poking their eyes out in the process. Lucky took an empty cardboard box and began picking up the bits and bobs from the floor, scraping away at any dust, or in a binder's case, spiders, that threatened to float away into his eyes.

Once everything was in order from his line of sight, Lucky began to shove the boxes underneath Mama and Daddy's bed. There was nothing important in any of the boxes, anyways, just a bunch of junk. Lucky cringed as the cardboard brushed against the wooden floors. It was a horrible sound that left his ears feeling as if they were on the brink of collapsing at any moment. Only one box was left when there wasn't any room. He laid onto the ground, looking under the bed frame to see if there was anything he could maneuver to get the last box to fit without having to leave it obtrusive in the room. There was only one thing down there that wasn't a cardboard box. It was a white box, smooth around the edges and had a nice feeling on the skin. Also, it was probably the only thing in the room not infected with dust. Unlabeled for clearly well-cared for by Mama or Daddy, Lucky dragged it out by the edge of its lid.

No reason not to snoop, they do it to you every day. He carried the box to his room.

He lifted the top, revealing a whole of hand-written papers, Mama's handwriting. He had no idea what they were for, or more importantly, who they were for, but Lucky could tell by Mama's shaky penmanship that it was something she was deeply emotional over. The stack was heavy and appeared never-ending, each page filled to the brim, front to back, with words. Most of those on the top of the pile were incoherent, usually one or two words written over and over again.

Sorry.
No.
My fault. My fault. Our fault.

Lucky began taking stacks of the papers at a time and tossing them to the side, looking for any pages that actually made sense and could explain his mother's panicked guilt. It dawned on him, midway through the pile, that if the box was anything like a book, the best way to find the truth behind a story was digging deep and going to the end. The last page. In this case, since the bottom page was the last one touched, the start of it all.

He read it to himself.

There's nothing more precious in this world than a baby. Their chubby little cheeks, the stretch they make with their fingers for the first time. The way that they cry, the way they smile at us no matter the weather or the emotion. Most importantly, if I do say so myself, the most compelling part of a baby is their promise. A baby offers a future path that nothing else can, molded and guided by their surroundings. A baby can do great things in twenty years time, but if they're not L lucky, they might just wind up dead or rowing a boat for the rest of their life.

Selena and Sei are too young to have a kid. They say they're in love, but the truth of the matter is that the excitement in their romance will fade and with it their care for each other. That's a problem when you're raising a baby. Torn between two parents with no clue which is the right path. The truth is, there is no right path for a child in that situation. It forces them to live their lives in turmoil and chaos, rather than allowing for them to thrive.

Selena was showing off her baby at work today. Everyone, men and women alike, laughed and cheered as the baby smiled for the attention he got and cried for the attention he didn't. What a wonderful child. Would've been a damn shame if they had him.

If?

Sei was calling for her down by the docks, and he sounded pretty upset. Selena gave her child to me of all people, to look after. Why me, you might ask? Beats me, as she didn't even know my name. Nobody here did. I was just an aspiring mother, another face of dozens. Without Selena bragging about the excitement of her first child (hopefully of many she said, Ripred help her,) the crowd of doe-eyed onlookers dispersed.

I looked into this little baby's jade green eyes and he looked back into mine. I thought to myself, I should… but I shouldn't… but I can't leave a baby boy in such horrific arms… so I did it anyways. I was blocks away when the wailing sounds of a mother and panicked screams from a father echoed against the seashore, and I didn't answer them. Del returned to the scene later to ask questions from the bystanders, and even offered to help search. Little did they know my husband was in on it, and willing too.

Days went by without a trace. A little white box is all they need to solve their little mystery.

We took him.

Him?

A tug at the back of his shirt dragged Lucky off of his bed and onto the ground. He landed hard on his elbows, only to see his father looking down at him with frustration.

{"When I said you could clean our bedroom, I didn't mean you could snoop around too."}

Lucky wanted to apologize, but tears were already flooding his eyes from the pain of the fall and what he'd read and the mere thought of there being hundreds of pages left to read. His instincts only allowed him to curl up in the corner of his room.

"What are those?

{"They're parts of… of Mama's stories that she used to write when she was younger. Mysteries. Action packed, raw, emotion-filled. They, they're-"}

"They sounded so real.. They sounded like Mama.."

{"They're not!"}

Daddy's voice cracked as sweat began to shine on his forehead. His wide eyes made him look like a father whose panicked screams fell flat against the seashore.

{"You're not listening to me."}

Lucky's voice broke higher. "No! You and Mama did that! You.. you.." he shook now, from the chatter of his jaw to his feet, relentlessly pushing as if he could get further into the corner.

{"No we did not!"}

Daddy pulled Lucky up to his feet, but Lucky trembled.

One.
Two.
Three.
Four.

It took four fully powered knuckles to Lucky's face before he sank to the ground again, covering his face to mask the pain and the tears. Daddy went back to the papers and stacked them neatly back into the box. The two sat in silence now, aside for Lucky's bawling sounds and Daddy's panting breath.

He broke the silence first.

{"I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to do that-"}

He did, Lucky knew that by the revolving door of his phrases, and how bored Daddy got of using them over and over again.

{"Luck.
Please.
Forgive me.
This isn't what you think."}

Lucky removed his hands from his eyes and looked at his father, eyes sinking from his tears that could have filled a drum. "I don't know. I don't know what to think anymore." His words were clogged by the phlegm and nasal congestion. He gave himself a moment to think and recompose himself, refusing to let Daddy tell him anything more until he said his piece.

"The one thing that I like about books is that I can skip to the last page and see how it ends before it begins. But here, every breath I take is a new last word of my book that I can't see the end result of until it's over. I.. Breathe, Lucky. Breathe. "I want to know what those last few words are. Of this chapter, of the next one, of the last. Where is the truth? What is the truth?" Hold it in, hold the tears in, Lucky. "Who am I? Who are they? Who, no, what are you?"

Five.

Hit number five was worse than all the others, as it was boosted by Daddy's raging scream.

{"You are Lucky Nachtnebel.
You are sixteen years old.
You are my son, I'm proud of that.
Proud of you.

That story isn't real.
You have known the truth all along, we've told you!
Get up, Luck."}

In the fetal position, he sat motionless. Like a bird in an egg: shaking, trying to escape, but immobile until the shell is broken.

{"Get up!"}

Daddy pulled Lucky up by his arms and held him close, their eyes inches from the other's.

{"Repeat after me, okay?
Okay?"}

Lucky nodded, unsure of if he wanted to but knowing he had to.

{"They hate me."}

He was hesitant, but his father insisted.

"They hate me.." he spoke in a whisper.

Daddy pointed to the wall, with the words written at every angle. Come to think of it.. some of those look like Daddy's handwriting, not m-

{"They hate me."}

"They hate me.."

{"They hate me."}

"They hate me.."

Daddy began shaking him now, his voice filling up the room each time he spoke.

{"They hate me."}

"They hate me.."

{"They hate me!"}

"They hate me!"

{"They hate you!"}

"They hate me!"

He changed it up, but Lucky failed to notice. All he could do was recite what Daddy taught him to say, think, live, and breathe.

{"They hate you!"}

"They hate me!"

{"They hate you!"}

"They hate me!"

{"They-"}

"THEY HATE ME!"

He was on the top of his lungs, and Lucky fell into his father's arms, where he eventually cried himself to sleep.

{"This is your home.
It's where you're loved."}

It's Lucky's home.
It's where he's loved.

--

The next morning, Lucky turned his doorknob with an ounce more caution than before. Mama and Daddy looked at him with no concern, only smiling faces. A plate was already set for him at the table.

{"Your father and I were thinking about having a fire tonight.
You know, to get rid of all that junk you cleaned up for us in our room."}

"What about all your old stories? I was looking at them and-"

{"Oh? Those old things.
We can get rid of them, Lucky.
They're just stories."}

It's exactly what they did. That night in the backyard, Mama, Daddy, and Lucky burned through the cardboard boxes. As the moon danced overhead, only one smooth and plush white box remained.

{"Don, I don't think I can burn these on my own."}


{"That's all right, sweetheart. You want to do the honors, Luck?"}

Lucky gave a quick nod of approval before Mama tossed him the lighter. He put the lighter in the box and was about to light it before Daddy dug Lucky's hand out of the box.

{"How about we do this page by page, Luck?
After all, we have all night."}

Mama agreed, and Lucky concurred, too.

He started with the page on top, letting the flames slowly consume the page.

{"That's the first page of the book I wrote, you know."}

Mama and Daddy didn't bat an eye as the offwhite pages turned into flame. The final words of the page, we took him were the last to go. He let go of the page and let it sink into the fire and went on with the next.

And the next. And the next. And the next.

He didn't know what to feel as Mama's confession, no, her story, disintegrated into ash. As the pages fell into the bonfire's pit of erasement, he knew one thing: this place, behind these gated walls, was his home. It's where he's loved. He told himself that over and over that night, until he finally believed it to be true.