Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/41435.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Fandom:
      mysterious_skin
  Character:
      Neil, Brian, Wendy, Eric
  Additional Tags:
      Child_Abuse
  Stats:
      Published: 2009-12-30 Words: 981
****** a moment, elaborate and weak ******
by Zara_Hemla_(zarahemla)
Summary
     hutchinson, kansas; a children's playground; a boy with a bottomless
     pit where his heart should be.
I left Wendy's place in the New York darkness, and I didn't wake her up.
Probably she wanted me to, but you can't always get what you want, right? She'd
of asked me a million questions, and the first one would have been, what
happened to your face, and I'd have to say something flip and useless like,
some guy didn't like sprouts on his foot-long. Yeah, very funny, it felt like a
foot-long all right, but for fuck's sake I wanted Wendy to keep her illusions
of me with a nine-to-five, making it in the big city. Okay? Maybe I wanted
someone to think well of me, someone somewhere who could keep it to herself.
I'm not sure come to think of it that Wendy thinks well of me. But if not she
never says anything. That's important.
Everything ached as I flew home; it was my first time on a plane and I couldn't
even enjoy it. Mostly I just sat there and stared at the clouds, watched the
wrinkly landscape crawl beneath the window. Wondered how it would be to fall
from how high up we were. If the plane just evaporated. Would I have time to
jerk off before I hit the ground?
I wanted to get up and walk the aisle because my ass was on fire but no one
would let me. Every inch of my skin prickled and my cuts felt like someone had
poured acid on my face. But inside I didn't feel much of anything except maybe
a vague guilt about Wendy. "Be safe," that's what she'd asked me. Just that one
thing, and I couldn't do it. I don't think it's in me to be safe. I'm a guy who
courts disaster.
Right -- I bet you were thinking that a man raping me and beating my face all
to shit has changed me. Yeah, this isn't that kind of story. Maybe I got a
fucking clue -- enough to realize that when a guy barks at you to shut up, you
don't go into his apartment like some dumb slut -- but getting a clue isn't my
strong suit. I looked like Tyson in the seventeenth round, though. My mother
freaked out. Eric's mouth dropped open when he saw me and he tried to hide it
but unfortunately he cannot hide things from me. I told them I was mugged -
- Eric and his idiot friend, the boy I knew from Little League, from the shag
carpeting on the floor of coach's house. The idiot kid looked sorry for me, but
Eric was not buying it. Well, I don't keep him around because I like his
bleached forelock. Now that I've told idiot boy the story of me and coach,
maybe Eric will be next.
I guess I was the idiot kid's dream come true; he looked at me like I was the
second coming. I took him to coach's house and told him the whole story and he
cried it out on my lap like I was his mom or something. But it didn't make us
friends. And seeing him made my life a hell of a lot worse. I was always proud
of the way me and coach were together. I did what coach wanted and he loved me
and I got a shitload of fruit loops and video games out of it. That's the way
it was. That's the way I thought it was. But listening to Brian, it was like,
you knew a story, right? And you'd known that story all your life. But then
suddenly someone came and told the story a different way and it was really an
ugly story, fucking ugly and messed up and you were sorry you'd ever heard it
in the first place.
With Brian it was all mixed up with his dad and his nose bleeding and aliens
and shit. Which makes no sense to me but I guess it was his way of rewriting
what happened. Rewriting. I didn't want to rewrite how someone finally made me
feel special for one shitty summer while my mother was fucking her latest and
watching the 9 oclock news with a vodka orange juice. But now listening to him
I feel like yeah, it all makes sense. Coach was an alien and he made me into
one. He gave me his long fingers and his black staring eyes. I don't fit in on
Earth anymore but I have nowhere to go.
I spend evenings in the park but I don't get in anyone's car. Yet. Eric comes
and sits with me or we play soccer or smoke grass. Sometimes he brings Brian
but mostly he senses that I don't really like Brian. I mean the kid is okay but
really kind of a fuckwad and he makes me kind of jittery. So Eric comes alone
and we sit there in the Kansas twilight and he tells me about his classes at
community college. Like algebra and shit. Shit I never could do, never tried to
do. Normal shit. For all his makeup, Eric is surprisingly normal and sweet and
kind. I can say whatever I want and he'll just smile at me. Sometimes I
remember how I kissed him. It was only in fun and in anger and he never called
me on it. Never asked me why. Never asked me to do it again.
Then he leaves when it gets too dark. Says he has homework. Whatever. So I sit
there crosslegged with sand shifting all around me and the swings creaking
their rusty chains, and I wait. If I go off with another man I might miss it:
the blue light like Brian said, the hazy fog blinding me, the shadow reaching
out its skinny arms. The half-familiar voice, finally saying my name.
--end--
title from the old 97s song, "Alone So Far."
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