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Cassius leaned his back against the cool of the sliding door’s window and watched the rhythmic motion of the rain. It could be assumed by his demeanor that he was deep in thought; however he was lost somewhere far away deep in his mind.
Blood falling down heavier than any normal raindrop should. He was five years old again, looking with his virgin eyes upon pure carnage. Evil. He could feel it pressing down upon him, suffocating him. His mother ran past screaming for him. But she couldn’t be, he reminded himself, she’s dead. He was spinning in time.
“Mon fils, mon fils, tu es où?” she shrieked, but the sounds of rain and gunshots stifled her cries. The blood dripped from her delicate hands like wax off the side of a candle. It seemed as if she was melting away from him. He could hear her heavy breathing, he could see her holding out her hand. That fair pure hand corrupted with fresh blood. He could almost touch her, that is how close he seemed. He was moving backwards, away from her.
“Cassius!” she pleaded.
His eyes snapped open, and he pulled his knees to his chest. The sounds of gunshots and horses faded away, as did his mother’s last echoing shriek. It rang out in his head until it faded into nothing but a memory. The rhythm of the rain hid the sound of a confused boy crying over the woman he never knew, but was forever haunted by.
Cassius sat against the underside of the porcelain sink in the bathroom of his father’s trailer unaware of the Disney Movie-like setting outside. He stared at the pack of razor blades before him with hungry bloodshot eyes.
Packs of Bic® razor blades have a zip lock bag that causes first time users a momentary struggle to puncture, but Cassius used one dirty thumbnail to deftly flick it open. With a satisfying and dramatically over perfected crack the shiny silver blades fell out of their casing.
He pressed the cold metal of the blade against his flesh, adding more and more pressure until the blade broke skin and then plunged further in. Curves and crevices contorted Cassius’s face as he bit his lip and winced, holding in a shriek of severe pain.
Pulling back the blade he relaxed, then tensed up again repeating the same procedure five more times until six lines of blood oozed from his arm. Tears dripped from his face as he put away the razors, wiped away the blood, and went into his closet.
It was the same every day. Wake up and cut. See the blood you don’t deserve, and feel the punishment of the pain. He did not remember the first time he cut himself, or why, or with what. Trying to think back to the past hurt his brain, and caused him a dizzying sense of vertigo. It seemed to him his past was a gloomy labyrinth with too many dead ends and not enough open passageways. He never understood why he felt this way. He didn’t understand why he was always punishing himself for things that never happened. What was wrong with him?
Cassius mused over all this as he tugged on his black wool turtleneck to hide the scars of knife on flesh. However hiding never causes pain to diminish but only represses it for a short while.
Each floorboard let out a half-hearted squeak as Cassius walked on. He smelt burning toast on the griddle, or was it gun smoke? Yes, it was gun smoke, and gun powder, and the musty smell of horses. Cassius gasped, and abruptly arrested his descent down the staircase.
There was fire all around him. He let out a high pitched scream as beam after fiery beam fell from the sky. His mother was crying in the corner, sobbing his name. Then they came in. Soldiers! They grabbed at Cassius, trying frantically to get him. “No one ever know of this. We must leave immediately!” the soldiers commanded gruffly, or were they tin soldiers? Perhaps they weren’t soldiers at all. Cassius’s small eyes were still focused on his mother lying in the corner as they carried him away. Why wasn’t she getting back up? Her blank lifeless eyes watched on as Cassius was lifted away.
“CASSIUS!” shrieked a voice. It was not his mother. “Take off that damn sweater!” His father’s greasy face jeered at him.
“No,” Cassius muttered with no distinct emotion. He shivered as his vision faded away.
“Don’t be telling me no!” his father replied. “It’s one hundred degrees outside! What’s wrong with you? There’s something seriously wrong with your brain! Maybe you’re b***h of a mother dropped you on your odd little head.”
Cassius regarded him with cold eyes. Disgusting bulges of fat were ripping at the seams of his poor, defenseless white tank top. Above the neck of the shirt suspended in some of the fat (which could be called a head by some, but really just morphed to the rest of his body thanks to lack of neck) were two beady, commanding, and amazingly stupid eyes. His father’s mouth opened into a wide ghoulish grin. Every single yellow tooth was showing, with the exception of the silver ones.
“You’re dirty, just like your dirty mother. You’re just as odd, and stupid, and strange,” he whispered through his jaundiced teeth. Frank had slapped Cassius across the face without even having to lift his hand. Cassius snapped up from the seat he had subconsciously sat down in. With two wild swipes of his arms he knocked the breakfast dishes off the table. Each plate shattered with a loud crash signaling its end, and the toaster landed under the counter with a clunk.
“Don’t you ever,” Cassius’s voice had the crescendo effect, “EVER talk about my mother, ever! You,” he choked. “You KILLED HER!! YOU BROKE HER HEART AND YOU KILLED HER! I HATE YOU! YOU MONSTER. YOU…” he cracked on his last word. The angry tears he had hoped to forever hide away burst forth. How pathetic to let my guard down, he thought bitterly. How pathetic to feel.
His father grew unusually calm. “You don’t understand, Cassius. You don’t understand this at all. Don’t shout at me about things you don’t understand.”
“UGH!” Cassius kicked a shard of broken plate, and stomped off to school broken up inside.
“Cassius?” the Science Professor pulled Cassius from his musings.
“Yes, Professor?” he replied.
“What happens when 6 Oxygen combines with sunlight and 6 Carbon Dioxide?”
Cassius stared blankly at the teacher, shrugged, then proceeded to fiddle with some papers in a very uninterested manner.
A change in the wind brought the sound of laughing children into the room, and the smell of newly baked cookies also wandered in.
It was the day of Cassius’s fourth birthday, and he had just gotten home from preschool. His mother sat at the table with a tray of chocolate-chip cookies freshly baked on her lap. Cassius gobbled down three, hungrily savoring each warm gooey bite. He removed the tray from her lap and sat his bottom there instead. He smiled up at her and tightly hugged her. His mother’s usually neat hair had fallen from its pins and there were spots of flour on her face. The sound of a car pulling into the drive stirred some kind of fright deep inside his mother.
She dropped him from her knee muttering, “What’s he doing home so early? Things aren’t tidied yet. Oh…oh no…He’ll be so, so angry…” She frantically shoved dishes in drawers. Running around in panicked circles she ran her head into a cupboard door. She sat on the floor with her hand over her eye. “Mommy?”, Cassius’s small voice rattled her back to the present.
“Cassius, dear, please go up stairs,” his mother pleaded. She frantically pushed him towards the stairs. In staggered father smelling heavily of alcohol.
“But Mommy…” he hesitated. She just smiled nervously, and pushed him on. The young Cassius sat at the top of the stairs crying quietly. Downstairs he heard his mother cry out, “Frank, please!” There was a crash, then utter silence. Shortly after a car fired up from somewhere outside, and drove away quickly. The screeching of its tires seemed angry to Cassius.
On many occasions Cassius had seen his father do absolutely despicable things to his mother, with his bare hands, with stool legs, knives, heavy books, lamps, and other weapon within his range at the time. Frank had always stopped before killing her, but only just before she was at her breaking point. Afterwards, he’d stumble away in a drunken rage. One day Cassius asked his mother if it hurt her when he did such things to her. “Of course not,” she replied, after a time. Her smile seemed forced as she added, “Your Daddy loves me very much. Why would he want to hurt Mommy?” From that day forward Cassius no longer cringed when he heard the sounds downstairs, no matter how ghastly they were. He was assured by his mother’s words, and chose to believe them.
“Cassius,” bellowed Professor O’Brien, “we need to talk. Your marks have been slipping this term.”
Cassius inspected his dirty fingernails, which were set on hands as pale as china, as his mother’s had been.
“So?” Cassius replied coolly. His eyes bored holes into the teacher’s chest. The teacher shivered.
“Strange one that he is, he has potential,” he had related to his wife late one night. Sometimes he wandered what had damaged the boy so completely.
“So?” the outrage was obvious in the Professor’s voice. His eyes burned with determination. “So? That’s all you have to say for yourself? Listen up, Cassius, you are a bright boy, but your school work is not reflecting your intelligence! If you can’t believe in yourself then I can’t help you.” Professor O’Brien stopped to see if his words had struck any emotion on the boy’s face, but he remained calm. His silence seemed like insolence.
“If this plunge you are taking continues, then your father will be brought in. Think about it, Cassius, think about it.” The teacher returned to his paperwork.
“You may go, Cassius,” his teacher dismissed him.
Cassius’s eyes went blank, and beads of sweat dripped down his pale face.
He was back in his room at his old home. He was six years old; it was 1985. The walls were still wallpapered with pictures of the Loony Toons. Sudden sounds downstairs caused fear in the little boy’s heart. Clanging and banging vibrated from deep in the core of the house. The cartoons seemed to twist their faces into sinister expressions. Each one seemed to be mocking him, and trapping him into the confines of his room. He heard heavy footfalls on the steps. It was his father. Somehow he knew he had to get away, but he was trapped there in that horrible wallpapered room.
“Cassius! For the last time, you may go!” the Professor’s voice surprised him. His face had grown a shade paler, if that were possible, and beads of sweat had drenched the collar of his shirt. He nodded, grabbed his bag, and staggered off. The Professor watched on feeling puzzled and helpless.
“There is something odd about the human mind, and that is its ability to control the things it remembers and what it will not. Even more amazing is the individual scenarios that go on in each different human being’s life that effects this memory process. A lot of the time things are not as we remember. We often warp them,” the guidance counselor’s apple pie voice cooed. Cassius surveyed the room., and came to the conclusion that it was a room of business. First and foremost Dr. Gillio’s room was an office. How are students supposed to feel safe and comfortable enough to open up in this cell of a room? Cassius mused. For at least an hour Dr. Gillio had attempted to pick apart Cassius’s psyche. The mans persistent queries were almost as infuriating as his disgustingly fake voice. His unnatural simper did not break Cassius, who had answered only with varying levels of silence. However, the doctor’s last statement hit a chord with Cassius. He finally looked in the man’s eyes. The Doctor looked tired and annoyed, yet also generally concerned. Cassius wasn’t used to compassion of this caliber and had to lower his eyes.
“Sometimes,” Cassius began cautiously, “I have flashbacks…” The effort of revealing his secret had brought small dew drops of perspiration to his forehead. The doctor stared at him, one of his eyebrows rising in confusion, or was it disbelief? One thing was clear the doctor didn’t understand. Cassius could read it in his eyes. Such a simpleton, to leave his emotions so freely flying, Cassius spat inside his head angrily. The last half hour of their time Cassius remained completely silent.
The rain was thundering down upon the tin roof of Cassius’s father’s trailer. He sat in one corner alone, staring fiercely at no particular spot with wild eyes. His hair was messy with spots of blood splattered through it.
Each of his arms had a multitude of cuts running down them. Each one leaked fountains of blood that stained the white of the carpet. Causing the whiteness to be stained, and imperfect, just like he felt his soul was.
Five year old Cassius lying in his mother’s arms. Six year old Cassius crying over his mother’s open grave. Seven year old Cassius flinching at the sight of his father’s oncoming fist. Memory after cruel memory fell from the heavens onto the boy’s frail shoulders.
His white face was set with no expression. Dried blood crusted to his face stood out among the paleness. The spinning of the fan cast ghostly shadows on the white ceiling of the room.
He was standing in the corner of the living room of his old home. He didn’t know how he knew it was his old home, but he knew. A small pale dark haired child sat in the corner playing with some sort of metal object. Was that a wee version of him? Was he playing with, of all things, a knife?
The memory seemed so close. He could hear his mother humming, he could smell the rice she was frying, and he could almost touch her. He had an overwhelming urge to hold her, hug her too him, but he had no idea why.
The dark haired child, he presumed to be himself, slowly crept over to his mother, who was using a wooden spoon to turn her rice. With no pause, no emotional struggle, no mercy he took his knife, and shoved it deep into his mother’s back. The little boy’s face stayed unchanging, and didn’t flinch as his mother screamed and squirmed under his knife. Those screams, unbeknownst to him at the time, would haunt his future dreams for the rest of his life. He continued to stab at her until she grew quiet.
He had seen daddy do the same thing to her, but why wouldn’t she wake up this time? Did Mommy say that it didn’t hurt her?
The grown Cassius screamed at the wall as the scene played itself out in his mind. He was in agony. He reached for his blade and sliced his arms more. With each cut he screamed out loud, and died over and over again in his mind, as he saw his mother’s blood seep from his own veins.
He was back in the corner, back to the past. A younger version of his father came into the house, smelt the air, and announced his presence. “Bridget, you better not have burnt my damn dinner!”
His mouth dropped several stories as he entered the kitchen to see his wife’s mangled body, and the shaft of a bloody knife in his son’s hands. Sirens filled the night air, and the screeches of squad cars racing down the road to answer a call could be heard from a distance.
There were no horses, no soldiers, just squad cars and his father. No smell of gunshots filled the air, just his father’s heavy alcoholic stench. It was his fault, all his fault. The grown Cassius screamed at his realization.
“What did you do, Cassius?” he whispered in shock. “WHAT DID YOU DO?” he cried out in anguish, slapping the boy several times across the face. Cassius started crying and screaming loudly.
His father yanked him up by the waist, and flung him over his shoulder. He ran out the door, throwing a burning match behind him. Chucking the screaming child into the truck, he turned, and screamed to him, “No one must EVER know about this!” He paused, and then roughly grabbed the boys face in his hand. “No one, Cassius. Do you hear me?”
The boy nodded fervently through his tears.
Frank came home late from work agitated as usual. After chucking his keys on the table, leafing through some old bills, and checking the mirror too see if his hair line had receded anymore during the last hour, he called out, “Cassius, where’s my damn dinner?” When there was no reply he went through the laborious task of searching the rooms for his son. When he approached the living room he stopped in his tracks. There laying in a pool of blood was his son. There were gashes running down the lengths of his arm. In one hand he held a blade in the other a crumpled picture. Frank pried open his son’s hand, and scanned the old photograph with his eyes. It was a picture of a pale faced dark haired woman sitting on a lawn chair smiling. When Frank turned over the picture he found the words “Mom. So Sorry…” scrawled in untidy letters on the back.
©2006 Akasha
Blood falling down heavier than any normal raindrop should. He was five years old again, looking with his virgin eyes upon pure carnage. Evil. He could feel it pressing down upon him, suffocating him. His mother ran past screaming for him. But she couldn’t be, he reminded himself, she’s dead. He was spinning in time.
“Mon fils, mon fils, tu es où?” she shrieked, but the sounds of rain and gunshots stifled her cries. The blood dripped from her delicate hands like wax off the side of a candle. It seemed as if she was melting away from him. He could hear her heavy breathing, he could see her holding out her hand. That fair pure hand corrupted with fresh blood. He could almost touch her, that is how close he seemed. He was moving backwards, away from her.
“Cassius!” she pleaded.
His eyes snapped open, and he pulled his knees to his chest. The sounds of gunshots and horses faded away, as did his mother’s last echoing shriek. It rang out in his head until it faded into nothing but a memory. The rhythm of the rain hid the sound of a confused boy crying over the woman he never knew, but was forever haunted by.
Cassius sat against the underside of the porcelain sink in the bathroom of his father’s trailer unaware of the Disney Movie-like setting outside. He stared at the pack of razor blades before him with hungry bloodshot eyes.
Packs of Bic® razor blades have a zip lock bag that causes first time users a momentary struggle to puncture, but Cassius used one dirty thumbnail to deftly flick it open. With a satisfying and dramatically over perfected crack the shiny silver blades fell out of their casing.
He pressed the cold metal of the blade against his flesh, adding more and more pressure until the blade broke skin and then plunged further in. Curves and crevices contorted Cassius’s face as he bit his lip and winced, holding in a shriek of severe pain.
Pulling back the blade he relaxed, then tensed up again repeating the same procedure five more times until six lines of blood oozed from his arm. Tears dripped from his face as he put away the razors, wiped away the blood, and went into his closet.
It was the same every day. Wake up and cut. See the blood you don’t deserve, and feel the punishment of the pain. He did not remember the first time he cut himself, or why, or with what. Trying to think back to the past hurt his brain, and caused him a dizzying sense of vertigo. It seemed to him his past was a gloomy labyrinth with too many dead ends and not enough open passageways. He never understood why he felt this way. He didn’t understand why he was always punishing himself for things that never happened. What was wrong with him?
Cassius mused over all this as he tugged on his black wool turtleneck to hide the scars of knife on flesh. However hiding never causes pain to diminish but only represses it for a short while.
Each floorboard let out a half-hearted squeak as Cassius walked on. He smelt burning toast on the griddle, or was it gun smoke? Yes, it was gun smoke, and gun powder, and the musty smell of horses. Cassius gasped, and abruptly arrested his descent down the staircase.
There was fire all around him. He let out a high pitched scream as beam after fiery beam fell from the sky. His mother was crying in the corner, sobbing his name. Then they came in. Soldiers! They grabbed at Cassius, trying frantically to get him. “No one ever know of this. We must leave immediately!” the soldiers commanded gruffly, or were they tin soldiers? Perhaps they weren’t soldiers at all. Cassius’s small eyes were still focused on his mother lying in the corner as they carried him away. Why wasn’t she getting back up? Her blank lifeless eyes watched on as Cassius was lifted away.
“CASSIUS!” shrieked a voice. It was not his mother. “Take off that damn sweater!” His father’s greasy face jeered at him.
“No,” Cassius muttered with no distinct emotion. He shivered as his vision faded away.
“Don’t be telling me no!” his father replied. “It’s one hundred degrees outside! What’s wrong with you? There’s something seriously wrong with your brain! Maybe you’re b***h of a mother dropped you on your odd little head.”
Cassius regarded him with cold eyes. Disgusting bulges of fat were ripping at the seams of his poor, defenseless white tank top. Above the neck of the shirt suspended in some of the fat (which could be called a head by some, but really just morphed to the rest of his body thanks to lack of neck) were two beady, commanding, and amazingly stupid eyes. His father’s mouth opened into a wide ghoulish grin. Every single yellow tooth was showing, with the exception of the silver ones.
“You’re dirty, just like your dirty mother. You’re just as odd, and stupid, and strange,” he whispered through his jaundiced teeth. Frank had slapped Cassius across the face without even having to lift his hand. Cassius snapped up from the seat he had subconsciously sat down in. With two wild swipes of his arms he knocked the breakfast dishes off the table. Each plate shattered with a loud crash signaling its end, and the toaster landed under the counter with a clunk.
“Don’t you ever,” Cassius’s voice had the crescendo effect, “EVER talk about my mother, ever! You,” he choked. “You KILLED HER!! YOU BROKE HER HEART AND YOU KILLED HER! I HATE YOU! YOU MONSTER. YOU…” he cracked on his last word. The angry tears he had hoped to forever hide away burst forth. How pathetic to let my guard down, he thought bitterly. How pathetic to feel.
His father grew unusually calm. “You don’t understand, Cassius. You don’t understand this at all. Don’t shout at me about things you don’t understand.”
“UGH!” Cassius kicked a shard of broken plate, and stomped off to school broken up inside.
“Cassius?” the Science Professor pulled Cassius from his musings.
“Yes, Professor?” he replied.
“What happens when 6 Oxygen combines with sunlight and 6 Carbon Dioxide?”
Cassius stared blankly at the teacher, shrugged, then proceeded to fiddle with some papers in a very uninterested manner.
A change in the wind brought the sound of laughing children into the room, and the smell of newly baked cookies also wandered in.
It was the day of Cassius’s fourth birthday, and he had just gotten home from preschool. His mother sat at the table with a tray of chocolate-chip cookies freshly baked on her lap. Cassius gobbled down three, hungrily savoring each warm gooey bite. He removed the tray from her lap and sat his bottom there instead. He smiled up at her and tightly hugged her. His mother’s usually neat hair had fallen from its pins and there were spots of flour on her face. The sound of a car pulling into the drive stirred some kind of fright deep inside his mother.
She dropped him from her knee muttering, “What’s he doing home so early? Things aren’t tidied yet. Oh…oh no…He’ll be so, so angry…” She frantically shoved dishes in drawers. Running around in panicked circles she ran her head into a cupboard door. She sat on the floor with her hand over her eye. “Mommy?”, Cassius’s small voice rattled her back to the present.
“Cassius, dear, please go up stairs,” his mother pleaded. She frantically pushed him towards the stairs. In staggered father smelling heavily of alcohol.
“But Mommy…” he hesitated. She just smiled nervously, and pushed him on. The young Cassius sat at the top of the stairs crying quietly. Downstairs he heard his mother cry out, “Frank, please!” There was a crash, then utter silence. Shortly after a car fired up from somewhere outside, and drove away quickly. The screeching of its tires seemed angry to Cassius.
On many occasions Cassius had seen his father do absolutely despicable things to his mother, with his bare hands, with stool legs, knives, heavy books, lamps, and other weapon within his range at the time. Frank had always stopped before killing her, but only just before she was at her breaking point. Afterwards, he’d stumble away in a drunken rage. One day Cassius asked his mother if it hurt her when he did such things to her. “Of course not,” she replied, after a time. Her smile seemed forced as she added, “Your Daddy loves me very much. Why would he want to hurt Mommy?” From that day forward Cassius no longer cringed when he heard the sounds downstairs, no matter how ghastly they were. He was assured by his mother’s words, and chose to believe them.
“Cassius,” bellowed Professor O’Brien, “we need to talk. Your marks have been slipping this term.”
Cassius inspected his dirty fingernails, which were set on hands as pale as china, as his mother’s had been.
“So?” Cassius replied coolly. His eyes bored holes into the teacher’s chest. The teacher shivered.
“Strange one that he is, he has potential,” he had related to his wife late one night. Sometimes he wandered what had damaged the boy so completely.
“So?” the outrage was obvious in the Professor’s voice. His eyes burned with determination. “So? That’s all you have to say for yourself? Listen up, Cassius, you are a bright boy, but your school work is not reflecting your intelligence! If you can’t believe in yourself then I can’t help you.” Professor O’Brien stopped to see if his words had struck any emotion on the boy’s face, but he remained calm. His silence seemed like insolence.
“If this plunge you are taking continues, then your father will be brought in. Think about it, Cassius, think about it.” The teacher returned to his paperwork.
“You may go, Cassius,” his teacher dismissed him.
Cassius’s eyes went blank, and beads of sweat dripped down his pale face.
He was back in his room at his old home. He was six years old; it was 1985. The walls were still wallpapered with pictures of the Loony Toons. Sudden sounds downstairs caused fear in the little boy’s heart. Clanging and banging vibrated from deep in the core of the house. The cartoons seemed to twist their faces into sinister expressions. Each one seemed to be mocking him, and trapping him into the confines of his room. He heard heavy footfalls on the steps. It was his father. Somehow he knew he had to get away, but he was trapped there in that horrible wallpapered room.
“Cassius! For the last time, you may go!” the Professor’s voice surprised him. His face had grown a shade paler, if that were possible, and beads of sweat had drenched the collar of his shirt. He nodded, grabbed his bag, and staggered off. The Professor watched on feeling puzzled and helpless.
“There is something odd about the human mind, and that is its ability to control the things it remembers and what it will not. Even more amazing is the individual scenarios that go on in each different human being’s life that effects this memory process. A lot of the time things are not as we remember. We often warp them,” the guidance counselor’s apple pie voice cooed. Cassius surveyed the room., and came to the conclusion that it was a room of business. First and foremost Dr. Gillio’s room was an office. How are students supposed to feel safe and comfortable enough to open up in this cell of a room? Cassius mused. For at least an hour Dr. Gillio had attempted to pick apart Cassius’s psyche. The mans persistent queries were almost as infuriating as his disgustingly fake voice. His unnatural simper did not break Cassius, who had answered only with varying levels of silence. However, the doctor’s last statement hit a chord with Cassius. He finally looked in the man’s eyes. The Doctor looked tired and annoyed, yet also generally concerned. Cassius wasn’t used to compassion of this caliber and had to lower his eyes.
“Sometimes,” Cassius began cautiously, “I have flashbacks…” The effort of revealing his secret had brought small dew drops of perspiration to his forehead. The doctor stared at him, one of his eyebrows rising in confusion, or was it disbelief? One thing was clear the doctor didn’t understand. Cassius could read it in his eyes. Such a simpleton, to leave his emotions so freely flying, Cassius spat inside his head angrily. The last half hour of their time Cassius remained completely silent.
The rain was thundering down upon the tin roof of Cassius’s father’s trailer. He sat in one corner alone, staring fiercely at no particular spot with wild eyes. His hair was messy with spots of blood splattered through it.
Each of his arms had a multitude of cuts running down them. Each one leaked fountains of blood that stained the white of the carpet. Causing the whiteness to be stained, and imperfect, just like he felt his soul was.
Five year old Cassius lying in his mother’s arms. Six year old Cassius crying over his mother’s open grave. Seven year old Cassius flinching at the sight of his father’s oncoming fist. Memory after cruel memory fell from the heavens onto the boy’s frail shoulders.
His white face was set with no expression. Dried blood crusted to his face stood out among the paleness. The spinning of the fan cast ghostly shadows on the white ceiling of the room.
He was standing in the corner of the living room of his old home. He didn’t know how he knew it was his old home, but he knew. A small pale dark haired child sat in the corner playing with some sort of metal object. Was that a wee version of him? Was he playing with, of all things, a knife?
The memory seemed so close. He could hear his mother humming, he could smell the rice she was frying, and he could almost touch her. He had an overwhelming urge to hold her, hug her too him, but he had no idea why.
The dark haired child, he presumed to be himself, slowly crept over to his mother, who was using a wooden spoon to turn her rice. With no pause, no emotional struggle, no mercy he took his knife, and shoved it deep into his mother’s back. The little boy’s face stayed unchanging, and didn’t flinch as his mother screamed and squirmed under his knife. Those screams, unbeknownst to him at the time, would haunt his future dreams for the rest of his life. He continued to stab at her until she grew quiet.
He had seen daddy do the same thing to her, but why wouldn’t she wake up this time? Did Mommy say that it didn’t hurt her?
The grown Cassius screamed at the wall as the scene played itself out in his mind. He was in agony. He reached for his blade and sliced his arms more. With each cut he screamed out loud, and died over and over again in his mind, as he saw his mother’s blood seep from his own veins.
He was back in the corner, back to the past. A younger version of his father came into the house, smelt the air, and announced his presence. “Bridget, you better not have burnt my damn dinner!”
His mouth dropped several stories as he entered the kitchen to see his wife’s mangled body, and the shaft of a bloody knife in his son’s hands. Sirens filled the night air, and the screeches of squad cars racing down the road to answer a call could be heard from a distance.
There were no horses, no soldiers, just squad cars and his father. No smell of gunshots filled the air, just his father’s heavy alcoholic stench. It was his fault, all his fault. The grown Cassius screamed at his realization.
“What did you do, Cassius?” he whispered in shock. “WHAT DID YOU DO?” he cried out in anguish, slapping the boy several times across the face. Cassius started crying and screaming loudly.
His father yanked him up by the waist, and flung him over his shoulder. He ran out the door, throwing a burning match behind him. Chucking the screaming child into the truck, he turned, and screamed to him, “No one must EVER know about this!” He paused, and then roughly grabbed the boys face in his hand. “No one, Cassius. Do you hear me?”
The boy nodded fervently through his tears.
Frank came home late from work agitated as usual. After chucking his keys on the table, leafing through some old bills, and checking the mirror too see if his hair line had receded anymore during the last hour, he called out, “Cassius, where’s my damn dinner?” When there was no reply he went through the laborious task of searching the rooms for his son. When he approached the living room he stopped in his tracks. There laying in a pool of blood was his son. There were gashes running down the lengths of his arm. In one hand he held a blade in the other a crumpled picture. Frank pried open his son’s hand, and scanned the old photograph with his eyes. It was a picture of a pale faced dark haired woman sitting on a lawn chair smiling. When Frank turned over the picture he found the words “Mom. So Sorry…” scrawled in untidy letters on the back.
©2006 Akasha
