“Let his flesh not be torn. Let his blood leave no stain. When they beat him let him feel no pain. Let his bones never break and however they try to destroy him. Let him never die. Let him never die.” –Schwartz

May 3rd, 2007

***

Brian had been home for a little over two hours. The water in the shower had long ago gone cold. Brian stood under the coarse spray, trembling from both fear and the change in temperature. His perfectly manicured hands displayed a constant repetitive movement.

One shaky hand held an almost empty bottle of Caress body wash. The object’s intended use, in perfect contrast to what his other hand grasped a rough, blue exfoliating sponge. The sound of constant scrubbing and the squirt of the soap bottle reverberate off the bathroom walls like music to only Brian’s ears. These sounds mixed with the showerheads hard water spray. It pounded down upon the Brunet’s skin. The shower stall’s sounds became an eerie echo of a symphony Brian knew all too well.

Perfection and cleanliness, it is all Brian’s mind can fathom. Brian’s muscles have frozen, it has made him unbalanced and he falls in a thud to the tile floor. At first, he does not feel the pain that he should. He does not feel the stretch in his legs from the fall, the burning sting the raw, opened, red patches on his skin let in. Some are bleeding, some bruising over bruises that faded long ago but remembered with possibly present feeling.

Right now, it is all numbing and comforting. The slick cold tiles cause his body to slip, his back and butt fall under him and he slides down until his head hits the floor, not hard, but hard enough for Brian to feel jolted out of wherever the place he was hiding inside his mind. It awakens him from his ritual cleansing. He turns his head to the side, squinting against the water hitting his head, the tile is only a few degrees colder than the water but it feels like a smack to his skin.

It does the trick. Brian comes back, comes to his senses enough to come out of his mind, get up, and turn off the indoor rain.

Brian carefully opens the glass shower door and reaches his hand out to get a soft, fluffy, blue towel off the linen bench. Meticulously, he dries every inch of his body with small light dabs. Every time the cotton sticks to an open wound, he finds himself jumping a bit from the sting but at the same time reveling in the familiarity of it.

Brian always needed stability and familiarity. So much so, that the need to make his own sometimes overpowered any other need, detrimental to his physical and mental health, more times than not. After stepping out of the shower, Brian thinks he feels much better. That is, until he hears his mother’s words inside his head, coming from the deep dark place that he begs to stay hidden.

Memories once buried for so long play in his mind. His therapist brought them back to the surface in yesterday’s session. He is learning ways to face them. He has to deal with them and move on. It is hard though when Brian does not remember the exercise taught to him to do this. He cannot think of anything when these memories invade his thoughts like a hammer-hell to his brain. The onslaught is never kind; it is never anything less than a heart wrenching, brutally ingrained mind fuck.

Brian did not mean to take the picture of the flower. It just looked so pretty. It had purple petals kissed with morning dew, sparkling in the early morning sunrise. It smelled so good too, fresh, clean and flowery. The boy regretted the need he had to take the picture. He had taken the trash out and had passed the flower on his way back inside the house.

Brian looked and saw Joan watching him pick it up off the mantle. She did not try to stop him so he thought it was okay. However, as soon as the camera clicked his mother had come outside and dragged him into the kitchen by his elbow. She did it so quickly that the camera fell from Brian’s hands onto the kitchen floor and shattered, the role of film inside the camera popped out and exposed itself to the light, ultimately leading Brian’s picture to an undeveloped death.

”What were you doing taking pictures Brian?” Joan Kinney asks her ten-year-old.

“I..I.. Mam I,” Brian stuttered.

His Father called him ‘stutter’, among other demeaning names, but that was probably the nicest one. Sometimes Brian wondered if his father remembered his actual name, his grandmother named him after her husband, Joan’s father. Brian tried to think about a time that his father had called him Brian, but could not think of one.

“Out with it Brian!” Joan stomped her foot on the kitchen floor, “Quit stuttering. Answer me! What were you doing stealing my camera?” Her angry face was inches from her son’s and Brian’s stomach started to turn.

It did not matter what time of the day it was. Joan’s breath always smelled of cheap wine, his father’s whole body always reeked of cheap liquor. Of course, Brian only realized that not all parents smelled this way when he met Cynthia’s parents. They smelled of cinnamon and flowers. Brian was not often around other adults besides his teacher. She was an old nun that smelled like mold.

“I wasn’t stealing mother. I swear,” Brian said looking down.

“Are you telling me that I didn’t see you take my camera outside this morning? Or is this your camera Brian?” Joan said pointing at the shattered black camera. “It was not enough you stealing it; you had to break it too!”

Brian could not remember the last time she had used it. He was sure it had sat on the bookshelf for a few years. Nevertheless, he knew that would not excuse the fact that he had taken it and used it. She had made him break it. “No. Mother,” Brian said. His mind could not think of any other excuse fast enough. She always made him so nervous. “I mean, I was only borrowing it. It looked so nice outside and….” He was not able to finish his sentence because he and his mother heard his father coming down for breakfast.

“Stir that,” Joan told him, pushing him toward the pans on the stove while she picked up and threw away the bits of camera.

Brian knew that Jack immediately noticed the tension in the room as he entered the small spot free kitchen. His father could always find trouble, if there was none to find then he would make it. Brian felt his body shaking as he saw his father looking at him out of the corner of his eye. Brian tried to continue to stir the gravy in a pan. Warm biscuits were tucked away in the basket that sat at the center of the table. Brian hoped his father would start to eat those first. Joan would not talk to him if he were in the middle of a meal.

“Are you running behind today sonny-boy?” Jack asked sitting down.

Brian turned to look at his father, though not in the eye, “No. Sir, I just thought I’d keep the gravy on the stove so it would still be warm.” Brian went to the coffee pot and made his father a cup of coffee the way he liked it and handed it to him.

“Are you going to tell your father what you did today Brian?” Brian’s face turned white. The innate sense of dread was embedded into him almost from birth. His hair on the back of his neck stood up as his father walked to where he was now at the stove.

Brian looked at his mother for a moment. He gave her a pleading look but she chose that moment to walk out of the kitchen. Whenever she asked Brian ’To tell Jack what he had done’, it usually meant that his father would not give a shit what it was. It was just a free excuse to beat up on Brian. Brian could already feel himself start to shake. He was in trouble, but that was nothing new to him.

Jack spun Brian around and grabbed him hard by the arm, “What is it sonny-boy? What’d you do this early to make the warden mad?”

“N..N..N..Nothing,” Brian said truthfully. “I didn’t steal it,” Brian said too quickly. His nerves were getting the best of him. The quaking inside his body unearthed all of his fears and then, his defense mechanisms. He stood there in front of Jack with his head bowed, his eyes blank and staring into a place that did not exist in the Kinney house.

What felt like hours, but was only minutes later; Brian thought of how stupid he was to say what he said to his father. He added ammunition to the fire his mother so lovingly set. He knew that he should never have said a word. It did not matter either way though.

Lying on the tile floor, Brian held his burnt hand to his chest. He would have to get up and put cold water on it soon before it scarred. That was nearly impossible though because he could not move his right leg. He stopped crying or fighting back too long ago to remember the day, the beating. He knew it was his entire fault. He was the reason his parents did not love him.

Brian heard footsteps coming his way and closed his eyes, hoping that whichever one it was would go away if they thought he was passed out.

The tapping of his mother’s shoes made him relax slightly, if possible. Then he heard it. Her mantra, “You are an evil wicked little boy Brian. You did this. You are a bad wicked little boy. Wicked.” His mother said as she tapped her pointy-toed shoe into his sore shoulder. He tried not to wince and alert her that he was still awake.

Brian opened his eyes and focused on his reflection in the mirror. He touched the sensitive skin and took a deep breath, “I am a good person.” He said to his reflection. He then went through the meticulous task of brushing his teeth.

After Brian dressed in one of many pairs of his Levis 501 jeans and a blue t-shirt he owned since high school, he felt more relaxed. However, this would not stop what needed to be done. He still had a lot of housework to take care of.

The first thing he did was go into his kitchen. That, to him, was always the dirtiest place, except for the bathroom of course. He liked this rooms system of cleaning better than any other of the rooms he had to cleanse.

First, Brian donned a pair of long black disposable gloves and put a large apron around him. Like a wild animal, he tore through his fridge and cabinets, gathering anything opened and throwing it in a large black trash bag.

In a very short time, Brian’s kitchen was spotlessly clean and nearly foodless. He decided that after he took out the trash he would call Cynthia and at least ask her about how the interview went. He still very much wanted to know about Justin Taylor.

Brian took the trash outside to the large dumpster next to his garage. He lifted one of the flaps and threw the first bag in. The next one was slightly heavier so he had to take a swing with it. Upon launch, the bag split its bottom open and sprayed its contents, mostly containing yogurts and deli foods, all over Brian.

At first, Brian stood in shock looking at the littered ground around him. After about a minute of staring, it started to sink in what had happened. His clothes were sticky and his whole body felt like it was crawling with ants.

He started to scream, shout, and dance around ungracefully. He was lucky that none of his neighbors was home during the day; otherwise, someone surely would have called the police. Brian screamed and screamed some more. He didn’t stop until he collapsed unwillingly onto the grass below him,

He never heard the car’s engine that turned into his driveway.

However, he certainly felt the boy’s hand on his shoulder, and then more of the boy, wrapping his young body around his sticky one without a care. Whispering words of comfort that were soothing to the point of unreality.

The touch was a good sense of fire. His body seemed to mold into the smaller man’s, as he felt himself rocked within the warmest embrace he had ever known. Brian’s heart beat like a mad man’s and his eyes were in disbelief at the beauty of Justin Taylor.