Stain (Stain #1)(3)

“I need you to continue being the stronger one, Max. You need to protect your brother. Keep him safe…like you’ve kept him safe all this time from your…from that monster.” There’s anger beneath the tears choking her. “I’ve failed you both for so long. I let him do things to you. God, what sort of mother am I to let all those things happen to you? My sweet, sweet boys. I’m so sorry I’ve failed you...I’m so sorry…I’m so sorry…” Sobs shake her body as she brings the hand carrying the gun to her head. I frown and watch her repeatedly hit the side of her head with it.

Noah moves ahead of me, running towards her, “Mom…”

“No!”

Her yell stops him in his tracks.

“My baby...my gentle, little Noah. Don’t…don’t come near me. I don’t want to taint you any more than we already have. Sweet little lamb. I’m so sorry, my child…”

“Mom, please.” Noah’s crying. A part of me wants to tell him to grow the f*ck up. But I don’t. I don’t say anything.

“…I know it’s not much...” she sniffs, her eyes and cheeks as wet as the flooded floor. “I know it will never erase the scars. But…but he won’t hurt you boys anymore. And neither will I...”

Time moves slowly and then stops. She brings the gun to her mouth, closes her lips around it, and pulls the trigger. The blast sounds like thunder. It’s so loud it shakes the air around us. I watch in horror as her head comes apart. What was inside splatters and explodes everywhere, coating and spraying everything with brain matter, shattered bones, and blood. So much blood. It paints the wall behind her. I feel some of it hit my skin. There’s a sound so clear it manages to cut through the stillness. It’s Noah. He’s in the tub with her, his head is on her naked chest. Her body is slumped over, her head too. There’s a hole in it; the bullet made a clean exit. He’s bawling. I should get him out. I should comfort him. But I do neither of those things. I leave him alone. I let him grieve and head back into the bedroom. Something in the back of my mind tells me I should be crying, too. Nothing comes, except the sudden need to pee. I walk toward the bed, hop onto it, and stand over his body.

My gun still in hand, I pull down my pajama bottoms with the other, until they gather around my knees. I grab my dick with my left hand and aim for his head, and breathe out, “Fucker,” as hot piss sprays up and down his body until I’m done. But it’s suddenly not enough. This is too good for him. She gave him too easy of an escape. Tugging my pants back on, I get a stronger grip on my gun. It’s loaded. I’ve been practicing. After school, in the forest behind the old nursing home on Felton I’ve unloaded several clips in soda cans. I slide the safety off, and grip the gun so tightly, my entire hand turns white from the strain. Arms steady, breath slow, I aim the barrel down, in the vicinity of his ass, and without much thought, I fire. And fire. And fire. And fire. The force of each shot shakes my body, but I keep my hold firm, following through with each release of the trigger. It’s not until I hear the screaming over the click-click-click that I finally stop. I’m out of bullets. The screaming…I’m screaming. There are no tears. Just a terrible scream that comes from deep inside me, shredding my throat in its escape. It takes Noah’s arms around my middle, his head resting on my back, to make me stop.

“It’s over…” he says. “He can’t hurt us anymore. It’s over, Max.”

It would be so easy to believe him. Buy into the lie he weaves so well. But that’s always been Noah’s problem. He can escape inside his fantasies. He can make his own lies sound like truths. It’s the way he’s been able to cope. Me? I’ve never been so lucky. My beliefs are firmly fixed in reality. A shitty, f*cked-up reality that I’ve never been able to run from. He says it’s over. It’s just the f*cking beginning. This shit is going to be with us for the rest of our lives. Our father’s evil, our mother’s suicide, it all contributes to a stain we’ll never be able to wash off.





Chapter 2


Aylee


Now…

Secrets are dangerous to keep. They rot you from the inside out. Every dark secret one harbors is a colony of millions of white little maggots crawling and burrowing inside the valleys and caverns of your being. Multiplying, procreating, and eating away at you until everything you thought you were disappears, leaving nothing but a shell behind. That’s what I am. A shell. A husk of the girl I could’ve been. Vibrant, ambitious, outgoing. I could’ve been a happy, well-adjusted teenager. But the secrets I’ve harbored for so long now have leeched life from my soul, turning me into this lifeless girl. Of course, I live; the heart beating steadily in my chest tells me so. The tiny little breaths I take, the blood pumping through my veins, the unbroken stream of thoughts are all reminders I live. And yet, they mean so little when you’re alive but not living. I’m as good as dead on the inside.

The water feels good pelting down on my bowed head, and it’s hot enough to bring a dark red flush to my skin. But I don’t mind it. It doesn’t hurt. It’s a crude form of what I really want to do, anyway. Not as effective, but it helps. For now…it helps. I’m not sure how long I’ve been standing in the shower. Probably long enough to make me look like a raisin, but I’m not ready to leave yet. It’s taken me a long time to earn back this little bit of privacy, so I intend to enjoy the little bit of time I have left. The bathroom is one of the only places in the house I have that’s mine, one of the only places I can be alone for a moment. But being alone sometimes isn’t such a good thing. Not for me. Being alone puts my thoughts into overdrive, and when they go into overdrive it leads me to doing things that aren’t particularly healthy. And just like that, the temperature of the water isn’t enough anymore. I want something else with a little more bite to it. The all too familiar itch I’ve battled with for so long creeps up my spine, like a worm wriggling over bruised fruit, searching for a soft spot to burrow itself into yielding flesh. It wants into my brain, into my thoughts, so that it can justify this secret need to hurt myself.