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“You’ve been bitten by a true believer. You’ve been bitten by someone’s false beliefs.”
Victor has seen the scars. They shared a room for long enough to see each other in various states of undress. Although it had taken quite a while for Eli to feel comfortable around Victor that way.
It had been almost like a test the first time Eli took off his shirt in front of Victor. Eli made sure his back was facing Victor, and he did it slowly, sure to draw Victor’s attention. Victor hadn’t been watching exactly, but he’d looked up from the report he’d been typing on his computer because it was the first time, after months of living together, that Eli had taken off his shirt in their shared room with Victor present. He’d previously thought Eli was just shy or had some abnormality he didn’t want anyone knowing about. So when Victor saw the scars, he froze. Apparently saying nothing was the right move, but he got the feeling Eli just wanted him to know of their existence, not what they meant.
Eli didn’t acknowledge Victor in any way. He just paused as he stared down at the new shirt on the bed in front of him. Breathing steadily as Victor watched his shoulders draw up and back down, almost as if Eli was steadying himself. It was the most vulnerable Victor had ever seen him. Then Eli put the shirt back on and they never talked about it.
Victor, however, was a scholar, a prodigy. Just because he didn’t ask Eli did not mean he didn’t want to know or that he wouldn’t try to find out. He started digging that very night.
Some things were easy to find. Newspaper articles, school transfers, etc. He’d known Eli was an orphan, he’d told Victor as much. But Victor found out that Eli had been bounced around between multiple foster homes as a child. His last foster parents had been relatives and Eli’s longest stay, but had ended in tragedy. Victor wondered how much of these events he blamed on himself.
He knew Eli was religious, and he couldn’t help but wonder if it was a way of coping with all the tragedy and grief in his life or if it came from somewhere else. How could anyone who lost so much, still believe in a benevolent God?
When Victor got as far as he could on his own, he needed to enlist the help of his sometimes-friend Mitch. Mitch was good with a computer – although he didn’t look the type. Mitch liked Victor for seeing past the stereotype of his hulking form, and Victor liked Mitch because he was useful.
It didn’t take long for Mitch to hand Victor a pile of pages and a USB drive in a manila folder. Victor couldn’t believe some of the stuff Mitch was able to dig up. Sealed files, police records, and not just the legitimate ones, but informal reports and transcripts of phone calls as well. The reading absorbed Victor, and by the end of it, he’d concluded that Eli’s parents were total lunatics.
It turned out Eli’s parents had force-fed religion down Eli’s throat so hard that even after everything that happened, it seemed that nothing could shake Eli’s faith. The report from the death of Eli’s father is what Victor found most interesting. The police report seemed to be omitting a fairly obvious conclusion. Perhaps there was a reason for that. It was fairly clear to Victor that a young Eli had probably pushed his father down the stairs. The ‘why’ seemed to be directly related to Eli’s scars. The police probably drew the same conclusion and decided justice had been served, and the transcribed phone calls seemed to hint as much.
Victor’s fist clenched, knuckles white from gripping the papers so tightly. The police had figured out what happened, and yet pushed Eli into the system anyway, letting him bounce around from place to place. Maybe they even knew or suspected what was going on before, and yet did nothing. Suddenly Eli made a lot more sense to Victor.
Victor looked more into Eli’s father, and it made Victor see red. There were clear signs of abuse, calls from neighbours and witnesses that were always brushed away and covered up. Victor had the sudden overbearing urge to save Eli. To make him see that his father had been crazy and wrong about Eli and God and the world. Victor couldn’t understand why Eli would be so loyal to a God that would let all of that happen to him. His one conclusion was that Eli had been brainwashed and no one had ever tried to correct this wrong-doing.
So Victor was going to do just that.