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He didn’t start off strong. In a small hospital, 3 months early, with his mother wailing almost as loud as him. He finally took his first breath, but it was cold, and stark, and scary. He lived in the outside world, but with his skin untouched by his mother’s hand for 2 long months. Maybe, he reasons, that’s why he can’t really stand human touch. Still he was finally taken home. It was small and drafty with brown peeling paint that his mother really should’ve stopped him from eating, but by the time he could lift himself onto his feet she didn’t pay him much attention. She loved him, mind you, but he was never a part of her long-term plan. Still when some one-night stand left her nauseous for more than one reason she thought fuck it. And so, Cody “Nightangel” Walsh was born.
He was a rebel without a cause, loud, and carefree. He never picked up on social cues well, but his only friends, the old ladies next door, and the tabby cat he would secretly feed, didn’t seem to mind. He watched cartoons on the blurry screen of the TV his momma found in the attic, and he didn’t understand why she wasn’t around to keep him from watching it all night. So he was happy.
Then school started. And he learnt very quickly. He learnt talking about Santa made people whisper, and giggle, and stare, and wearing t-shirts of cartoons got him labels like baby and retard. He found out scowling and refusing to do work was easier than admitting he needed help, and eating lunch in the bathroom was easier than eating alone in the cafe. He learnt that the words his mother used like fuck, shit, and bitch weren’t allowed, so he learnt to say them even more.
Life was hard, not unbearable, but hard. His momma loved him, even if she came home at 3 am smelling like cigarettes and sex. And he even had friends... though they made him feel small, said he was freak for lining his eyes like the guys online who actually seemed to fucking get it. If they were freaks, then so was he, he decided.
As he got older he got angrier. He picked up bad habits, like watching in fascination as red blood slipped down white arms, because that was what freaks did, right? He ditched his friends for being “posers” and grew out his hair until it finally covered one of his eyes. He got pissed at his mom, and called her a whore, and moved out... He moved back in a week later, of course, he didn’t have anywhere to go. But things were never the same after that. In his junior year he stopped cutting his skin, and instead started to finish the cigarettes his mother left scattered around.
He was 18 when he moved out the second and final time. Staying in a dorm and taking classes at a community college. He was still Cody so naturally he’d shout out “fuck school” during his all lectures, but deep down he knew once again, he had no where else to go.
Shockingly he never went to the mall as a kid, he shopped at thrift shores, or “borrowed” clothes from the Macy’s down the street. But then he finished his degree and had to move out of the dorms and his roommate forced him on a job hunt (“ugh fucking fine, dude!”), so off to the mall he went. And it was… nice. It wasn’t like he found everything that he’d ever hoped or dreamed for. No, that didn’t happen until he got to Hot Topic.
The manager took one look at him and said he was hired. Well, that’s what Cody likes to say, in actuality there was an interview and the manager instead said if he swore one more time he’d get kicked out. Alas he was hired, and to everyone’s surprise (most of all Cody’s) he was fucking great.
He related to the customers, and he knew every pro to every piece of merchandise the store owned. It was really quite uncanny. And when he was offered a manager position in NYC at 22 he kissed his momma goodbye and moved to the big apple (approximately 45 minutes away).
And for the first time in a long time he flourished. He went to weekly game nights with his co-workers, and he finally had money to buy those sick-ass swords on eBay, regular customers would even say hi to him in the streets. His motto was “nerds rule, jocks drool, because I have a motherfuking sword bitch”… it needed some workshopping, but it got the point across.
Life was… alright I guess (but for Cody that means life was fucking awesome). He was all set, money, friends, a roof above his head, and enough diversity packed into one place that no one bat an eye at what he looked like. He even fell in and out of love at one point, but that’s a story for another day.
It wasn’t all fairytales and rainbows, he had to move in with four people when his building got bought, and some little shit touched the sword on his back, cut his hand, and somehow it was all his fault? Fucking police state man. But still, he was happy.
Then everything went to shit. The place he loved started to shrivel and die, until finally his rock, the one thing (store) that kept him afloat disappeared and he was suddenly cold, and wet, and drowning.
For a while he was depressed. Tracing the self-inflicted lines on his arms, but he never spilt his blood, because those corporate fuckers couldn’t make him do that.
In fact those fuckers can’t win, because- because- they just can’t . They didn’t deserve his store, they didn’t deserve his mall, and they sure as hell didn’t deserve to take away his goddamn happiness. And suddenly he was pissed . He vowed he would avenge the life he used to have at any cost. Even if he had to sell his fucking soul.
Because, to be fair, that would be sick .