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When Alex wasn’t wearing his jacket, John would be runninghis finger down the teeth of the zip or filling the huge sleeves with hisskinny arms. It was too large for his bony frame, but the woolen lining was warm and there were always hints of his father’s cologne on the collar. The material was old and worn. It had been passed down through the family until it reached Alex, and one day it’d be given to his son. People had sought to buy it off them, drawn to the rarity of earth items, and the real leather and wool, like a moth to a lamp. But even when the offers were outrageous, they’d held onto it. It was almost a family heirloom by John’s time.
Occasionally John would fall asleep with the jacket draped across his shoulders and curled into it, clutching tightly at the leather. Most commonly it would happen propped up against the small window that they had in their quarters. A habit had been made of pressing himself into the wool and flicking through old books, or reading copies of century old novels on the tablets, until his eyelids were too heavy to keep open. At some point he’d become vaguely aware of strong arms lifting him up gently, of the jacket being removed from around his sleeping form, and laid down on his bed. The books would always end up neatly stacked on his steel dresser, and the jacket would be clinging to his father’s frame next time John saw it.
John immersed himself in the worlds of giant dragons, magicians with scars on their heads, rhymes of love and tragedy, monsters made of various human parts and odd German stories that usually had a horrific twist. He even read a book about a girl who loved to read as much as he did. However, John was a painfully slow reader and the longer, more complex sentences would continuously trip him up with both their meaning and pronunciation. But the words would paint pictures in his head and drag him along on adventures that were too hard to resist. John had decided that he liked the poetry the best.
Sometime after he turned eight, he and his father would sit together with their backs pressed against the wall, taking turns at reading the pages out loud. Alex was always patient with his son, not minding the struggle John had with the text. It was like the letters jumped around and jumbled and blurred together, he’d described it one day. Alex had smiled and said that they must just be excited to be read.
-
When John was almost ten a vicious sickness swept through their section of the station. Children suffered terrible coughs and fevers, were unable to get out of bed for days and their stomachs were as unstable as the ocean. They were just as likely to heave suddenly as they were to remain peaceful and keep down their food. Very few adults caught the bug, and very few people died. But it happened.
Three children had passed away by the time the bug found its way to John. He was stuck in bed for almost three weeks, his state worsening steadily. Alex watched his child’s health deteriorate, changing him from a strong and healthy, boisterous kid, to yellowed, delirious and unable to muster up the energy to crawl from between the sheets unaided. The doctors had said it was the flu, but Alex had never seen a strain like this and it worried him to no ends. It was the worst case they’d seen yet.
He would read to John whenever he wasn’t working, sitting by the bed and working his way through all the stories he could get his hands on. The leather jacket was spread out on the bed and John would always fiddle clumsily with the zip and pocket flaps. But eventually there came a time when Alex couldn’t just read and hope.
His effort to aide his son was in vain though, and then the guard was hammering on the door.
-
John didn’t get to say goodbye.
He was left with a letter tucked into the front pocket of the leather jacket. Afterwards you wouldn’t see a book in the child’s hand’s unless it was forced into them. He could still hear what it was like to be read to by his father, and it hurt his heart and stung his eyes to try and get through a story. The jacket was hung up in the closest, gathering dust and slowly losing the smell of Alex’s cologne. John became closed off, his state worsened by the lack of support from his mother.
She died when he was barely twelve years old. The mental walls that had been barely holding back all the rage and pain John had tried to bury broke down completely. His vision went red, and when it cleared a cell wall was what faced him.
He didn’t let people call him John from that point. John died with his mother, or perhaps even with his father. It was just Murphy now, and Murphy screamed himself hoarse, beat his fists against the walls and other prisoner’s skin, and caused utter chaos until the dusty jacket and his stack of books and stories were brought to his cell.