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It was on stormy nights like these that he thought of her.
His homework was done, his game was dead, his friends were fast asleep, leaving him all alone to his thoughts. She loved to push herself to the forefront of his mind and with her presence brought a dark cloud and an open bottle of unwelcome memories.
They were never close. Michelle didn’t form attachments, not to anyone, certainly not to her only son. She loathed him when he was a little child. Denki remembered the awkward sneers (that he supposed were attempted smiles) when he presented her with whatever arts and crafts project he made. It wasn’t because she didn’t like it. Michelle just didn’t care. He could do anything to try and grab her attention, from scribbling on the walls to singing loudly, but nothing. Denki thought something was wrong with him at first.
But then she gave birth to Yumiko. And Michelle ignored her even more than she did Denki. It didn’t matter that poor Yumiko was just a baby who had to rely entirely on someone, Michelle detested the infant, and passed her off into the willing arms of her brother. Who was eager to please for his mother’s praise.
Denki’s body started to spark dangerously as heat floated through his limbs. How could she neglect them?
How could she leave them?
Denki was five when she left. Yumiko was one.
It was hard to keep recollection of her, to be honest. But God did Denki’s brain cling to the few memories of her desperately.
She was beautiful.
Long, bright yellow hair and the same sparkling yellow eyes. She was Japanese-American. She liked to dress herself in luxury clothes and jewelry. She had an electric quirk.
Denki looked just like her.
His father loved that about him.
When Michelle left, his father’s attentions drifted to him in the worse way possible.
Trembling hands clutched at his skull, electricity began to pulse around his head. Denki shocked himself, to contain the memories. He couldn’t think about him. Think about her.
Her pretty yellow eyes.
Why did he have to look like her?
And why did Yumiko have to look like him?
His father was tall. He was big and imposing. He had black hair and eyes. (Like Yumiko.) Denki gagged when he thought about him, and had to force himself to not gag when he thought about Yumiko.
It wasn’t her fault.
She was a child. (But weren’t you a child too?)
He needed to take care of both Dad and Yumiko. Because he was the big brother and because he looked like Michelle.
(Did Michelle know what Dad would do when he left?)
She did. She had to. Yet she still left.
What if it had been Yumiko who looked like Michelle?
Pretty yellow eyes.
Dad loved those eyes. Would he love her like he loved Michelle and Denki?
(It wasn’t love. It was something sick and horrible.)
It would he so much easier if Yumiko looked like Michelle and not Dad.
Denki wanted to rip his own hair out from the guilt of having such a thought.
And he was going to start with that stupid fucking black lightning streak.
The memories ate him alive. It would be so much easier to just short circuit. Then he wouldn’t have to think about anything. Not Dad, not Michelle, and not Yumiko.
(If she had stayed, none of this would’ve happened.)
Denki cried. Cried for his lack of maternal love, for the twisted paternal love he did recieve, for the sister he resented, for his lost childhood, for his stolen innocence. He cried.
How could she leave?
Denki hated his father for abusing him, but he hated his mother more for letting it happen.