Chapter Text
He is five years old, the first time he remembers being left on the doorstep with a kiss to the forehead and a whispered stay close by, etched against his hairline with shaking lips and a bone-dry tongue. He remembers being hungry, and tired, and the air is thin and bitter where it ruffles the fabric of his too-big shirt, nips at the exposed skin of his ankles.
He remembers sucking his sleeve between his teeth and settling against the cold brick beneath the window sill, watching shadows cross back and forth through the street. Doors open and close, figures shrouded in darkness creeping between houses; low, dim candle light hiding in the hollows of their cheeks and their deep, sunken eyes. He remembers the first noises filtering out into the street from the cracked window panes above him – muffled words he doesn’t understand; a lilt of laughter that is almost familiar, but not quite; the creak of the bed springs; thuds and rustles and groans that sounded almost pained.
But not quite.
He remembers the whip of the wind – blisteringly cold air billowing down from the stairwells and blazing through the market town – and the damp, musky smell of the bricks he uses as pillows for his sleep-heavy head.
He is six, the first time he remembers feeling painfully hungry. The kind of hunger that gnaws at your stomach, burning, stinging, aching all at once; the kind of hunger that twists your gut and tightens your throat and makes your head light and sickly and somehow heavy, too. The kind of hunger that makes you desperate.
He remembers crying; remembers the sweep of calloused thumbs beneath his eyes, the press of shaking kisses over his tears and the mumble of cracked apologies against the peeking bones of his cheeks. He remembers sorry sorry sorry, remembers there’ll be more tomorrow, remembers just hold on until then.
He remembers, later that night, when the front door is locked and his bare feet are pressed to the cold floor, his toes crossed over one another and twisting into the dirt, the unbearable hunger. He remembers wandering down the street, the soles of his feet hard and numb to the scratch of sharp pebbles and broken glass, and rummaging a reluctant hand through the black bags piled high in the alley. Rats squeak and shuffle around him – one runs right over his toes, it’s little claws catching the skin and peeling it away – and he continues searching until he finds the bitten core of an apple.
He remembers slotting it between his teeth and sucking the juice from it – it tastes bitter, sour and old, but it is nourishment and instinct tells him to eat what he can, when he can.
He cannot afford to be picky.
He remembers settling back beneath the window sill with the apple core in hand, drowning out the noises breaking through the walls, rubbing blood and dirt and garbage from between his toes and dreaming of a world so very different from the only one he knows.
He is seven, the first time he remembers tasting warm food.
It isn’t all that much, just a small loaf of bread from the bakers, but it is fresh and warm and delicious, and his mother smiles – laughs, even – as she tears away a chunk and feeds it into his greedy palms. He pops it between his teeth and savours the heat on his tongue, and his mother does the same, and he remembers the whites of her teeth shining at him in the darkness.
They sit on the bed – the sheets are freshly laundered and the smell of lavender wafts up every time he moves, it is such a luxury to feel clean that he finds himself shuffling against the soft fabric every few seconds, just to lift the smell into the air one more time – under the light of a low, orange candle, and they share the loaf between them in companionable silence.
He is seven, the first time he remembers feeling happy.
He is eight, the first time he remembers seeing – really seeing – the bones protruding at her hips and cheeks and joints, the knots of her spine bulging like tiny, rounded mountains as she curves herself over the rim of the sink to rinse the soap from her hair. He remembers thinking her skin looks too tight, paper-thin and stretched over her frame, almost as though it were too small to fit her.
He remembers watching the light dance in the concave flesh of her cheeks, remembers the way the flame flickers, gives the room an almost warm glow, remembers spying the purpling marks on her hips that remind him of dirty fingerprints on freshly painted walls; they mar her, ruin an image otherwise so clean. He washes his hands in the water trailing from the tips of her hair because somehow, it makes him feel a little better.
He remembers the way she sways when she stands upright. She is tall and too-thin, her gut cratered in between poking ribs and jutting hips. He remembers wondering if she’s always been this gaunt.
He remembers pulling his shirt – her shirt, because they cannot afford new clothes and he has finally, finally outgrown his own – over his head and cupping the dirty, used water from the basin into his hands, and he remembers seeing his reflection in the mirror and wondering if he’s always looked this gaunt, too.
He is eight years old when awareness first creeps into his bones, and it makes him feel sick and heavy and when he takes himself out of the house that night and tucks his knees to his chest beneath the sill, he thinks things are more hopeless now than they’ve ever been before.
He is nine, the first time he cleans the house. He remembers the realization, as his mother lies beneath the sheets, sweat-slicked hair pasted to her brow and cheeks, her head tossing back and forth over the pillow, that cleaning – scrubbing, sweeping, dusting, anything – might kill the germs blackening her lungs and paralyzing the breath in her throat. He convinces himself that scrubbing the toilet and the sink and the floor and the walls until his palms are raw might chase away the fever boiling her from the inside out.
He remembers conning himself into thinking that a fresh home can somehow reverse the carnage tearing away at her chest. He remembers thinking that if he can just get things clean, if he can take away the dirt, the grime, the filth that is making his skin crawl where he stands, that he can somehow fix her.
He is ten, the weather cold and cruel, the cracks in the windows rattling and threatening to give under the whirling wind, when he rolls over in the small bed to find his mother’s frame, hard and cold, pressed into the mattress beside him.
He remembers shaking her; he digs his tiny, spotless fingertips into the skin of her forearm and he shakes her with all the strength he can muster. She doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t breathe. He remembers touching her face, remembers thinking she doesn’t look like her anymore. The skin is slack around her mouth, cheeks and jaw, and without feelings or expressions or life pulsing through her veins, she looks like a stranger.
He remembers sitting beside her, for a while. He tucks his knees to his chest and folds his arms around his shins and watches the light from the street flicker over her face. He remembers wishing she looked peaceful in death, wishing the horrors of their lifetime had disappeared when she’d breathed her last breath and she’d been left in quiet, restful bliss for the rest of forever, but instead she looks morphed, and pained, and after a while he can’t bear the thought of sitting beside her any longer.
The floor is cold and splintering as he sets himself at the foot of the bed, his back pressed to the cool brick wall, and tucks himself up as small as possible in the darkness. He remembers feeling dirty, itches to wash her from his skin but they have no water left, so instead he strips himself bare of the clothes he’d slept in and pulls out the only clean shirt left in the drawer. It still smells fresh, like lavender, and he peels it over his frame and pulls the collar up to his nose.
He remembers the smell as one day turns into two, and two into three, and he remembers the buzz of flies hovering around the bed sheets. He remembers watching one land against the corner of her slackened mouth, remembers watching it tip-toe over her chapped lips and dry teeth, remembers it crawling along her gums and disappearing into the cavern of her mouth, and he remembers turning away to spit frothing stomach acid onto the floor.
He is ten, frail and sickly and oh-so-tired, the day Kenny boots open the door and converses with the corpse in the bed.
He barely remembers saying a word, but Kenny turns to him and says who are you? And he thinks the blurring thoughts in his head must have made their way from his tongue without his consent. He remembers feeling exhausted, a tiredness seeping through his bones and into the very heart of him, the kind of tired that makes joints ache and stomach turn and eyes sting.
He doesn’t remember much, after that.
He is twelve, strong and well-fed, not quite brave, not quite fearless, but close enough, when he remembers watching Kenny’s back disappear into the crowd. He remembers the feel of blood slick between his fingers, warm against his palm and grinding into the wood grain of the knife’s handle.
He remembers the sagging of his shoulders, the warmth of a body quivering in fear – fear of him - between his knees, the cold, unnerving weight settling in his gut as he watches the closest thing to family he has left walk away without a word.
He remembers wondering why. He remembers, as the night draws in and he finds shelter in an abandoned shop, dust lifting from the boxes he settles himself between, thinking that he must have done something wrong, something to burden or to disappoint. Why else would he be abandoned?
He is twelve, strong and well-fed and the farthest from brave he’s ever been, the first time he remembers feeling lonely.