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Neil Perry never tried to pretend he was perfect. He knew he wasn’t; his dad had made sure of that fact. Every A that wasn’t an A+, every tone of voice that wasn’t respectful enough, every misplaced step—Neil would never truly live his life correctly.
He also knew many, many people thought he was perfect. Some of them were important (Charlie), most of them weren’t. He didn’t really care what they thought. He couldn’t care what they thought.
Except it stung, their perception of him, and how it clashed with his reality. Neil was fundamentally flawed, couldn’t they see that? Why would they look up to him, a generational fuck-up? Sometimes he wondered why his parents had had a child at all. Better never exist than only half-exist.
Glass half-empty, glass half-full. If you possess only half the will to live, are you suicidal or not? If you’re only half-living, never living freely but never living perfectly, what does that make you? A fucking ghost of a son?
Neil was always there. At the top of the class, carrying one of the banners at commencement. No one’s eyes skipped over Neil Perry, and Neil found it a nightmare. Always compared, always falsely admired. Always kicked down to the ground, laying in the dirt. Someone had once told him he had eyes too soulful, like the dirt of a a gravestone garden. If he was a flower instead of the dirt that birthed it, what would that make him? One wilting, or one dead too soon? One that blossomed for only a day? One infested by bugs? He’d never much liked flowers, their scent too cloying and their petals too perfect. He would never be a flower. He was destined to be the grave, it seemed.
He’d spilled tomato sauce on his sweater one dinner. He excused himself from the table, feeling like he was about to cry. He tried to wash it out in the bathroom, but it only clung harder. He stared at the mirror, looking at his hollow face and strands of hair dripping water. His eyes looked like nothing. He glanced down at the sweater, at the red stain.
What would be one more splotch of red? He wanted to immortalize his fuckup in his skin as a reminder. He was a fuckup already. What was one more sign of it? Maybe then people would realize Neil Perry’s not all he’s cracked up to be.
Hesitantly, he pulled a pin off his school blazer, rinsed it underneath the tap, and dried it with his sweater. He pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and remembered the purple bruises his father used to leave after gripping his wrist too hard. He absentmindedly started tracing the places where the last ones had been.
How did he remember that, but never knew how to be just fucking normal?
With a sob, he dragged the pin across his arm. The bite of metal felt cool, sweet, exhilarating. Like everything at once and nothing at all. Numbness. Feeling. He did it again, and again, and again, and when he heard footsteps he ran his arm underneath the tap, rinsing the blood down the drain, and pulled down his sleeve on autopilot.
"Hey Neil, what are you doing here?"
"Ah, pin just fell off my blazer and I had to fix it in the mirror. All good now though. I’ll see you around."
He ducked his head in a polite nod of acknowledgement and left the bathroom, his eyes still glazed red.
——————
Charlie had told him about the whole "getting red" thing before he’d done it. Neil took one look at the jagged red sprinting down his best friend’s chest and wanted to rip his lungs out. Charlie said it felt like breathing freely, but Neil was too choked. He could never express himself. He wanted to run a knife down the center of his ribs and tear his heart out. God knows his father would’ve loved that.
——————
The berries on his crown shone like rubies. He wanted to be princely for once in his life. Princely and perfect.
The gun did not shine or gleam. The gun sucked up the light in the room, a black hole Neil was destined to orbit. He looked at it and wondered what his eyes must look like. Then he lifted and aimed.