These children were scarred.
Once upon a time, there lived a sweet little prince whose father had left under an evil spell, one which had conquered his body and ruined his mind. The prince, whose name was Michael Arthur, and his mother the Queen lived in a great City at that time. This Queen was very wise. While packing her beautiful dresses into a royal trunk, she told the little prince that, no matter how great this City was, it would always be filled to overflowing with the steaming shit heaps of addicts and whores. He stood in the doorway, nodded solemnly, and repeated, "steaming shit heaps of addicts and whores." She nodded, packing her royal trunk. "That's right, kiddo. It's the god-awful truth and we've just got to deal with it."
So they went. The Queen uprooted herself from the great City and planted her family of two into a small house somewhere in the Midwest. From there, she worked on her company's website, attended conference calls, and supplemented her income with homemade soap that she sold online. Michael attended a school where everyone looked the same and most of the children kept as quiet as he was.
As the Queen was fond of making up routines (mostly so that she could break them), she and Michael began to go to the same grocery store every Sunday. On one of these occasions, sometime in early Spring, they ran into a Knight and his daughter, who was a year or two older than Michael.
Both the girl and her Knight were beautiful, and this beauty was unfair. It outdid everyday beauty and cast other people in the grocery store as withered leaves. The Knight looked like something straight out of a romance novel: in a word, "rakish." He was big of brawn and bone, with a beard and dark auburn hair clipped in a Ken-doll cut. Thick pink lips parted to reveal denture-white teeth that he made an excellent show of when he saw the Queen.
The girl was much more interesting. This interest did not lie in the fact that she was visually captivating, though she was. She had light brown hair, woven into many tiny braids like a flower child's, thin silver ribbons running through each one as if it were a natural highlight. Her skin was pale, almost as white as her father's teeth. She did not have a perfect body; baby fat was still evident in a pudgy belly and backside, and her new-formed breasts were small and a little too pointed. She wore a white dress in peasant-smock style and pink flip-flops.
What Michael found interesting about the girl was the way she didn't look right at someone. When she saw him, first she scanned the air around his face, as if tracing his outline against a paper backdrop. Then, she looked from his scuffed sneakers to his baggy jeans, to the tight black tee-shirt that made him look even more gaunt than he was. She pinpointed his Adam's apple, then finally raised her gaze to his face, his eyes.
This was an excellent way of getting Michael to look back. At first, he thought her eyes were green, then they seemed to be blue, and finally he pronounced the color gray. Moonstone-gray.
Before Michael could work up the courage to ask this beautiful girl her name, the Queen and the Knight had already decided on what day they would meet at his house for dinner with the children, then drinks and hand-rolled cigarettes while the kids ran off to play. Michael looked up at his mother and saw no reason to hide his dislike.~*~ "You're such a crybaby, kiddo," said the Queen as she tilted back, broad hips jutting forward, and twisted her hair into a long rope. Bobby pins stuck out of her mouth at odd angles, and she expertly spit one at a time into her left palm until the coil of brown was fixed into place. Michael nodded, staring, and zipped up the back of her dress once she was done. She saw his sour face in the mirror. "Stand up straight, Mike. And don't just nod, tell me, 'Yes, Ma'am.' Either that or defend yourself, for pity's sake."
"But it's true. I am." At thirteen, Michael's face was already haggard. His mouth was momentarily pulled into his face at the corners in a disapproving manner, thick lower lip nearly pouting. His eyes, though a lovely softened hazel, never really showed themselves from beneath thick lids and eyebrows. His forehead was tight and angry, a little too small. Straight black hair was constantly getting in his face. His skin was a sallow shade of brown that made him look like a thin-blooded Hispanic. Had he been old enough, his sunken cheeks and weak chin would have needed a shave.
"Ugh. And you could learn to lie a little. I don't know who taught you to tell the truth all the goddamn time. It damn well wasn't your father, it wasn't me. Must be those sissy liberal teachers they've got at that child farm. Anyway, tell me what you think." She spun around, and raised up one bare arm, the other stretched out to the side, fingertips resting on a window ledge. Her hips and torso seemed out of alignment. Black satin fell in gathers over her tanned breast, revealing nearly all of what little cleavage she had to offer.
Michael frowned. "You look like a whore."
"Perfect. Let's go."~*~ Michael and the Queen arrived at twilight, rolling from a dirt road onto a pebble driveway. The night was clear. Stars were visible. The last dregs of winter were intent on creeping into the bones of anyone foolish enough to be outside. The man in the moon grinned a sideways Cheshire-cat grin.
The Knight's house was more cottage than castle, but it lacked any sort of country charm. As soon as Michael stepped out of the car, he caught the sweetish scent of broken stems. An old garden had been spread out at the side of the house, layers of flower patches and trees with a carefully-laid stone walkway meandering through. A few young pansies timidly showed indistinguishable color in the darkness, but for the most part the place looked as if a mob had been through it: flowers were stomped, shrubs were hacked into malformed topiary, and trees were left as dismembered stumps with splintered limbs littering the ground.
The Queen did not notice this. She locked the car, clutched her black woolen cloak, and walked up through the cold grass to ring the doorbell. Its chime quickly descended out of tune.
"Cynthia Faye!" shouted the Knight, "Go finish setting the table!" The Queen, practicing her thin smile on the closed door, did not seem to catch the roar in his voice. The Knight opened the door. He was wearing black slacks and a white dress shirt that was left unbuttoned at the top, showing muscle and curls of reddish hair. Michael shrank back, hiding a little behind the Queen's skirts.
"Come in, dear damsel. What's the matter, boy?" The Knight raised a bushy brow, then left the question unanswered as he turned and led them inside.
Suddenly, the girl ran up to them, bare feet slapping against tile floor. Her hair was bound in a braid that twisted around the crown of her head, embellished by small wire flowers, all pink. She gathered her long peach-satin skirt in her hands, made a deep curtsey, and sang,The Queen was delighted with this performance, and clapped for the maid. Michael smiled. The Knight glowered. "That's enough, girl," he said, "have you done your job?""I finished the dishes an hour ago,
then licked my plate full clean.
Then dessert, and meat, and bread alike
were devoured by me, I ween.
And afterwards I, with craft so sly,
did dress for th'occasion rare;
then ironed my dress, and at your behest,
Made garlands for my hair!"
"Didn't I just tell you?" she chirped, then giggled and scampered off.
The parents and remaining child followed Cynthia, sat down at a small dining table, and ate. Dinner was filling but bland. Michael and Cynthia ate quietly and mechanically, keeping their eyes firmly set on white porcelain plates of chicken and corn. Their parents, however, let their meals cool. The Queen seemed to enjoy being courted, as she laughed every few minutes at one of the Knight's trivial tales of country living. In the middle of one of these tales, Cynthia stood up and stared at her father.
"May Michael and I be excused."
The Knight looked at her for a moment, then gave a short nod. "Go up to your room, then. And don't make too much noise, either of you." He turned back to the Queen, trusting his orders to be already followed. "Care for some dessert, Gwen?"
Michael saw her looking up at him with worried, hesitating eyes. He mouthed, "It's okay, Mom," and followed Cynthia up the stairs to her room.~*~ Cynthia Faye's room suited her perfectly: it was a pink-frosted paradise. Her closet was wide open to reveal dozens of dresses and skirts, all in pastel shades save an emerald velvet gown. Her bedspread and curtains were white and green, decorated all over with pansies, lilies, and tulips. Shining pearl lace was draped over her bookshelves, lamps, and tables. Cynthia padded over to her queen-sized bed and stood on it to pull down one of the thick oversized books on the top shelf. After taking her time in claiming what she wanted, she plopped down to sitting at the foot of the bed, letting the springs bounce her to stillness.
"How old are you?" she asked.
"Thirteen. How old are you?" Michael Arthur walked over to her, his hands in his pockets, and sat down beside her. The book in her lap was labeled, The Complete Illustrated Works of the Brothers Grimm. It possessed that musky smell of library volumes. The pages had darkened around the edges to a pale brownish-yellow, the color of the first leaves of fall.
"As old as I look, I think." She smiled, and opened the book, leafing through the faded illustrations.
"You look fourteen," he said.
"Your guess is as good as mine," she answered, and pointed out a particularly funny picture of a shuddering man who'd had a bucket of water dumped over him in his sleep. Fish flopped all over his chest.
"You act a lot younger than fourteen. Everything on your bookshelves is fairy stories." He leaned in over her shoulder, recognizing a picture of Hansel and Gretel, clutched arm in arm as they wandered through the woods, dropping bread crumbs.
"You're nothing but an innocent, compared to me." She flipped to a watercolor of a princess who had turned into a briar, and her lover into a rose within the briar, to protect him.
He raised one eyebrow at her, lips parting in indignation. "My father's a heroin addict."
"That's nice. Doesn't make you less innocent for all that. My father looks like a lumberjack, don't you think?"
"Yes." Michael paused to think, watching her while she continually leafed through the pages of her book. "Do you ever give anyone a straight answer?"
Cynthia considered this, closing her book and pressing it to her chest. As if to make herself think better, she scooted a little away from him, then laid down with her head in his lap. She smiled and looked at the cover of her book, tracing pudgy fingers over the faces of kings and maidens. "I give people straight answers just as often as you don't."
This made Michael laugh. He leaned back on his elbows, comfortable. Her father may have set him on edge, but not Cynthia. He liked Cynthia, and said as much. "I like you."
She took her eyes from the cover of the book, and stared up at him, gray eyes a little widened. "You do?"
"Mhm. And I'm being honest with you, too. You don't have to say whether you like me back or not, though. I'd be afraid it was just another fairy tale." She just continued to stare up at him. It was getting Michael nervous, so he just kept talking, fast. "You don't have to even like me back even like a friend or anything I mean I'm younger than you and all so you'd probably rather go out with some guy in high school and--"
Her white fingers flew to his lips, cutting him off. "Let me tell you a story."
"Sure." He nodded, then laid back against the flowered bedspread.
"Once, there was a beautiful virtuous girl named Moonfairy. She lived in a quiet place, far away from men and women of breeding, but she did what she could for her poor lonely father, who had lost his kind city wife to a foul demon of the night. Her father had been a wild man of the woods, and so when his wife died, the part of him that had been tamed became wild again. He grew fierce, and the young girl grew afraid of him. Then one day, the King came riding by. He spied Moonfairy tending her mother's ruined garden, and fell so in love with her that he declared they should marry immediately.
"But the wild man of the woods would not have this. He tried to kill the King when he came anywhere near Moonfairy, and if he caught any of the King's men wandering near his cottage to take the girl away, he'd capture them and behead them, planting their eyes in the defamed garden. Terrible creatures would spring from these filthy seeds, and so Moonfairy was forced to stay hidden in her room, secretly crying both for love of the King and for her wild father, who could no longer feel love.
"One day, the King put an enchantment upon himself, and came to the cottage dressed as a beautiful woman with long black hair. Using only his great beauty and his subtle cunning, the King seduced the wild man of the woods into letting him enter the cottage, then asked about his daughter. The King met Moonfairy as a woman, and begged the wild man of the woods to let the daughter go with him as his own, since she was growing thin and weak from pining away. Halfway coming to his senses, and halfway out of lust for the woman he thought of the King, the wild man relented and let his daughter go.
"After this escape, the King and Moonfairy married, and lived in much happiness in his kingdom. However, Moonfairy still missed her father. She begged the King for some way that her father would be happy again. Being a kind man at heart, the King sent to the wild man a beautiful lady who matched Moonfairy's mother in beauty and grace. This lady tamed the wild man once more, and he grew calm and went with her to his daughter's kingdom. There, they lived happily ever after, to the end of their lives."
Michael stared at ceiling for a while, arms crossed under his head, legs dangling off the foot of the bed. As he mulled over the story, questions began to take root in his mind. Disregarding the rest, the thing he wanted most to know was, "Am I the King?"
"That all depends," she answered.
"On what?"
"On whether you're strong enough, fast enough, brave enough, smart enough, and adept enough in magic to protect and take care of Moonfairy. She might not even love you back." He heard the thump of the book being dropped to the floor.
"But you're Moonfairy. It was your story, a story about you. And, if it was me, you would love me back someday. I think you would."
"Really?"
"I think you like me." Michael continued to watch the ceiling, counted the swirls of broom-turns in plaster. The now-familiar weight of her head removed itself from his thigh. He heard a rustling, felt the bed bounce just slightly. Then a click, and the lights went out. The ceiling was cast into darkness. As his eyes adjusted, it began to shine whitish-gray.
"Go to sleep, Michael. It's almost ten, and I don't think you'll be going home tonight. I'm tired." He turned his head to see a clock, numbers glowing red. A shadow crawled past it, blocking his view, and made the bed bounce. But she'd been honest. Nine fifty-eight.~*~ At eleven o'clock, the noise began. Michael woke up from dreams of knights and flowers and sky-kingdoms so high above the clouds that their people could always see the moon. He was turned on his side, facing the lump of shadow that was Cynthia, not knowing where he was at first. As soon as he remembered, he wondered instead why he'd woken up.
He rolled over and sat up, staring huge-eyed through the dark at the far-away wall as if he could force his eyes to see what had disturbed him. It had come steadily, first rising up as a rhythm that traveled from the floor to the bedframe. Michael's brow furrowed in confusion. He looked at Cynthia, but she was not moving in her sleep. Then he heard it as well as felt it.
"What the hell?" he choked. "Mom?" He folded his legs beneath him, stared down at the pattern of flowers on the bedspread. Pansy, lily, tulip. All in little diamonds, wreathed in green. His eyes tracked over it until he'd found the key to what grew next to what. His neck ached.
A hand touched his arm, and he jumped a little, turning around to stare at Cynthia with wide, confused eyes. "It's okay, Michael," she said. "They're just playing a game."
"They're having sex."
"Same thing."
He turned around and stared at the wall again, his breath quickening in fear and shame. "This is the second-most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me," he said, while Cynthia kept her fingers on his arm. "Other than when my Dad came to pick me up from school stoned and hit on my fourth grade teacher."
"It happens all the time, everywhere. The thing with your Dad, too. There's nothing to be embarrassed about."
The Queen, in the meantime, had begun to moan.
Cynthia sat up next to Michael and hugged him, kissed his cheek. He pressed his thin angry face into her shoulder. The moans were growing louder. She clapped her hands over his ears. Downstairs, animals fought and furniture screamed.
"Make it stop, Cynthia," Michael whispered. "Please. It's too loud. Make it stop."
"Only if you trust me." She pushed him away, held him by his shoulders. Her gray eyes glimmered and shone purplish in the darkness. "Promise me you trust me, and I'll help make it stop."
He paused, staring at her face. The intensity in her gaze forced him into submission, made him nod and tremble, wondering what she would do. Another moan-scream rattled up through the floor. "I promise I trust you."
She put her hands over his eyes, so he closed them. Then she caught his lips with hers.
Michael stayed still, frightened, confused. It took a few moments to register that he was being kissed. An even greater shock came when he felt something wet enter his mouth, slick on one side, grainy on the other as it swirled around and tasted him. Then it was over, and he was left reeling.
"Did that make it stop? Do you still trust me?" Cynthia asked, softly. "I'm about to do more than just that." She suddenly seemed much more real. Her skin was close enough for him to see imperfections; her eyes had dimmed to plain gray.
Michael stared at her. His mouth tasted strange. He nodded. Let the girl weave her spell. At least he knew now that she was probably real, and besides, he was already trapped. The noises were fading into a background he could ignore. White hands flitted around him, pulled off the black shirt and jeans, laid him on his back and touched him until he grew confident enough to touch her in return. Thoughts came in snatches. How hot it had gotten. Whether this was okay or not. Flowers cut into the wood of the headboard. His age. The red glowing numbers on the clock: 11:45. A few minutes later, he heard nothing.~*~ Midnight. Before the children could have been warned, a loud bang sounded from the door. The framed picture of a woman fell, glass shattering into fragments. Michael's eyes snapped open wide, drawing in light, but he could not decipher the shadowed monster standing in the doorway, stooping slowly to pick up one of the larger fragments of glass.
"You've been a very bad little girl," the monster growled. "Very, very bad. You and your little boyfriend have to be punished. Now."
The shadow-monster lunged at Michael and easily brought him from the bed to the floor. The solid thud of head against floor sent his ears ringing, though it may have been the scream of a girl. This close, Michael could see a coarse red pelt, could see skin shining with sweat in the half-light and dripping down onto his own bare chest. "You think you're a man, do you?" asked the monster. The Knight. The monster that was the Knight.
A large hand held his head painfully upright by a grip on the hair while a knee pressed firmly down at his chest. Michael's entire body burned, and he opened his mouth to scream, but found that he could not breathe. The cut was shallow but slow, deliberate. It went over Michael's right shoulder, around the base of his neck from nape to throat. No veins or arteries were cut, but blood dripped down over the right half of his body.
The pressure on Michael's chest was released, and his head was left to thunk on the floor. He stared at the ceiling, naked and silent. Behind him, from the bed, he heard female whimpering and a sharp cry when the glass ripped into Cynthia's skin.
"You're mirrors of each other, now. You got the left, he got the right. Learn from this, girl."
A mumble. Michael couldn't distinguish it from his own ragged breath.
"Don't you 'father' me. Say it again, right this time."
"Yes. Sir."
Alerted by the uproar, the Queen stormed in and screamed.
Michael felt himself being lifted, felt his head slump back against air as a hand supported his neck. Another scream; she must have felt the blood. "Lance, what have you done?! What in hell have you done?!" There was movement. Michael Arthur's feet slammed against the doorframe, but he didn't much care. His mother was warm and dark, and that's all he wanted right now. Darkness. Warmth. To get away. And she was taking care of all of it. What a wonderful mother he had.~*~ These children were scarred.
The stream of blood had long since trickled to a halt, and Michael was again clean and clothed. The Queen told her son the day after it happened that she did not care what had happened between the girl and her prescious little prince within that dark room; she only cared about the violence that was done to her baby, her one and only child, whom she had forgotten in a drunken sexual frenzy. She told him that it was her fault, not his, and that she would never let the sin slip her mind. From that night forward, the Queen did daily penance. She brought her child back to the great City and dedicated the rest of her years to keeping him safe from everyone. Michael never saw the sun unless he was at school, and when there, he spent his time in the library, far away from the school's gardens and small colorful flowerbeds.
Through her penance, the Queen nearly sainted herself. She never again cursed. She never drank. She never dated. She never lived and, on Michael's twenty-third birthday, she died from a combination of guilt and boredom. For the first time, Michael Arthur was made to live on his own.
His story continues.