4. Brontë
Arsonist’s Lullaby - Hozier
T he forest was cold that night. The ground smelled like rain-soaked earth and rot. Animals lurked out of sight, living in the darkness, howling at the silver moon hanging in the sky.
None of us should have been there. It was against the rules.
If any of the instructors or administrators were to catch us, it would mean expulsion.
But I was fourteen. Angry. Proud. Too stupid to think straight.
I shifted my weight on the log I was sitting on, the wood creaking beneath me. Archer Hurst and the others were late.
It seemed like they weren’t going to show up at all until they emerged from between the trees.
We were about to finish what we had started.
No one to stop us. No one to break us apart.
Our rivalry was going to be settled once and for all.
The others formed a semicircle around me and Hurst.
Raskova, Klein, and Nolan were spectators to our brutal fistfight.
We taunted each other. Threw our fists at whatever piece of each other we could.
It wasn’t long before the fight became messy. We both grew desperate. Hurst kicked dirt in my eyes. I pulled a switchblade on him.
Our blood decorated the woodland floor. Our grunts filled the night air.
The other three closed in on us, like hound dogs that had picked up the scent of what was coming.
One of us was about to win. Another was about to lose.
We rolled across the jagged rocks and sharp sticks on the ground and tore at each other. My knuckles collided with Hurst’s jaw and I pushed myself to a shaky stand. I fought to breathe, panting and dripping sweat.
Hurst scrambled to his feet and then charged at me. He shoved me in the chest, the push hard enough to make me stumble.
My body jerked backward. The ground disappeared from under me.
The whole world tilted.
Everything went upside down, air rushing my ears.
The fall was forever, but the impact was instant.
I screamed into what seemed like a void that quickly swallowed up the sound.
There was no way to cushion the fall. I was dropping dozens of feet off a cliff. The pain was blinding.
I lost consciousness and should’ve died.
It wouldn’t have mattered. The others left me for dead. They fled the scene and never uttered a word to anyone.
Days passed before I woke up. The pain hit me in waves. It felt like my entire body was broken. My bones grinded against each other with every stilted breath. My leg was twisted beneath me. My right arm bent at an odd angle.
And my face… I didn’t need a mirror to know.
I could feel the wet, open wounds and the sharp sting any gust of air brought to my raw flesh. The copper taste of blood lingered in my mouth in a way that felt permanent.
Eventually, I dragged myself through the underbrush. Every movement was a new kind of hell. The skin on my palms peeled away as I clawed at the dirt and rocks. Streaks of blood trailed in my wake.
I was a shattered wreck, my mind a storm of rage, confusion, shame. Hurst’s face swam before my eyes everywhere I looked.
For weeks, I lived like an animal. I scavenged berries and chewed on roots. I survived any way I could, broken and battered.
Nights were the worst—cold, endless, dark, the wind blowing so hard I had to take cover anywhere I could.
It was impossible to tell how long I had been missing. I wandered the woods in search of something I couldn’t even describe. But thoughts crept into my head, bitter and twisted questions about why no one came looking for me.
Was the school aware? Did my family know? Were Hurst and the others keeping it a secret?
Was it more convenient if I stayed dead?
My body was mangled and disfigured. My face unrecognizable. I was a creature. An animal just like the others living in these woods.
When a search party finally did find me months later, I was barely human. My mother fainted when she saw me. I bared my teeth and snapped at her and the others, feral and livid. They were the enemy; they were the ones who left me for dead and barely cared enough to scour the area.
But where my mother was horrified, my father was dispassionate. He was as withdrawn as ever.
“Get him to the hospital,” he said.
Surgeries were performed. The doctors did their best. They reset bones and stitched wounds. They grafted skin. But my reflection revealed the ugly truth.
My face was a grotesque map of scars, ridges of flesh twisting over what used to be smooth skin. My nose was permanently damaged. One of my eyelids more swollen than the other. My jaw was thick and wide and ached no matter how the doctors readjusted it.
Somehow, my body was worse.
Bones had healed wrong. Pain radiated through me from the simplest movement. I was going to be dealing with it for the rest of my life.
Pain was my new best friend.
My mother broke into sobs when it dawned on her there was nothing else that could be done. Always the polar opposite, my father stood at the foot of my hospital bed, his face blank but his eyes full of something I couldn’t name. Disappointment? Revulsion? Shame?
Hatred.
“I’ll make arrangements,” he said, his voice flat.
I was moved from one hospital to another. But it wasn’t a typical kind of hospital, where patients go for physical wounds or ailments. It was the Brighter Days Psychiatric Hospital run by none other than my father.
I wasn’t admitted as a patient. I wasn’t one, not on paper and in official records.
The arrangements he spoke of were in the basement. It turned out to be a cold, damp room with concrete walls and a single cot. No windows and no sound except the faint hum of the fluorescent light in the ceiling.
I wasn’t his son anymore. I was a secret.
Stashed away in a place you put things that didn’t belong. Hidden away where no one else would see me.
For years, my job was to assist the janitorial and maintenance staff. I was allowed to wander the long, echoing corridors of the hospital late at night when the janitors mopped the floors and took care of other mundane tasks they’d never get done during the day with patients awake.
I burned with anger and resentment at what had been done to me. But what other choice did I have? This was my life now.
I had to learn to breathe through the daily pain. My leg throbbed constantly, a dull ache that spiked with every step. Screws were drilled into my spine but did little to relieve the sharp pricks that stabbed away.
The only thing that sustained me were the pain meds prescribed by my father. They muted the constant agony as much as possible and kept me functioning.
On the rare chance I encountered him in the halls, he didn’t acknowledge me. He wouldn’t even look at me. My mother had stopped visiting a long time ago. I was a ghost in my own family, a disfigured and shameful reminder of what I had done.
They once believed I would be the heir to the family they had created. Now that that wasn’t the case, I served no use to them.
I hated them for it. I hated the world.
And then I saw her.
She wasn’t like the others. She didn’t belong here. The crinkly blue gown hung on her tall frame and her thick afro haloed her face like a cloud. Her eyes were large and round but not vacant or dead like the others.
They were dark and shining with life.
She carried herself differently, like she knew she didn’t fit in but was comfortable with such a reality.
Where the others were hollow husks wandering the halls like zombies, she was hope. She never gave up despite the bleakness around her.
She didn’t know it, but I became her shadow. I learned her routines. I tracked her movements through the hospital.
Late at night when I was able to prowl the halls, I slipped inside her room and watched her sleep. The dark shadow lurking that she’d peer at between dreams.
For the first time in years, I felt something other than anger. I wasn’t consumed by hate.
She became my purpose. My reason. My anchor.
I decided then that I’d never leave her side. I’d be her shadow, her guardian, her everything.
Because she was the only thing in this world that still made me feel human.
And I’d follow her to the ends of the earth if I had to.