34. Preston #2
“Do you want to leave your poor mother all alone, Preston?” he asked me. “The only reason I’m staying with such a train wreck like her is because of you. If you keep acting like this, I’ll get rid of you and leave her and tell her it’s because of you. She’ll hate you just like your dad.”
All I could think about was what she told me when I suggested I spend more time at Dad’s, hugging me close and crying.
“You want to leave just like your dad? Do you not love me anymore, Preston? Am I such a bad mom? Have I failed at that as well?”
She wasn’t a bad mom. She was my world. So I had to stop fighting.
To just lie still and take it.
It’d be over soon anyway. The pain, the discomfort, and the inability to breathe.
I could do that much for my mom.
But it didn’t work.
One night, she walked into my room and saw Claude on top of me with his limp dick in my mouth.
Mom kind of…switched off. She roared so loud and hit him with a lamp, making him fall unconscious, then hugged me so tight that I couldn’t breathe.
But it was okay because Mom finally heard my internal screams.
She finally helped me.
She had tears in her eyes as she soothed me, gave me a shower, and put me to bed. For the first time in years, she slept with me in the same bed and sang me a French lullaby.
It was the first time I slept soundly since Claude had come into our house.
The following day, I woke up to Dad hugging me tightly, too.
“I’m sorry,” he said in the same guilt-stricken tone she’d spoken in. “I should’ve seen the signs. I’m so sorry, son.”
“Dad heard my cries for help, too,” I thought. “It’s finally over, right? I can have my mom and dad now, right?”
Not really.
Mom killed herself that night.
Didn’t matter whether I’d told her or not, she still abandoned me.
After that, I never saw Claude again. I think Dad killed him. I never asked, and I don’t want to know.
Didn’t matter whether the asshole was there or not. He still fucked me up and made me lose my mom.
A few years later, when I was eleven, a teacher at the boarding school used me again. I didn’t fight as he forced his dick in my mouth, because that’s what I do, right?
Stay quiet so he doesn’t tell Dad something about me that will make Dad hate and abandon me, too.
As he came on my face, though, Kane and Jude found me. They pushed him off me, and Jude gave me a candelabra and told me to kill him.
I didn’t know I could do that.
But as I smashed his skull, I felt a sense of liberation I’d never experienced before.
I hit and hit and hit until I could see Claude’s face, until my senses were saturated with blood instead of peppery musk and cigarettes.
And for the first time since Mom died, I smiled.
Unfortunately, however, my first kill came with a psychological diagnosis and the glorious streak of Dad being disappointed in me.
He wanted a proper heir who’d inherit his estate, but he had me, a cocktail of bad decisions and mental issues. I think he’s always hated that I’m so much like my mom.
He divorced her because he didn’t get along with her, but it’s not like he can get rid of his own son the same way.
I feel sorry for him sometimes. When I’m not a dick who keeps causing trouble, I wish I were more like him—unfeeling, detached, and methodical—so that he’d be proud of me.
I wish I weren’t such…a clusterfuck of emotions with a defective brain.
I wish I were a proper son.
I know Dad cares about me in his own way. He really tried to get closer to me after Mom’s death. He even took me on this mountain trip, just the two of us for the whole summer, and tried to talk to me, but I was scared.
I still am.
At the back of my mind, I keep thinking that one day, he’ll realize he’s had enough, just like with my mom, and abandon me, too.
That’s why I’ve done everything under the sun to get his attention. Fights, murder, sabotage, and burning his property. At least if he punishes me, it means he cares.
Fucked up, true, but as you now know, I am fucked up. Extremely so.
I’m fucked up enough that I crush people’s egos on the ice (or outside of it) because I picture them as Claude. It gives me immense satisfaction to see arrogant people like him humbled.
I’m so fucked up that I get myself hurt just to feel alive. Without pain, it’s hard for me to exist in the moment.
It’s why I don’t understand what the fuck you see in me, Marcus.
How…can you look at me with those soft eyes all the time? How can you automatically have this warm smile just because I’m there?
How can you be happy to see me when I’m barely holding myself together?
I don’t get it. I just don’t.
You should be with someone whole, not whatever Frankensteined pieces of me I put together every morning to play pretend.
And I do pretend. A lot.
I pretend I’m the prettiest, most handsome man on earth with the biggest dick, when, in reality, that beauty disgusts me.
I was called pretty a lot by Claude and that teacher.
And I HATED it. I loathed being pretty because only creepy touches and suffocation came with it.
I thought if I weren’t so pretty, none of that would’ve happened to me.
I pretend that I like being praised for my beauty, but really, it makes my skin crawl. I’ll look in the mirror and force a smile when all I want to do is smash the monstrous image reflected back at me.
Because that’s all I see—an ugly monster with a fractured skull and bulging eyes. A demon who took the place of my image from childhood.
Thing is, I let Claude kill my real self.
I let him take it all away when I stopped fighting like a coward, and now, I’m stuck with this shadow of me. Someone with a pretty exterior but rotten insides.
And I don’t…want you to see that part of me, Marcus. Ever.
If you do, you’ll despise me or leave me, and I won’t be able to survive it.
Since I was seven years old, I’ve mastered the art of forgetting and pretending everything is okay.
So what if I was sexually assaulted? Happens to many other people, and sometimes, it’s worse in their case. I’m NOT that special. I told myself to suck it up and be a man. I told myself not to be a weakling and to stop falling into my feelings or wishing I could have fought.
It was over, and I grew up having the best time of my life playing hockey and slashing people left and right.
I hated the idea of vulnerability during sex, so I tied girls up and fucked them only on my terms. It was good, and I was fine.
But then you showed up, and it wasn’t fine anymore.
Because, in reality, I do love vulnerability in sex. I don’t think it’s about the gender; it’s about power, and I enjoy surrendering it. And I never knew that until you cornered me in that box the first time.
I never imagined how healing it could be to enjoy something that ruined my life, knowing I had the power to stop it.
But I could’ve never admitted it out loud to you, because it was never only sex for me, Marcus. From the beginning, our encounters were terrifying revelations and a scary need for a deep connection.
You saw the fractured parts of me and still stayed, and I craved that, but the thought of you leaving one day terrorized me. So I had to push you away before you pushed me.
Had to abandon you before you abandoned me.
Even if it hurt.
Even if…I can’t really stay away from you.
I was fine pretending, but you keep provoking the version of me I thought I killed a long time ago.
The one who wants to fight, to heal, to stop using blood to fill up the hole inside me.
I hate you for it sometimes, but I can never hate you for long. I just hope you don’t dislike me that much.
It’s fine if you do, I know I’ve been such an asshole, and I won’t make excuses for it.
When you get this letter, I’ll be locked in a mental institute with Dad’s doctors.
I know why. I said Dr. Duret’s name in front of Dad again.
Dr. Duret has been my therapist since Mom died. But she doesn’t exist.
I mentioned her before, when I was eleven, and I got extensively examined for it. I guess I forgot about it, which is normal. My brain has a tendency to delete files as it wishes. Dr. Fenwick (this one is real, I swear) calls it a coping mechanism.
That game in which I couldn’t bring you down messed with my head enough that I allowed her back into my life.
Or more like into my head, like one of those stars on the ceiling of my childhood bedroom.
She looks like Mom and has Mom’s maiden name because I loved thinking I was talking to my mother.
I often forget she’s a figment of my imagination and tonight, I bitched out loud about her. Dad heard said bitching, and he needed to intervene. Hence the locking up.
I mentioned Lenin, too. Dad’s right-hand man who beats me up on his behalf.
This is going to sound crazy, but I think he doesn’t exist either. Because I saw footage the other day, and apparently, I threw myself down the stairs when I thought Lenin was hitting me.
I don’t have to check other footage to conclude I made him up, too.
I’m so messed up, I conjured two entirely imaginary people to take Mom’s and Dad’s places in my life.
Aren’t you glad you got rid of this loose screw?
Not funny, I know.
This letter is running a bit too long, and I’m feeling numb at this point.
I don’t know why I’m writing you this, Marcus. I’m not asking for a chance I don’t deserve, and I’m certainly not asking you to wait for me.
Maybe I just wanted to tell you everything. I wanted to blurt everything out every time you held me to sleep or when you asked me what was wrong, but the words just wouldn’t come out.
I hope this answers some of your questions, as unglamorous a revelation as it was. And I hope you know that you’re the best lover anyone can have.
I’m just the worst.
I’m sorry for wasting your time.
Let’s be what we could’ve never been.
Friends.
Preston