Chapter 3
Haden
Time blurs inside the car, and when I finally move, my body feels broken, and each movement is like pushing a mountain.
My heart is desolate, as if everything stopped existing from that moment on.
The devastation left by Halia’s death has taken with it the little music I had in my life.
She gave me a home when she reached out to me, with cracks but still standing.
Now that she’s gone, nothing remains but broken windows and unhinged doors, letting the ice she once defeated take over.
I’m surprised I’m still standing, still somehow functioning, when inside I want to curl up like a baby and cry until I’m empty and these feelings vanish. My love for my sister, though, will never waver.
I’m good with the crying part as I haven’t done anything else since I received the news. I grew up with the stupid rule—men don’t cry. Today I broke that rule so many times I don’t even have the strength to be ashamed. And why should I? I’ve lost the only good part of my life.
I would never give my family the satisfaction of seeing how broken I am. They were the first to receive the news, and unfortunately I had to receive it from them.They didn’t deserve us, and they don’t deserve to be part of what’s coming.
My beautiful little sister is… lost forever… dead.
I can’t get past the knowledge that she’s gone and I’m stillhere.
I look around to see if anyone is witnessing my breakdown, but people are too wrapped up in themselves to notice what’s happening around them.
I clean my face with the sleeve of my shirt. I need a drink, a strong one, and I need time to think about what to do.
With measured movements I get out of the car and then walk away. I’m not even sure if I lock the car; it’s as if I’m on a mission.
The energy inside the bar is a match to the storm raging inside me.
Dark corners, soft light, people hunched around their glasses as if they can save them from annihilation, and the acrid smell of despair.
It looks like the right place to hide, drink, and forget my sorrow.
It’ll only be for a moment, but I need this as much as I need my next breath.
After the first glance I don’t look around. Instead I walk to the table at the far end of the place. It seems like the best spot, as far away from the other patrons as I can manage. Before taking possession of it, I need a liquid friend. More than one, but let’s start with one.
When I’m done at the bar the table’s still empty, so I take ownership of it. I keep my head down and nurse my drink, looking as imposing as my frame will allow. I’m hoping these are spot-on signals to tell people to stay away. I’m not normally one for unnecessary conversations, today even less.
What I want is to be alone, and to let the memories of us fill the void I have inside, because they’re the only things left.
It had always been the two of us. Our parents were too busy taking care of others to have time for us, so we bonded. It was us against the world, always. Even the huge age gap between us didn’t matter. We helped each other when no one else would.
It’s like a vital part of my body has been torn away from me. Not only am I going to miss my sister like I’ll miss a limb, but I’ll miss the part of myself that was better because of her. She was able to bring out the better parts of me.
Who will fight with me against a world that doesn’t want me in it?
Who is going to have my back?
Now, in the moment where I need her support the most, she’s gone. But in doing so she left me her most precious treasure. Her daughter. My niece… my daughter.
My mind pulls me back to the moment we sat in front of the lawyer while he opened my sister’s will.
No one knows, I can read it in my parents’ faces. The shocked glances between them, and the hatred towards me. I ignore everything, more interested in reading the last wishes my sister had.
“Mr Taylor?”
“Call me Haden,” I say to him, while I control the bile trying to make its way out. I should have changed my surname… but hope.
In the meantime my dad replies, “I’m Mr Taylor.”
I nearly laugh when the lawyer ignores him, and instead keeps his attention on me.
“Mr Haden, here is a letter to be read once you’re alone.”
I take the envelope and place it in the inside pocket of my jacket.
“I’ll be reading Miss Taylor’s will now. Please avoid any comments until I’ve read it in full. There’ll be time for questions at the end.
Dear Haden,
I’m sorry for not having the time to discuss this before I ambushed you this way. But no moment felt like the right moment. Now it’s too late, and I hope you’ll forgive me.”
I adjust myself on the chair, trying to find a comfortable position in an uncomfortable situation. I avoid my parents’ stares, and focus my attention back on the lawyer. There is nothing to forgive.
“Now that I’m gone, Arianna needs a guardian. I thought a lot about this, and I want you to take care of her, just like you did with me…
Mr and Mrs Taylor, this part is for you,“ the lawyer says, and resumes reading without waiting for them to acknowledge him.
“Mum, Dad, I love you both despite everything.
Even if we don’t see things the same way, please do not fight my decision. I want Haden to raise Arianna. Only if he refuses will things change.
Love you all.
Halia”
I listen with only half my attention, focused on the request my sister left me with. How can I take care of Arianna? Can I really do that?
“Outrageous!” Both of my parents jump to their feet, “He can’t have our granddaughter.”
“Please,” the lawyer says, trying to calm them down.
“We can’t accept this. That faggot can’t raise our blood.”
I rise to my feet, the sound of the chair scraping the floor louder than their voices. Everything stops. The decision that was weighing on my shoulders, taken from my hands with a single word.
There is no way in hell that these two are getting custody of Arianna. Not while I have breath inside my lungs. Not while I’m alive. “I’ll do it. I’ll come by another day to sign all the documents.” I wait until the lawyer nods, and then I turn around and leave my parents to him.
I’m not good, but Arianna won’t be raised by those monsters.
A loud noise brings me back to the room, but my body is still feeling the remnants of the fight we had only a couple of days ago.
I’m not sure what the lawyer told them, but we filed an emergency request for guardianship, and it was approved. She’s mine, mine to care for, mine to raise, and mine to protect.
The thought of taking care of someone else makes me tremble. Halia was always the one caring for people, me included, and now she’s left me with the huge task of taking care of someone else.
Can I do that? Or should I let my parents take control?
That last thought makes me gag, and brings forward memories I want to forget. Memories I wish never existed.
I tried very hard before that happened to follow their values and stay away from the devil, but when I fell for one of the new boys in school and my mother found us in my bedroom with our heads close and ready to kiss, I couldn’t deny it anymore.
She waited for my dad to come back after throwing my friend out of the house, screaming verses of the Bible, and locking me in my room.
Together they decided I needed to be purified, because only by completing that ritual could the devil be extracted from my body, returning me to the grace of God.
So that I could go back to being the obedient boy I was before he took hold of me…
“You need to repent. You need to let the devil go.”
Is there a devil inside me?
“Mum?”
I’m dragged by my hair to the bathroom, where the water is already running in the bathtub.
I’m shoved to the floor, and I land hard on my knees, hitting the bathtub with my head. The blow makes my head spin and my ears ring.
The sound of the water running stops, then my hair is being pulled, and I’m being dragged on my knees, forced to shuffle forward to avoid banging my head again.
Once I’m on the edge, with my head hovering just above the water, she stops pulling but doesn’t release my hair.
Is she going to cleanse my sins with water? Like when my sister was baptised?
That’s the last coherent thought I have, because she pulls me forward with a strength I never knew she had, and my nose and mouth fill with water.
My brain takes a few seconds to recover from the shock and instruct my body to react to the danger. I fling my arms around trying to find something to hold on to, so I can pull myself out and finally breathe air into my deprived lungs.
Why are they doing this to me? Isn’t love a good thing? Isn’t love coming from a good place?
I manage to raise my head out of the water, and I sputter while at the same time I try to breathe air into my lungs. I get a tiny breath in before I’m pushed forward again, but this time I close my mouth and hold my breath.
I fight even harder to get free.
That’s when my father moves and places his knee on my back, pushing me hard against the edge, the pain making me scream inside the water, defeating my need to keep my mouth closed.
I’ll have a bruise for sure, if I survive.
I’m sure it’s him, because the weight on top of me is like a mountain… immovable.
My head is pulled backwards until I can look my mum in the eyes. Her face is made of marble—no emotions, no love, only determination to bend me to her will.
“Have you been freed?” She must have read the truth in my eyes, because my head is shoved under the water again.
I try even harder to move away, to save myself, but nothing I do is bringing me closer to safety. My vision dims, and I’m sure I’m crying, but I can’t really tell because of the water around me.
People call for their parents to save them when they’re in danger, but who can I call to save me when my parents are the ones trying to kill me?
My strength leaves faster than I thought was possible, and unable to keep my breath in any longer, I take a watery one.
My nose and mouth fill with the water once again, but this time it doesn’t stop there…
it goes down my throat, burning like fire.
I never knew water could burn, and then it reaches my lungs and that’s when everything goes black.
A loud sound, and then a burning sensation on my left side, brings me back to the living.
Water comes out of my mouth, and down my chin. The pain is like a knife stabbing my skin. My lungs, mouth, and eyes are burning as if I were inside a fire and not a bathtub.
The more I breathe, the stronger the pain becomes.
My mum… she doesn’t deserve to be called that, no mum would do this to her own child. Mother is talking to Father, about how clean I am now that the devil has been purged from my body.
I’m different now, and not because they cured me from my sin of liking boys, but because they showed me that family can betray you if you don’t conform to what they expect. I’m changed because I’m alone and my family would rather see me dead than with someone I love.
“Haden? Darling, are you okay?”
I’d laugh if it wasn’t for the pain, and the fear that she can read through me and know I haven’t changed. Know that the devil is still inside of me. And know that I’ll do that again.
She kneels next to me, and places a towel on my face, but I jerk away, afraid she’ll kill me.
“Darling, everything’s okay now. You’re cured.”
I avoid her eyes, and turn my head the other way. I’m unable to lie to her, so the only way to save myself, at least for today, is to keep quiet.
Trembling like a leaf in the wind, I cough again with the need to rid my lungs of all the liquid. Breathing is not easy, and hurts like hell, and the place between my shoulder blades throbs. I’m sure tomorrow there’ll be a bruise there, just like the one I’m going to have in my chest.
Father grabs my chin and pushes my head up until our eyes meet. Have his eyes always been so cold and lifeless?
“Boy.”
I tremble in his grip. I’m not small by any means, but my dad has a strength that comes from a hard life. A life where he had to fight with claws and teeth to get everything he had.
“You better be cured by tomorrow, or you’ll be out on your arse. I want no sissy in my house.”
I look at him without blinking, but I’m sure he knows nothing of what they did has cured me. There is no cure, I was born this way, and nothing is going to change that.
His grip loosens, and my head falls, tears filling my eyes. I don’t have any fight left in me, and what’s the point when it would only lead to my death. I hear them walk away, leaving me on the floor, wet and scared and aware that my life is going to change forever tomorrow.
I didn’t know at that moment just how much it was going to change.
I take a sip of my drink just to realise it’s all gone.
I must have drunk it while lost in my past. I wave at the bartender to bring me another one, and I watch my hands shake.
I turn them into fists but I don’t know how to stop them.
I wish I knew how to turn back time because I want to recover what I lost.
A shadow appears on top of my empty glass, but I keep my head down, until the sound of a chair scratching on the floor fills my head, followed by the presence of someone sitting down in front of me.
Between the memories and the loss of something precious to me, my temper rises like lava inside a volcano ready to erupt.
“What the f—“ I restrain myself from blowing up, but I’m ready to go on a rampage and take my pain and sorrow out on whoever the fuck has the audacity of sitting in front of me.
I can already taste the satisfaction of reducing his face to a pulp, just to have some relief from the rage mixed with pain raging inside me.
Those are my thoughts before I meet his eyes, because once I do, I’m struck. They’re the most beautiful green colour I’ve ever seen. It’s like looking at a forest while the sun shines through it. They speak of a lake on a stormy day, changing from green to grey as if following the weather’s mood.
His eyes grow bigger in surprise, as if he just realised what he’s done. His hand comes up as if trying to calm me down or ask for forgiveness.
I open my mouth, ready to bite like a deadly snake, but something stops me. Something that goes beyond his raised hands, something that’s simmering inside those eyes, and the pain of those memories is like a knife repeatedly driven inside my chest.
I’m sure he knows that kind of pain.
And I don’t know how, but I’m sure he knows the agony that comes from betrayal.