42. DAPPER-DAN
alistair
They call me a good boy.
Not in the way people mean kindness, nor warmth, nor anything resembling innocence. It’s never about virtue. It’s about utility.
Good, as in compliant. Predictable. Easy to overlook in a room full of louder, or easy to manipulate.
My mom taught me that if you smile long enough, people stop looking too closely. Their curiosity dulls, their instincts soften, and whatever unease might have stirred at the back of their mind dissolves into something far more convenient.
I’ve noticed they stop asking questions. They stop wondering what sits behind your eyes, because the answer no longer feels necessary.
She played that song often enough that it became an instruction. “When it feels like all the world is wearing a frown, put a smile on and spread it around…”
I don’t usually see her smiling. Not in the way people define happiness—soft, effortless, unburdened. Her smiles are practiced, worn like armor in front of strangers, stretched just enough to survive the night.
But each time I’m around, it’s different. That same wide smile settles on her lips and lingers, almost stubborn in its persistence, as if my presence alone is enough to anchor her to something gentler.
I watch it carefully, memorizing the exact curve, the way her eyes soften around the edges, the way it almost looks real.
I always want it to stay that way.
And yet, every time that song plays in the radio, something shifts in her.
She hums along under her breath at first, then louder, letting the melody pull her into motion until she’s swaying across the kitchen floor.
My mother always plays the song at night, always after everyone leaves, after the door closes for the final time and the house settles into a quieter kind of decay.
She washes herself first, scrubbing away whatever marks the night has left behind—blood from her lip, her wrist, her thigh, depending on what the evening demands—before she allows herself to sit.
She always thinks I am asleep.
She always faces away from me.
The radio crackles softly, the melody slipping in and out of clarity as she hums along, her voice threading through the broken sound like she is trying to convince herself that something softer still exists.
“Put a smile on and spread it around…”
Sometimes when I’m not sleeping, or stirred awake, she’d reach for me without asking. Her fingers would wrap around my wrist and she’d tug me into it with her, guiding my stiff, uncooperative body into something that resembles dancing.
I never understood the rhythm, never felt what she feels in those moments. But I let her move me anyway, because in those few minutes, she looks free.
The radio itself is a dying thing, older than it should have been allowed to survive.
Its insides rattle faintly whenever the volume shifts between too loud.
The knob never settles properly, stuck in a limbo where the sound warps and bends in on itself, distorting the melody until it feels like it is struggling to exist.
Like us.
Our house sits in a part of the city people pretend doesn’t exist, the kind of place that doesn’t appear in conversations unless it’s to be dismissed or avoided. Doors stay locked, windows stay covered—not for privacy, never for that illusion of comfort, but for survival.
Men come and go at all hours, their presence as routine as the flicker of the faulty light above the kitchen sink.
Some arrive loud, announcing themselves with careless arrogance. Others slip in quietly, as if they understand instinctively that noise can be dangerous in a place like this.
A few are drunk enough to forget my existence entirely, even though I’m always there, sitting on the floor, fighting to focus on my academics amidst all the sounds that blur between pleasure and pain.
Alistair.
I always say it politely whenever they care to ask for my name, with my lips curved into something that resembles friendliness. I smile when I say it—I’ve already learned that people respond better to something that looks pleasant, even when it isn’t.
Some of them like that—the warmth in my voice, the deliberate politeness, the illusion of something soft where there is none. Others frown the moment they hear my name, as if it carries something unpleasant they can’t quite place.
Alistair—or Alastor.
That’s how only she pronounces it when she’s tired. The name slips differently off her tongue, as it belongs to something older than either of us.
She told me once, in fragments that didn’t make sense at the time. She explained it means the executioner of Hell, the one who punishes the wicked, a vengeful spirit rooted somewhere between mythology and religion—Alastor.
I remember asking her why she chose it.
She laughed softly, brushing my hair back with fingers that still smelled faintly of cheap perfume, and said something broken and unfinished about a hero who punishes the evil.
Even then, I think she wanted to believe I’d become something righteous. She just didn’t understand what form of righteous I’d actually turn into.
So yeah, I wasn’t what my mom thought I was. I turned out to be a strange child.
Not loud enough to be disruptive, not visible enough to be memorable, but different in ways that unsettled people without them understanding why.
I never cry when I’m supposed to. Never reacted when things happened that made other children scream or recoil, or run.
I watch.
I listen.
I learn patterns.
For instance, men who knock twice are impatient, their rhythm demanding, already irritated by the idea of waiting. Men who knock once and pause carry a different kind of danger, quieter but far more deliberate. The ones who don’t knock at all… those are the ones you stay quiet for.
School, in comparison, is simpler.
Children are easier to understand than adults. Crueler, yes, but their cruelty lacks complexity. It’s direct, unrefined, driven by instinct rather than calculation.
And they never liked me.
Not because I do anything to them, but because I don’t do anything with them.
I don’t participate in games that lack structure or rules. I don’t join them in laughing that erupts without cause. I had no constant need to be seen, to be acknowledged, or to occupy space loudly enough that others are forced to notice.
I already know what happens when people notice you. People noticed my mother for having the most beautiful blue eyes and the lightest shade of blonde hair. Being poor, she could do nothing but endure all of it in silence.
So the children push me to my limits. Mock me to see me break. Take things that don’t belong to them and call it fun.
I let them.
I’m still testing variables, still mapping responses, still trying to understand what triggers escalation and what diffuses it.
“He was a dapper-dan Cinderella…”
I remember that line, though I didn’t understand it then. What I understand is the tone—light, playful, laced with something that sounds almost mocking.
The same tone they use when they shove my face into the dirt, laughter spilling out of them in uneven bursts as if my pain amused them more than resistance ever could.
“Why don’t you fight back?”
“Say something.”
“Cry, at least.”
I smile. Always do.
That makes them angrier, and they always take it out on me.
So I start coming home with bruises on my whole body, especially my back—cuts lining my knuckles, my cheek, sometimes split skin that stings long after the impact fades. Dirt clings to my clothes, dried blood flakes against my skin.
I used to step through the door already calculating how much of it she’ll notice before I can make it seem insignificant.
She always notices.
Her expression dulls for a fraction of a second before smoothing out into that ever-familiar sweet smile, the one she insists I return.
“Be kind,” is what she always said, as if kindness were a shield instead of an invitation for others to take advantage of you. “Smile. Don’t let them change you.”
I obey. Because I’ve started noticing marks on her too.
Faint at first, then deepening. Discolored patches along her wrists, the shadow of fingers pressed too hard into her fragile neck, the subtle stiffness in the way she moved some nights.
She never explained them, never acknowledged them.
But she smiles through it all with a consistency that borders on unnatural. So I do the same.
If my mother can smile through pain, then so can I.
And when I do, when I force that same expression onto my face despite the ache settling deep beneath my skin, I notice how it makes her happy. How it eases something inside her, even if only slightly.
With that, the pain becomes manageable.
The scholarship arrives on a Tuesday.
I remember the weight of the paper in my hands, the way it feels heavier than it should, feeling the ink itself carrying something more than words.
Alistair Benette.
I took after my mother’s last name since I still don’t know who my father is. Still seeing my name printed in formal lettering looks unfamiliar, like it belongs to someone who exists in a world that doesn’t smell like cheap alcohol, antiseptic, and strangers.
Oxford University.
Fully funded.
I’m having imposter syndrome.
I don’t tell anyone at school—not even the teachers. I just ran home. I can’t waste a single second.
For the first time in my life, I run toward something instead of running away from it—my lungs burn, my pulse uneven from something dangerously close to hope.
I want to see her face when I tell her. I want to see something different there.
Something that isn’t survival.
Something that is… worth keeping.
I want to see her proud.
The door is open.
She never leaves it open, not even when she is expecting someone.
That’s the first time something is off in a way that presses against instinct before rational thought can catch up.
The second mistake is the radio, playing too loudly, the sound distorted beyond recognition, the melody warped into a celebratory tune.
I step inside. “Ma?”
No answer.
The kitchen light spills out into the darkened hallway, pulling me forward whether I intend to follow it or not.