The Girl Who Was Afraid of Waves

The Boy Who Lived on Seventh and Mason

In a flurry of cinder and brimstone, that was how it ended. All the mockery, the anguish, the cries and unreasonable dilemmas he faced as a child. That was how it all ended. Jeremy had little remorse left in his young, scathed heart; the only thing that remained was his deep scorn towards him, his father, who had abandoned him long before he knew who he was—and even more so now that he had known who—and what—he is. Was.

                The two-storey brick house glowed with crimson tongues, scorching the building from the rooftop to the cellar. The house stood quite vehemently against the raging flames, brick by brick, torched slowly by the fire that burnt in Jeremy’ eyes. To the boy, he saw each brick melt, like the candles he used to see almost every night, growing up in the orange-bricked house. He clenched his fists tightly on his sides, as he heard the faint wailing of a man he hated with all his being, much to the assent of the tears that slowly traced his cheeks. He was a bad man, he kept telling himself. He was a bad man.

Jeremy was four when he was brought into that very same brick house that stood quite aloof from the rest of the brick houses along Seventh and Mason. Riding in this man’s car from the orphanage, he could starkly remember what the old nun said as she handed him to Phillip Sanders, “He can be quite a handful at times, but he is a good boy.... Mostly quiet during the day... He sleeps early at night… He likes Popeye.”

                The 1967 orange-tinged Sedan stopped in front of the brick house that stood along Seventh and Mason, the engine purring into a sudden stop, before Phillip Sanders looked at Jeremy with those deep blue eyes, and a smug that he will never forget, “Your mother was quite a handful as well… but you’re home now. With me.”

                Phillip Sanders seemed like a happy fellow in his snappy brown suit that smelled of day-old lint and cheap cleaning detergent that they used in the laundry mats near the orphanage that sat on a sleepy hill near the edge of town. He wore a golfer’s hat that day when he picked up Jeremy from the orphanage. Looking back, Jeremy realised that Phillip Sanders wore the same hat for the entire 10 years that he had stayed with the old man. More often that not—if he hadn’t smelled of detergent—he would smell of candles wax, or menthol or Vaseline. Jeremy didn’t really take notice of how Phillip Sanders smelled. He took heed of this quaintness only until a few years after. 

Jeremy closed his eyes as Phillip Sanders carried him out of his car, clutching him with his left arm, and scuffling for his house keys that seemed buried in his pockets with his right hand. Soon the man was able to open the front door that led Jeremy inside the brick house. Inside, the main corridor seemed to stretch over a kilometre for little Jeremy, leading to a hallway of doors and nooks that Jeremy would soon find comforting, in the darkest of night.

                As a four-year-old, Jeremy made a lot of effort to look at himself in the gigantic mirrors that stood beside the fireplace of the living room which was at the end of the hallway. His scruffy brown hair and thick eyebrows fell effortlessly on his face like a pancake on a sizzling pan. He was shorter for his age, and other children in the orphanage would tease him constantly about it, calling him a runt or a toadstool as often as they could. Jeremy was fascinated with his face, his hands, his feet. He took little notice of anything and everything about the house, not even asking what was it that clamoured at night when he was too drowsy to even squint his left eye, or the shadows that constantly passed by his closed door whenever Phillip Sanders had houseguests.

                In his first three years in the brick house, Jeremy would spend his days inside his room, where Phillip Sanders placed a similarly huge rectangular mirror at the corner of his bed, after apparently discovering how fascinated the boy was with mirrors and the images they showed his big, emerald eyes. In the mornings, Phillip Sanders left him to the care of a neighbour-friend—Mr Pickles, Jeremy remembered calling him as a child, since he smelled of freshly-opened pickle jars that Phillip Sanders used to make his midday sandwiches for Jeremy.