One Step

Chapter 3

I closed the book, trying to block out the memories that were now flooding to the forefront of my mind. I hated thinking about what Isaac had to go through. It didn't matter what Paul did to me, I could handle it, but when he would turn on Isaac, which hurt more than any beating could. I will never forgive him for what he put Isaac through, what he did to him. I hated him. I still hate him. I hate her as well. My so- called 'mother'. She didn't care about me or Isaac at all. She saw what Paul did to us but she never once tried to stop him. What kind of mother doesn't even try to protect her children, her only children? I hated thinking about them, so I decided to distract myself by writing.

Writing is a way for me to escape reality. I don't know what it is about it, maybe it's the fact that I can actually control what happens or the fact that anything can happen, all I know is that when I am just sitting there with a pen in my left hand and paper in my right, it's when I feel the happiest. I would love to be able to save all my stories on a computer, that way I wouldn't have to worry about the pages getting wet when it's a particularly rainy night. However I can barely afford to feed myself every day, let alone afford a computer so I just try my hardest to not let the books get wet.

I have filled about 12 books now with stories. Some are short, some are long but nearly all of them are about love. I think I write about love because I've never really experienced it and it's a way for me to imagine being loved and needed by someone else other than Isaac. I like the idea of love. The idea that there is someone out there for everyone. I don't think anyone is really alive until they've loved and been loved. Everybody needs to have love in their life. Even the people who think that relationships are just messy and are another way for them to get hurt, they need love in their life. The people who feel like they don't deserve love, they need love in their life. It doesn't matter what age, race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, or anything else that makes a person who they are, everyone needs love in their life and everyone deserves to be loved.

I don't even know what I was writing about, that usually happens to me. I just write and write and write and it ends up becoming a full story. I sat there for about 3 hours, just writing. I tried to draw small pictures to go along with them but they all ended up looking like a three year old had drawn them. Isaac used to illustrate my stories; we would sit there in our room and just spend the whole day drawing and writing. He would use the pencils and paints that I bought for him. It was his 10th birthday and I wanted to get him something special so I saved up every penny I could and ran errands for this elderly lady that lived down the road from us.

She used to give me little jobs to do like sorting out her recycling or tidying the living room and even though these would only be small jobs, she would pay me a lot. She knew what mine and Isaac's home situation was like. I tried to hide my bruises but I would have to pull my sleeves up when washing up so she would see them sometimes. She would always invite us into her house when we came back from school and give us the cakes she had baked during the day. She doted on Isaac and would always slip him an extra cake or biscuit when we left. She was more of a mother to us than Caroline ever was. I don't know why she loved us so much, there was no blood relation at all but even before I started doing stuff for her, she would wave at us as we walked past her house. To be honest, I think she was just lonely and Isaac and I were good company for her. Her name was Elizabeth, and she passed away a few weeks after my 14th birthday. Isaac and I went to the funeral and were two of five guests there. I guess she didn't have any family or friends that really cared about her. She left us everything in her will. The house, her money, everything. Unfortunately her brother said that because we weren't related to her we had no right to any of it and took it all for him. If we had got it then maybe Isaac and I would still be with each other. There was enough money for both of us to live comfortably in that house and go to university when we were older. Looks like all of that failed in the end.

I packed my book away in my bag and decided to go and visit Elizabeth's house. It was like a sanctuary for me and since her brother passed away a few years later, the house was empty. I could easily have just lived in that house instead of in random warehouses and abandoned buildings but whenever I did go there I would get emotional. It was unconditional love that she gave us. She didn't care that we weren't related to her, she treated us like we were her sons. She cared for us so much and it kills me that I wasn't able to repay her for it. I walked the few miles to her house and when I eventually reached it, I let out a sigh. It looked so empty. There was hardly any furniture left in it and dust covered every surface. I walked through the front door; the lock had been broken for a while now, and walked towards the living room which was the first door on the right. I entered the huge room. It looked the same as it was a few years ago as this was the only room in the house that still had all the furniture left in it, untouched. The three dark green sofas arranged in the shape of a U around a light mahogany coffee table hadn't moved one inch. The painting of a ship that hung above the stone fireplace had tilted slightly and was now at an angle. I walked over to it and adjusted it, wanting to make it look exactly as it did when Elizabeth was still alive. I lit a fire and sat in front of it, just watching the flames rise and fall, the different shades of red, yellow, orange and occasionally blue, the way the flames separated and then met again, engulfing the oxygen to keep itself alive. I'm not a pyromaniac but there's just something about fire that calms me. I think it's the way that it can be both a creative and destructive force. People have been using fire for hundreds of year to forge items out of metal and to create fires for warmth and cooking. On the other hand fires destroy as well. They can burn buildings and trees, ruin people's lives, even kill. I sat there for about 15 minutes just observing the sea of flames until my rumbling stomach pulled me from the hypnotic effect that the fire had on me. 

I stood up and walked through the adjoining dining room into the kitchen to find some food. Although no one had lived here in so long, Elizabeth had kept the house filled with tins of food which would last for a long time and were an absolute certain source of food for me. I opened the wooden cupboard door beneath the granite worktop and took out one tin of peas and one tin of sweet corn. It wasn't a lot but it would be enough to keep my appetite sated. Thankfully the tins had a ring pull or I would not have been able to open them as I had no idea where the tin opener was. I opened the tins and used the spoon that I always had in my bag to scoop the green and yellow morsels into my mouth. 

After I had finished eating I wanted to write again. Elizabeth had a room especially for Isaac and I to draw and write. It had a desk for each of us and the necessary items that we would both need. Isaac's desk had pencils, pens, a ruler, an eraser and coloured pens and pencils. My desk had different types of paper and different coloured pens so no story would look the same as another. I climbed the stairs to get to that room, the memories of the fun Isaac and I had in this house swimming around my mind. I was brought out of my deep thoughts when I approached the door and heard a noise on the other side. I froze. No one ever comes to this house so what was that noise? I didn't know what to do. Should I enter the room? Should I just leave? Was it just in my mind or was it real? All these questions were spinning around my head when I decided to just try and figure out what the noise was by pressing my ear to the door. That's when I heard her crying.