east of eden 𑁋 salvis.

I

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"Dear Lord, who art in Heaven, we thank thee for this meal.." The words started to fade out as Travis said the same words he repeated three times a day, every single day. At this point, it was routine. Clasp your hands together, bow your head, and thank the Lord above for blessing you with a resource you need to survive.

"Amen." Travis, Kenneth, and his step-mother, Deborah, all look up in sync. They exchange a glance before the two adults start eating their meals. Travis, on the other hand, only stares at his food. Though he's got food in front of him, he knows better than to eat it. It'll only come rushing back up after ten minutes of resting heavily and uneasily in his stomach.

Kenneth glances at Travis, seeming to pick up his hesitancy to eat, but doesn't say a word. He could care less whether Travis eats or not, as does Deborah. Neither of the two have any regard for Travis and his mental or physical wellbeing. They don't want him to exist anyways, so they don't care if he were to fade away from not eating, which is probably what's going to happen anyways.

Travis, at this point, has gotten used to the endless hunger. He's gotten used to forgetting the last time he ate and the itchy, sick feeling of hunger clawing at his insides. It's hardly even noticeable anymore. Travis can hardly feel anything, physically or mentally, and that includes the rough claws of hunger digging into his stomach and begging for something. Anything. Even just 10 calories. But 10 leads to 20, and 20 leads to 30, and 30 leads to 40, and then, before he knows it, Travis has eaten thousands of calories in one sitting.

He only allows himself to eat every 2 to 3 days. He doesn't want to risk getting fat. Not again. Well, again would be an overstatement. Travis has never been fat. But, as a child, he was right there in the middle, with too much pudge to be considered skinny, but not enough to be fat. He was large enough to get insulted and poked in the stomach by others, including his family, but skinny enough to receive compliments from adults about how small he was, how they wish they could be his size, his weight, be able to eat whatever they want and maintain themselves and their image like he could.

Travis stares at his food. Kenneth, eventually, for some reason, getting fed up with his lack of eating, steps harshly on his foot under the table, and, at the same time, reaches over to hit Travis aggressively in the back of the head. Travis winces, rubbing the spot Kenneth hit, but doesn't say anything. He knows better than to say anything about the hits, about the abuse. Especially when it's happening. That just makes it worse.

"Eat. Your mother worked very hard on this meal." Mother. Such a sour word, at least for Travis. And Deborah, she was not his mother. She was nowhere close to being a mother. She had taught Travis that there was even such a thing as throwing your food back up. She was the one that had told him girls wouldn't like him unless he was skin and bones. She was the one that started the hunger.

Travis' real mother, his biological mother, well, he didn't know where she was. One day she was there, kissing Travis' forehead and making him dinner and telling him bedtime stories, and then the next, she was gone, as were her belongings. She hadn't even left a note, she had just left.

Travis had been five at the time, not able to accept the thought of loss or even understand it, and especially not in those circumstances. He knew of death and he knew of vacations and things of the sort, but he didn't know people's mother's just up and left like that. He didn't know family could just leave.

At the time, he hadn't been sad. He thought she'd gone on a vacation and that one day she'd be back. But when the time had passed, when he hadn't seen her in years, when his father brought home someone new, he knew she wouldn't be coming back.

He hadn't cried, though. By the time he had accepted his mother's loss, he was too far gone mentally to feel the sadness that caused tears. He just sighed, greeted his step-mother with a smile, and began to loathe his biological mother for leaving without a word.

Travis nods, listening to Kenneth's words and picking up his fork to eat the food sitting on the plate in front of him. He knows better than to disrespect Kenneth, as doing that could do nothing more than bring more pain. He'll just throw the food back up after dinner. That always works.

Dinner is eaten in silence, as always. No small talk about how their days are, if Travis has any news friends, or even if he has his eyes set on a girl. Dinner, for the Phelps family, is eaten in silence as quickly as possible before they all depart to their own respective places. For Travis, that's his bedroom. For Kenneth, that's usually wherever Travis is to "punish" him, or church. And for Deborah, well, Travis has no idea. He doesn't keep track of her.

Travis is the first done with his plate, already feeling the food rest heavily and uneasy in his stomach as he stands and picks up his plate to put in the sink. Kenneth grabs his wrist as he picks up the plate, though, causing him to drop it. The room goes even quieter than before, if that's possible, as the plate falls from a shaky hand to shatter loudly on the floor upon impacting the wooden surface.

Kenneth stares at the shards of plate now littering the floor. He stares for only a moment before grabbing Travis' shoulders and shoving the boy onto the glass on the floor. He lands mostly on his left side, grimacing as he feels the shards of broken plate dig into his arm, shoulder, cheek, and some of his thigh, drawing blood as he makes impact on the sharp pieces.

Tears gloss over his eyes, but not from the heartbreak of his father doing this, nor of the heartbreak that no one will save him from this. Deborah could care less about what goes on in Travis' punishments. He just has to lay and wait them out. No one comes to save him.

The tears, rather than come from the betrayals of his parents, are instead from the pain. The pain of old bruises and cuts being reopened. It hurts so badly. Yet, Travis does not speak a word to his father, not from the pain, nor of the tears. He lays there, in pain, shaking, and he waits for what may come next.

Kenneth doesn't say or do anything next. He just stares at Travis, shaking and suffering in silence, before muttering something to himself, shaking his head, and walking away. Travis waits a moment after Kenneth walks away before he stands, looking at Deborah. She, much like Kenneth, just mutters to herself and shakes her head. Unlike Kenneth, though, she's not nearly as quiet with her word. Travis can hear perfectly what she says to herself.

"Pathetic queer." Those words ring loudly and harshly in his ears as Deborah stands and walks over to him. "Clean up your mess." She states, sideswiping his injured shoulder as she walks away. He grimaces again, but doesn't complain about the task he was designated to do. He doesn't really feel like getting in trouble again.

Travis suffers through the pain coming from both the left side of his body as well as the pain that comes from his stomach as his body tries desperately to reject the food he forced himself to swallow. He cleans up the remaining shards of plate on the floor, cleans up the remains of dinner off the table, washes the dishes, and then he goes to the bathroom, where he kneels in front of the toilet and sticks his fingers down his throat until his half digested dinner comes rushing up, burning his throat and leaving a disgusting taste in his mouth before landing in the bowl below.

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