wonderwall || punznap

pains

Need your mother remotivatin' with cordial hate

Ain't no story, cater to the allegory

Like a hero's ballad with nothin' but a belated date

Veldt - brakence

There was a loud bang on the almost rusted door of the trailer, and the guy quietly sighed with relief. The creaking of the door always evoked a slight wave of bitter calmness in him. It meant that his mother was gone, which meant there would be no screams and pain, at least an hour, and, if he was lucky, he'd have even more time, or at least it gave him time to quietly run away to school or just leave.

The brunet rests his hands on the dirty sink in the kitchen and stares greedily at his lip. Thousands of thoughts fly through the guy's head, starting from the fact that the mother once again did not think where she'd hit, ending with the fact that all this swollen bloody disgrace on his face would have to be covered up with cheap powder, which means that he will also be beaten up for taking her things again. He looked in a tiny mirror filled with stains and dreamed that all this was not happening to him. But instead, the hands poured cold water on the broken lip, it seems that it relieves puffiness, and the face was still numb from the cold and the pain became not so strong.

The water in the sink was pinkish from the blood the guy washed off his face and bruised hands. The eyes reflected in the mirror were red, teary, swollen eyelids, an abomination, Nick thought.

The guy looked into his eyes and hated the way he was looking at himself. It seemed that it was hard to describe everything that splashed in dark, almost black eyes, the guy found only one word that more or less fit to describe his appearance and look - hunted. But the eyes were not the main aspect of his appearance. Brown, slightly curly, dirty hair hung in greasy strands near her face, falling carelessly just below the chin.

He hated looking in the mirror. One look at the lately haggard figure was enough to understand that everything was going wrong. Even the loose, worn but clean T-shirts and sweatshirts couldn't hide it. His face had recently become haggard, he tightly clenched his teeth, and his plump lips, which had become even larger from the swelling, clenched into a thin thread.

The trailer park was slowly waking up, people were starting to scurry from side to side, the first rays of the sun hit his face. Hands, tightly gripping the rusty edges of the shell, fell limply along the body, as if he had abruptly lost power over them. Nick understood that he needed not just to leave, but to run headlong, spitting out his lungs from fatigue in order to catch the bus. And there is absolutely no strength in his body, he doesn't even want to move.

At the exit of the trailer, he grabbed a shabby and dirty black briefcase, put on in places a tattered dark bomber jacket, already faded to an incomprehensible color, and left without closing the door behind him. He quickened his pace, passing trailers, dogs and people who had already started to get out of the "houses", of dirty street children. Some of the trailers smelled of food, someone was warming up or preparing breakfast, the guy's stomach clenched painfully. He just sighed tiredly and, ignoring the messages of his body, on half-stiff legs continued to move on.

The body continued to stubbornly hurt, although the guy thought that he should have gotten used to regular beatings and abrasions for a long time, but each time the pain did not get easier, maybe, thought Nick, only physical. For some reason, he still couldn't comprehend how the mother, whom he remembered from childhood, had changed so much. Although he knew how, he just preferred not to remember. Hiding from the pain somewhere in the depths of his skull and sitting there, pressing his face to his knees, bathing in his own pity and hatred.

School was no better. Only a few weeks left until the fall break, and Nick was bombarded with control and screening tests before the end of the first semester. He would like to give them all his attention and get away from personal problems, and study normally, at least "well". But only the situation at home did not give a single opportunity to concentrate on studies, evenings spent in the library were in vain.

Already at school, he went to the bathroom. He stared unseeingly into the mirror at the bruise that had spread from his broken lip to his cheekbone in lilac smudges, the entire left side of his face gave off with pulling pain. Nick shuddered with a lump in his throat, and then instantly a small aching shiver went through his body. It started somewhere in the lungs, slowly flowed through the insides, flooding them with caustic alkali, licked along the spine from the neck to the coccyx, pulling off part of the skin with its rough tongue, like sandpaper. The brunet bit his already injured lower lip. His eyes clouded with tears, he looked up so as not to cry. Abruptly exhaled.

Nick cursed and spat into the sink. In an empty room, decorated with tiles covered with lime stains, his voice came out in a dull but short echo. The guy turned on his heels, pressed his head into his shoulders, trying to become more inconspicuous, and left the toilet.

The school corridor was quite crowded, there was an eerie background noise, from which the brunette began to have a headache and he wanted to return to the dark, cold room which he had just left. A group of first-year school girls burst into laughter somewhere behind Nick. He shuddered and pressed his head even more into his shoulders, accelerating his pace almost to the point of running. He tried to reach his locker as quickly as possible and put away his terrible jacket, which he hated with all his heart. Conversations around, steps, people, all this in the eyes of the guy mixed up into one terrible gray-brown-crimson faceless mess.

Already at his locker, the guy looked around to check his guess about whether the freshmen were laughing at him. Looking at the girls, Nick exhaled, he was not the cause of their loud laughter - next to the girls was a group of local cream, athletes, or as they were called by first-years who were fucking Netflix enjoyers - the elite. But Nick didn't see anything elite or golden in these guys - ordinary rich selfish kids, with an immense ego, who were ready to eat alive anyone who did not look at them with awe and adoration in their eyes.

It would seem that everything is worth calming down, they were not laughing at him, but from something inside Nick seemed to have a steel spring that drove anxiety deeper and deeper into his throat. The first bell rang, the girls, silly giggling, asked the guys to walk them to the lockers, and passing by Nick, one of the guys whom he periodically saw in the corridor pushed him with his shoulder, while throwing a rude: "Did you see something fucking interesting?".

Nick was thrown pretty hard against the lockers, his legs, weakened from hunger, no longer held him properly. Nick silently waited for a group of teenagers to move away, then leaned on a shabby yellow locker with his hand, stood up and rubbed his sore shoulder. Pulling up the sleeve of his T-shirt a little higher and cursing even harder, which is why it hurt so much, he managed to fall right on one of the worst bruises he had in the last couple of months.

Just remembering the day he first got it made Nick sweat. He remembered how sickly his mother smelled of cheap vodka and weed, remembered her strange wry smile when he entered the trailer. He remembered how she stood with the cord from the TV, which one of her lovers broke a couple of weeks ago; he remembered how, in response to his greeting, his mother swung at him, remembered that she aimed the first blow at his face, from which he dodged and the wire flew with terrible force into his right shoulder. He remembered how he fell to the floor in pain and covered his head with his hands, and she was yelling something from above.

Nick swallowed the sticky saliva that had accumulated in his mouth. He adjusted the strap of his backpack on his shoulder and went to class, temporarily lost in his thoughts.