Sixty Flashes of Life

Chapter 7

Chapter 7. 

[23:10]

Eliot watched the girl without turning his eyes away from her petite body. He was only a ten-year-old child at that moment, but girls had already managed to catch his attention. Like a newcomer, would observe everything, for he came to an entirely new world with an only desire: to see what this land hides in.

A pure curiosity of a different species. Their way of putting various powders on the face with some unknown intentions, but surely doing it in an eye-catching, bizarre way.

The girl in front sat on a queen bed, which could fit at least five other girls of her size. The bed, covered in pink bedding with two massive, fluffy pillows, served as a playground for the girl, who enjoyed every single bit of it.

To Eliot, she looked as if she had been taken from the most charming field of lilies that existed on earth. Her wavy, shoulder-length white hair whirled as she fidgeted around the bed.

"I heard my parents speaking last night," she yawned, covering her mouth with a palm, as she leafed through pages of a fashion magazine. The clock on the wall said ten minutes after eleven; it would have been her bedtime if only Eliot had not come to stay over.

"Yes?" He did not show much of interest to this topic, but his tone was more strained than usually. "And what about them?"

He was not a very talkative child in comparison to other kids, especially in public. However, even in their relationship, he was surely not the one to take the reins in ninety-nine percent of the times if such opportunities popped up.

"They were talking about your parents... My mother can't realize why Lee, I mean your father, always gives them a cold shoulder? Does he not like us? Her cheeks blushed right away. It was obvious enough to Eliot that she was embarrassed for bringing up the topic.

"I don't know," he said in a gloomy way, and averted his gaze from her to the window nearby.

He was ashamed of talking about this topic in the same way as she was for having stirred this boiling pot. She knew some parts of his family story –many in the town had their ideas– but he always tried to keep this bone as deep under the ground as possible.

Judith was his best friend, and had been for a few years at that time. However, the soil of a man's heart is stonier; no matter whether he is a child or a grown-up man.

Some secrets remain in the closet for good, but the reasons why his father acted so detached from all his neighbors were sometimes self-evident, even though no one really knew that his father had turned into a monster.

"My parents say it's because he likes to shoot the stars; they call it vodka or also rotgut, but I don't know what the second means. Yikes, that's disgusting. Promise me you won't drink anything like this in your life, El"

He did not need to promise this to keep away from drinks. There was enough aversion in him to alcohol to feed their whole town, and more. How could a person ever want to drink something that almost literally killed their close people?

"I won't, Judy. Never in my life," he sighed, and turned his head to face her knees where a book lay. She read books for him every Friday evening, and it was the most pleasant and anticipated thing throughout the whole week.

It was not much fun today, though. If she was not his only best friend, he would regret coming by, but time with her was worth every single moment. Most children avoided him, and for a plausible reason: stench. He stank with that obnoxious reek of alcohol that never left their house.

He tried to complain about it once to his mother, and that was the worst decision ever made. Lee, or his father, had heard it, and dared to smack him in the face after screaming at him for around ten minutes.

"Men never cry," his mother had told him many times before, but it did not sound so persuasive after being treated like an old rag.

Did it ever occur to him that he was a boy at that moment and there were no particular rules in the world that forbid children to cry? As he grew up to a sturdy, attractive man, he came upon another version of this phrase: Men never take advantage of weaker ones, all the same girls, boys, children, or pets". However, it happened only later on, so far, he was—

just a boy with an excruciating, stabbing pain in the chest.