The Domino Effect

The Domino Effect: Ares

Rain

Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum.

It drummed against the windows, an endless drone in the ears of the boy. He listened to it though, intently, in attempts to tune out his teacher buzzing on excitedly about the industrial revolution. He had already learned about that topic at least six times in his career as a student, why must he learn it again. His apathetic gray-blue eyes looked out the window; he had a window seat, looking at the drenched scenery of the outside world. It was miserable, cold, and untouchable, just like him. His situation: his life.

But the boy in that class room envied the outside, Mother Nature. She could cry, wail, yell her sadness to the world in thunderous claps and angry lightening, the way people destroyed her oh so beautiful body.

The boy couldn't.

He was trapped. Ensnared in the endless pain that was his father, unable to escape, run away, spell bound by the only thing keeping him alive, his father. He felt attached, scared, to the only person he ever had a relationship in his entire life, afraid to leave, and no one would remember him. Maybe his fellow classmates, a teacher, his father. Eventually they would all forget him; he would be nothing, nonexistent. The boy was afraid of nonexistence, he wanted the proof he had lived, that he had once struggled to crawl along the jagged and broken path of his livelihood, but at this rate no one would.

The sudden flash of light caused him to jump back a little, the annoying oohs and aahs of his classmates that had also seen the lightening followed by the enormous rumble of Mother Nature's angry wails.

Several girls scream with the thunder.

He feels his blood boil.

Their pathetic attempts at attention amazes him; they know nothing of what true fear is, not in the soft cushioned life of the rich. They would never understand true suffering of what reality was, is. He hated how lucky they were, the fact that they didn't appreciate it.

Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa. The rain is picking up.

The boy looking towards the outside again, forgetting this place. He unconsciously pushing his sleeves over his hands and pulls his collar tighter around his neck. He hides the discoloration, the cuts, the anorexia. He didn't know when this habit of his started, but now it was daily part of his life. Purposely buying a uniform a size to large, hiding his secret from the world.

He covers his ears. The rain is suddenly unbearably loud; the teacher seemed to be screaming. He shook his head lightly covering his ears with his hands a sleeve slipping downward just below his wrist. White bandages stained pink hide what his secret is. He must steal from the nurse for this type of luxury, bandage.

His brown hair covers his eyes, un-brushed. I want to die, I want to die. The sentence he tries to bury the most surfaces in his head. He tries to think that is the wrong thought, to keep living, that's what he should think.

Now it's the rain. It is the reason he thinks this. He knows it, everyone is against him, does not want him. Not even Mother Nature wants him around anymore; she believes he has no place here on this world. He is a worthless pathetic being whose only place is a human punching bag for a single drunkard to take his anger out on. He knows it, no; he had known it, for a long time. He refused to accept it, believing that everyone deserved a chance at life.

His chance was over.

His heartbeat elevates. No, this was the wrong way to think. He knew he must live, he had no choice. He only had to live until there was someone to remember him, so when he went he wouldn't be forgotten. He needed to remember for his life in Hell to have meant a single thing.

"Ares... ARES!"

The angry snap of his teacher causes his attention to be snapped out of his misery. The teacher looks at him annoyed, an unaware idiot, obviously unhappy to be a teacher in a high school. "Please tell me the year slavery was abolished."

Ares sighs. He knows the answer already, but of course he did, too afraid to achieve anything but perfection or he had a beating in store from his father. The only time he smiled was when he achieved perfection in anything, mostly school.

"Slavery was officially abolished in the United States in 1865, by the enactment of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, although many states abolished slavery for themselves at various dates between 1777 and 1864 and the transport of new slaves from Africa to the US was stopped as early as 1808."

Looking up through the brown fringe, the boy feels a bit of humor in the teacher's face. It seemed he knew more than the teacher did. So the teacher moves on clearing her throat and he go back to his own thoughts, no longer worried about being called on. Ares' sink back into his solitude.

He goes back to living alone, the life of the abused.