Ghost (First Edition)

Chapter Seven

Luis

Luis was, for the first time, feeling happy beyond measure. He had a boyfriend, he was going to prom with his boyfriend, Nathan would be dropping by now and again, and he was starting to get Bs...

However, his joyous mood quickly evaporated once he stepped through the old, half-rotten front door of his home. His mother—a bony woman with brittle brown hair, sharp brown eyes, and an ugly sharp face—was standing in the hallway, bony hands on her bony hips, glaring at him.

Luis knew she hated him because he resembled his father. He had seen a photo of the man in the trash can once. His father had the same messy black hair, round face, and green eyes as Luis. He looked very happy in that photo. Of course, Luis had gotten a beating for looking at the photo, but at least he had known what his father had looked like.

"Hello Mother," Luis murmured hesitantly.

"Late," his mother hissed, "ten hundred dollars grants you an extra hour, not three!"

Luis swallowed. "I'm sorry mother. I lost track of time."

His mother showed him the wooden spoon she held in her right hand, and before Luis could move, she grabbed him and forced him against the dirty, mouldy wall and was beating him all over with the spoon, hard enough to bruise. Luis cried out and tried to squirm away, but she had him pinned firmly.

"Stop!" Luis screamed, "Please stop! I'm sorry!!"

She did stop, and slowly, fearfully, Luis turned around. And was met with a slap to the face. Her bony hand meeting the soft flesh of his cheek sounded like the crack of a whip. Luis screamed.

"You useless piece of shit!" His mother spat, slapping him again, this time sending him to the floor, "You should never have been born! Go to your room! No dinner!"

Luis scrambled to his feet, tears streaming down his face as he stumbled to his room. No sooner than he was a few steps in, his door was slammed shut and locked. That wave of darkness and depression threatened to fall over him, so, trembling, Luis headed to his desk.

The desk drawer was a little stiff, but Luis managed to open it. He looked at the contents inside. A sharp knife with a thin layer of blood on the tip, two unused cigarettes, an ashtray full of dirty grey ash, and a rest red lighter.

Luis set the ashtray on the desk, grabbed a cigarette, and then the lighter. His hands were strangely steady as he lit the cigarette, the room filling with the bitter scent of tobacco. He set the lighter down and pushed his right jumper sleeve up to the elbow, revealing his skin covered in scars. Long scars, short scars, round scars... feeling no emotion, he set the burning tip to his skin.

The pain was glorious.

Luis sighed as that dark wave was pushed back just a little bit further. It filled him with relief. He would make it another day. Another day of trauma.

He squished the tip of the cigarette into the ashtray before putting everything back into the drawer. He looked at his arm, there was an angry red welt on his skin, it stood out starkly against his pale skin and the whiteness of the other scars. He pulled his sleeve down to hide the injury before heading to bed, quickly emptying his bladder in the little bowl at the foot of his bed before climbing onto the mattress, wrapping the thin, moth-eaten blanket around himself and falling asleep.

***

When Luis woke up the next morning he was horrified to remember that today was a public holiday. That meant a whole day without seeing Nathan. A whole day of being abused and made to clean the house on an empty stomach.

Luis got up and went to his door and turned the old, brass handle.

Locked.

He frowned. His mother woke up an hour ago, she should have unlocked the door. Maybe she's dead, Luis thought, almost in glee. He tried the handle again. Still locked. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and looked over his shoulder at the half-empty chamber pot, even empty, it wasn't deep enough to hold a full morning pee.

"Mother!" He called, "Can I come out?"

"No!" His mother yelled back, "You can stay in there and go hungry! This is what you get when you stay out late and make me go hungry!"

"But I need the bathroom! Please!" Luis begged. There was no response.

Luis slumped his shoulders. He went and picked up the chamber pot and emptied the contents out the window, a startled yelp made him jump. He looked out the window, Mat glared back at him, drenched. Luis snickered and vanished from the window to empty what he could from his bladder without overflowing the chamber pot. This resulted in Mat getting drenched three more times. Luis didn't care, he hated the dog, and the dog hated him. That was probably why he was stationed there in the first place. Not that Luis was going to leave regardless. He liked his bones intact.

The only problem was, was that Luis didn't have anything to do besides use the toilet. With a sigh, he flopped down onto his bed, looking up at his cracked, leaky, and mouldy ceiling, listening to his stomach rumbling and longing for the stale slice of bread he would have had for breakfast.

He rolled over, wishing Nathan was here to help fight off the darkness. He moved his right sleeve up and ran his finger over the new burn on his arm. Should he do more? No, not today. Maybe tomorrow.

There was the sound of his door unlocking, and he sat up, hopeful. His door opened and his mother was there, scowling, a batting stick in her hand, a wild look in her eye. She was having some kind of episode, and Luis knew that all she saw before her was the man she hated. The man who abandoned her when she was pregnant with a child she didn't want. A man she wanted dead.

Luis raised his arms against the first, cracking blow, and he knew that this was only the start of the horror he would face today.