Hearts in Chains

The small house on the corner...

     It was a tiny, cramped house. 

     There wasn't enough room for Damien, or his five siblings, their dog, or their two parents. The paint chipped all off the walls, the scent of trash and other filthy things filling the air. The floors were dirty and hadn't been mopped in weeks, the walls had small hand prints on them. The bathrooms were nasty and in shambles. Some days, the water would stop working, as well as the heat. And some days, Damien and his siblings never had access to clean clothes, or a warm bed or hot showers. Some days, they had to sit in filth and go around to their neighbors for food. Some days, they'd come home from school to beer bottles lying everywhere and their parents lying on the floor, bugged out from having shot up heroine. And other days, Damien would wake up, and hear his parents fighting, the house loud and rowdy, glass breaking and the sounds of the two hitting each other and screaming. When that happened, he found himself running to his sisters and brothers, climbing into their beds and wanting to hide away in their arms forever because he knew that deep down, they'd always protect him. That, deep down, they wouldn't be stuck in this hell that they'd known for so long, forever.

     But, despite all that, Damien found solace in that tiny, cramped house. In its filthy walls and its dirty floors. He found a sense of serenity in the trouble and chaos of it all. 

     .....it was all he'd known. All he knew.

     Until the day that child protective services had come and taken him and his siblings away from their parents. Oh, how his mother and father had screamed for them, begged for the woman in the pantsuit to stop what she'd been doing and to give them some grace. But..it was all in vain. There was nothing his parents could have done. Nothing would have convinced them not to take them. Nothing would have convinced them not to separate them from the only family they'd known. It was all a matter of desperation, a matter of delusion and lucidity. Damien could see tears in his mothers eyes that day--tears that spoke to him. Tears he'd remember until he could no longer remember. 

     Maybe, deep down, his mother had begun to realize her faults. That, in her minds eye, she'd wronged her children. Robbed them of the only thing they'd truly ever wanted, ever needed..

     ...a mother.

     And because of her foolishness, because of her inability to see her faults and her mistakes, she had to watch her children, her babies, get taken from her. One by one. Taken to homes that they hadn't known, hadn't wanted to know. Taken to strangers who had no idea how to raise them. Taken to strangers who had no desire to protect them like she had wished she could. No desire to love them like she wished she had.

    And it was all for what? A small baggie of heroine? A 40-ounce pack of beer? 

     Once Damien and his siblings were taken from their parents, both parents were taken into custody by the local PD for multiple charges--mostly child endangerment, drug abuse, and a ton of others on that long file of theirs. As for he and his siblings, they had been separated by the foster system. His three sisters had been adopted by some wealthy family up north, and his two brothers had been adopted by a lesbian couple down south. Now, all that was left was Damien. And shortly after a few months had passed, Damien had been adopted by a loving couple. A woman named Darlene Agustus, along with her husband, Thomas.

     Because of Damien being so young, he had grown to love and accept them, despite the fact he had known that neither of him were his real parents. But, regardless, he chose to treat them as such. After all, they had given him a loving home, a warm bed, hot meals and showers, and most of all..

     ..they'd given him the love that every child should receive from their parents.

     As the years began to pass, Damien began to grow older. He began to grow bolder with a new sense of snark, like any sassy teenager would. He started to develop new feelings and ideals, his own sense of mind. And for once in his life, he felt a sense of freedom that he had never felt, a change of heart. Yet, despite all this, Damien never forgot his siblings. Never forgot his family and where he had come from. He had enough sense to be humble about his upbringing and his shortcomings, enough sense to try and move past it all and do something with his life.

     Soon enough, he was in high-school. He could see real people his age, could dwindle and laugh with them and tell them about his favorite song and his hobbies. Maybe it'd be like all the movies he'd seen, all the pictures on the internet that he'd sensibly scrolled past.

     But, this wasn't the suburbs. This wasn't the internet or any TV show or movie he'd seen. It was real life, and unfortunately, it was nothing like he'd dreamed. The school itself was run down and raggedy. The courtyard had trash thrown everywhere, the football field was run down. 

     High school, he thought. It was nothing he'd ever seen. But, he'd play his deck of cards, and if he was lucky, he'd get some tax back off of them. He'd only have to play the game for a little while.