WIshing Away Curve Balls

Splatter Paint

Frozen in my tracks. What do I do now?

I reevaluated the events that led up to the scene before me.

He had asked me to walk with him. He told me that he needed to be brave like I was. 

He knew that my bruises were from my mother, that my attempts to be a 11year old caring for her family was beyond my capabilities. I knew that my little brother and I would be separated if I cried to anyone. The few days I was permitted to attend school now: I was often in a private office with some format of adult asking me if everything was alright at home. Each time I would only walk over to the shelf of board games. I would pull out Candy Land (even if it was a Kindergarten Game) and set it up to play. 

One teacher actually became aggressive when I refused to speak: pulling me back out into the hall before hissing out, "I can't prove what is happening if you don't tell me its happening"

I remember turning to walk away with out a tear, whimper, or sound from my cemented stare retracing my steps back to my classroom.

That's what I have to do again. Get away before the police came and made me talk to them. Talking to them would mean losing my little brother. I already lost my sister due to my neglect. I couldn't allow it to happen again.

I remember looking up to his face as tears seem to sear down across his cheeks. His short light brown hair wasn't brushed or gelled back as it usually was. His blue eyes still bore into my brown ones in the back of my mind.

"When we get there I need you to stay where I tell you, and just look at me. I'm glad your holding my hand. I wish I could hold your hand forever, and take you away to a house on the beach."

After that He didn't speak again. I was still in 5th grade, but he was in Middle school. He may have been deaf, but he was my only friend. I remember that he knocked on the door one day. He brought me a single white rose from the neighbors garden. He told me that He loved me, and I wasn't meant to be a lamb.

He always spoke in riddles, but today I can look back and see where he was older than 12 in his mind. He was an old soul that riddled with a sadness that masked the light smirks he would retrieve to assure others that he was "ok". I always knew better. I would often just look into those eyes and calmly returned a whisper, "You lie."

Stephen was always that way. He was the male version of the story "My Girl"... only darker...

as we came out of the cluster of trees that aligned themselves parallel to the train tracks, I remembered him hugging me. I heard the whistle... He stared at me one last time- "You promised you would stay and watch me so I am not afraid. You cannot come!"

He stood with his back to on coming train and didn't answer my call out to him of Please Don't Go. I will remember the haunting tears as he smirked... "I'm going to where I can always watch over you: protecting you from above is the only way I can save you...."

I didn't know what to do... I just stood there staring as the train made him toss up ward just to be slammed down below the front of it: as his head crushed blood splatter sprayed painting the ground with bright red rain spots. It was a thwack and a crack that was that was a cross between a melon splitting open and a large branch snapping.

The high pitch of the brakes still echoed as I began a trance movement toward the speeding vessel and the mashed body laying next to it. I leaned over and pulled off his hearing aides. They had blood on them, and other bits. With how his insides where disassembled and contorted: he only had a single eye staring blankly. I gazed a moment before closing the eyelid gently down before I sprinted back through the trees.

I hid the little brown hearing aides in my closet until the leaves started to change color on the tree we climbed. I went out and buried them one day... After a long time had gone by... But it still feels like I could close my eyes and see them bare themselves out before me. The window to his sould that was slammed shut to open up his door into heaven that day.