One Million Masks: REDUX | ✓

Wings on Fire, 2029

++ Wings on Fire, 2029 ++

The first ten years of my life my brother had me dead convinced I was adopted.

I'm not sure what gave Francis the bright idea to tell such an awful lie but when I look back on it the spite behind his words is actually kind of impressive. Statistically speaking, most lies only last a week or two, a month at most, before they split open and the truth gushes out.

But me? I thought my parents weren't my parents for ten whole years.

Like, can you imagine the time and commitment Francis devoted to making sure I never questioned his logic? He even made up stories about how Mom and Dad found me on their doorstep swaddled in a piss-yellow blanket with a single note pinned near my feet: not yet house-trained, will eat anything.

So I believed him - had no reason not to. He was my adopted brother after all.

Reality didn't hit until my father showed me a home video of a Haitian doctor reaching his white-gloved hands into my Haitian mother's vagina and wriggling out a sizeable Haitian baby like a prize bass.

A.K.A. Hector Jean-Baptiste.

A.K.A. Me.

"Wait a minute," I stood inches from the grainy screen and strained my eyes. "Is that Francis?"

"What? No. Hector, that's you. Don't you see the hair and the nose?"

"How is that possible?"

"Well, Hector. It's funny you should ask," Dad rubbed his neck how fortune tellers rub crystal balls. "It's... it's complicated. You see when a man loves a woman..."

While Dad struggled to explain the finer points of heterosexual intercourse I recalled every night I laid awake wondering where my birth parents were and why they abandoned me. I'd mourned the loss of people who never existed - who technically slept two bedrooms away from me - for as long as I could remember being alive. It's amazing the vast amount of nonsense the brain will force itself to accept as law.

Francis described his idea making process like his head filling with rubber balloons, pressing against his skull until they overfilled and popped!

My ideas feel more like cool water. Details collect in my cranium and drain down my spinal chord. My ideas drip down my limbs and pool in my mouth. My ideas are fluid. Small oceans. Lukewarm lakes.

I asked Francis why he would bother keeping the game up for so long and his answer was naturally ambivalent.

"Because you make it easy, Hector. You're gullible. You're a damn fool."

Francis had his word for it - my social coach said I was just extraordinarily trusting.

Dr. Noel said most Aspie Boys weren't as open as I was (I hate hate hated that phrase, I choked a little every time he said it) and encouraged a forgiving spirit where Francis was concerned.

"There will be people in your life who try to take advantage. The wrong they do is a reflection their character, not yours."

"So I should let them walk all over me?"

"No, of course not. See justice is served, but do it with pure intentions and you'll never be disappointed."

"Sounds unreasonable."

Dr. Noel cleaned his wire-rimmed glasses on his linen shirt. "Human decency often is. It's amazing we haven't absolutely massacred each other yet. But enough about that, let's talk a bit about how your interests are developing, okay? How's school? Making any friends?"