Masked Mayhem

Truth Wrapped in Fiction

This prompt response was created to honor the 1 in ~3 females who endures sexual harassment to a level that involves physical touch. Welcome to the result of the prompt 'Dear Diary'.

    Michelangelo had been drawn to the old boxes in the back of April's closet for a while after her mom's visit. April snickered and loaded him up with three saying they were from her 'art years,' leaving him nearly delirious with joy. When he dragged a bowl of popcorn into his room and a pair of bottles to drink, his brothers understood that he might be pulling an all-nighter with the art how-to's and old sketchbooks and simply left him to it after dinner. A free night with Mikey being away from the TV happened rarely enough that Raphael only snorted and took the pointed hint of a chair loudly wedged under the doorknob when he tried to invite his best bud down for the ice cream they had picked up at April's. Leonardo only snickered when his soft knock late in the night and call to remind Mikey that there would be no shirking morning practice, received a muffled, "I'm already in bed!" Mike must have found something 'really good' to curl up in bed with it.

    Mostly, the layers in the first box had proven to be dehydrated markers and some slightly oily student pastels above 'how to draw' books. Only one box had a layer of salvageable quality art supplies on top of the books with names of fantasy art and book cover illustrators as well as a few focused on more classical artists. Michelangelo's namesake wasn't in the box though. The thirds layer included some well loved and prehistoric erasers on top of larger, in color, art books that covered the Holy Grail. April's childhood sketchbooks-- quite a few actually. He got down to the last handful of popcorn when the ordinary looking art journal gave way after a few pages of juvenile sketches to a page starting with ~Dear Diary~. He stared at the page heading for a moment before getting startled by Raphael's knock and blocking the door. He wasn't gonna let this piece of gold slip through his fingers!

    Three hours later, Mike huddled in bed staring around at corners of the room as he dried his eyes. Leonardo's knock, then call that morning practice would happen and he was expected there forced a startled reply out of the youngest. He looked back down to the page, frozen in place and the final stark line of, "If he touches me again, I will kill him."  

    The idea that smart, smiling, KIND April had been reduced to a terrified, bitter, and vengeful girl who managed the horror of mentioning her abuser by writing his pronouns in harsh wiggly lines had happened within one summer, burned inside and made him startle at the shadows in the corners of his room. She must have gotten past all this somehow and he had to keep reading until he figured out how she got through the summer; how the other journals filled up with expressive art and she kept all the burning shame, terror and sheer rage verbally locked away in this one journal. Somehow, it was like being there for her in some way he couldn't explain and if he didn't keep reading, it was like saying she had never mattered to him at all. So, he kept reading.

    Looking around, he could only stare down at the journals telling him April's horror in small snatches of dark pain and coinciding artwork. If anyone had been looking, it became easy enough to see her words in the artwork filled with dark stylized hands and sharp angles jabbing into muted colors on the backgrounds. Then, finally, the cousin had been arrested for the abuse of a much smaller girl down the block and although April had stayed silent, as his threats against her family had always ensured, other girls in the neighborhood spoke up. Her aunt had the audacity to demand that April speak at her cousins trial in his defense and she had run away overnight to avoid the court date. She got shipped home the week after her cousin was remanded to juvenile rehabilitation. The aunt had never explained, only callously claimed April to be a moody and unreliable houseguest.

    The back of the journal included several lists of things her aunt had to have overlooked to be so massively clueless and just the signs of her cold obsession with her only son who 'couldn't possibly be guilty of such filthy acts.' By then, the art interest had faded into the calm kindness of an uncle who showed her science in a way that pulled her out of the shy shell of paranoia hiding every sign of the person the turtle knew as April. The purging journal pages became less harsh and the sketchbooks became smaller to accompany her on digs and filled with basic science nerd sketches. He wondered if Uncle Auggie had any clue how much he had done for April in showing her his kindness and taking her in.

    Hours after Leo's knock, he closed the diary as April went back to school after a different summer and her closest family none the wiser. It took him only a few minutes with all the lights on in his room to pack the journals away in a new smaller box. He would return them to April the next time he was topside and apologize for reading it all, as this wasn't something she would have told him herself. He felt odd for knowing this sort of thing, planning on letting her know he hadn't told any of the others.

    Still, it helped him understand how she became willing to fight a boss she expected to adore and adopt four turtles as brothers all in the same week. The ones that are Monsters aren't always obvious at first glance was written at the bottom of her last piece of artwork before she stopped writing in the sketchbook diary. April learned that lesson harshly and Michelangelo could only tearfully marvel at the person she became because of all of it.