I Am Yours and You Are Mine

Chapter One - Feeling

Spring 1989

A curly haired boy, no more than 18, looked at himself in the steamed mirror. His eyes darted from side to side with a perplexing glare.

"Ben, breakfast" an echoed voice called from downstairs.

The boy didn't move. He just stared, blinking lightly. The air was fogged with a humid sting from the shower. The water was still running, without its inhabitant. The white tiled walls were dripping with hot condensation. The boy didn't move.

"Ben, breakfast is ready! Come down before it's cold." The voice said again, this time with more urgency.

The boy made his first move, he turned to the shower, watching the water pour down like a monsoon. He wanted to move more but he couldn't. He felt like the water, always pouring down with little thought to the flooding that would occur and leave a wake of devastation.

"Am I a devastation?" he thought to himself, his thoughts splashing around in his head.

"Breakfast!" the voice bellowed from below. His mother made breakfast everyday, whether anybody wanted it or not. It was her ritual.

"Coming Ma" the boy retorted, annoyed. He moved quickly now, no longer rooted in stillness. He turned the water off, the pour rushing to a stop. He combed his curly hair away from his face, pulled on his faded Levi's and snapped up his shirt, leaving it half-unbuttoned.

_______

The smell of fresh pancakes wafted in the air as the boy jumped down the stairs, hurriedly avoiding the everyday morning argument.

Too late.

"Benjamin, what takes you so long up there. You would think you were getting dolled up for a TV interview." His mother scolded him.

"Yeah, what are you a pretty boy or somethin" his father glanced up from the morning paper, looking at his son with a vague sense of suspicion.

His older brother chortled as he hurled the bottle of maple syrup at him, trying to catch him off guard, but he caught it with ease.

"Boys! Cut it out, before you make a mess" His mother interjected, while plating the finished ceremonial pancakes.

"A plate for you and for you" His mother placed the plates in front of her sons. Ben just looked at it. He hated pancakes, but almost everyday, a plate was waiting for him with a side of argument at his peculiar behavior and distantness.

"Uh, I think I'm gonna just walk to school" he said, getting up and grabbing an apple and his backpack and hurrying out of the kitchen before his family could say anymore to him. Away from the kitchen and out of earshot, he took a deep breath, slid on his Reebok's and quickly left through the front door.

The fresh morning air hit him with force. There was still a breeze in the air, remnants of the winter prior. He didn't mind, he liked the silence. It was more time for him to think. He thought a lot lately.

He walked quickly down the street, looking at the neighbors, some with coffee in hand, starting their cars and making the drive to work. The redundancy of middle class life. Some of the wives waved from the windows at their husbands, almost all of them thinking of how to drown their boring existence. He wanted someone to wave him away, wistfully longing to be together again, even though he was just leaving and only for a couple of hours.

He could never have that though. He was different. Something was wrong with his thoughts. They weren't normal. He wasn't normal. He tried pushing the wickedness from his head, but it oppressed him.