Excavate

Cry

The intense sensory overload of the current situation with his mom was far beyond what Riley could reasonably comprehend. He was still trying to digest the sudden reversal in his mom's behavior toward him by not only offering him food, but a second helping, that by the time she had led him up to the bathroom to give him a shower, he was just barely keeping pace with the goings on.

Yesterday his mom had screamed at him, called him a problem child, and accused him of breaking her plates on purpose. And today, she acted like none of that had even happened. 

No, not just yesterday, he realized. She was acting like nothing had happened at all since he'd woken up in the hospital to see her next to his bed, promising him that she wouldn't leave. His mom was acting like her own abandonment hadn't actually happened and Riley was almost tempted to believe it and play along, simply because he was tired of being hurt.

Riley found it easy to follow along with Sharon's guiding gestures like a puppet until she wanted him to undress. The sickening dread of someone asking to see his body was hard-coded by this point in his life, trained through a demanding curriculum of circumventing the questions and inquisitive looks from concerned doctors, nurses, and well-meaning teachers.

But for his mother to see what he actually looked like... it brought an entirely new level of peril for him to tumble downward into. Sure, she had seen the gruesome stab wounds that decorated his hands, but that had been a last-line, no alternative situation for Riley.

He sat frozen, unable to even take full breaths until "Okay Riley, arms up," gave him whiplash with it's nostalgic trance. 

If he closed his eyes, he was a little boy again, ready for bath time with Mommy instead of a ruined teenager just trying to not further disappoint the mother who'd abandoned him.

So he complied, raising his arms above his head despite the protests from his tight, healing ribs. And when the white cotton whooshed over his head and he could feel the cool air on his torso, Riley couldn't help the whines that rose from his throat without his consent. 

If his mother gasped or said anything about his unsightly appearance, he was too embedded in his own torment to notice.

Riley appreciated that she kept moving, kept guiding him without any uneasy questions that he would have no interest in answering. She removed the bandages on his feet, and the tatty, ancient sweatpants that were not his own. 

Standing in someone else's underwear, cold, exposed, his hideous history of abuse on display, Riley couldn't bring himself to undress any further without avoiding a complete meltdown.

Again, Riley was grateful to his mother as she wrapped a towel around his waist, not even asking about the threadbare undergarments. 

It felt strange, to have someone empathize with something that would make him uncomfortable. Normally no one gave a shit about what Riley wanted, or what would make him comfortable. It was what he was used to, so by the time his mom led him into the wide expanse of the shower and had him sit down on the stone shelf, he was already warming up to her care, no matter how suspicious he was of its intentions.

He was embarrassed when he nearly jumped out of his skin as the faucet turned on and the low drone of the water streams hitting the stone frightened him. Fear driven, he looked up at his mother, begging her to forgive his cowardly response, much the way he did when he mis-stepped when waiting for his father's beatings.

Arms outstretched, hands flat against the wall. Feet shoulder-width apart. Every small hair on his body stood on end in agonizing anticipation. The belt buckle clinked behind him as it was pulled from its loops. The leather snapped against itself with the sudden deafening sound of a gunshot in the silence.