Ebony was the colour of darkness. It was for dreaded, haunted nightscapes with monsters and pain. It was the hue-starved pit of camouflage made for concealment, and it was the aristocratic black of piano keys. Ghoulish nightmares, hidden dangers, deep sorrowful music… none were particularly joyous or embracing. None were gleeful to the unperturbed mind. When the heavens were about to cry they would spew billowings of this darkest ebony, blackening the sky, tainting it. Then it would send down billions of tiny droplets to quench the ground… or flood it, depending on the degree of darkness in the poisoned clouds. Rain started to fall lightly on a particular plot of land in a particular sun-starved state of north America, the lightest of smirrings, able to go unnoticed perhaps for some time.
A seventeen-year-old found himself perched on the perimeter fence of the particular plot, a garden of sorts, more a yard, which at that moment held five or six adolescents. Five or six, because one particular boy could not himself decide whether he was indeed in the yard, or merely on the edge of it, but counted himself as still being confined within it. For only three feet beyond the ageing pine fence lay an alarmed boundary line, hopelessly reliable and forever restricting. The boy found himself looking up at the offending sky as wet speckles collided with his wind-dried face, and found nothing offensive about it. He found himself doing a lot of things, not because he was significantly restless or active, but because once he was in the state of doing anything, he was likely to forget how or why he had come to be doing it. He was a boy who spent summer afternoons watching, just watching whatever, and also on that particular afternoon, analysing his name. It was not something he did regularly, but it was an impassioned activity. Ebony Black could not remember anything of the no-doubt moronic fascist who so ‘lovingly bestowed’ upon him his name. Had he remembered them at all he would have done so with scorn, as he had promised himself when he was very small. That he did remember, when he found that his Christian name had a meaning. Firstly, he was not a Christian, and secondly he did not even want a name, so life did not make much sense to his five-year-old self. To him, giving your child a fucked-up name like his was just about on par with sewing a ‘kick me, I’m smug’ sign into their skin, so that only time, great difficulty and pain could remove it. His hatred of two people he had effectively never met was not as shallow as a name grudge, yet he could not seem to let that part go.
He relished the gentle splashing on his cheeks while he could, knowing it could not go unnoticed for much longer. Then he would be herded indoors with the others to sit on friendly sofas of covered sterilized foam and wait patiently for his lunch and prescription meds. The woman in her late twenties by the French patio doors reading a magazine was not a tenant of the building behind her, but an employee, a psychiatric nurse. Ashcrest Adolescent Psychiatric Home cared for eleven young people whose various mental disorders and syndromes made normal societal living difficult to cope with. The building had a capacity for up to thirty teenagers, but with more and more transfers taking place, Ebony was one of Ashcrest’s veterans. He would not be transferred though, no.
He was not getting better.
**
A four year old climbed awkwardly from a yellow taxicab, the smallest pair of white sneakers scuffing the pavement with blood-curdling friction. The boy’s eyes were barely open, pink inflammation and sleepless contusions surrounding their fragile sockets, saltwater flowing freely as his mouth emitted a series of distressed cries and wails into the thick air. Cries that should have sent a mother racing to her child’s side and showering down words of comfort, hugs, kisses… anything. Instead, features on the woman’s face remained inhumanly static; somewhat detached, but shaky. As if carved in slowly crumbling stone, her expression expressed next to nothing. Her hand gripped tightly around the boy’s arm, pulling him briskly beyond a gothic wrought iron gate and towards a clean stone building whose structure loomed far taller than the boy had imagined possible.
“No! Noooo!! Let me go! Please! Where’s my mommy?! I want my mommy!” The cries grew louder and more prolonged, further stiffening the woman’s face as they ate away at her. Like spied insects crawling under her skin; all shrieking out the same desperate words as the child in her grasp, their actions shrinking her emotional stability until it hung by splitting threads from within her. She could not bare to look at the boy’s face, her boy’s face, for his tenure as a son was over.
**
Now seventeen years of age, the same boy lay in an unfamiliar bed. Lethargy had taken its hold over a once active mind… forced on him by an mental illness he could not control. Reminders of this came daily, as staff would reassure him of what was going on when he “couldn’t remember”. He did, of course, remember more than he was merited for… but if they were going to treat him like a pitiable object of senility then he was going to act like one. Differing bottles of medication lay at his bedside in neat military rows, arranged amusingly in order of apparent rank and strength. A bored student-psychiatrist must have been fiddling around with the room, he thought disparagingly, all of what he assumed to be his clothes folded in colour co-ordinated piles along a cream sofa.
Most of his life he had sat alongside severely schizophrenic teenagers and orphaned autistic children… an existence he adapted to with time. Strict routines, kindly assistance and dramatic behavioural outbursts were all entwined into ‘normality’ as a typical day. He could not remember many particular details but he knew it to be normal, almost instinctually from being to accustomed to it. What he could not understand was why he was there in the first place. Down’s Syndrome, ADD, even undefined psychosis were all understandably difficult to live with. Thos conditions and illnesses needed extra attention, some needed treatment and curing; that could be daunting to parents. But he was not sick. He had no acute learning difficulties or multiple personalities… he had a perfect grasp of normal human etiquette and never has socio-psychotic urges to inflict pain on others. So why, then, did his parents find living with him to be such an unattractive prospect? Surely, he thought, lack of memory was not so difficult to cope with.
A new (or perhaps regular) nurse tottered by the door in black heels, her clinical uniform as yet absent, ample cleavage visible under her tank top. Passing the door for a second time, Ebony could see she was clutching a sign-in card… and had obviously arrived late. He wondered if all the staff were like that: young, inexperienced… somewhat naïve, and he loathed them. He loathed them because day-in day-out they would shimmy around in their designer shoes, wearing a white coat as a guise of maturity and wisdom, holding the hands of small ghosting figures with confused eyes and all the while thinking how great they were. Thinking how wonderful it is that they are making a difference in the lives of all those poor, sick little kids. And how somehow that puts them above everyone else in moral status. They were blind, though, to the teenage boy with ‘no memory’. Only he knew the truth. It was only Ebony who noticed when they neglected their cleaning duties in favour of obscene bimbo-like chatter, swapped shifts and signed each other out to get short hours and go unnoticed, or when they lit up cigarettes in the kitchen while some kid in Room 3 obliviously went without a meal. And he hated them doubly because he knew that tomorrow he’d just forget all that he’d seen, and that they could do whatever they wanted… because the only person capable of picking up on their negligence forgot it the next day.
And to top it all off he wouldn’t enjoy the safety of the adolescent home for much longer. Oh no, once he turned eighteen he knew he’d be thrown in with all the half-dead people and the real psychos. Unpredictable adults, possibly murderers, all with no hope of integrating into society. The Down’s Syndrome kids were the lucky ones in his mind… they would get a rent-free council house with home-help every Wednesday and Sunday, and live practically or even fully independent lives. They would be able to see and remember the things that happened to them, get visits from their siblings or parents, live happy lives and die with precious memories held close.
Ebony would have none of those. Any attempts to control his future were painfully futile, any opportunities snatched away by his inability to seal in obtained information. He operated like a human sieve, his mind constantly filling up and draining away simultaneously.
He didn’t know what would happen to him, but he knew that whatever it was, he would live it out with disappointing unawareness. What little past he had could haunt him, but it could not satisfy him.
We are all shaped by our experiences, and our memories of them.
Without that, we are lost.
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This is for
 's Prompt contest, details here: [link]My prompt was the song "Crawling in the Dark" by Hoobastank, and seeing as I'd never heard of either the band or the song, I had to take my interpretation of it spontaneously. This is what came out, and I'm not very proud of it, but what the heck. Good luck to the other entrants, too x |
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--
I murmur under moon and stars; In brambly wildernesses
I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my cresses.
And out again I curve and flow to join the brimming river,
for men may come and men may go But I go on forever.
---Lord Tennyson
--
~~ It isn't botherin' me, is it botherin' you?!~~
--
I murmur under moon and stars; In brambly wildernesses
I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my cresses.
And out again I curve and flow to join the brimming river,
for men may come and men may go But I go on forever.
---Lord Tennyson
--
I'm miana96's personal ninja
Thye be hating us cause we're glamourous, they be hating us cause we're fabulous
--
"Popsicles should be the new black and then everyone would have one." - Frank Iero - ^_^
“Look at me, with my pretty bracelet and tiara... I'm a f****n' princess!” - Gerard Way - <3
I'm so happy people actually liked this.
Blown away x
--
~~ It isn't botherin' me, is it botherin' you?!~~
Thankyou so much!!
I know I was up against you, and after reading your entry I was sure you'd win (then again, I usually expect that from you XD)
And Holy Bajeesus, I didn't even know I'd won 'til I read this comment!
My new Journals were on-screen announcing the winner, but it didn't show enough in the preview for me to know I'd won... then I scrolled down and found this! Hehe!
--
~~ It isn't botherin' me, is it botherin' you?!~~
--
I'm miana96's personal ninja
Thye be hating us cause we're glamourous, they be hating us cause we're fabulous
--
~~ It isn't botherin' me, is it botherin' you?!~~
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