Prolougue

in the beginning...

I'm a creep. I'm a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here. " Thom Yorke

Prologue

“He was always so nice,” they would say, “never did a thing wrong.”

That is what they would say about me but they never saw how plagued I really was. They never saw the tortured me. I always masqueraded around as the “happy child” and they couldn't see through the façade. They couldn't see the real… me, I wouldn’t allow it. My name is Atton Brown and I am a demented human being.

          I haven't always been this way; I used to be what you people considered normal. My birth was conventional; I arrived into the world in the company of a man and a woman. The woman was my mother and, at the time, I thought the man was my father. Later on, I found out that my father never came and that man was just a doctor.

          When I was very young, maybe two years old, my dad stuck a needle in my arm. He told me it was medicine, but I did not believe him. I really did not understand why then, but every day for the next ten years, he did it. At first, I would bleed and he would wipe it away but after awhile, it seemed, the blood went away on its own.

As I grew older, I grew lonelier. My mom either was out or home, arguing with the man who called himself my father...

                                 ***

 “Where’ve you been Deborah?” Kip barked.

Her head twitched a little to one side, “At Ma-Mar-Marcus’s.”

He nodded and gritted his teeth, “Yeah Marcus the one with the f*****g crack house right!” Her eyes darted down, then towards me. My mom reached for me and my hand slid towards her warmth, but the man who called himself my father would not allow it. He slapped her hands away.

“Hey,” she snapped angrily, as I withdrew, “he’s my son too.”

“The son you never see,” he ground out.

 “At least I don’t treat him like some damn experiment.”

“I lo…”

“Don’t you dare say love, Kip,” she whispered. “He’s not your son, as far as you’re concerned he’s your property. Get off of this little wannabe ‘God Complex’ of yours, come down and see what’s crumbling around you.”

“Oh and just what is that?” he arrogantly flailed his arms.

“Your whole life Kip,” she sighed and turned to me. “Hi Atton,” she said sweetly with a smile, “Hey sweetie.”

I looked up at her eyes, red and overcome with tears. Why would he berate a woman who simply needed help? The cruelty of humans disgusts me. I threw my arms around my mother in a much-desired warm embrace. The only time the man who called himself my father put his hands on me was to steady me for another injection.

          I lost myself for a moment in something you probably take as trivial. My mother gave me a kiss on the forehead and stumbled into her room and the man who called himself my father stood there, doing nothing to help his wife.

          I shot him an angry glare, “Help her!” I wanted to shout, but the words of a child are always silenced in this broken home.

   *** 

My only escape from the chaos was school and even though I didn't have any friends, I loved it. I excelled in all of my classes, mainly science. However, in one instance, I unintentionally stuck out.

This world is laden with people who will arbitrarily commit murder. Once in school, there was someone crazy enough to bring a gun. I don't remember the specific details but I remember the look on the boys face and I remember his name was Thomas, I think. He looked so angry at the world, yet so sad at the same time. The second his finger slipped and squeezed the trigger, he looked afraid. The bullet zoomed towards me and tore through my abdomen.

I thought I was dead but, six hours later, I woke up in my house. I rubbed where the bullet had supposedly gone through but there was nothing there, there wasn't a scar on my body. After that day, I began to cut my wrists but still I didn't die.

I hated myself when I cut my wrists but I hated myself even more when my cuts weren’t there, I’d feel so empty. Maybe a cut for everyone I’d hurt or who’d hurt me. I had 40 some scars just left on my wrist and when they faded…I made more because when the tears melt into the blood I felt something…indescribable. Where do the cuts come from? I began bottle my emotions, years at a time and when I broke that bottle open, the shards would slice my wrists. When the bottle exploded, I lost control. I became…something I never meant to be…

There were many needles in my house, my mother's and my father's. The needles that belonged to my father were purely scientific but my mothers were not. In times of abandonment, drugs became her friend. She said it was her own personal experiment but she became addicted and I do not think she was completely aware of what she did. Despite of every illegal and immoral action I still loved her, my father, however… was another story.                          I never blamed my mother‘s addictions on her. Most people would but he pushed her away to the point where she needed them. If he had been there, if he had cared, heroin, crack, meth…they would not have been my mother’s loves.                            One night, February if I remember correctly, my mother and father had another argument, but arguments happened on a daily basis then, so I did not pay much attention to it.

I should have.     

The yelling was so loud that night; I didn't want to hear, so I locked myself in my room and barricaded the door. I hid in my bed and covered my ears with a pillow.

          It got louder and they grew angrier but then, through the anger, there was silence. I ran downstairs and my mother was nowhere to be found. The man who called himself my father, told me not to worry.

          After that night, the testing stopped and I never saw my mom again.

I went to public school for the next few years at Marshall High and it felt good to be normal for a while. Soon I discovered I was not normal, as did everyone else. There were things I heard, things I did, things I saw; they called me emo. I hated them for it, all of them.     

          On my Saturday night, there were no dates, no friends, no, not for the “emo kid.” My bloodstained floors and walls teeming with hate were a bane to all. Even my own father didn't dare enter. Eventually, I learned to mask it all. I learned to fake a smile; I hid and became something I wasn’t. I made them laugh before they could see me cry and I hid behind the tears of a clown.

          My dad had a job working for a business tycoon, McCormick or McCoy, or something. I looked for someone to take his place and found a man in Mid-Airosfield, Werly Adams. However, I quickly began to annoy him, not intentionally though.

           Three summers ago, my father and I lost our house, something about not being able to pay the mortgage. My dad and I found an old forest in the outskirts of Downtown Airosfield. We made it to the end of it and found a considerable stretch of land, about two acres ending in a waterfall. The waterfall was actually the only tolerable thing I looked at all day.

          I remember the beginning like it was yesterday. I wanted to see him again, to maybe put myself back in his good graces. Something in me changed that day when I went over to Mid-Airosfield to see my “friend” Werly.