One quick note: the prologue is much gorier and language insensitive than the rest of the story will ever be. Just to clear things up. Also, this prologue is optional, so if you don't want to see violence, then you may avoid this.
“FUCK YOU!”
“NO, FUCK YOU!”
“YOU’RE THE FUCKER THAT DRANK ALL OUR MONEY AWAY!”
“YOU’RE THE FUCKER THAT DON’T DO SHIT!”
Bottles crashed to the ground as Mom and Dad wrestled. I hid in the corner of the kitchen, trying not to attract any attention. Fear began to consume me, like every other time. A black hole of emptiness filled me as I realized the extent of how they ignored me. My own parents ignored me.
“MAYBE I SHOULD LEAVE!”
“FUCK YOU, YOU’RE STAYING, BITCH!”
I shuddered, and fear closed in on me. It looked me in the eye, full of malice.
“WHAT DID YOU CALL ME, YOU MANWHORE SON OF A PROSTITUTE!”
Broken glass slid towards my feet, and the warm liquor washed up against my feet. I whimpered. I tried to stay strong. Fear inched closer and closer to my heart. If it got to my heart, I knew I would be lost. I only had one option left. I attacked fear, replacing it with anger. I slowly focused my thoughts on anger at my parents’ ignorance, my parents’ selfishness, their inability to accept each other. They didn’t notice my change in emotion.
“YOU SLAP ME?”
“YES I DID. WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT-”
I had enough of my parents yelling. For the first time, I was angry with my parents. I stood up.
“STOP IT!” I screamed from the tops of my lungs. They stared back, surprised at my outburst.
“You…you little…” my mom started, at a loss for words, but my dad finished. “Imma slice off your lips so you can’t talk, you useless lil cunt…”
Fear quickly replaced my anger again. It enveloped me, cackling, only manifesting itself in me more and more as my drunken dad hobbled closer and closer, pulling a kitchen knife from the nearby block.
I was frozen in place. My eyes darted from object to object, trying to find some way to escape. I spotted the screen door, and scrambled towards it, slipping on pieces of glass. My mom moved into the way, and I ducked wildly under her legs, and smashed through the door. The fiber twine ripped clean off. Getting up, I looked back. Fear, the black cloud of pain and anger, growled, and chased me. I turned and ran, and didn’t look back.
Jumping over fences, running under branches, tripping on roots, and finally landing under a large tree, I couldn’t take it anymore. Stumbling to the ground, I started to cry loudly, the reservoir of feelings finally cracked.
Nobody cared anyway. Nobody cared about me. I was a useless abortion failure. No friends, abusive family, cruel town.
Lonesome.
Invisible.
Nothing.
The dirt absorbed my tears, and wept with me, and my sobs were caught by the wind and spun into melodies of lament.
It seemed like an eternity before I stopped, gasping in quick breaths and spasms, and leaned next to the tree trunk. I quickly fell asleep, tired out by my sadness.
When I woke, the sun was already starting to pierce the dull grey sky. I rubbed my eyes, and curiously, I was staring at tree branches.
“What, oh…” I had slept on the ground, in the middle of nowhere, last night. Looking closer, I came to the realization that there were birds in the branches.
The birds came down, and hopped towards me, curious. I whistled, and they came closer. A few of them cocked their heads towards their sides, and others fluttered their wings quietly.
“Hey,” I asked. “How’s it like to be a bird? Must be fun, to be able to run away from anything that you know.”
The birds stared back, intent. They understood me. They made me feel calm, even happy. For the first time, I was without the presence of fear. I started to converse with the birds.
I told them about how miserable the town was, how bad my parents were, and how I had no friends. At one point, one of them flapped their wings, telling me, why don’t you just leave this miserable town? Use your wings.
“I don’t have wings, unfortunately,” The birds looked to the ground. “If I were a bird, I would do that, though.”
The birds looked at me, and sorrowfully crowed. Too bad you don’t have wings, human.
“I want to be a bird,” I grumbled. “I wanna get out of this town. Heck, I just want a friend.”
“Oh really?”
I whipped my head around, and spotted a hairy chest protruding from a worn out wife beater. I stood up. It was a bully from my school, Blades. His muscles bulged as he smacked his hands together, forming a fist. I guessed that his goons were behind him. I was right. Bruce and Geo appeared from behind their larger leader.
“What are you doing here, Blades?” I took a step back.
“Turns out these woods are great for paintballing,” Blades cackled, revealing his paintball gun, “Just hanging with friends, which you don’t have, queer.”
“I have friends!” I shrugged off.
“Oh, yeah?” Blades grabbed me. “Tell me one friend of yours, and I won’t give you a knuckle sandwich, fag.”
I gulped. I realized he was right.
“I was right!” Blades sniggered. He dropped me. My knees hit the ground, and pain shot up my legs. Fear, that dark cloud, began to come back. It screeched at me, beckoning me to give in. Grass was in my sight, and I couldn’t see… wait, grass…
“No. I have friends.” I looked at the ground. “The grass. The tree. The birds.” I stared at their faces proudly. Fear shrieked, and tried to counter attack. It tapped each bully on the head slightly. I looked up at the bullies.
The three were staring at me. Suddenly, they burst into laughter.
“Ha,” Blades grabbed me again. “That’s a funny one.” His fist was raised.
“Any last words, punk?” Blades pressed me against the ground.
Something was off. A bird landed on the ground next to him. Blades didn’t notice. Then another, and another started to hover behind him at head’s length.
“Birds,” I coughed, trying to warn him.
“Birds?” He hooted. “He really is a queer. Right, Geo?”
He turned to see Geo’s reaction. Geo was paling from the birds that were starting to land on Blade’s back.
“What?” Blades yelled. “Speak up, Geo!” Then he felt them.
“AHHH!!!”
Blades jumped back, frightened by the birds. A small group of birds flew by him, and dropped white droplets of poo onto his varsity jacket.
Fear recoiled, and groaned as it began to lose a foothold on me.
“Let’s get out of here!” Bruce moaned, as the birds began to peck him on the head.
“Die, ya stupid birds!” Blades leveled his paintball gun, and started firing it randomly. A couple birds landed on it, and yanked it out of his hand, throwing it onto the floor.
A bird frantically flew by me. Go! Run! It told me.
The bullies were too busy with the birds to notice me, except Bruce, who yelled at me, “Hey-“
He tripped on a tree root, and landed face first onto the grass.
I got up, and sprinted as far as I could, away from the bullies and fear.
When I couldn’t run anymore, I stumbled along, and found myself in front of my house. I hesitated, as I walked up to the door. There was no doubt that my parents were still in there. They would only be mad at me for running. The black cloud of fear began to take energy from my pondering. I shook my head. I would go in anyway.
As I walked in, a bottle smashed onto a wall above my head.
“YOU KNOW HOW MUCH TROUBLE YOU COULD’VE GOTTEN US INTO?”
“YEAH!”
“Um, no,” I whispered.
“CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES COULD’VE TAKEN YOU AWAY! I COULD LOSE MY JOB!”
“I COULD’VE LOST MY CREDIT AS A LOVING MOM!”
Dad turned to Mom at that point.
“THE FUCK YOU SMOKING? YOU KNOW I’M THE ONE DOING ALL THE LOVING!”
I quickly tripped up the stairs, not wanting to get involved again. I could’ve snuck out again if I wanted to. My parents wouldn’t notice, not in the argument they were in, but Bruce was out there. So I stayed.
That night, I stood at the windowsill, trying to coo at birds nearby.
“Hey, thanks,” I told them. They stared back at me with beady eyes.
I thought I finally had a friend. Every day, if I could, I headed down to the hill. It had some sort of stability in my life. The birds were always eager to hear what I had to say, and there were always new things to discover, whether it was new baby birds in the tree, a new plant growing near the pond, or a branch strong enough on the tree to support my weight.
The birds cared. The hills cared for me. I was an explorer, learning new things every day. I had friends.
I was no longer lonesome.
I was visible.
Something.
Sadly, all good things must come to pass. Soon the birds headed south for the winter. I never saw them again. I still wanted to visit the hill, but my parents wouldn’t even dare let me leave now. Besides, winter was coming, and my parents wouldn’t stop bickering to even buy me a coat.
Only when the snow melted was I able to sneak out after another intense argument.
My excitement fell short as I exited the forest. The hill was gone.
Replaced with an apartment complex.
The trees, the grass, the birds, all removed from the face of the earth, like they didn’t exist. I didn’t know why, but I continued on, trying to remember what it was like. The apartment building’s corner was built right where my favorite tree was, and the other corner was the place where I found some baby birds playing in a pond. Both the pond and the birds vanished.
“Hey, faggot,” I heard a familiar voice, and found Blades behind me again.
“Look around, fag,” Blades yelled. “All your friends are gone. They left you.”
“N-no,” I stammered, holding back tears. “They were killed.”
“Oh, this?” Blades pointed to the apartment. “So what if I asked my dad to build an apartment there? He was already convinced it was useless.”
“You’re smarter than you look,” I retorted.
“Faggot,” he screamed, and punched me across the face. I spat blood out. Anger boiled in my veins. There was no fear in my heart at all.
“You killed them! You killed my friends!” I screamed back, got up, and punched him back, hitting him square in the chin.
“Oh,” Blades rubbed his chinbone. “That’s how you wanna play, huh, faggot?”
I gasped as he pulled a knife out from his jacket. I started to run, but as I turned the corner to the apartment, a fist knocked me to the floor.
“Geo! Bruce, grab his arms!”
My arms were lifted, and my back was suddenly pressed on a wall.
“You’re gonna die for what you just did,” Blades grinned, and raised the dagger.
The knife plunged into my stomach, and I screamed out as pain shot through my whole body. My arms suddenly were dropped, and as I looked to my left and right, I could see Geo and Bruce both backing off. Blood started coating my front side, spreading down my shirt.
“Dude, we should stop,” Bruce warned. Blades came back down, and stabbed me again and again. Each stab was rewarded with more pain, and I howled louder. Blades came down one more time, this time stabbing at my left chest.
I whimpered as I gazed down at the blade that was sunk into my heart. He looked at me with contempt, and then got up, leaving the knife impaled in my chest.
“Geo, Bruce, let’s get out of this joint. We can call it a suicide.”
His two “friends” scrambled away from my feeble body. I was too much in pain to notice, or care. I tried grasping at the blade, trying to pull it out, but the hurting just increased. Suddenly, I realized what happened. My fingerprints were now on the knife. The suicide story would have enough flak to get through the officials. I cried out in angst, and then sobbed. I would die, friendless, forgotten, and lonely.
Nobody cared anyway. Nobody cared about me. I was a useless abortion failure. No friends, abusive family, cruel town.
Lonesome.
Invisible.
Nothing.
The pain started to numb the rest of my body. I found I couldn’t move my arms anymore. As my vision dimmed, I saw… a bird… no… something with wings… what…