Part 32 - Inside Brahms

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I feel like I'm dying.  My body aches so bad.  My head...the pain is searing. Like someone has a red hot dagger inside my skull.   Every time I move I feel nauseous.  I have to be strong.  For Y/N.  I can't let her be afraid for me. 

I sensed there was a storm coming.   I don't know how.  I knew as I buried Joel that part of him would come back.  I wasn't wrong.

I'm in and out of sleep.  Y/N tries her best to keep me awake.  She took me to the bathroom earlier.  That was humiliating.  I'm so weak I can barely stand.  She's in the kitchen right now, boiling up chicken broth.  She says it's an old remedy, one her grandmother used to make.  Boil up a chicken carcass, meat, bones and all.    I'm glad she's here.  I'm so grateful she loves me.

When I heard his voice, that Elias, I knew I'd kill him.  I wanted to.  I would have.  She stopped me.  Now, I know she's right.   I have to control the part of me that wants to fight.   I have so much anger inside me.  Years of frustration that gnaw at my heart.  I was a bad child.  I want to be a good man.

Each time I open my eyes, the room spins and I feel sick.  Y/N says the bleeding's stopped.  She says I'll be fine.

I don't feel fine.

Each time I close my eyes I see that bastard with his fists in Y/N's hair.  I still want to hurt him.  When he looked up and saw me, standing there with my mask, barefoot and ready, I saw the fear in his eyes; the uncertainty and hesitation.  That's what they always feel when they see me.  Male, female, young, old.   It used to thrill me.  I'd grin beneath the mask.  Their fear made me hate them all the more.  Their weakness.   The many girls my mother brought; gifts for me to love and care for?   They all found me repulsive.  None of them cared enough to know me.  Only Y/N had the patience to find all the places inside me that held normality.  That's why I let Elias live. Because she asked it of me.  She's the only one who can control that other me.  My only master. 

How I've come to this, is still a miracle.   I was out of control before she came.  Savage and feral; an animal.   I hated my parents, and I loved them too.  I found ways to punish them, demands I knew they couldn't fulfil.  I lived like a pig behind the walls.  Not washing.  Wearing rags. All deliberate because I not only hated them, I hated myself.   Wishes to die  became part of the  walls I lived in.   I'd educated myself through literature and television, but learned nothing of who I really am.   It took this one woman to bring me into the light.

But this light is scary, and the child in me sometimes longs for the return of darkness; to be safe in the cocoon of the walls.  Hiding. Timid.  Living and receiving through the doll.   The security of The Rules.   Being the boy.

The child is gone now.  I'm a man.  She made me so.  I can't get back.  I know I don't belong there now.  The doors are closed.  There are labyrinths in my head.  Some have dead ends. Others lead to places best kept hidden.  No sharing.  Keep them locked, forever closed.  No exit.

Am I sick?  In the head?  Is my normal a reflection of what she gives me?  Am I the mirror, forever lying, only showing what she wants to see?   I can hear her singing in the kitchen.  The fragrance of chicken soup makes my stomach rumble.  Stop overthinking, she'd tell me.  You're my Brahms.   You're not your scars.   I can never tell her how much that worried me.  I suspect she knows.  That first time, at the bonfire?  I knew I had to trust her.  So I did.  I nearly died and cried at the look on her face.  She didn't care.  She only saw me.   

Her Brahms.  I belong to someone at last.




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