Sun Violent

Chapter 1

The hospital is white. Sickly white. It’s the white you see after chemicals have reached and destroyed organic lives. There are silent sounds that travel the halls, the wheels of a stretcher, the steady beep of a moniter. The loudest sounds are the ones that they do not recognize immediately; puking (where is a nurse?), screaming (hand me that morphine), laughing (something good has happened?), the children. The loud children; the loud, white children that only blend in with the walls because they are sick.

The baby is born and it yells. It howls and screams. It’s bloody and gory and still attached to another life. It is healthy. The doctors are happy (congratulations, Mrs. Varret!), the nurses are hovering, caring, cleaning; the father is relieved. Mrs. Varret is tense, still, even now.

“What is it?” she spits her words, as though they taste awful within her. “Tell me, what it is now.”

  The nurse glances at her, she holds a wonderful baby boy in her hands. “Why, it’s a boy, and he’s perfect.”

The sheets about her crumple in her clasp, she is sweating all over again. She breathes deep, as if to detoxify herself of the anguish that suddenly grips her.

“Do you want to hold him?”

“No.”

The air is razors.

“…Shall we call in Mr. Varret?”

Her silence is indifference. The nurse shies away from the anger.

Luc is called. He feels the gravity of new life and enters the room. Suddenly, he is held by the sensation of hate and love colliding before him; the chemicals and sweat and blood waste away the sensation as quickly as it came. Now, all he can feel is his arms out in front of him, which he doesn’t remember doing, and the infant being placed gently therein.

“Child,” he whispers softly, his voice a glaring contrast to his wife’s; beach waves to a storm. “Mariya?” he calls to her, he being the only thing that can pull her from her bitterness. “You may choose, <i>chérie</i>; Garland is my heritage, now you may pass on your’s.”

She pulls back her lips as if to thank him, and then refrains; her last wish is to be associated with this mistake. She quickly sorts through her memory of relatives, in order to spit out a name and get it over with. She makes a last minute decision to abandon this child from her family and put everything she finds shameful in this hateful America into his name.

“Dallas”

~*~

The world is very large, to his eyes. It’s large and blue and green and clean.

He steps into the sunlight of his front yard with a sudden need to run and roll and play. The clear light is warm and lovely on his face, everything is crisp. Everything is sound. Garland follows, his angel-steps making no imprint on the grass, as it bends and releases in the embrace of his weight.

Laughter escapes them, and the wind pushes their lithe bodies around. Poppies and dandelions and honeysuckle and lavender are the scent of life now; filth is nonexistent, pollution nowhere. Just bright teeth and brighter eyes, falling into the high world of happiness and mirth. These days are long. These days are very long.

Then he wakes. Garland is near him, he can hear him getting dressed, beginning. Father is already gone; he has already left them for the day. Mother is waiting; lights invade his vision at the thought.

“C’mon, get up.”  Garland is twelve, and already has lost almost every trace of France and Russia in the way he carries himself. His appearance betrays his efforts. Georgia has him; the hot summers are who he is now. “We’ve already overslept and you know mom won’t be buzzing when she notices the time. I’m serious.”

Dallas is serious too. He is serious from the moment he wakes and the moment he sleeps; cycnicism hasn’t corrupted him yet, but childhood animation has already been robbed. “Does she know I’m still in bed?”

“No,” his voice is verging on puberty, verging on masculinity and he is damn excited; currently, though, he seems to be trying too hard for that and his voice is trying too little. “She called up earlier, I told her we were both getting ready; you were in the bathroom, I had to flush the toilet to make it seem true.”

“Thank-you.” Dread leaves him, and it seems the gravity bleeds out of his bed so that he can rise and get dressed and ready himself. He glances at the clock, reluctantly. “We’re leaving in twenty minutes? Why didn’t you get me up sooner? I won’t be able to eat anything before Mass.”

“So grab a bagel on the way out.”

“And risk getting crumbs in the car? No way.”

“Well, fuck then, I’ll go grab you something now and say it’s for me.”

“She always lets you eat more than you need.”

Garland hits his face with a look of guilt-slash-indignation anger. “Well, it ain’t my fault. You’re a boy. You ruined the pattern of what she wanted.”

“I bet she’s just trying to do this so I’ll die of mal…mal-eating-ition.”

“Malnutrition.”

“Whatever, can you hurry? I’m starving.” childhood is his language still; he is but six. Gimme-gimme-gimme are his manners, but this is something he shall quickly abandon; it won’t last long in his mother’s court.

~*~

Christ, above, let’s have it. Where are you?

~*~

They return home, quickly, unobtrusively, disconnected. Their mother heads to the kitchen, looking for release in alcohol and weed; she takes it outside. Garland and Dallas head upstairs, a game of toy soldiers should fix the hard morning. After moments, Dallas has forgotten. Garland is old enough to remember now, old enough that his girly voice doesn’t cause him amnesia of the youthful variety.

“You know it’s my birthday tomorrow?” Garland’s fingers are hardening, he observes them as he thinks of aging.

“Uh, no, actually I didn’t.” Dallas is uninterested; when is his birthday?

“Well, it is. Guess what my present is?” Dallas shrugs, he doesn’t care. Garland ignores the lack of enthusiasm. “We’re going to the zoo, it’s gonna be a hell of a lot of fun.”

Well, things change. “Oh really?” Dallas’ dark eyes are bright at the thought “I’ve never been! Kids at school say it’s a real time.”

Garland nods, he is more excited but doesn’t show it; men aren’t emotional like excited school girls.

“Behave, boy. I mean it, Dally, she won‘t let you have anything for years if you mess this up.”

“I woudn’t dream of it.”

~*~

He is silent in the back seat. The bright green tress make tattoos on the window pane as the car glides down the road. August is beautiful, but they block it off with air-conditiong and sealed glass. Dallas’ forehead is against said glass. He can almost imagine it melting to water so that he may fall through and play in the park they pass by.

Their mother is quiet in the front seat, the only indications that she is not a paralysis victim is that she is nodding her head to things their father says at random intervals. He’s speaking a low mumble in French, it sounds like the hum of bees.

Dallas, unfortunately, is dreading this day. He’s going to try and do as Garland had said, and behave, but he has been afflicted in the night by a stomach sickness. He threw up that morning and had been trying to hold it in since. Don’t ruin this day he keeps repeating to himself Don’t. It’s all clockwork, inhale, close your eyes, exhale, open. Repeat. It’s just clockwork, baby.

The zoo is acrid. Shit and uncleanliness is the air here and it does nothing to help his lurching stomach. He holds back, holds back like an asylum victim as they pump him full of the good stuff that keeps him quiet. Quiet.

Zebras. Lions. Sloths. Hippos. A petting zoo (which he refrains from). Cute white things in the water. Belugas. Or are they seals? Doesn’t matter, they have passed them already.

“Are you having any fun Dally?” Garland inquires at one point. His hands are dirty from llama heads.

Dallas offers a smile, fake fake fake, and nods. “Yeah, for sure.” he holds back vomit, bile burns his teeth.

They come upon alligators. Dallas feels a great sense of dread envelop him at the site of the seething, meaty creatures. They’re looking at him, and he knows it. Everyone else around him is oblivious to the demonic creatures before him.

And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, "He is possessed by Beelzebul," and "by the prince of demons he casts out the demons."

They want to consume him, he can feel it. He can envision them tearing apart his small body into fleshy bits with his blood spraying against the plexiglass everyone is gawking through. The water is red around their scaly bodies and becomes awfully pink as it hits the edges.

“Dallas, come on!” Garland’s voice pulls him from his nightmare. He coughs after he has been asphyxiated from the horror. Bile and puke escape his small mouth. He almost cries, almost.

“Shit! Dallas! What the-” Garland is at his side, suddenly, guiding him away from an uncomfortable crowd. Dallas vaguely hears him calling to their mother that they need a bathroom break.

The cold tile of the bathroom floor is a relief to his burning face. The air-conditioing coats his sweating body and he almost passes out. Chills run through him, gorgeous chills of cleanliness. He can smell chemical cleaner near him. He wants to sleep.

“I can’t believe it, why didn’t you say anything? I knew I heard you making weird noises in the bathroom, I knew I should have said something to you. Oh, man.”

“I’m sorry.” Dallas finally chokes out, the whiteness of the room is clearing his brain.

“It’s fine. Are you better?”

“I need water.”

Garland lifts Dallas’ small body from the floor to the sink, and dunks his head under the tap. Sweet water gushes out and coats his hot, burning lips. His tongue is freezing and his teeth are numb by the time he is done consuming the liquid, and he feels about a hundred times better.

“I’m so sorry, Garland. I was trying so hard not to mess things up.”

Oh child, that’s all you can do. You are just so young and so unaware. Life is too big. You’re so small.

“Hey, it’s okay, as long as you’re fine now we can head back out there, right?”

“Yeah, for sure.” Dallas follows Garland’s growing body out of the bathroom and back into the August fire.

They pass the alligators. He can hear them; he refuses to look at them. He hears the snap of their jaws and sees the white of his chest cavities as they tear him in half and consume him and ache for more.

Then he sees Garland; auburn hair and wicked-fire eyes and grass that doesn’t feel his weight; angel steps contrast his baby steps. There’s an empty space in the centre of his back where wings should be. Stark sunlight blinds him for a moment before he returns to the physical and he realizes Garland is very far away and is becoming more brilliant with each quick-fading second. He looks to the sky.

He only sees cherubim

~*~

“Are you disgusting?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“What’s that? I didn’t hear you. Are you disgusting?”

“Yes ma’am.” Louder, not too loud. Too loud and he might not be able to talk again.

“Yes, you are. You’re disgusting. You’re a fucking shame on this family.”

Dallas looks down at the mess on the kitchen floor. Puke, puke, puke. He can see his reflection. That’s him, right there; waste, shame, sickness.

Her foot connects with the nape of his neck. He goes head first onto the floor, slips on the mess, gets it in his eyes. Acid stings. 

“Clean it up. Is it too gross for you? You made it. What the hell is wrong with you. Clean it up.”

He has nothing but his hands to clean with. He starts to pull his shirt off to use as a rag, he hopes. It’s wet with bile too. He’s all wet with his insides. He’s crying.

“Stop crying.”

Stop crying.

His eyes won’t stop stinging. He can’t see. He just feels the vomit at his knees, on his elbows, on his face, in his mouth. He can smell it.

“Smell it!” her nails cut his scalp and he can’t hardly breathe. Is his nose cracking? His face is covered in it. He can’t see.

“Clean it!”

He throws up again; please, no, not again, no, no, no. His whole body shudders, it quakes. It’s over but now he’s coughing and his throat is burning and he can’t stop crying.

“You’re disgusting.”

“Yes ma’am,”


~*~

Dallas is finally done cleaning the floor, cleaning his shirt, cleaning his body and cleaning his mouth when Garland gets home from a friend’s and turns his malachite eyes to him.

“Are you still sick?”

“Yes.”

He sighs the last of August air out of his lungs as he closes the door. The number thirteen makes him feel very big and older and manlier, therefore he can pass by Dallas and offer only a gentle pat to the head as condolences. Dallas winces under the touch, his dark hair is matted with blood. Garland’s fingers feel dirty and unclean suddenly and he rushes to the sink to wash them as the scent of chemicals and puke invade his senses. He involuntarily shudders at the thought of his mother’s reaction to her white tiles turning yellow with bile. Blades of dread knife his vertebrae as he returns back to Dallas and ushers him upstairs.

“Look.”

He tosses a small plastic bag to Dallas’ bed so as to change the topic of interest.

“What is it?” Dallas’ mind is overwhelmed with naiveté. The small green-brown plant things look harmless, and worse, rather boring. He runs his tongue along his front teeth.

“Weed.”

Dallas isn’t quick to understand. Digging around in the front yard for weeds was a pastime of his when he was younger, but truly he figures Garland should have outgrown that by now. “So?”

Garland shakes his head, thinks of puffy clouds and rainbows because they really are comparable to the innocent child before him. “It’s fun. It makes you think weird things and girls think it’s hot.”

“Really?” Dallas could care less about girls. They’re dirty, filthy things that wear dresses and cry when they get muddy. They really are quite awful.

“Oh, yeah. This girl, her name’s Cassidy, all she ever talked about was how her older sister did all this weed with her boyfriend. Now it’s summer break, and I haven’t seen her in a while, but I hear she’s really into that stuff now. Man, she has some nice tits.”

“Alright,” Dallas agrees quickly so Garland will shut up about this harpy he keeps prattling on about. He moves to the point at hand, ebony eyes pull some interest from somewhere in his small, little brain. “What do you do with it?”

“You smoke it.”

“That’ll give ya cancer.”

Cancer, Garland thinks, would be a transcendent journey through an endless spiral of impending death. Exciting, he figures. Miserable though. Almost makes it unappealing.

“No, it won’t. Don’t be a dumbass, Dally, those are cigarettes.” Garland flips his redwood hair back and smiles like he sees mermaids “We’re going to try it. It will be fun.”

“I don’t want to.”

Garland pulls a face “Well, fine, you don’t have to. Just help me get it all ready.” He pulls some strange contraption out of his backpack and sits on the floor. “I think I have to grind it up.”

Dallas shrugs indifferently, he can’t see how he can help. He begins picking under his nails where dried vomit resides. He graphically recalls the skin of his scalp tearing.

Garland has since been packing the ground up plant into a little end of the contraption which Dallas only now notices is filled with water. He takes a lighter to it, presses his lips against the other opening and inhales.

“That smells bad.”

“Not any worse than you do.” Garland retorts rather coldly. Cold, almost enough, to dispel the heavy heat hanging in the room. Dallas licks a bid of sweat from his upper lip.

“I’ll just keep it all to myself.”
Dallas is hardly jealous. (Envy? I prefer wrath, honey.) He rubs the skin behind his ears and wonders if Garland feels the same, if genetics made them completely identical. That if someone were to look down on them with a microscope, would the spot behind their ears be exactly the same?
Dallas falls back on his bed, his head turns to cloud as he sees swirls of magic waft lazily through the air above him.
~*~
There is a brief moment of utter Is this it? like in movies before he feels the skin split open on the side of his face. Blood pours out and he wonders, almost half-awake, if the wind is blowing into his closed mouth through the new space. Is she looking at his teeth from the side of his jaw? There is a saw-mill in his brain. Cerebrally, the foundations of what is real and what is merely fantasy and pain-induced sickness fall away and he wakes up with stitches in his face.
~*~
There are endless nightmares for many weeks about surgeons that get into his room through the window. They walk without feet so they don’t wake Garland, so Garland can’t save him. Anaesthesia consumes him but he lies awake.
not right not right not right.
“I can feel everything.” he says, but his mouth doesn’t move. Tools move, hands move, he doesn’t. He can see every  part of him being pulled out, examined, tossed away. He feels very hot everywhere. That’s nerves. You can’t feel hot if you’re numb. Sensations come quickly after that. There’s emptiness everywhere in him and the wind from the window blows in and enters every last hole and crevice inside him.
He wakes up, every night, crying, staring in horror to the window. He crawls quickly to the other side of the room, crawls into Garland’s bed, his back facing the wall. They can’t come through walls. Nothing comes through walls. This is all a very visceral experience. He is more aware now than ever of every part of him and it’s value to the rest. He holds his stomach, he bites down on Garland’s t-shirt to not cry.