Broken and Labelled

The epitaph read:
"Never forget that everyone has some goodness, look deep enough and you shall find it.
Elizabeth Tuppins, loving mother to two and life long optimist."



Carl Montenue had been born an only child to a dying mum and an alcoholic father. His mother, Cheryl, suffered from breast cancer and was diagnosed as terminal a week before his birth. She died shortly after; leaving Carl to the worthless wreckage that was his father.

Neighbours gossiped that Daniel drunk so much that it was likely that he didn't even realise that she had passed. However, they lived in the slums and cases like his were seen everyday and ignored. Besides, they had to concentrate on putting the bread on their tables rather than sticking their noses in others' business.

Daniel was useless with bringing up Carl. The only bottle he used was the one to feed his own needs for alcohol, his preferred choice being beer. If it wasn't for Carl's auntie, Lorraine, Carl didn't know what would've happened to him. However, his auntie had no understanding of parenting and no wish to learn. She cleaned him, fed him and sometimes even gave him a second hand toy but she spent no time other than what was necessary with him. His dad, gulping down the alcohol and often spilling it down himself with desperation to consume it, barely said two words to Carl a day. They were often 'move', 'bugger off' or far more offensive obscenities.

Carl had learnt to look after his self, to be his own friend and judge. With no discipline in the house, he struggled to behave like a boy should. In the end, he didn't bother. His days at school could hardly be remembered now as he truanted constantly. For this, he was expelled when he was 10 and he vanished from the system. The few days he could remember at school had been filled with shouting and punishment. After all, he had no idea how to behave so often resorted to primitive violence to achieve his needs.

He had wandered the streets often then, sometimes even mugging people to get their money for booze. He knew he was turning into his father but did not even question whether it was a bad thing. He had no other models to copy.

The police had him on file as he had been caught often for stealing and assault. They believed he was a hooligan, a no-good yob. Carl didn't care; it was what he believed himself. When he was 13, he went to a tattoo parlour and had a skull and crossbones tattooed on his arm. He paid for it with stolen money. They had asked no questions about him being under-age as they didn't care, like so many other people in his life.

Carl did not really have a concept of good or bad. He assumed that good was when something went right and bad was where something went wrong. He was familiar with the idea of evil though as it was what most of society thought of him. A feral animal that should be put down.

He lost his virginity at 15, to a girl who staggered out of a nightclub, drunk. She started kissing him and then begged that he take her to his home as she had nowhere to go. He managed to sneak her into his bedroom without awakening his father. She demanded that he take her, while starting to strip. As he had no real friends and no one else to tell him about the facts of life, he didn't know what to do. She guided him through it, cooing in his ear sweet nothings that she loved him and wanted him.

Carl hadn't had anything like that said to him before. It was what he'd seen on TV but hadn't believed it really occurred in real life. He told her that he loved her too, because that's what they always did on TV, didn't they? He hadn't experienced love before but guessed that maybe his growing erection was proof of it.

The next morning he woke up, to see her sitting on the side of the bed, putting on her bra. He hugged her from behind, kissing her neck and saying 'Hey'.

"Get off me!" She shouted and tried to elbow him off her. Carl was confused and retreated.

"You're a sicko, taking advantage of me when I was drunk! I hope you die," she said coldly, while clothing herself. Fully dressed, she turned towards him, looking daggers at him. "Rapist." She spat and stormed off, leaving him stunned.

Carl heard the floorboards creak noisily; his father staggered into Carl's room.

"Fucking rapist, huh? You bring that fucking slag into my house and fucking rape her? You're a fucking bastard child; you're no son of mine! Get out of here 'fore I fuckin' kill ya!" He shouted, lurching towards Carl.

Taking no chances, Carl left, never to come back. Alone, broke and confused, he walked in the rain, crying. The rain helped hide his tears, which he despised as they were a sign of his weakness. A sign of his inability to cope. For the first time in his life, he attempted suicide.

He used the knife that he always carried with him to hack into his wrists, letting the flow of blood rush out of him. Carl wasn't scared of the pain, he felt too numb. He sat on the street, his back against a building, watching his wrists in silence.

The rain was cold and Carl decided that he did not want to die in the freezing rain. He wanted to die in the warmth. He stood up, and saw that the building behind him was a library. Carl had never used a library before, he could barely read. However, it was warm and Carl felt a sense of irony that someone who couldn't read would die surrounded by books.

He entered and immediately walked left, to sit in the corner where he thought that no one would see him. He questioned whether that was even needed, because he was often invisible to most normal people anyway. He sat with his legs up and his hands in his lap, allowing the blood to trickle onto his trousers rather than the clean carpet. He let his head rest on top of his knees, and shut his eyes, waiting to die.

Someone was nudging him, trying to wake him. He opened his eyes. There was a gasp of shock and horror as the nudger, an old lady librarian, glimpsed the state of his wrists.

"Oh lord, call the ambulance Janet!!" She cried, to a younger librarian standing nearby. "Oh you poor dear, hang on, it'll be alright, do you feel faint?"

He looked at her, as if in a dream that he couldn't comprehend. Everything was both speeding up and slowing down at the same time. He was speechless.

She looked at him closely, seeing that he was not in a correct state of mind. She felt his forehead with the back of her hand.

"Oh, and so cold!" She said, taking off her cardigan and wrapping it round him. Janet had come back, having called an ambulance, and handed the old lady some bandages. The old women carefully wrapped his wrists with them. Everything became too much for him and he blacked out.

He woke up later surrounded by white, in a white bed. He looked around realising that it was a hospital and saw that his wrists were now bandaged. His suicide attempt was a failure. He was disgusted at himself for not even getting that right.

A doctor came up to him. "I'm glad you're awake now. You had a close call. If those librarians had called us any later then you may not have been here now. One is requesting to come and see you. Would you like to see her?"

"Sure, whatever." Carl said faintly. His mind was already starting to design other plans to end his life.

The doctor left and the old librarian from earlier came in and walked up to his bed.

"How are you?" She asked, genuinely concerned.

"OK." Carl said bluntly.

"Do you have any family? Surely they should be contacted..."

"No. I have no one."

She looked at him strangely. He looked away.

"What made you try to take your own life?" She murmured gently.

Carl said nothing.

"I know I may be old, but I still have good hearing. Try me, what's the worst that could happen? It might be that it's something we could solve."

Carl smiled coldly. "It can't be solved. You can't fix a life. I wish that I'd have managed to kill myself. At least I wouldn't be a failure."

"Maybe there's a reason for you coming into the library. If it wasn't your subconscious, then maybe it was Fate. You were not supposed to die. Maybe you came in so that someone would listen."

Carl was silent, mulling over what she had said. Eventually he gave in and told her exactly what happened and about his life in general. Throughout it all, she just stayed and listened, not interrupting once, even when he told her about mugging other people.

"The only way to fix my life is to end it." Carl finished off.

"Or maybe you need to grab it by both ends and shake it up a little." She smiled. "You've had a bad start to life but that doesn't mean it must finish badly. What is your dream, what you would love to do if you could?"

He paused. "I guess, um, I wanted to be a fire fighter. But that's stupid anyway, I'm too thick. There's no chance that I could ever be one."

"There is certainly no chance if you think in that way. We can only do what we believe we can do. Now you mentioned that you dropped out of school. Would you be prepared to be taught at home?"

"I have no home." Carl said.

"My home. You can stay in my son's old bedroom, if you have nowhere to go."

He looked at her, astonished. "Why are you being so nice to me? How can you trust me when you know that I'm a thief and a mugger?"

"Precisely because I do know," she said, looking at him steadily. "You're honest, I can tell that. You have a lot of good inside you; you just don't know how to use it. Everybody is special, even you. And the biggest reward in life is helping others, and you could certainly do with some helping."

Carl was speechless. He kept trying to see what the old woman's hidden agenda was but he couldn't see one. She seemed genuine.

"I'm giving you the chance to have a good life," she smiled, "it's up to you whether you take it. The doctors have said that you'll be able to leave tomorrow, should everything go ok. I'll come back then and you can tell me whether you wish to take it." And with that, she left.

Twenty years later, Carl was working as a fire fighter. He had had 2 children, a boy and a girl who he named Tomas and Ellie, with his wife Leanne, who he'd met while training to be a fire fighter. Most of all he was happy. He had broken off all contact with his father, and Carl couldn't even be sure whether he was still alive.

The old librarian, whose name was Elizabeth Tuppins, had died seven years ago. She had been true to her word, taking him from the hospital back to her home and teaching him to read and count. She had been like a mother to him, someone who was there for him, even when he did slip up from time to time. She had been the first stable influence in his life and a brilliant one at that. He had found out that her son had died, hit by a car, a few years before Carl and Elizabeth met. She had kept her son's bedroom the same as it always was for him until she met Carl. It meant a lot to him that she let him stay in her son's room, when it was so deeply important to her. She had said to him, "There's no good letting the past hold us back. It is important, but not enough to lose lunch over".

Carl had almost gone off the rails again when Elizabeth died. But she had anticipated that her life was drawing to a close and had told him not to cry or be sad over her going. After all, Fate has its way with all of us in the end, and to mourn over that is to be wasting some very precious moments indeed.