Page 22 of In This Iron Ground
Hakan picked up a piece of wood easily. There was no strain on his face even as he balanced it for an over-arm throw. The piece of wood sailed through the air, landing so far that Damien barely heard thethumpof its landing. He stared.
“Okay, that was…pretty impressive. And you’re not even an adult werewolf,” Damien mused. Hakan shrugged.
They played hide and seek in the forest. First, with all of Hakan’s senses. Then, with his ears filled with music. Then, with his nose plugged. Finally, just a piece of Damien’s clothing hidden in the forest, under the ground.
Hakan found him every time. His scent. His heartbeat. Hakan could follow him anywhere.
“You’re like a real-life superhero,” Damien said as they stepped out of the forest for the last time. His eyes were bright. Hakan’s lips tipped in a smile.
“That’s not what makes a superhero. I’m no more heroic than you,” Hakan said. Damien couldn’t help but snort.
“Okay,” he said, feeling comfortable enough with Hakan to let himself be sarcastic. Hakan frowned at him.
“And what’s wrong with what I just said?” Hakan asked. Damien shook his head, flapping his hands at him.
“Okay, we gotta test your echolocation next,” Damien said, changing the subject. Hakan let it drop, but it lingered in Damien’s mind. He knew why what Hakan had said was ridiculous.
How could a person be called a hero if they couldn’t even help themselves? he thought bitterly.
If Damien could choose a superpower it would be the ability to disintegrate into the air and join the earth around him.
It was the sound of his own breaths that woke him up. The sound of an animal dying in his room. He opened his eyes but only darkness met him. Mrs. McKenzie always shut the door and the blinds. He closed and opened his eyes, and closed and opened his eyes, and there wasn’t a difference. There was just black, inside and out.
Vertigo overtook him. Damien wasn’t real. He was empty like the air around him. He was a nightmare he himself was having. His breath harshened further, even when he tried to squeeze his chest closed to not make noise. He almost wished somebody would come in and tell him off, some proof that he was real, the emptiness around him so deep and heavy it seemed to have its own gravitational pull, ripping him apart.
“Dad, Dad,” he pleaded, wishing,wishing, imagining the feel of his rough uniform against his face and the smell of his cologne like a ghost from a past embrace. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been hugged or kissed on the forehead like his parents used to do. If he could have it one more time. Just one more time.
“Please,” he whispered, pulling desperately at the binds tying him to the bed, feeling on the verge of screaming.
Yesterday had been his fourteenth birthday, and no one had noticed. Stupidly, Damien had been waiting for a surprise. For some acknowledgment. Maybe the Salgados would find out, somehow, and invite him over, or Nicola would show up, or the McKenzies would do something, take him somewhere. But nobody had said anything at school, not even the teachers. Once he got home, it was back on the chair. Back to disappearing.
Something snapped inside Damien, the ominously subtle sound of a creature’s spine breaking. He had to get out of the binds, had to,hadto. He pulled at each limb—inward, out, inward, out, and then all together, but there was no budge. He tried until he was left thrashing on the bed, his heart roaring in his head. There was an obliterating wildness inside him.
He didn’t know how long he stayed in that state, straining and pulling like he was possessed, until the pain of his raw skin penetrated the adrenaline pumping through him. He fell still, trembling. Exhausted. He breathed into the darkness, breathed it in, breathed it out, and it sounded like sobs, and it sounded like nothing. He lay there. A body that had crawled from the rotting earth, the mineral residue on his body salty and acidic.
When Mrs. McKenzie untied him in the morning, she frowned at his wrists and ankles, telling him off for the blood stains on the sheets, but it was as if she were talking at him from the other end of a tunnel. He watched his body as if through a thick pane of soundproof glass, observing it go through his morning routine like it was someone else. He was scared, somewhere deep, but the emotion was abstract, curled somewhere unreachable.
At school, he stared straight ahead, eyes unseeing, until something leaped the distance, an insect-hive buzz in the form of one of his classmates. If asked later, Damien wouldn’t be able to recall what Calvin had said passing him in the hall, but it had been fire on dry kindling. Before Damien knew what was happening, he had jumped on Calvin, rabid. He didn’t care if Calvin hit him back. He didn’t care about what happened to him. He wished he could break every one of Calvin’s bones with a viciousness he had never felt before. Just as suddenly, however, he was ripped away from Calvin’s shouting form before any real damage could be done. Damien twisted madly in the hold. Not even seeing that it was Koko calmed him down.
“Let go!” he snarled.
“Shut up,” she replied, marching him quickly away from the scene of the crime, where only a few people had stopped to gawk. Damien had no choice but to walk through the crowd, his jaw clenched so tight he could hear his teeth grinding. She stopped where the crowds had thinned, pressing his back against the wall.
“What the hell, Damien? Since when do you let that loser get to you?” she asked and Damien almost laughed.
Calvin had always gotten to him. Everything had always gotten to him, was getting to him, one thing after another, and another, and another, and he was suffocating. Nobody could see, was even bothering to look, and the divide between what he felt and what everybody saw was killing him.
“What the fuck do you care?” Damien spat out, shoving at Koko, who stumbled more in surprise than anything else. She stared at him incredulously.
“Damien, what—”
“Fuckyou!” he said, voice harsh, trembling. Koko’s expression hardened.
“Fine! Get expelled for all I care!” she growled before stalking away. Damien watched her leave, staring at the quickly emptying hallway unseeingly. He was still trembling, tense, as if the empty core that had opened during the night had been filled with an anger that couldn’t be drained away, that he couldn’t see past.
He sat in his next lesson, thankfully not one he shared with Koko. He barely listened, clawing at his arms under his long-sleeved shirt. He hadn’t been scratching his arms for months, since he had met the Salgados, but now he couldn’t seem to stop. He concentrated on the feel of his nails raking the soft underside of his arm, peeling the skin away again and again. The pain was like an anchor, but instead of helping him stay afloat it was pulling him under.
He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’tbreathe.
