In Memory (10 page)

Argh
, D
efinitely need to go to school tomorrow.
Terra’s
starting to do the not-so-subtle nudge-nudge-hey-go-to-school-you-slacker thing.

So many hyphens!

143 Days, 7 October, Tuesday

Something I read today. There is no such thing as a memory that does not exist. That is to say that, if you remember something, it happened.

So even dreams count, I suppose.
I remember my dreams
,
they became experiences
. I remember feeling pain, love, happiness, sadness
;
all emotions that accompany those memories. Those feelings for my dreams are just as real as my feelings for this reality.
When
we dream, we’re just travelling to another place, where we can experience just as much as we can when we’re awake. Maybe that’s why I
am always so affected by my nigh
tmares.

I a
lways experience them as something real, and don’t have the ability to brush them aside as fanciful fantasies made up by my brain.

This is how I know what happened to Noah the night he showed up at my house, all broken and bleeding. I dreamt of it.

D
idn’t actually enter his house. I was just there, watching things from the sidelines, little flashes of things. Memories that didn’t belong to me played in front of me like a poorly edited movie, scenes jumping from one to another.

A happy family, a small child hiding in a closet, someone doing laundry, a man digging a hole in the garden

Noah, rolling up his sleeve, placing a shiny razor over his arm and pulling it down, searing through his pale flesh.
The blood ran down, glistening and pure. He looked at it as it dripped down onto the floor, his eyes empty and sad.

He cut himself…

There was a tense silence.

“What is this?” Noah’s father (or
that’s who I imagine it was,
can’t actually remember his face) spoke in a dangerously low voice, his hand clamped firmly around his son’s thin wrist, coaxing a few pearls of blood from the shallow cuts.

Noah remained silent, closing his eyes, condemning himself. I could tell this just from the way he set his shoulders and stiffened his trembling movements that he was just waiting for the inevitable impact.

It came as a heavy crushing blow of his father’s fist into the left side of his face. Tears sprang into his eyes, and he fell to the floor, landing roughly on his arm.

“You want to cut yourself?” his father asked, crossing the kitchen to where the knives stood in their wooden compartment. “Then do it right!” He returned to where his son lay, holding a long, thick knife, tilting it to catch the bright white light.

Abruptly, he knelt down, yanking Noah up by the front of his shirt. Noah looked up at him blearily, still starry-eyed from the first punch.

“You like cuts, you little freak?” The knife flicked, slicing through the white fabric of Noah’s shirt. Blood spread quickly, staining the perfect white.

“You
like
that?” Another cut, followed by a cry of pain, “Huh?”

“No!” cried Noah, attempting to pull away.

His father roared, slamming him into the floor by his hold on the front of his shirt. “Then why did you do it?” The knife dove again, ripping a broad deep cut up his forearm.

“I don’t know!” sobbed Noah, “I’m sorry
!!!”

“You’re sorry?”

“I’m sorry!”

“Shut up. Shut up.” His father repeated through clenched teeth.

Noah whimpered, tears rolling from his eyes, “Please…”

His father stopped, the knife held aloft. “What?”

“Please stop. I’m sorry.” Noah’s gaze found his father’s, staring deeply.

“Don’t say another word.” He commanded.

“Father…”

Something in the larger man snapped. He attacked, punching and swiping with the knife, determined to harm any available part of his son.

“I’m sorry!” screamed Noah, shielding himself from the flurry of attacks. Blood spattered onto the polished tile, spreading and joining together. “I’m sorry
!!”
he screamed, over and over, trying to escape.

I suppose his screams went unnoticed due to the sheer size of their estate.

As of right now, he’s sleeping on the couch in the living room. I opted to sit in the large armchair beside the fireplace, which I started up a little while ago, before he got here. It’s strange to look at him, sleeping quietly, when flashes of him in my dream keep interrupting me.

He showed up here after school, shiveri
ng and shaking in the rain. W
as only drizzling a bit, but he still looked pretty cold. We didn’t speak much,
he seemed really out of it. G
ave him some dry clothes, and grabbed all of the blankets off the bed in the spare room for him to use.

He was asleep almost as soon as he settled into the couch. Before he was totally gone, he kept repeating “Thank you, thank you…”

Didn’t reply. J
ust tucked him in and cleared his hair from his face. There’s still a faded bruise on the side of his face, from that punch that rattled in my mind as I thought about it. There’s also a small cut with a bruise around it on his forehead that I hadn’t noticed before.

Another thing I just noticed as I’m sitting here is that he breathes really shakily through his mouth. Normally, I’d assume he had a cold or something, but just because it’s him, I think he’s in pain.

W
oke him up to give him some painkillers, which he blearily took without question.

“You… you’re here…” he mumbled, exhaling softly, “I just thought I was a dream… I’m still asleep but… when I got home, you’d already thrown it out… then the lighthouse turned back
on….”

He’s a bit strange when he’s half-asleep. Correction: He’s a bit strange all the time.
More so when he’s sleep-deprived.

Just looking at him makes me feel tired. Maybe I’ll have a short nap before dinner.

142 Days, 8 October, Wednesday

So my short nap ended up being more like a full night’s sleep at
a bizarre time of the day. W
as six am when I woke up, with my diary in my hands, and the fire completely
dead.
One of the spare room
blankets was draped over me. L
ooked over to the couch; Noah was curled in a ball underneath the thin flannel blanket he kept.

S
tood up and stretched, picked up my pre-warmed quilt, and placed it on him, willing some warmth onto him.

He always looks so cold.

W
ent to the closet and grabbed the small space heater Terra found at a garage sale. After setting it up and switching it on, I went up to my room and resumed sleeping in my own bed.

Terra came and woke me up at about 11:15, telling me to get up and go make brunch for everyone. Clearly she didn’t care I was blatantly skipping school. I wonder if she even knows that it’s Wednesday…

When I finally dragged myself out of bed, she had already awakened Noah, who was sitting on the couch with a blanket around him. He still looked tired and confused, even after sleeping that long.

“Good morning!” I greeted him cheerfully, figuring this would be an appropriate way to start our day.

“Good morning.” He replied, studying me carefully. I’m used to his piercing stares by now, they don’t freak me out anymore.

“What do you want for brunch?”

He looked at me curiously. “For
brunch…?”

“Yeah, I’m thinking I want some waffles.”

I led the way into the kitchen, smiling as Terra downed a whole cup of coffee. At least she can make coffee without burning the house down. Heh, I just realised she could be reading this. Whoops, oh well. No erasing ink.

It was a wei
rd breakfast, in retrospect. D
idn’t anticipate Noah would be so… refined when he ate. He eats like a proper gentleman. You know, he holds his fork and knife properly, and uses a napkin gracefully, etc. He was fun to watch.

Apparently, I was watching him a little too closely,
and
got really distracted when his thin pink tongue flicked out after he took a drink of juice. It was like it played in slow motion, and I really stared.
So… attractive?

When I snapped back to reality, both he a
nd Terra were staring at me. C
huckled, and appropriated my staring to the fact I was still a little groggy. To cover up my embarrassment, I stood up, and gathered the used dishes, busily hurrying to the sink.

Terra stood up too, breathing out a tired sigh. “Well, I’m
gonna
hit the sack, I’m beat.”

W
as going to comment on the irony of ‘hit the sack’/‘I’m beat’, and how they reference violence when they actually me
an exhaustion, but I didn’t. G
uess I could’ve.

Noah stayed until after brunch, then mumbled something about going home before his absence was notic
ed. W
ondered if I should try and convince him to stay, thinking that if he went home, he’d just come back with more bruises.

W
as so torn, watching him go
out the door in my clothes. S
hould have washed
his, and let him wear them.
T
hink even the smallest thing like that would set his father off.
Maybe that’s just speculation from what little I’ve seen of him.

R
eally don’t want anything I’ve done for Noah to be the reason he gets hurt.

It’s unfair that this sort of
thought should occur to me. D
on’t understand why he has to go through all that pain for something so small.

If he’s hurt next time I see him, I’m going to be really upset. Although, I have vowed to keep a good humour around him, he seems less down when I’m smiling around him.

H
ad work today, mostly running errands for the doctors and spending time with the ladies in the senior wing.

141 Days, 9 October, Thursday

J
ust about freaked out like crazy in
class today. H
ad just sat down in Math, and was digging in my bag for my calculator
when he sat down behind me. T
urned to greet him, and stopped short when I saw him.

He looked terrible. Even though he is generally good looking, not even that could hide the fact that the entire left side of his face was swollen and pink. He had taped a couple bandages over some of the bruises, but they still burned through the off white gauze.

I swallowed, opening my mouth, trying to say some
thing, but nothing came out. J
ust gaped, opening and closing my mouth, then stood up, slamming all my books back in my bag, grabbed his arm, and led him out of the room.

I
gnored the call of the teacher, marching down the h
allway with Noah at my side. K
new that some of the other students had gott
en up and were watching out the
door.

Noah was silent, and fol
lowed me without resistance. L
ed him all the way to the infirmary, and sat him down on the bed.

“Okay, tell me.
” I looked at him seriously. T
ried to imagine how my face looked, and hoped I didn’t look scary and/or angry. He avoided my gaze, staring pointedly at the railing of the bed.

“Noah. Tell me what happened.”

“I went home. I was reading. He came into my room. Then he questioned why I was home at that time. I explained that I had been at your house and he struck me. Twelve times. I made an attempt to stop
him,
the thirteenth blow knocked me unconscious. I do not know if he continued after that.”

I breathed out a heavy gust of air
to stop myself from yelling. W
anted to storm into the office and call the police and demand the arrest of his father.

“Why?” I asked through gritted teeth. “Why can’t we go to the police for this? Why won’t you do anything about it?”

“Because…” he faltered, “…because he owns the police. He owns everyone.”

I furrowed my brow, trying to look him in the eye.

“So he always gets away with everything he does, because no one believes a word against him. He is in charge of many aspects of the city, and is a well-respected man of the community. It is only me he has any sort of ill-regard for.”

I sat back, sighing deeply. “I understand.”

He finally looked at me, the crisp shine of his ice blue iris almost shocking. It was so light
compared to the darkness of his
hair.

That moment was weird, I stood up, but it was like my body was moving of it’s own accord. It almost felt like I was being controlled, or I was watching from outside my body.