Frail, and already damaged, Nolan’s body remained limp. For the seventeenth time in his life, he awoke to his mother hovering above him, a large present in hand. His body had been aching and traumatized for some time now, with part of his abdomen red and engorged. It felt as if something was probing him from the inside, an internal vacuum trying to suck himself up.
When his father left all those years ago, his body had looked ghostly and leather-like, as if the putrified skin of a dead animal had replaced his own. At the time, Nolan had been too young to register what a terrible condition he appeared to be in, and though his memory had become foggier by now, Nolan couldn’t help but feel as though he was growing to resemble the figure more and more, as he grew.
Nolan already knew what his “gift” would be. Scales were the one thing he knew were sure to always be in his possession; every other factor of his domestic life was unstable. From the time he was a child, Nolan’s mother had ripped and dragged them from house to house, after short periods of habitation once she deemed the house “unclean.” His mother was a woman of order and impeccable taste. If something wasn’t to her liking, it was to be disposed of immediately, forgotten, and left to rot.
Nolan wondered why his mother continued wrapping it up at all, both of them already knowing of its contents. Yet he put on a big show of untying the bow and removing the scale from its brightly colored box, his mother’s piercing eyes watching expectantly. He placed the dully gray colored scale on the floor and thanked her.
“Happy birthday, my dear,” she replied in a voice only slightly higher than a whisper. The crinkles near her eyes turned upwards as she smiled, showing off the little teeth she had. “Go ahead, get on it. I’ll turn around.”
Nolan shifted his gaze from her to the floor, knowing he had no other option but to comply. This was their tradition. Nolan was forced to weigh himself and make sure that he was living in accordance with whatever standard she had envisioned.
In an attempt to fill the tense silence that always ensued, his mother turned on the radio, one of the few items that had belonged to his father that he was allowed to keep, solely out of convenience.
“And now a sermon from Reverend Jean.”
“I want to dedicate today’s sermon to our female listeners, staying home and holding things down for the male heads of the household. While your life might be in shambles now, at least you can say you’ve done your duty and birthed—”
Before the program could continue, Nolan’s mother aggressively flipped the off switch and asked him, “So?”
“One hundred and twenty five pounds” he announced, unable to keep the distance and resentment from his voice.
“Very good” his mother informed him, gaze still averted. “You may get dressed.”
“Thank you, Mother.”
His usual pre-planned birthday activities consisted of such activities as nibbling on a cupcake with no icing; blowing out a candle outdoors where it was less likely for the smoke to enter his lungs directly; and a bath, which he was only allowed to enter on special occasions like these, his Mother believing it to be the equivalent of basking in your own accumulated filth.
The bathroom was, of course, spotless. His mother hadn’t been employed for some time, as she found that deep-cleaning the house each day was a much more productive and rewarding way of spending her time. Of course, he was forced to help her, his back bent and knees folded as he scrubbed each tile by hand. It did pay off in some ways. The floor was stark white, the windows had no sign of dirt on them, allowing the blue hue from outside to escape into the house.
As Nolan submerged himself under the water, he began to contemplate what forces would allow him to experience such suffering in his life. He thought that at this age, perhaps, he would have grown accustomed to the ridiculous and oppressive conditions his mother had forced him to live under. Or maybe that her ways would become his new normal, that he would make peace with her and himself. There was always the possibility of acceptance and forgiveness. Though, truthfully, how would acceptance differ from mindless submission? What more could he possibly do to conjure up acceptance? And if he was ever truly willing to embrace his mother, would she deserve it?
Nolan couldn’t bring himself to answer that question, but deep down, he knew that his father would. In fact, he already did, and the answer was no. He had to leave eventually, for one reason or another. The only sensible theory Nolan could conceive was that his mother had to have already been unwell for some time. Yet, his father chose to marry her anyway, for his own stupidly selfish reasons.
As Nolan scrubbed himself with a bar of soap and a tattered washcloth, he tried to recall memories of his father. They had always been extremely limited, due to the age Nolan was when he left. The few memories he could recall were always insignificant little tidbits, like the sparse blonde hairs that grew in his curly head of brown weed, the fact that the last digit of his phone number was two, and the tiny scar on his left ring finger. Despite their lack of importance, Nolan obsessed over these facts, trying to get any sense of his presence.
His mother refused to acknowledge the man’s existence in any way, shape, or form.
Nolan observed the cloudiness of his bathwater, its pale color similar to that of his own skin. He lifted his body and ran his fingers over himself, tracing from his nape down to his protruding hip bones. After soaking for so long, his skin looked red and raw, his ribcage somehow more visible than it already had been. It was getting more difficult for him to mask his utter disgust with the condition he allowed himself to be in.
In the stash of magazines Nolan kept hidden under his mattress, there were countless boys, who couldn’t be much older than him, with perfectly healthy, thriving bodies. He didn’t risk sneaking into town and buying these magazines for his own arousal (though there had been times where he’s tried to use them for their intended purposes and miserably failed, because he couldn’t shake the guilty feeling that someone was watching over him), but simply to learn what other bodies could look like, full and exposed, and so different from his starved and contained self.
Planning to flip through his magazines tonight, Nolan hurriedly dried himself with a towel, roughly going over the injury near his abdomen and unintentionally causing it to bleed. Bandages were never readily available in his house. His mother did not allow the possibility of an injury, which was just another imperfection, to cross her mind. He held the towel against his flesh, watching the redness of his blood spread and stain. It seemed like the more pressure he applied, the deeper the aching felt, and the more blood rushed out of him.
A sudden flickering of the lights startled him amidst all the unexpected chaos. It briefly made him think of his mother, who was sure to begin panicking. The lights flashed on, off, and on again, almost rhythmically, as if they were trying to communicate with one another. He couldn’t pay much attention to the phenomenon, solely focused on the aching of his side. He removed the towel to discover that his wound had turned black around the edges, as if someone had scorched him with a boiling liquid, but there was a dark shade of blue in the middle.
The only person he knew that could help was his mother. Bewildered, like a deer in headlights, his feet hit the ground, pounding against the hard wood floors. He managed to stumble up the stairs and into her room, where he found her kneeling, head bowed, and hands clasped together.
The image in front of him could’ve been deemed haunting had any other person seen it, but Nolan showed no reaction, only focused on his own pain. Her long gray hair covered her head entirely, her frail and bony arms shaking as if her body was about to give out completely. Under her breath, she repeatedly muttered a series of numbers, “eight, three, two, six, three, zero, one, nine, nine, two.” The lamp in front of her, the one that she appeared to be praying to, flipped on and off with each alternating number, as if the two beings were in conversation with one another. Even with the light flashing wildly in front of him, Nolan’s focus remained on how his body continued to ache and ache, as if something was probing him from the inside and trying to swallow him whole.
The wound continued to spread, the blueness eventually taking over the blackened edges. In the time he had spent desperately calling out to his mother and wildly screaming her name, it had travelled from his abdomen to his collarbones and thighs. After what must’ve been the hundredth time he cried out for her, she finally responded. Suddenly she rose, an unexpected grime covering her kneecaps.
Her steps toward him were staggered, and when she finally reached Nolan, she jerked him by the shoulder and threw him against the floor with an unprecedented strength. In one swift motion, she threw her head back, hair sticking up straight, as she plunged a bite-covered arm into his gaping wound. The pain was indescribable, both from the swift spread of the wound and his mother’s inclusion.
Her arm plunged deeper and deeper, and travelled upwards from his stomach to mouth. She spared him, at least a little, and pulled her hand out quickly, and once she did, she collapsed. By now, he had been taken over. His body was dripping with the blue liquid and all life had been removed.
Nolan saunters over to the nearest mirror he can find. There is one speck of dust on it. He blows it away.
He is blue and disfigured beyond repair. His appearance could be likened to a skeleton’s with the thinnest layer of skin blanketing it. Each bone and joint is visible. If you were to shine a light on him, you’d be sure to see arteries and intestines.
His face maintains its human qualities, only it is unrecognizable and no longer his own. The shape of his head, the placement of his eyes, nose, and lips, and the tufts of curls on his head all resembled the long-forgotten features of his father.
In a voice only slightly higher than a whisper, he says to himself, “Enjoy it.”