Calm
30 Mar 2019Today’s prompt: “A child needs to do one thing over and over to calm himself down when the adults get angry. What does he do? How did he learn it?”
It’s not unheard of for obesessive-compulsive behaviors to embed themselves in children who find themselves in anxious surroundings. Turning the light switch off and on 11 times before bed. Rearranging their bookshelves over and over. Touching each of their stuffed animals in the exact right order as they enter the room.
For Marcus, it’s stabbing your corpse precisely seven times when his parents get shouty.
One of the last moments Marcus remembers where his family felt truly together was when his father murdered you in the family basement in the center of a chalky pentagram. His mother chanted, while his father stabbed you. Seven times.
Marcus’s parents didn’t know he was watching at the time. They figured it out later, which is part of why the shouting happens so often now.
What Marcus’s parents still don’t know is that, when they started having arguments about whether and when he should be raised in the occult, Marcus took a shovel to the makeshift grave where they buried you. He dug up your corpse and dragged it to the fort his father built for him.
Marcus can hardly bear the stench of your rotting body now. But what he can’t bear is the thought of dealing with his parents’ impending divorce without some kind of physical, tangible outlet for his frustrations. So he goes back, each time, to the last moment he remembers being happy. Being together. Being a family.