Forlorn Secrets

                   “It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.”
                                                                                                               ~ J.K. Rowling
                                                 Forlorn Secrets
         The strange, milky-bright light crept upon the wall of the shed from the east. The boy had barely gotten his left shoe on this time before he bolted out of the rickety shed door past the river. It was coming for him. Hammond knew this.  Constantly glancing over his scrawny shoulder, he tore through the yard. The fierce light was gaining on him fast. The boy felt the urge for his stomach to heave, but he held it in as he dove through the pet door of his parent’s house. Panting, Hammond quickly began dusting himself off and tweaking his rickety clothes.

“You’re a pastors’ son, boy. That makes any filth and untidy behavior unacceptable,” his mother and father always say. Then his parents would give him ten thrashings per whatever misdeeds he had done. 
         
    A forced twinge came from the new, brass key hole at the front door. Trembling, Hammond stood erect, as young church folk aught. The thought of missing today’s Sunday service on the count of his oversleeping imploded his thoughts while a chocolate-toned angry woman ambled through the living room where the boy stood and pulled up a chair at the open-bar.
“Hi mom!”

“Please forgive me for missing service First lady. I …I won’t do it again. I…I’m gonna be a good boy from now on.” The boy said, choking back sobs.  “May I please sleep in the house tonight?  I’m gonna be a real good boy!” 
         
    Tightening up her eyes, Hammond’s mother fixed them upon him in disgust. Pursing her lips, she strode over the freshly stained hardwood floors that covered up the recent red spillage nicely. Yanking open the drawer to the study desk, the First lady withdrew a set of red-stained brass keys and headed for the file cabinet.
         
                Falling to his knees, squeezing his small fist tightly, he begged for mercy. For he knew where this was headed, he pleaded with his first lady for forgiveness through a soaked face and a runny nose. Hammond reached for the hem of her long black skirt; she sideswiped him. Hauling the chain and lock off the middle shelf, she yanked off the newly bought comforter set and pillows from the boy’s freshly made bed and casted them on the clean kept floor outside of his room and began to chain his doors.

“Please…forgive me! I’ll be a real good boy,” he screeched.

“Please help me tell the Pastor I’m sorry. Tell’em I won’t do it again. I don’t like sleeping late anymore. I’m a holy boy.”
         
              He knew he had no excuse as he stood in the midst of the living room in his cold shadow. He knew what the penalty was for missing church. Whether he had been extremely sick, or mildly sick, whether he had overslept, or not, it was always the same penalty for missing service: he spent the night in the shed. “A sin is a sin,” his parent’s would say.

“The good Lord don’t differentiate between accidental and purposefully committed sins; He just renders his wrath.”

“We never wanted children anyways,” was the Pastor’s admission in her time of vehemence. “One day, we’ll gladly pay our sacrificial price. One day, the Lord’ll remove our great burden.”
         
              Hammond stood erect with his small fist clasped as his mother strode right toward and through him. His skin began to prickle, and his stomach began to twist violently. They’d been doing it for two days now. He hated when they did that, when they walked through him like he wasn’t even there.
         
            It’ll be another night in that cold, broken down shed, again, he thought. “I don’t care about that,” the boy muttered to himself.

"I’m a person,” he screamed, standing up for himself for the first time in his life.

“I hate it when you walk through me like that!” Hammond shouted through oozing spittle and with clutched fist, while he watched her calmly pour herself a cup of gin.

            “You don’t give a damn about me. You never did!” The boy managed to say through sobs as he began to rub a hand across his deep welts on his arm and then his back. Rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, his body began to shutter violently with tension. Channeling his energy, he began to knock his hands against the glass vase, and the old glass ashtrays; anything fragile he could get hold to he broke in his violent rage. 
         
                  A champagne bottle popped behind the First lady as she sipped on her precious ice cold gin; she shuttered, alarmed at the sudden, violent outburst. Hammond’s mom gave a quick glance in the direction of the ruckus, debris lay scattered across what was, up until a minute ago, a spotless hardwood floor.
         
                  Hammond gazed at the dried red flakes on his hand, where he had rubbed against the welts on his arm and back. He carefully stood on the ottoman. Reaching up toward his neck, he gazed at his reflection in what remained of the broken-half mirror that sat high upon the wall. The fresh, dark red hand prints imprinted on his sunken neck from where his mother had hugged it with her hands a little too tightly two days ago, he fought to overlook them. Yet, his blue lips had betrayed any certainty that he still belonged upon the living in this world any longer.  It all came back to him in a flash like the saying goes, “before you die your whole life flashes before your eyes.” How could they have laid his bones out there of all places? He felt no comfort in that creepy, dilapidated shed; they knew this. No one was there to stop his mother as she sacrificed him in her anger.

“Don’t resist. I am sacrificing you like God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac,” the First lady said, as Hammond had fought back and pleaded as best he could in his last gurgles of breath.
         
                Seething with anger, the boy screamed at the top of his lungs, “I was a good boy! Damn you! No one asked me if I wanted to die! No one asked me if I wanted to die.” He sobbed, slouching, for the very first time in all of his seven years that he remained on earth. He no longer feared them or their God.
         
                  The First Lady shifted in her seat and pulled on the plastic stick, which drew back the curtains as she refilled her gin.

                    “I WAS A GOOD DAMN BOY!”

              He screamed for the last time, but to no avail. He shrunk in slowly, realizing his defeat .She couldn’t hear him nor see him. Besides, the whole blasted town was controlled by the Pastors’ dark, magical discourse. No matter how poorly the Pastors covered the boy’s murder up: the freshly stained floors that still showed splatters of blood, the boy’s chained up bedroom. No one would come and look for him any more than they would remember him.

            Her face screwed up and the first seeds of tears began to form in her eyes as she turned on the gospel station. Confounded, he gazed at her in that strange place that was never truly his home. Hammond could see the weird, eerie light, that taunted him, dance along her shoulders as she began to sing along to her favorite gospel hymn:

“Come to the light,

Like He’s in the light,

Jesus is the light,

The light of the world.”