The Eyes of September

Part One: Caged

Esau - the bully

September, 2015

The first time Esau hit someone, he was thirteen. Still just a kid. Not old enough to know the important things: how to heal a black eye, what the principal thought about violence, the most comfortable plastic chair in the office. All those things he would become familiar with, but not just yet. Not before this: his first victim. The beginning of his bloodlust, when the ugliness would sponge deep down into his skin and wrap tentacles around his heart.

The boy, the object of his anger, had pale blonde hair. So skinny he resembled a praying mantis, skinny enough to snap in half at the hit. But he simply curled up his winnowed arms, weak and limp, dribbling blood and saliva, tucked his knees and elbows deep into his sides to absorb the blow. There was a strange, beatific expression on his face. Where he was going, in his head, must have been shelter.

A mental safe place barred by iron walls, thirteen feet deep and impenetrable. Esau knew exactly when the kid dove to the bottom, curled up into that abysmal submarine, because his eyes grew soft, lids dropping down, neck slackening like a wet rag.

And Esau screamed, enraged, in part because he wanted that shelter, needed it, and also because his stomach was turning with a vicious lurch. In truth, he was a little bit horrified. Ashamed. Here was this kid, unconscious, for elusive and incomprehensible reasons. For a second he forgot why he was mad.

When he remembered: he beat it out, until darkness overtook the kid's face, a kind of numb surrender.

That was the kind Esau wanted when his dad told him to piss off, when his classmates jeered at him because he had kicked some kid in the stomach, and he was in trouble, and he was always in trouble. He wanted to absorb such a superpower - being able to disappear without ever physically leaving.

Now, he remembered standing up, looking down on the kid. Psyching himself up for this, for his revenge, he had fantasized about how good it would feel. Vengeance was supposed to be sweet, after all, but when he stepped back from that kid all he felt was nausea. God, the locker room was bloody. Red running into tile pits all over the floor, leeching the purity from the leftover water. Neck elongated, the kid slumped over a metal bench, arms bruised and fingers locked together.

Where was the triumph? Esau waited. And waited. It didn't hit him. It - the sickness - laughed in his face. It followed him back home and into his bedroom, sat against his locked door and crowed victoriously, because he had succumbed, surrendered to his basest and most wicked human impulses, and now his conscience was stained black and blue.

Around midnight, the self-doubt, then the reassuring lies, kicked in. He had done what he had set out to do: he had avenged himself. And now, when some idiot thought it would be funny to book-check him in the hallway, or steal his clothing, or smash his food, or any of the crap - there would at least be a forethought, a subtle reminder, that he, Esau Postue, could defend himself.

He fell asleep to this, trying to convince himself that he was right. It felt better than acknowledging the truth: that what he had done was desperately wrong. Safeguards in place, fingers in his ears, he let the evil overtake him, nightmares grow in menace and number.

Being strong, being feared - it was supposed to be easier that way. His quest for revenge robbed from him, stole the good things and replaced them with the rotten. And as a parting gift, he was left with what he carried now: too many enemies, and not enough time to save himself.

***

The first Thursday was supposed to be the worst - a hurdle of sorts, barring the dreaded first week from the rest of the semester. Seven days earlier Esau had climbed out of a taxi with a suitcase and a couple cardboard boxes, carried his portable life up a set of green concrete steps and into a dorm room the size of a prison cell. College didn't intimidate him, but those first few moments did: no parents, no farewell, just a wad of cash shoved back through a dirty window.