Chapter 12: A Truth of Children Pt. 2

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The night was unseasonably warm.

The harsh bite of winter still clung in the wind, and at the edge of the night, but the snow underfoot which had blanketed The Fort, had thawed, bringing forth the mud which lay hidden and ready to spring forth. The snow of course hung at the base of trees or on the raised hilly spots about town, where the snow had been kept out of the flood of the thaw, or been shaded from the light of the day, which brought little warmth.

The path Tom walked was a quagmire of degree and wet hungry earth which consumed each step as he went, the hungry holes or footprints left behind filling with silvery pools of water underneath the moonlight of a nearly full moon.

Tom's breath hung in the air - his exhales coming out raspy and animalistic as the idea that the man who escaped the light, the main which was ash, and rot incarnate, was right, and that ben was alive - ate at Tom, consumed tom, terrified tom, and in some sick perverse way, excited Tom.

The idea that Ben was alive meant that Tom had not killed him - that was exciting and filled him with hope. But that trojan horse known as hope, spoke logic in his minds ear, told him that it was impossible - even if he had left Ben down in that pit alive, even if Tom had condemned him to the agony of laying broken, and alone, but still alive - Ben would have died long ago, starving to death, or freezing to death.

The regret of what had happened with ben gnawed at Tom - and it had gnawed at him for years. He'd blocked himself from that regret, the emotions of impending consequence, the guilt, the sorrow, Tom had blocked those emotions, had torn them down and put them away with every ounce of his will, and his intent to escape his own guilt, for what had happened to Ben.

That's where the magic was - in the will of a boy who walked in shoes to large for him - pretending to be more than he was, trying to forget the scared boy hurtling himself in fear through a cave, trying to forget the boy who had killed his older better kinder brother.

Intent and Will - that's what kept him ignorant, and unseeing, that's how he'd flitted through life until the pleading whispers of Peggy had dragged him back to the memory of something forgotten - had dragged him back to face the locked door - had forced him to remember there were things to be locked away, that in fact Ben wasn't just a nightmare that plagued him, that Ben wasn't just a blip in the short history of Tom LaPonte - Tom wasn't indifferent. Tom wasn't uncaring as he had thought himself to be, how Peggy had thought him to be.

The truth that had been lost for so long ..... Tom felt more deeply than most, his was an empathy that bore the slings and arrows of all those around him out of love, and sympathy, and those deep emotions fueled his will, and his intent to forget and to lock a part of himself away.

After Tom had knocked Ben from the ledge of a deep dark pit, where the cave turned down maliciously and serpentine, Tom had sat there on his knees stunned, and confused, peering down an impossible dark pit.

TOM: Ben?

TOM: Ben?

[hang]

TOM: ...Ben?

As he had sat there, Tom's knees pressed into tiny sharp pebbles which slowly scratched at his skin.

As Tom shivered, as he sobbed quietly, too stunned to fully comprehend what had happened, but knowing all too well that Ben was gone, those sharp little pebbles sawed at his pants, and then at his knees.

It would have taken an awfully long time, and an awfully long time is how long Tom sat there.

Fragmented thoughts of what he should do hurtled through his mind as abstract images.

His mind too scattered, too shattered to piece together a full sentence.

As he stared into the dark, his eyes unfocused, mirroring his frail mind, he began to see the eyes of his mother peering back at him.....

They were red, and wet from crying, her bottom eye lid was purple from the sheer strain of the primal sorrow of a parent who had lost her favorite child.

Tom mouth twisted into a cartoonish, exaggerated frown, as he watched in horror as the inside corner of his mother's disembodied eyes birthed tears of a sharp and painful magnitude.

Tom flinched turning away from the mirage in the dark, shaking the image from his eyes. But they were imprinted on his mind.

Tom never wanted to see that again..... So Tom knew he would lie.

Not willing to meet the gaze of the black once more, tom stared down at his own hands. He'd been in the pitch black of the cave long enough that he could make out the shape of his hands, the way his index finger stood not quite as straight as his other fingers, from the tim he'd twisted and broken it falling from a tree.

He could see the deep lines on the belly of his knuckles, and the trenches of his palm where his hand folded naturally.

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