Mr X.

[[I realised Missy’s become ignored. But alahe ihe is merely a cat, not a main character, so no worries. Donnie Darko-Time Travel = Influence music.]]

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ The words where defensive, short, sharp. Darren felt afraid, but he pushed onward, something inside him told him that he needed to know, that he had to know why this boy, which was all Mr X really was, had become this way. He remained silent, though waiting, and Mr X sensed it. He sensed the anticipation as he sensed anything else. His insides seemed to tighten with discomfort and fear, his eyes stared distantly, and slowly, his fingers slipped away before his arms fell limp completely. ‘People are cruel, Darren.’ His lips moved slowly, his tone was odd, confused, dreamy even. ‘No matter how much you love them, or how much you give for them, they only hurt you in the end. They say they love you but they never do. They just lie.’ Silence surrounded them, and Darren continued to listen. He pressed his ear to Mr X’s chest. The encompassing arms returned, and he could hear the heart beating inside, just the same as his.

‘What happened when you where a boy, Mr X?’ Mr X sighed loudly. He laughed a little. A soft, strange, rueful sound.

‘They hurt me.’ His voice cracked. ‘They said they loved me and they hurt me. They locked me away. They wouldn’t let me go outside. But they said it was because they loved me.’

‘Why can’t you write?’ Darren’s voice was suddenly the commanding one, and he realised, with confusion, that their position had changed. That now he was the one holding Mr X. That Mr X was the one curled to his chest now.

‘They didn’t let me go to school. They didn’t let me outside. I had to live in the box, because that was where bad boys like me belonged.’ The childish words struck an odd chord in Darren. He felt somehow wrong in this position. Confused. He was supposed to hate Mr X, not hold him and listen to the depths of his murky childhood. ‘Eleven years,’ Mr X whispered suddenly.

‘Eleven years?’ Mr X nodded slightly.

‘Eleven years in the box until I got away. Eleven years with the dark and the smell and the nothingness. I could always hear them outside. But I wasn’t allowed.’ Darren found himself nodding. Found himself shushing. Found himself soothing as fingers rubbed gently over the back of his captor, and he felt the body against him shaking. No tears. No sobbing. Just a constant quiver running through him. ‘The box was down the stairs. One day… When Uncle Andy came to give me breakfast, I hid. I had the rake. I found the rake in there, and I hit him in the head. I killed Uncle Andy, and then Aunt Marie came. I was hiding behind the door, and I pushed her. She fell down the stairs and her neck broke. I climbed out of the box, and I ran away. They bled a lot, I saw them bleeding down there, but they deserved it!’ Anger suddenly seeped into his tone, he pulled away sharply, and his features wrought with a defensive and aggressive expression. ‘They hurt me! They hurt me a lot, they fed me bad things that made me sick, they hit me with things, and they said I was a bad boy when I’d never done anything bad at all!’ Darren pulled back. Mr X stood sharply. His whole body once again rigid.

‘But why did they hurt you? Why did they want to keep you away from everyone else? What was it that they thought they’d gain from that?’ Darren persevered as he sat upright. Mr X shook his head.

‘They didn’t have a reason, they just wanted to make me cry, everything they did was to make me cry.’ Mr X’s knees seemed to go limp, and Darren found himself catching the strange creature he had sco scooped up by in a torrent of violence at first, dragging him to the bed and laying him down. He felt himself burning inside with an odd mix of emotions. Sympathy and hatred warped together, hatred in so many different directions, and he found hot tears tracking down the sides of his face again, over those bruises made by what seemed to be just a broken and confused and selfish and hungry child that had never been taught anything.

‘Don’t cry…’ Mr X’s fingers wiped his tears away, shaky, slender, pale hands which where usually so strong and terrifying. ‘Don’er ler let anyone see you cry, you’re beautiful when you cry, they’ll only make you cry even more.’ Their lips seemed to meet suddenly, and their bodies came together in mutuality which Darren felt sickened by, yet could not resist. He felt whole as his arms wrapped around the torso at his side, as his tongue twined around the tongue of his torturer, as their fingers interlocked between one another’s, and as Mr X began to sob against him. He felt like a part of him that he’d never felt upon before opened up. He kissed those tears away and succumbed to what had to be madness. And suddenly, what had been tender and accepting became heated and desperate, suddenly it seemed, Mr X’s fingers where plucking and pulling at Darren’s clothes, removing them with deft ease, and Darren found himself owinowing suit, stripping free the clothing upon the male opposite. They met again in the centre, skin to skin it seemed, and Darren knew he must let his thoughts seep away as they screamed at one another in opposition. His fingers grazed over the body of Mr X, and as he caressed what seemed every square inch of the male now beneath him, he felt the shocking amount of scarring. Upraised, pure white skin from his past. Darren found himself kissing each scar as Mr X writhed and panted beneath him.

‘No!’ His voice broke free, and en pen paused, lips pressed to a laceration of the past across the angular and jutting hip bone of Mr X. ‘What are you doing?’ The dark haired male asked, and Darren noted his eyes where round with fright and confusion, and he felt compassion. He crawled up to litter his features with similar butterfly kisses.

‘Trust me,’ he found himself murmuring softly as fingers wound amid the darkened hair to gently tilt his head back, lips caressing his neck. ‘I won’t harm you. You know I won’t harm you. I’m too weak for that. Just trust me.’ Their eyes met. Mr X’s liquid oily hue it seemed in opposition to the clarified darkness of a pitch-black pupil amid watery blue. Their gaze held, and again Darren mused if this was what it was to be mad as all he felt he saw was strange, tainted beauty, ruined by the cruelty of circumstance. And as their gaze held, very softly, Mr X’s voice broke free. ‘Call me Carlos, Darren.’