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He wasn’t always so passive, so meek. That he wished to hide every trace of his anger, to become a small and hidden thing, visible only at a couple times of the day; this could only be so because he shined so bright and burned so hot. It didn’t work, of course, because there’s nothing worse a boy can be than soft and gentle the way he wanted to make himself, but that didn’t stop him from trying. The alternatives were worse.
92.1 units of atmospheric pressure.
Sensitive. That was always the word grownups used to his face. They used worse ones when they thought he wasn’t listening. He saw how his father shook his head, the disappointment whenever he tried to talk to him. That wasn’t very often. He saw the way he scoffed at all of his failures, mourning “whatever I did to bring up a boy like that.” He saw how his mother tried to shelter him, like he was too fragile and needed his hand held for every little thing he did, no matter how trivial. She was convinced that he was too soft for the horrors of the world. The Devil was everywhere, she told him, and it was her job as a mother to protect her precious angel boy from him. It was only around her that he could manage to so much as muster irritation. Somehow he knew the Devil wasn’t the problem. He saw the strange, sometimes pitying, sometimes disgusted looks his sister gave when he stared too long at her dresses, at her nail polish.
Everybody treated him like he had only one foot in this world, like he was moments away from drifting off, never to be seen again. They tried to tie him down, make him solid and substantial. But he was always flitting away, his mind slipping into itself, off into zones of thought he kept locked far away where nobody could see.
Off to tomorrows and maybes and things she hadn’t even dreamed of yet. To do otherwise would crush her under the weight of so much flesh and blood and bone and whispered words and sidelong looks. Besides, if she was too grounded, she would start noticing how furious she was.
872 °F.
Seventh grade. If anything rivaled the Summer Scouts for a thesis in why God hates you, it had to be middle school.
Here, especially, he tried to make himself unnoticed, tucked into corners with dog-eared books about adventures involving dragons or spaceships. Nothing good ever happened when he was noticed. Unfortunately, no matter how much he tried to hide, it was like there was a searchlight on him.
“Hey, faggot.”
Like right now, with the boy snatching the book out of his hands. Reign of the Alien Princess. This was already turning out to be one of his favorites. It had dragons on a spaceship!
“Haha, what a faggy book. Is it about you? Is it about your period?”
And here was that boy and his shitty hangers on. The one that liked to bother him the most. The one that tripped him and stole his things. One of several, anyway. He was passing the novel along between his friends, getting their nasty little hands on it.
Why did they do this? Did they get something out of it? There was nothing he could think of. And they never ever left him alone. He sat there, his eyes wide, frozen, as they jeered and everybody around snickered and whispered. Why? No matter what he tried to do, it invited only mockery. It was like he was born wrong, and all he could do was fuck up and make people despise him. Then, wasn’t it God’s fault for making her the wrong way? It made her so angry.
It happened all at once. One of them tore a page from his book. And he rose up all at once, clenching her first and glaring daggers.
“Haha, are you gonna cry? Fucking cry, faggot.”
“I won’t cry.”
“What?”
“But you will.”
My lady confronted the mountain range. She advanced step by step. She sharpened both edges of her dagger. She grabbed his neck as if ripping up weeds. She pressed the dagger's teeth into his interior. She roared like thunder.
“Because you did not put your nose to the ground, because you did not rub your lips in the dust, I have killed you and brought you low.
As with an elephant I have seized your tusks. As with a great wild bull I have brought you to the ground by your thick horns. As with a bull I have forced your great strength to the ground and pursued you savagely. I have made tears the norm in your eyes. I have placed laments in your heart. Birds of sorrow are building nests on these flanks.”
For a second time, rejoicing in fearsome terror, she spoke out righteously: "My father Enlil has poured my great terror over the center of the mountains. On my right side he has placed a weapon. On my left side a crown is placed. My anger, a harrow with great teeth, has torn the mountain apart."
When Venus came to, the boy was bleeding and crying on the floor. There was so much blood. His nose was broken, and he needed 16 stitches. Venus was suspended from school, and would end up transferring to another one.
When he was sent home, his mother was inconsolable, sobbing in horror that her angel boy could do such a terrible thing. But his father was worse. He looked smug, even proud. Later, he told Venus “I knew you had a pair after all.”
A few months later would be the first time he was a Summer Scout.