He got to his feet, strode over to the table, and knocked the puzzle to the floor before he realized what he was doing. He stared down at the pieces for a bit and poked them with hiѕ bare toes as faint creaking noises came from the direction of Mother's room. He suddenly felt like all the noises around him were closing in like wolves on a scared little deer. He couldn't stay in his room any longer. He'd go insane like the old man down the street who wore ladies' shoes and talked to himself all the time. Mihael tried to imagine himself wearing hiѕ mother's heels and found the image quite amusing. He wanted to go to the kitchen, to the living room, anywhere. If Mother saw him, he'd just say that he wanted a glass of water.
He felt like an intruder in a stranger's home as he crept out of his room and past Mother'ѕ bedroom, where she and her friend were groaning like they were about to vomit. Mihael hurried away and ran to the living room, energized by the thought that he was doing something he wasn't supposed to. He ran around the couch two times and then hopped up on the cushions, feeling the springs squeak beneath his weight. He liked to jump on the couch when Mother wasn't around, but he found that it was even more fun when it was dark and Mother wasn't paying attention.
It was so fun, in fact, that he didn't notice that Mother and her friend had come out of the room until the lights in the room snapped on, and his fun came to a crashing halt. He'd never seen one of Mother's friendѕ before, but one look at the well-dressed man gaping at him was enough to make Mihael think that friends were worthless and ugly. And stupid, because apparently the sight of a little blond boy jumping on the couch was enough to send Mother's friend into a rage. The man yelled at Mother until he turned red in the face, gripping his suit jacket and then brandishing it like a whip. Mother just apologized and cowered, and Mihael couldn't stand anyone making hiѕ mother act like that any more than he could stand that she had turned into a weak, whimpering thing.
He'd learned a lot of words from his upstairs neighbors, and he now used them all, screaming them like a mantra until he thought the man was going to lunge forward and hit him. He wanted to frighten the man away, but his words only seem to spark anger. Finally, in a blind rage, he threatened to get a knife from the kitchen and stab the man, and in that moment, he felt like he could have done it. He was never sure if his killer intent scared Mother's friend away, or if the man just decided that Mihael's high-pitched little boy yells were going to wake everyone up. Either way, he randomly threw money at Mother and stormed out the door.
The sudden presence of the money confused and stunned Mihael into silence. It was a sudden variable that he didn't understand, but he knew that money was valuable and didn't belong on the floor. He hurried over and picked it up, holding it out to Mother rather guiltily, a little ashamed of his temper tantrum. Mother only stared at him, though, and all that stood out to him was her long golden hair surrounding her flushed face, clinging to the sweat on her cheeks. It was a mess, and Mother hated for her hair to be messy. More than anything, it was her disheveled hair that let Mihael know that things were starting to come undone.

She turned and stalked to her room, leaving him with the largest amount of money he'd ever held in his life. Too bad he didn't care for it at all.
*
He expected Mother to yell and hit him, but to his surprise, she didn't. He would almost have preferred it if she did, because that would have been normal. Her talking on the phone in her bedroom for a long time was not normal, and even though he eventually worked up the courage to knock on her door and tearfully apologize for being bad, she didn't answer him. He tried the doorknob, but it was locked, which made him want to kick the door until Mother came out and gave him the beating he expected, but he decided to wait and be patient. Mother hated when he threw fits.
He fell asleep outside her door and didn't wake up until the next morning when he felt her thin hands gently rousing him, lifting him into her soft arms and carrying him into the ѕmall, sunlit bathroom. She ѕmelled sweet and sour, like candy gone bad. Strangely, though, she wasn't mad at him. She even hummed a little and playfully dabbed shampoo lather on the tip of his nose as she washed his hair.
The thought crossed his mind that Mother was acting strangely and maybe he should suspect some sort of trouble, but though Mother rarely behaved warmly towards him, she never treated him cruelly. Mihael was just so relieved that Mother wasn't angry with him that the darkness of the night before faded from his mind as she dressed him in the nice clothes she usually made him wear during the infrequent times they attended Mass. Afterwards, she put him on a stool in front of the bathroom mirror and attempted to take a comb to his longish blond hair, but his hair had sat flatly on his head for so long that it refused to look anything but silly when she tried to part it to the side. Finally she set the comb aside and hoisted him onto her hip, which she hadn't done in ages.
"Who's Mother's handsome boy?" she asked.
"Me!" he said, enthused by her radiant smile even though he thought he was too old for silly questions like that.
Children were such fools, really, and Mihael was no different. He thought one smile from Mother could make the world a brighter place, make all his worries evaporate like puddles of rain in the sunlight. He believed he was going to spend a fun day with Mother, and it was fun, walking around the streets, playing in the park, eating lunch at an actual restaurant, standing on tiptoes to peer into the windows of shops. Mother was a golden presence at his side at all times, and for the first time ever, he felt that he was the center of her universe, and she was his, that they could coexist perfectly as long as they had each other. He looked up into Mother's pale eyes and knew that he had her full attention, and it was a beautiful feeling. Mihael wished he had light-colored eyes like his Mother, but he had his father's eyes, and Father had been made of darker stuff than Mother. Or so he'd been told. He'd never met the man and didn't particularly want to.
Afternoon turned into evening, and as the daylight slowly died, Mother seemed to fade with it, her existence slowly unwinding from his even though her hand still remained tightly clasped around his smaller one. Mother brought him an old-looking building with a big, golden cross on the top of it. Church? Why were they going to church when it wasn't Sunday? In the front yard, a pair of nuns was herding a group of giggling children into the building. Mihael always thought nuns looked a little like aliens, or penguins--or alien penguinѕ--but the kids seemed pretty happy with their oddly-dressed matrons.
A strangely youngish nun appeared before him like magic, her black habit looking more like an extension of her dark hair than a menacing cowl. She smiled at him with slightly crooked teeth, but she had nice eyes, though the color of them was so unremarkable that he didn't even commit it to memory. She bent to greet him, and the large silver cross around her neck swung forward like a pendulum. Ever impulsive, Mihael released Mother's hand and went to catch the cross, cradling it in his palms and watching in mute fascination as the colors of the sunset danced on the metallic surface, fading shades of red and orange forming a glowing pool of fire on the cross. The sister patiently tolerated his infatuation, but when she placed gentle hands on his shoulders, he could feel something sympathetic in her touch, some deep, wrongful kindness.
He turned around, and Mother was gone. He never saw her again.

＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝＝
I want my innocence back
And if you can't give it to me
I will cut you down
And I will run you through
With the dagger you sharpened
On my body and soul
Before you slit me in two
And then devoured me whole
--Emilie Autumn, "I Want My Innocence Back"
*
The Our Lady of Hope orphanage in Lingen, Germany became Mihael's new home, and good riddance to his whore of a mother. Sister Helga, the nun with the kind eyes and fascinating cross, seemed to consider him her personal responsibility, making sure he ate all his meals and was in bed by lights out. His abandonment and immediate introduction into a strange environment had disrupted the normal patterns of hiѕ body. He had increasing difficulty keeping food in his stomach, and he found himself sleeping and waking at odd hours. Sister Helga took it all in stride, checking up on him in the middle of the night and immediately going out to find him if she discovered him not in bed. He could have hidden from her, but he always let her find and talk to him, drinking in the comfort of her wordѕ but not really taking it to heart. Sister Helga was a nice lady, and nice ladies were normally nice to everyone. She always told him his hair was like sunlight, his eyes like shadows, and though he thought the comparison was rather poetic and silly, he liked to listen to her anyway because she had a pretty voice.
There were other nuns at the orphanage, and other children, but none of them left any lingering impressions on him. Mihael always wanted to be alone, or at the center of someone's attention. One or the other, black or white, no shades of gray in between. He hated when Sister Helga would smile warmly at someone other than him, hated having to see the reality that other people warranted her attention just as he did. It made him feel plain, boring, and unloved. Just like Mother apparently thought he was.
When he wasn't hanging onto the hem of Sister Helga's skirt or sitting on her knees, he often explored the orphanage regardless of whether he defied the curfew. Rules were stupid, Mihael had decided. Following them--conforming to the boundaries of others--just landed you in the same cage as everyone else, and he wanted nothing to do with that. He had the orphanage, and beyond that, the city, and beyond that, the whole world. He couldn't wait until he waѕ big and smart enough to go out there by himself.
In his endless wanderings, he often found himself in the orphanage chapel, drawn to the sacred silence and comforting aroma of incense still lingering in the air. He hated coming to Mass with the other children, but he loved going there by himself. It was like a playground, all for him. He would walk the Stations of the Cross, light candles without praying for anything in particular, sit in the empty confessionals, or lie prostrate in front of the altar in mock-worship. He wondered if God ever got angry at him for playing around in such a holy place, but Mihael was sure that in His infinite wisdom, God knew that He could not expect much else from a four-year-old. In return for the Lord's understanding, Mihael never went anywhere near the tabernacle that housed the Body of Christ, which apparently had to rest undisturbed in its little golden prison-box. Mihael personally would have loved to be liberated from such a cage, but he supposed God had some agenda in mind that no human could understand, and it involved keeping His Son'ѕ body in a gilded prison for others to consume on a ritual basiѕ.
Besides, the tabernacle and Christ's captive wafer-body didn't really interest Mihael. He was more attracted to the statues of various saints that hunkered in dark corners and niches, forever caught in the shadows of God's divinity. Mihael liked to touch them and imagine what it might have felt to actually poke Joseph's big toe, or run his fingers over the hem of the Virgin's robes, stained with dust and the blood of the serpent crushed underneath her delicate stone foot. Mary's statue was old, her paint fading in some areas and chipping off in others, but her face still remained serene and motherly, offset by the white veil she wore over her hair. Her hands never moved from their outstretched positions, palms outward, fingers together, peaceful and constant, an effigy that could withstand the test of time.
The statue of the Virgin Mary became his favorite part of the orphanage. When he was bored, he'd touch her hard, cold fingers and imagine her coming alive to embrace him with her arms of smooth stone. He would cling to her and pretend the stone was skin, that it was warm and full of life, not cold and dead like window glass on a winter morning. Her perfume of incense soothed him, made him feel safe, but just as he was about to open his mouth and call her, "Mother," he forcibly reminded himself that Mother Mary was just a statue, and she would never love him.

When Mihael wasn't in the chapel, he studied on his own. Despite his lack of proper schooling, Mihael found the material taught to children his age to be ridiculously easy to comprehend, and over the three years he spent at the orphanage, he realized that his intelligence far surpassed the other students'. He wasn't like them at all, but instead of feeling superior, he just felt isolated by their sheer idiocy. Sometimes he wished he were stupid like them, just so he could fit in, but he always chastised himself harshly for such thoughts. It waѕ better to be different; to lose his individuality would be to lose himself.
Mihael went above and beyond what was required of him. After mastering the use of his native German tongue, he picked up English so quickly that soon he spoke it better than some of the teachers. He conversed with foreigners when the orphans went to the park, and in his spare time, he translated pages from the Bible into English. He studied math, history, Latin, grammar, science--anything he could find in the library. Sometimes Sister Helga brought him books from one of the local stores, touched by his fervor for knowledge.
Such a good boy, Mihael, studying so hard. I just wish you'd eat something besides candy. So much sugar can't be good for a growing boy. I wish you'd wear a color besideѕ black; perhaps it would make you appear less off-putting when families consider you for adoption. I want to see you happy, Mihael. I wish for nothing more than your happiness.
He knew Sister Helga meant well. She really did want him to be happy, but she also wanted the whole damn world to be full of joy and laughter, and Mihael knew that wasn't possible. He also felt that his happiness was elsewhere, and that he had to act on that feeling as soon as possible, or he'd be stuck here until he was close to adulthood.
So, he did what Sister Helga wanted. He played with the other children, all the while comparing them to pitiful little puppies yipping at his heels, unable to keep pace with him. He forced himself to eat the meals the orphanage provided and usually threw up later, hiѕ body painfully rejecting every morsel of food given out of pity disguised as love. He went to Mass and rose when everyone else rose, knelt when everyone else knelt, but his eyes were always on the statue of Mother Mary. All his prayers were directed to her. Please, Mother, please set me free.
One day, it seemed like his prayers were answered. At age seven, he was adopted by a family whose faces he no longer clearly remembered, only that they smiled all the time and seemed fond of touching his hair, stroking it lovingly like he'd seen the kids do to stray dogs. He felt nothing for these people, though he was sure they were very nice. At their quaint little home far away from the orphanage, he had to share a room with another boy who was so corpulent Mihael swore he saw him hiding food in his double chins for a midnight snack.
At the first opportunity, Mihael gathered his few belongings and ran away, leaving his large would-be brother snoring alone in the bedroom. He had left the orphanage to explore the city a few timeѕ, but he had always returned before anyone noticed his absence, and he'd never wandered very far. But he had spent hours poring over maps of the city, memorizing streets and landmarks until he had committed it all to memory and could practically reproduce the map with his eyes closed. He had grilled his new family about bus schedules, pretending to be curious about how public transportation worked. They had cheerfully offered to take him for a ride on the buses tomorrow, and though logically he knew that he should have waited to memorize the bus schedule before making his great escape, his hunger for freedom overwhelmed the whispers of his rational mind.

However, the city at nighttime was a different beast. Streets seemed to shed and swap names like couples exchanging spit in dark alleys. Nothing looked as Mihael had imagined, and he wasn't surprised when he found himself lost, searching aimlessly for the bus station. He'd never had a child's instinctual fear of the dark, but what did scare him was the idea of wandering forever in the city without food or water and with scary people all around, trapped forever in this midnight hell.
Though part of him just wanted to find a nice dark corner where he could sit and cry his eyes out, Mihael refused to shed tears for his own stupidity like the other kids at the orphanage. Instead, he pushed on into the maze of twists and turns, telling himself that he'd ask the first sane-looking person he saw for directions. Before he found anyone, though, he discovered something else.
Three years had passed since he last saw the building he'd lived in with Mother, but he'd know it anywhere, night or day, rain or sunshine. Time had shown it no mercy, and the apartment complex seemed to have taken time's passage as a personal insult and descended into debauchery like a rebellious child. The tenants were bawdier; Mihael didn't even have to go into the complex itself to hear the loud music being played in some apartments, the loud arguments in others, televisions fighting to be heard over other televisions two doors down. Rabid monkeys screaming in a cage--that was what this place reminded him of.
Yet, it was home.
Mihael didn't quite remember the number of their old apartment, but he knew that if he saw the shape of the numbers on the door, he would recognize them immediately. Round all throughout, especially in the middle. Rusty silver numbers on a dull, blue door. He soon found apartment 606 and knew it had to be the place. The door wasn't locked, but as soon as he pushed it open, he knew that Mother no longer lived here. Mother was a big neat-freak, and even in the unlikely chance that she had fallen into grief after giving up her only son, she never would have left syringes on the floor or several ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts on every available counter. The entire apartment reeked of sour milk and wet dog fur. Mihael could hear the mutt barking somewhere in the apartment and wondered if its owner was there. He hoped not, but judging from the scuffling noises and muffled curses from the direction of the kitchen, someone was probably home.
Numbly, he walked into the apartment, old newspapers with piss-stains crunching underneath his sneakers. He tried to imagine his golden Mother walking from room to room in this house and found the image so jarring that it made him a little ill, sausage from dinner rising in his throat. He wanted sugar, cake maybe, chocolate definitely. Sugar, to bring back the sweet aroma of Mother. Sugar, to obliterate the horrible reek of this place he had once called home. His eyes fell on the table where he and Mother had eaten dinner together, its surface covered with food-crusted plates that battled the piles of dog shit on the floor for which could attract the largest swarm of flies.
Mihael was having difficulty breathing, as he sometimes did when the incense in the church was too strong. His feet instinctively migrated towards his old room, craving that cage, that quiet prison with the puzzle that he might be able to put together now that he was older. But his room no longer existed in a form that he recognized. His bed, his table, his forever-unfinished puzzle--it was all gone. In their place lay more trash, more syringes, more piss-soaked newspapers. Someone was making a wheezing noise, and in the back of his mind, he realized that it was him. His vision swam like he was underwater, his lungs rejecting the foul air of the apartment.

Something thudded above him, and Mihael looked up in time for dozens of plaster particles to rain down on his cheeks, dusting his eyelashes and getting into his hair. The neighbors, fighting just like old times. Suddenly, it was all unbearably funny to him; after everything, that old stupid couple hadn't killed each other yet. He tried to laugh, but he couldn't find the breath for such a great feat. He choked instead, and choking somehow led to a white, quiet place that he plummeted into, screaming or laughing. He didn't know which.
*
Mihael owed his life to the crackhead who had been in the kitchen and heard the sound of a little boy'ѕ body hitting the floor. The man stupidly called for the authorities and got himself busted for drug possession, but at least Mihael arrived at the hospital before the first severe asthma attack of his life earned him a plot in the orphanage cemetery. He spent a few hours in the hospital hooked up to a machine called a nebulizer before they released him back to the orphanage. Apparently his new family of walking smiles didn't want him anymore. Maybe they didn't like runaway kids with asthma who had had a prostitute for a mother and whose old home had been turned into a crack den peppered with her0in syringes and dog crap. Mihael understood. If he were them, he wouldn't want him, either.
Sister Helga fretted and prayed over him as if he were on his death bed, and the doctor tried to give him an inhaler. Mihael quickly decided that inhalers were for pussies and that he would just have to deal with this affliction for the rest of his life. If he couldn't handle a simple bodily ailment, then he deserved to die. He refused to carry around life support in his pocket for the rest of his goddamn life. As soon as everyone left the infirmary, he sprayed all the medicine out of the inhaler and watched the particles float in the air like mist, catching the sunlight as they fell onto the blanket covering hiѕ body. He dropped the empty inhaler to the floor and slowly began to wheeze his way back to health.
Sister Helga came to see him several times a day, bringing him books to read and keeping him company so he wouldn't get dangerously bored and attempt something stupid like actually walking to the bathroom on his own. Certainly, she noticed his inhaler lying on the tiles, but she chose not to mention it even when Mihael couldn't draw a deep enough breath to properly converse with her.
"Let's pray, Mihael," she murmured at the end of every visit, taking out a rosary with bright crimson beads and holding it in her hands, fingers moving from bead to bead as she recited Our Fathers and Hail Marys that Mihael often didn't have the strength to say with her. He did make an effort to say the Hail Marys, though, mouthing the words and staring at the gnarled silver body of Christ on the rosary's crucifix. He hailed Mary until he nearly passed out, and then he left Sister Helga to pray for him until the rosary was finished.
The days went by, and he started to regain his strength, just as he knew he would. He didn't need the doctor's stupid medicine to get better. Pretty soon he was able to sit up in bed and talk with Sister Helga without getting winded. Once he could walk again, he planned to go down to the library and begin devising another plan for escape.

Before he could do that, however, an old English gentleman named Roger came to visit him in the infirmary. The man had a large nose that took up nearly half his face and small spectacles that perched nicely on the bridge of it. Tufts of gray hair framed his head like cotton balls stuck to his scalp. He greeted Mihael in German, but Mihael replied in English, never one to miss an opportunity to hone his new skills. They discussed insipid things like the weather, what they served for lunch today, and Mihael's rapidly improving health. He felt very strongly that something else was going on beneath their hollow words, and when he and Roger began a thorough discussion of Mihael's marks and the books he'd read, he finally got fed up with the man's roundabout approach.
"Look, mister, what are you here for?" he demanded. "Are you going to adopt me or something? I don't think I want you as my dad. You could be a pedophile who keeps helpless little boys chained up in a dungeon in your castle in England."
Roger blinked, caught off guard. "My, my, what an imagination you have there. I see you're a rather direct little boy. That's very good. I'm not here to adopt you, Mihael, though I'm sure you already guessed that."
"Yeah. I wouldn't want to adopt me, either."
"I'm here because I help run an orphanage for gifted children in England. Your intellect is far above normal, and if you're willing to leave everything behind and fly out with me tonight, I will take you to that orphanage."
Though Mihael's heart thudded in his chest at the idea of freedom arriving so rapidly (and at the thought of riding in an airplane), his natural suspicion of kindness wormed its way to the forefront of his mind. "What's in it for me? You want my intelligence, but what do I get out of it?"
Roger smiled. "The chance to compete for the title of 'The Best,' and to stand on top of the world. It's all yours, if you're smart enough."
That evening, they were on a plane to Winchester, England, and Mihael Keehl was no more. From now on, there would only be "Mello."
~tbc
5 June 2006

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