Through the Speakers (freewrite)

honeydue (68)in #freewrite • 6 years ago

The music was pumping loud into the speakers and into the boy's blood, filling his veins with pure, uncut adrenaline, the singer's desperation becoming his own as he screamed into his pillow.

'Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa,' he yelled, indiscriminately, not really paying attention to what the man was singing. He knew the words by heart, he'd always known them, even before listening to the song. They were in there, mixed with the drugs they'd given him, the painkillers.

No, no, no. Please God, no. They couldn't know about the music or about the singer because if they did, if that too was just a part of their little game, then it was all lost, he had nothing left to live for, no hope left that he might one day become a human being again.

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He was young and yet he'd done such a long time in this place. So much that he was terrified that one day soon, he'd go crazy if he didn't get out before that. He'd tried scratching his way through the walls, drawing long, bloody trails down the thick wood that surrounded him. His nails, dustbitten and full of ghosts had been hanging in tatters for months after that. The first incident they'd called it, so natural, as if they expected him to act that way. And the truth was they did, the boy knew that now. They'd always knows how he was going to react, how the separation from his parents would impact him. Hard, like a gutpunch where the pain never went away and it only kept coming and coming, raw and killing, destroying anything in its path, even the boy.

And then his mouth went dry, he found he couldn't quite scream anymore, like he was all out. Fresh out of voice, out of patience and out of home. He just lay there, with his mouth open, teeth sinking hard into the inside of his cheek, so he could taste the blood trickling down the pillow, yet he refused to move or care. He just listened to the singer's voice and to the monsters flying from his mouth. He didn't wonder what pain hid behind the words in the song, because he didn't really need to know. Excuses, they were all just excuses because really, the pain was just the same, the pain of not being able to get away, to leave behind something you did not wish to leave.

And then, just like that, an explosion into space, a bursting of the eardrums, drowning out all sound and all future possibility. He would never escape The Institute, he realized, as the pain in his ears subsided and somewhere faintly, he could still hear the singer's voice, so angry, always so very rebellions and hateful. So much like the boy, who lay on the bed, his head exploded and his brain turned to mush.

And he, so perfectly free.

M. trudged down the hallway, nodding without much enthusiasm at the people who passed him by for the last time. The backpack weighed heavy on his shoulders. He knew it wasn't wise to bring it along, but he couldn't bring himself to leave it in the car, couldn't trust the parking lot attendees not to go scooping through his things and seize them, hoping for some meager promotion from his father.
M. knocked on the door twice. Rat-tat. Quiet, perfect, the melody of the knock flooding his ears as his heart pumped rapidly, ready to burst out of his chest.
'Come in,' came the voice from inside, heavy and bellowing, always bellowing in the memory of his mind.
M. stepped through quietly, swallowing down hard once and for all the voices drowning in his head. 'Dad,' he said, 'I need to –'
'Yes, I need to talk to you too, actually, son. You see, I've been hearing these...rumors, shall we say, and they're not very much to my liking. To tell you the truth, I don't like them one bit. Now, of course, I know they're not tr–'
'They are,' M. said overriding his father. 'They're all true. I did everything they said I did.'
He found in his voice a strength he didn't know he had and it thrilled him to no end. It was the strength in that little voice at the back of his head that told him he'd be alright every time he thought about leaving.

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His father sat, still as a stone, looking at his well-polished desk. 'You know I don't approve of that,' he tried, in what he thought of as his most appeasing tone.
'I don't care, Dad. I don't want you to approve, I don't want you to even care,' M. said, shaking his head.
His father was quick, but not quite enough, and M. saw the flash of anger pass through his eye. He was winning, he realized in disbelief, but the battle had only just begun.
'I'm leaving, Dad. I know you don't tolerate musicians, so I must as well leave, right? I don't wanna live with you no more, anyway.'
He allowed the silence to hug them tight, closing any gap that ever existed between father and son and then breaking them off forever.
'This is just a...a phase, a silly game. I understand you don't want to be a man, you don't want to be like your father. I get it, I did that too, with your grandfather. You'll own up, my son,' he said, his voice empty.
'It's not about being a man,' M. replied, quietly. 'Bu you're right, Dad, I don't want to be like you. What you're doing here is...hell. You're condemning these people to live in hell. I won't have anything to do with that. It's not just a game.'
M. felt his throat so impossibly dry. It was time to leave, now, soon, before he lost his courage and allowed his father to sweep him under the rug as he had so many times. He turned, not looking to see the breaking in the old man's face.
'I'd rather shoot myself than be like you,' he said, opening the door and leaving his father's office forever. And his father said nothing, because there was nothing he could say. The boy would come back to him, one day.

And each waking second, the father waited for that moment. He sat in his office high up in The Institute and he listened to each album his son put out, remembering the voice of the child who would beg his father to come play. He even played his son's songs to his patients at The Institute. He would've liked to tell them 'that's my son', but he never found the words.