Theme Challenge #5: Depression
#5: Depression
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: None
Word Count: 454
Warnings: Mentions of self-harm, abuse, and attempted suicide.
The Dutch botanist/geneticist Hugo de Vries coined the phrase “Mutation” in the late nineteenth century, while studying crossbreeding in flower specimens. The word came from the Latin “mutare”, to change, to become different.
Charles has been becoming different, lately. He’s eight years old, and he’s starting to hear things, things that no one says out loud. When the doctor examined him, after he had complained about voices when there were none to be heard, he diagnosed the boy with an overactive imagination. Charles is young and naïve, and when his teacher slaps him for asking why she spent the night at the principal’s house he doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong. He feels horribly guilty, but as the day goes on he realizes that it isn’t him who’s feeling it.
His stepbrother thinks he’s a freak, but that’s nothing new. His stepfather beats him when he mentions the voices so he tries not to mention them, but sometimes it’s very hard for him to tell the difference between someone who is actually speaking and someone who is, Charles finally figures out, thinking.
It’s his mother that really makes it hard. She’s been getting increasingly quiet since she re-married, and at the long breakfast table Charles can see that she has the same bruises as him. But that’s not the worst part.
The worst part is being able to hear her thoughts. It’s lying in bed as her silent screams of Nonono! pierce his mind. It’s the self-loathing that radiates off her when she stands in the drawing room and drinks, thinking that she’s alone in the house. It’s when she sits on the lawn, her brain addled by pills and liquor, watching Charles play and thinking how she wishes she were dead.
Charles falls out of his seat at school one day when he’s nine, choking and doubled over in pain. He grabs at his wrists so tightly that they bruise black and yellow, and the school nurse can’t get him to stop screaming for his mother until an hour later. He’s lying curled up in the infirmary, body wracked with sobs, when they get the call that Mrs. Marko (the former Mrs. Xavier) is in the hospital.
She’s pale and thin and her bony wrists are shackled in gauze when Charles gets to visit her three days later. She smiles at the small bundle of flowers he gives her and kisses his forehead, but he can hear what she’s saying inside her head louder than the words she croaks out loud, her voice raw and quiet from the stomach pumping.
Why. Why. Why. Why.
Charles’ mother goes to live in an institution, and he doesn’t see her again until her funeral.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: None
Word Count: 454
Warnings: Mentions of self-harm, abuse, and attempted suicide.
The Dutch botanist/geneticist Hugo de Vries coined the phrase “Mutation” in the late nineteenth century, while studying crossbreeding in flower specimens. The word came from the Latin “mutare”, to change, to become different.
Charles has been becoming different, lately. He’s eight years old, and he’s starting to hear things, things that no one says out loud. When the doctor examined him, after he had complained about voices when there were none to be heard, he diagnosed the boy with an overactive imagination. Charles is young and naïve, and when his teacher slaps him for asking why she spent the night at the principal’s house he doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong. He feels horribly guilty, but as the day goes on he realizes that it isn’t him who’s feeling it.
His stepbrother thinks he’s a freak, but that’s nothing new. His stepfather beats him when he mentions the voices so he tries not to mention them, but sometimes it’s very hard for him to tell the difference between someone who is actually speaking and someone who is, Charles finally figures out, thinking.
It’s his mother that really makes it hard. She’s been getting increasingly quiet since she re-married, and at the long breakfast table Charles can see that she has the same bruises as him. But that’s not the worst part.
The worst part is being able to hear her thoughts. It’s lying in bed as her silent screams of Nonono! pierce his mind. It’s the self-loathing that radiates off her when she stands in the drawing room and drinks, thinking that she’s alone in the house. It’s when she sits on the lawn, her brain addled by pills and liquor, watching Charles play and thinking how she wishes she were dead.
Charles falls out of his seat at school one day when he’s nine, choking and doubled over in pain. He grabs at his wrists so tightly that they bruise black and yellow, and the school nurse can’t get him to stop screaming for his mother until an hour later. He’s lying curled up in the infirmary, body wracked with sobs, when they get the call that Mrs. Marko (the former Mrs. Xavier) is in the hospital.
She’s pale and thin and her bony wrists are shackled in gauze when Charles gets to visit her three days later. She smiles at the small bundle of flowers he gives her and kisses his forehead, but he can hear what she’s saying inside her head louder than the words she croaks out loud, her voice raw and quiet from the stomach pumping.
Why. Why. Why. Why.
Charles’ mother goes to live in an institution, and he doesn’t see her again until her funeral.