FOTD, Peanut Butter 7: Reclamation
Title: Reclamation
Main Story: In The Heart
Flavors, Toppings, Extras: FOTD (braird: new growth), peanut butter 7 (light), malt (Summer Challenge: 269: Once you've looked into the darkness I think you carry it with you for the rest of your life. - The Exorcism of Emily Rose), fresh strawberries (the sick being taken aboard ship), fresh pineapple (Sprawl II, Arcade Fire), pocky chain, cherry (first person).
Word Count: 1100
Rating: PG-13 for disturbing imagery.
WARNING: Child death, discussions of depressive and suicidal feelings.
Summary: Everyone needs to be forgiven.
Notes: This story takes its inspiration from two Doctor Who episodes: "The Doctor's Wife" and "A Christmas Carol." My thanks and all credit to the creators.
Everyone wants to be forgiven.
Everyone. Everywhere. Even you. There's something in your past that you did or didn't do, some petty sin you never confessed, and you don't dare tell anyone at this late date but oh, how you need to be forgiven.
Maybe you stole a dollar from your mother's purse. Maybe you didn't take good care of your hamster, so it died. Maybe you left home when you shouldn't have, and your whole life fell apart from there.
It doesn't matter exactly what it was. You need forgiveness. We all do.
Me?
I need forgiveness for surviving.
--
We lived way out of town, when I was a kid. We could've lived in the reverend's house attached to the church, but my mom liked her privacy so they bought this big house out in the forest. Our nearest neighbors were almost half a mile away.
I loved it. I hated the fifteen-minute walk from the bus stop, but it was worth it for all the hours I got to spend running around in the woods, in that strange cathedral-like light you get out there. There's nothing quite like sunlight filtered through leaves.
I loved it, until the fire.
--
My dad used to smoke. My mom kept trying to make him quit, so he started sneaking cigarettes in the garage. My sisters and I always knew, because he smelled like smoke, but he'd wink at us and put his finger to his lips and we never told.
I didn't realize the problems with a reverend getting his kids to lie. I was nine and I worshiped my father. Maybe if I had...
I can't stand the smell of smoke anymore. Makes me gag. And the sight of a cigarette's tip glowing red at night...
I don't lie anymore, either.
--
I can see it, when I close my eyes. Smoke, curling up from a trash bin in the garage. Flames creeping up the walls, that strange bright orange-yellow, hot and hungry.
My sisters are sleeping. Mom always said they could sleep through anything. They slept through everything, in the end.
My parents wake up, though. My father runs for my sisters, but the stairs break under him and he falls. My mother... I don't know what she does. That's the one thing I can't picture.
She burned to death. When I try to imagine it, all I see is light.
--
People always want to know how I survived. It's a very simple question with a very simple answer-- I wasn't there. I was staying at my friend Victor's house. I didn't know until Victor's mom drove me home, irritated because my parents hadn't come to pick me up.
The fire was still burning when we got there. Not seriously; the firemen had been at it all morning, and it was really just a few embers smoking in the corners. Like fireflies, winking in the ashes.
I don't remember much about the next few days, but I remember those flickering lights.
--
I was in the light all the time, after that.
First the police, questioning me. Then the social workers, trying to be kind but being just as invasive. My foster family, poking and prodding at my fresh wounds like I was some kind of do-it-yourself repair kit.
All I really wanted was to be left alone in the dark, but they kept dragging me out into the light so they could get a better look. I was not a toy or a project but they kept treating me like one anyway.
Is it any wonder I went to the dark?
--
You need the dark, sometimes. The dark is comforting, where the light is harsh. Have you ever seen those old movies where the police shine a light in the suspect's face while they're interrogating them? It's so he can't see them, can't see anything but the light, while they, safe in the dark, see him in perfect detail.
That's what I felt like, in those clumsy confused days, bundled from place to place. A suspect, pinned in the light. I'd committed the crime of surviving and now I had to be punished.
For years, I felt that way. For years.
--
So there it is. My family died, and I did not. For years I thought I should have died. So I hibernated for years, curled up in the dark where at least nothing hurt, because the thought of light on my crime was too much to bear.
Then... I don’t even know what I was doing. Lying around, probably. It was the summer before my senior year and everyone was asking about college, but I couldn't bear to think about the future. I was lying on my bed, and it hit me in the face-- light. Sunlight.
Sunlight through leaves.
--
It wasn't an epiphany. I wasn't suddenly better. But it was... the start, I guess, of a very slow epiphany that took me nearly a decade to complete. I went to college after all. I got my degree, went on to get my law degree, started working for Mrs. Hirschfeld, every movement one slow step out of the dark.
I wasn't forgiven, but maybe I was on a probation of sorts. Getting time off for good behavior, or something.
I didn't mean to survive the fire. I certainly didn't mean to live after it. Somehow I found myself doing both.
--
I still need to be forgiven. I still don't feel as if my survival was a gift or a miracle, like everyone says it was. I lost my entire family, and I don't feel blessed at all, so don't you dare tell me I am.
But I'm starting to realize it wasn't my fault; that my survival may not have been a miracle, but it also wasn't a crime. I no longer need some giant cosmic figure to come down out of the sky and boom that I, Jacob Foster, am forgiven.
The only forgiveness I need is my own.
--
My friend Aaron really likes Doctor Who. I don't know why, it's kind of a crazy show, but whatever, I guess it has its good points. Anyway, he makes me watch all the Christmas episodes with him so he has someone to talk to about them.
Usually I don't pay that much attention to them. I follow the plot, but not much else. But something in the last one stuck with me.
Halfway out of the dark, he said. I'm halfway out of the dark.
Forgiveness doesn't come easy, especially when it's your own.
But I think I'm almost there.
Main Story: In The Heart
Flavors, Toppings, Extras: FOTD (braird: new growth), peanut butter 7 (light), malt (Summer Challenge: 269: Once you've looked into the darkness I think you carry it with you for the rest of your life. - The Exorcism of Emily Rose), fresh strawberries (the sick being taken aboard ship), fresh pineapple (Sprawl II, Arcade Fire), pocky chain, cherry (first person).
Word Count: 1100
Rating: PG-13 for disturbing imagery.
WARNING: Child death, discussions of depressive and suicidal feelings.
Summary: Everyone needs to be forgiven.
Notes: This story takes its inspiration from two Doctor Who episodes: "The Doctor's Wife" and "A Christmas Carol." My thanks and all credit to the creators.
Everyone wants to be forgiven.
Everyone. Everywhere. Even you. There's something in your past that you did or didn't do, some petty sin you never confessed, and you don't dare tell anyone at this late date but oh, how you need to be forgiven.
Maybe you stole a dollar from your mother's purse. Maybe you didn't take good care of your hamster, so it died. Maybe you left home when you shouldn't have, and your whole life fell apart from there.
It doesn't matter exactly what it was. You need forgiveness. We all do.
Me?
I need forgiveness for surviving.
--
We lived way out of town, when I was a kid. We could've lived in the reverend's house attached to the church, but my mom liked her privacy so they bought this big house out in the forest. Our nearest neighbors were almost half a mile away.
I loved it. I hated the fifteen-minute walk from the bus stop, but it was worth it for all the hours I got to spend running around in the woods, in that strange cathedral-like light you get out there. There's nothing quite like sunlight filtered through leaves.
I loved it, until the fire.
--
My dad used to smoke. My mom kept trying to make him quit, so he started sneaking cigarettes in the garage. My sisters and I always knew, because he smelled like smoke, but he'd wink at us and put his finger to his lips and we never told.
I didn't realize the problems with a reverend getting his kids to lie. I was nine and I worshiped my father. Maybe if I had...
I can't stand the smell of smoke anymore. Makes me gag. And the sight of a cigarette's tip glowing red at night...
I don't lie anymore, either.
--
I can see it, when I close my eyes. Smoke, curling up from a trash bin in the garage. Flames creeping up the walls, that strange bright orange-yellow, hot and hungry.
My sisters are sleeping. Mom always said they could sleep through anything. They slept through everything, in the end.
My parents wake up, though. My father runs for my sisters, but the stairs break under him and he falls. My mother... I don't know what she does. That's the one thing I can't picture.
She burned to death. When I try to imagine it, all I see is light.
--
People always want to know how I survived. It's a very simple question with a very simple answer-- I wasn't there. I was staying at my friend Victor's house. I didn't know until Victor's mom drove me home, irritated because my parents hadn't come to pick me up.
The fire was still burning when we got there. Not seriously; the firemen had been at it all morning, and it was really just a few embers smoking in the corners. Like fireflies, winking in the ashes.
I don't remember much about the next few days, but I remember those flickering lights.
--
I was in the light all the time, after that.
First the police, questioning me. Then the social workers, trying to be kind but being just as invasive. My foster family, poking and prodding at my fresh wounds like I was some kind of do-it-yourself repair kit.
All I really wanted was to be left alone in the dark, but they kept dragging me out into the light so they could get a better look. I was not a toy or a project but they kept treating me like one anyway.
Is it any wonder I went to the dark?
--
You need the dark, sometimes. The dark is comforting, where the light is harsh. Have you ever seen those old movies where the police shine a light in the suspect's face while they're interrogating them? It's so he can't see them, can't see anything but the light, while they, safe in the dark, see him in perfect detail.
That's what I felt like, in those clumsy confused days, bundled from place to place. A suspect, pinned in the light. I'd committed the crime of surviving and now I had to be punished.
For years, I felt that way. For years.
--
So there it is. My family died, and I did not. For years I thought I should have died. So I hibernated for years, curled up in the dark where at least nothing hurt, because the thought of light on my crime was too much to bear.
Then... I don’t even know what I was doing. Lying around, probably. It was the summer before my senior year and everyone was asking about college, but I couldn't bear to think about the future. I was lying on my bed, and it hit me in the face-- light. Sunlight.
Sunlight through leaves.
--
It wasn't an epiphany. I wasn't suddenly better. But it was... the start, I guess, of a very slow epiphany that took me nearly a decade to complete. I went to college after all. I got my degree, went on to get my law degree, started working for Mrs. Hirschfeld, every movement one slow step out of the dark.
I wasn't forgiven, but maybe I was on a probation of sorts. Getting time off for good behavior, or something.
I didn't mean to survive the fire. I certainly didn't mean to live after it. Somehow I found myself doing both.
--
I still need to be forgiven. I still don't feel as if my survival was a gift or a miracle, like everyone says it was. I lost my entire family, and I don't feel blessed at all, so don't you dare tell me I am.
But I'm starting to realize it wasn't my fault; that my survival may not have been a miracle, but it also wasn't a crime. I no longer need some giant cosmic figure to come down out of the sky and boom that I, Jacob Foster, am forgiven.
The only forgiveness I need is my own.
--
My friend Aaron really likes Doctor Who. I don't know why, it's kind of a crazy show, but whatever, I guess it has its good points. Anyway, he makes me watch all the Christmas episodes with him so he has someone to talk to about them.
Usually I don't pay that much attention to them. I follow the plot, but not much else. But something in the last one stuck with me.
Halfway out of the dark, he said. I'm halfway out of the dark.
Forgiveness doesn't come easy, especially when it's your own.
But I think I'm almost there.