A Sick Little Ditty About the Past of a Demon

[Ladd Russo of the Russo Family]

Well. Damn it. It seemed like every time he woke, he woke between grasp of unyielding wood and fat gravity, his nose filled with the sharp, cold scent that was dried blood. A lot of it this time oh God here came the panic he was so weak why so much why? Was he going to die? Calm! He needed to be calm! In the summer, the world choked up around him, all the heat and steam crushing him in one darkly wallpapered room. In the winter, it receded so far that he could feel the radius of thin, terrifying miles at all times, as insistently there as the crowded summer crush but somehow more frightening in its distance. And there was fear like a cracked glaze, something to stir his heart sometimes—nothing much else did.

But that was digression. It was not important. In fact it was the troubled mindset of a troubled child whose sleep was slowly being lifted from him as he shivered on a bedraggled porch under a gray gray sky.

There were two things that he was in. He was in a panic and he was in pain, already replacing nightmares he couldn’t remember, or maybe he could. Not nightmares this time; they weren’t fading fast enough. Hurriedly he grasped at them, his small brown face pinching with a renewed wave of tears as desperation raked at his soul. Tangled dark hair was damply plastered against that tight face. Water was the source of this. It often was. It frightened him only a little less than Mommy.

Of course, this was not all dumb fear. This was a bad hurt.

If he was like most people, he would have a good chance of dying at a hospital.

He heard crying that wasn’t his own, a soft sobbing in a lower range. His fists clenched suddenly, finally grasping the answer, and a solid block of clear recall slammed into the blank pain-pulsing hole that was at the moment his entire day. There was a reason panic should stay blind. This was not good. Oh God oh God oh God no no no no no no no….

Earlier; the beginning; his morning;





A crashing woke him.

As close as the dust in his throat were the floral walls, dark wallpaper, a troubling hue somewhere between purple and brown, spread across the narrow hallways. Straight walls, hard angles, dark wood that shone despite the dents and dust of decades. He placed his hand against the polished surface, flat and sharp, and he could feel his breath in the darkness, cold air eating it. They called this season winter, and today the weather was finally reflecting it. This hallway had no windows, but at the far end he saw a line of light under one of the heavy doors, the type of light that came from the sun.

He separated himself from the grit of the floors, cheek lifting first, head drooping as he forced the rest of himself up; it was an affair of little hands, elbows, and knees, an illogical jumble resulting from a head still chased by phantom pain. The gash across his arm was half-healed, scabbed nicely. He knew his body wanted to heal it, could do so in less than a minute, but he fought it off. Mommy sometimes got surly when she could not see her handiwork. A blank canvas was far too tempting to her fevered temper, better to leave a few strokes and hope to God that rationality had a place with her this day.

But that crash. He doubted it.

He did not want to leave this place. Hidden, safe, why venture out into the light? But of course that would not be wise. Nine years of experience crushing his shoulders down, long hair as dark as the paneling itching his face and eyes, he struggled with the door until the frame unstuck, and went from boldly cringing in the dark to owlishly blinking in the light. It was colder out in the airy kitchen. A window was open, and a few pieces of French toast sat in long-congealed syrup on a plate. The draft played in tune with his anxiety as he sat to eat it.

It did not taste like food. That breadish material just mashed into a paste with all the charm of cardboard, the syrup giving it a freezing, sickeningly sweet tang. He finished it all with a faint but pleasant smile on his face. This was not an expression—this was a mask, blank, muscles pulled in a perfect imitation of contentment. Later it would become his face, but he still had a few years yet for that.

And it said nothing of the resentment fluttering inside him, discordant with the window’s cold breeze, of eating this food. Knowing every bite would go to recreating whatever chunk of him she decided to take away, hoping it would be enough to avoid the agony of starvation. He was not in starvation state today. She had been kind lately.

Rational thought was difficult when one had to juggle chunks of memory and bleeding self in both hands. Did the breakfast mean she had been planning it all along? He was on his feet, somehow, scabs falling from him like gnarled ash or cracking sharply along movement lines, blood oozing up and in and everywhere. Something suffered and screamed in his stomach, wanting material to heal the rest, but he was blinded by the pain and purpose of these wounds. Later. He couldn’t go in that house now. He just couldn’t. He couldn’t stand either, apparently, and Rell fell down with a pathetic little cry, wanting never to move again.

Beyond the pool was a towering old tree, one that annoyed neighbors with its shameless root invasions and gummed up the pool (Oh God he couldn’t even look at that). The sounds of sobbing were issuing from behind it.

He did not hear her coming. Her lightly tanned face—nothing like his own, which she called dark as the devil— seemed pale in the winter sunlight. She was beautiful like the women in movies.

“Rell, honey, come out here when you’re finished breakfast, okay?” she asked. She sounded like the mothers in the movies, too. The same smooth tones, the sense of caring, nurturing. He sometimes wondered where she learned it. It was not a perfect performance, but she was good. Not that even a show worthy of Judy Garland would win him over now, of course. He knew her.

Some time passed. He did not know what he was staring at. Or even what he was thinking really. That’s how his life tended to be.
Except then a pair of hands wrapped around his eyes. He screamed in alarm, flailing out at his assailant without thinking. The spike of panic came almost simultaneously with the knowledge that his punishment would be double for the breaking of face. His smile had not slipped—only frozen—but the screaming and –above all—preemptive retaliation would be enough to damn him for today.

And when he thought ‘damn him for today’, he did not think of it as more than just a turn of phrase. He was pretty sure her opinion of him could sink no lower. The only reason he cared about her opinion at all was because his life depended on it.

But he could not stop himself, his small fist was already slicing through air, a bony thing. It collided with a bare chest with a hollow sound, and his stomach fell away and left him staring. Not the chest he had been expecting. Smile still icing over the shock of his face, Rell let a breath of relief slide out from between his lips.

His uncle blinked, dark eyes taking an injured cast.

“What did I do?” he asked, voice mature, tone less so. Like a child unsure of what he did wrong, honestly repentant. Rell hated it, a little. He did not like people talking to him as if he were his mother. Or maybe he did, which was why he hated it so much. Confusing emotions, irrelevant to his survival. Uncle Joseph was only rarely a threat, as the man seemed to genuinely care. This was strange and something Rell had only recently and grudgingly began to admit—it was an insane notion and one he still needed time to work through, because he very much doubted that even the best performance of genuine care was honest. Rell had hated Joseph for many years, but he was fast growing out of it. It was pointless. All of the disaster his uncle unwittingly pulled upon him was always a result of Rell’s own ignorance, and if he still had not figured out the triggers by now, he had only himself to blame. Might as well blame a fire for burning a straying hand.

Maybe. Now he was not so sure.

“No, I’m sorry,” he said, and he sounded truly so, whatever he actually felt on the matter. Honestly, he did not feel much of anything besides a relief that Joseph was not his mother, go figure. “It was an accident, uncle. What brings you here today?” Eye games. His uncle was going to say ‘guess who’ and be excited on whether Rell could figure it out or not. Despite the fact that Rell had only ever had more than a passing word with two people. But that was the dubious charm of Uncle Joseph. The man pretended to be just about the dumbest thing on this earth. Or actually was. God he had no idea anymore—why did it matter? Rell had no doubt that whatever had broken in his uncle’s mind, it had been done by his mother’s hands.
His uncle’s face cleared, becoming that same picture of vague, childish joy that sent Rell through a tired coaster of loathing and jealousy. His face remained a pleasant smile to match his uncle’s—no need to upset the man again, he was only a bother that way.

His uncle did not come over every day. It was roughly a monthly thing, though by no means regular. Applying regularity to his uncle would be like attempting to do so to a rabid bear. Not that the two were comparable otherwise. Or they were. He didn’t know. It did not matter, because it was only ever safe to treat everything as if it could potentially kill you—which pretty much everything could and would if it had the chance. Sometimes he wondered how Uncle Joseph could be so silent in his approach; Rell could count the times he had ever heard his uncle coming with one hand. The man instead seemed to be miraculously able to appear behind him at any and all times, doors still closed, sometimes even locked. It made no difference.

He would learn later that this was less of an uncanny and extremely unsettling coincidence as it was an actual miracle, and a slightly terrifying one at that.






On his feet again, he bit his tongue bloody to keep back any more sobs from himself. It was bad enough listening to the tree’s crying, and if his mother was still about, it would be dangerous to his extremely depleted health for her to hear them. And also humiliating to him, which was something the flat, still ocean of his rage would not stand for. Fear when she was around, anger when she wasn’t. This two-faced pattern would be etched into him for a long time, and later chipped away by his continual attempts to dispel it in the years after.

The tree was cold, bark gnarled and tortured. It could have been on fire; that was all his burned hand received from touching it. But he needed something to steady himself. The world was moving back and forth. He shouldn’t be moving. He should be healing. He loathed doing what he should be doing. Maybe when he had the luxury of choice he’d consider it someday. No no no no no no no he could not sit down now. He had gotten to this damned tree and by God he was going to have a deep and reflective talk with the sniveling bastard behind it. Who the hell did he think he was, to do something like that and then run and cry? God he was so tired. Pain was the only thing keeping him awake.

The tree seemed too large; it seemed that it took him too long to go around it, to find his uncle there curled up tight. His smile was gone, had been gone for a long time, his eyes absolutely dead if not for the flare of righteous, childish indignation. Pain made him honest.







It was so cold in the house today. His arm ached dully, and his ribs began to cramp with suppressed shivers. Boring, usual, with the cracked glaze of fear. A fine vase.

She would smash it when she chose.

And that would probably be soon. He doubted there was anything good to come of her request, though she loved to keep him guessing. But it had been too long to be anything nice. His breakfast was done. His stomach had a cold, sticky lump somewhere inside it to chew on for a while, all of it that wasn’t still stuck somewhere halfway down his throat. Uncle Joseph had already wandered out the back door. He would be obliged to follow soon, and very soon. Mommy wanted him outside, and that was that.

And so he was outside, the grimy waters of the pool reflecting in his wide gray eyes, shifting lightly in the icy breeze. The splintered deck was rough against his bare feet. He never knew why water made him feel so off-balance, so ill-at-ease, but it did. After today he would certainly blame this incident as an establishing feature, but that was later.

“Rell, baby, I need you to go in the pool and fetch Mommy’s ring, okay? She dropped it.”

Unlikely. He couldn’t see the bottom of the water, but he felt like water was already around him. The mind was a powerful thing. His smile felt plastic on his face… he knew it was no longer believable. She stood there, in a sweater and jeans. The sweater was obnoxious, too big for her and an eye-strangling orange, with a yellow sun in the middle. Her smile was genuine. There was a large bucket by her feet filled with yet more water, and a sickly smell filled the air. God he was so afraid.

“Mommy.” It was all he could say, a tremor in his already tiny voice. He always had a nagging suspicion that people couldn’t breathe water, and a few of the movies he had seen confirmed it. It was called drowning, when water strangled you. His eyes pleaded while his throat stuck, smile struggling. Gray, gray sky above.

“Well, it’s either that you dump this bucket of water on yourself,” she said primly, laughing as if it were a silly thing. Nothing could be silly with her. “But I don’t see why you’d want to do that, baby. It’s up to you, though.”

Even if he would be wet and freezing for the rest of the day—he doubted she’d let him change clothes—it was better than having the airless tomb of murk close around. It seemed like far too much the obvious choice though, which was scary in its own right, but he had to risk it. No choice.

“I love you, Mom. I’ll put water on myself for you, Mom,” he chirruped weakly. His frail arms could not lift the bucket. Before it even registered to him that the smell was getting stronger, she had ‘helped’ him with the task by upturning it above his head. The thick smell was overwhelming now, and his eyes seared where the liquid dripped into it, all of it soaking into his oversized shirt and ripped pants with a gurgling kind of splash. It did not feel like water.

“This is what you get for lying to me,” she said, voice suddenly cutting through the air and through what was left of his composure, which was now completely terror. His smile went, scattered away like so many ghosts. Worse. He had to get it back. His smile. This was bad. He should have risked drowning. Misstep. Bad things happened with that voice, all hate and scorn. Bad bad things. He was sorry. He was sorry. He was sorry!

“Mom, I didn’t—” No, he had, he had said he loved her.

“Shut the fuck up.”

He shut the fuck up.

“A-adella?”

Now where had his uncle come from? As if this wouldn’t be bad enough without a drooling, brain-dead witness to him getting beaten half to death. God, please no please no. Why was there no way to stop this? What was he covered in? He didn’t understand… He should run! His legs might as well be his smile for how accessible they were right now.

She lunged at him, and in some disjointed way he saw a spark of orange in her hand, fire on a tiny stick. It was captured in his mind. Then the world exploded in flame and agony.

At the could hear his uncle screaming ‘don’t’, saw him lunge but be too late. In some way he could see his uncle staring as he burned alive, but there was no thought to it, just broken images and agony unlike anything he had ever felt. He would know later why talk of Hell was always accompanied by fire.

His body was not in pain. His body had become pain. There was nothing else.

Some nameless, uncountable amount of time later, he felt the jaws of the world close around his every inch, a freezing blanket wrapping strait-jacket tight. The flames strangled out, another fire ripping through, this one of ice. He gasped lungful after lungful of grimy water, not understanding why it added to the pain like grains upon a mountain or why it did not lessen the screaming panic in his chest for air.





He doubled over and retched a thick bile from his stomach, shining, crushed black remains of leaves and drowned bugs in their most reduced form. He teetered but drew up short before the ground reared up too close.

There was his uncle, slim as a girl with hair longer than most of them, a fragile and unique snowflake in an undeviating world. How dear. He cried in a way somewhere between a man and a child—quietly, not attempting to receive attention or solution, but also without suppression or shame. The only thing that stopped Rell from hitting him across the face was the fact that it was already buried in his uncle’s hands, and that far too much blood was dripping in between those fingers. The child trembled, all his self-control focused into standing straight and staying conscious, which left precious little for his normal applications.

That was dangerous for everyone.

His uncle looked up, and Rell went still. His eyes were burning, but his uncle’s eyes were burnt, one gone completely from his head in a face that was half-seared away. The other half wept tears, eyes startling wide with pain and a childlike fear that twisted in him like a knife. And what little control Rell had fled at the sight. He saw that man’s game now.

“What did you do?” he nearly hissed, words coming soft and clipped with anger. “How— why would you ever step in between us? Are you an idiot? I saw you, trying to stop her. Was that some sort of noble sacrifice? Do you feel better?” The sarcasm stung his tongue, God, he hated that face—he hated even the half that remained. Loathed it. His uncle could die for all that he cared! He would kill him if it helped at all! Just anything to rid this arrogant, malicious leech in front of him.

The remaining eye looked at him blankly; he wasn’t sure if his uncle was even listening. His rage spiked at that uncomprehending gaze, rage synonymous with the pain he was in. He wanted those eyes to flinch; he wanted his uncle’s acting to fail. It was one thing to put on this damned act, another thing to expect Rell to believe it, especially now that it was obvious. Listen, God damn it!

“Is this anything like what you wanted?” he continued, patronizing, but his voice trembled with hate. “Do you expect me to say thank you?! I don’t care what you want, do you understand that!? YOU ARE THE MOST ARROGANT PERSON THAT I HAVE EVER KNOWN! You could have died out there, and then what would you get from me then! But no, congratulations, you survived!” Grief and fear began to strain his denunciations, voice getting more raw by the moment. “So now I do something for you, right? That’s what this is all about, I understand. Well, what do you want me to do?! Am I supposed to like you now, is that your price? Should I start throwing myself in front of you every time someone wants to turn your face into cuts?! DO YOU WIN MY GODDAMNED LOYALTY?!”

The child fell back on the ground into a sitting position, chest heaving, face marked by fear and betrayal, and of course anger.
“You assumed,” he snarled breathlessly, “but you’re not getting what you expected. You’re getting nothing. I hate you. Is that hard to understand? I don’t owe you anything. You can not just do something like that and think that you’ll suddenly control me. You don’t.”

Joseph’s eye still stared blankly, but this time he had heard. Though what exactly his nephew was shouting about might be a bit beyond him, at this moment or any moment.

“I… I already got what I wanted,” his uncle breathed, eye still staring blankly. Rell shook, already half on the ground, unwilling to fall further.

“No you didn’t!”

“I.. I did..”

“No!”

“But…but I did…”

Why did this hurt so much? He hated this man. He hated him. He hated him. Why was he so afraid? Why would his uncle not just shut his damn mouth and realize that he had lost this sick game?

“Oh yeah? How?” Rell asked, a hysterical, would-be aloof laugh leaving him like a cough.

“You’re still alive.”






A sudden, sharp bite in the back of his head preceded a sense of movement, things he could not comprehend. He did not piece together their meaning, nor the reason why the screaming all around him became a shriek with a pressure of rough hands around his stomach, then another dislocation from reality as the empty air clapped over him and gravity harshly resumed, folding him into two arms. He was gently settled down onto the deck—a feeling synonymous with the agony levels of being flung against it from the roof, unfortunately. There was nothing but that for so long…

Somewhere in there it became unconsciousness, and after that there was really nothing. A few times, locked outside of the expanse of twitching and darkness, there were things that did happen.

Shaking, yelling, the fire was back again, who was doing the shaking and shouting? All he saw was blood and pain and deck boards dancing.

A sense of time passing.

Walking numbly, half of his sense cut away in a trance, watching as if he were not of this body or world. Dimly, half-dragging, half walking, pulling self to sink, drinking as much water as he could, as if he were drowning again. His mind did not work, it was only survival that drove him, his body knowing that he needed clean water or he would die.

This happened a few times, his brainless shuffles leaving the floor streaked with smears of blood and damp clothing. Sometimes he saw Adella watching from her seat at the kitchen chair, her expressionless face as she watched somehow more terrifying than all of this. But not then, he felt nothing then. He had not even been awake, and he certainly hadn’t seen her. Even now he was not sure he was awake. Even now he…





“Why? Why is that so important?” he asked hoarsely.
“Captain, there’s heavy fire on the east side, we’re going to have to regroup! Get the woman and children out of there!”
“No! No, you are not going to be crazy now! We are having a serious conversation.” The rage flashed back. This man!
“Captain? I don’t follow.”
“You are going to answer my question! You are Joseph John Attwater, half of your face is gone, and you’re going to answer me! Why do you want me alive?! What are you trying to use me for?” Interrogating on his knees, tears in his eyes. He hated this weakness. Everything was gone, his smile, any deception or defense was as weak as tissue paper, easily ripping with his tears.

And there was no damn answer.

How long did they sit there, staring at each other. Rell trying to find a meaning to this, trying to find a method that would work, trying to think through a mind clogged with gasoline, pain, and pool scum, Joseph doing God knew what. There was nothing but the huffing exhalation and inhalation of two people that were kind of really hurt. His ire slowed gradually, bleeding out, circling, but there was nothing. But finally something changed. His uncle went very still, his voice a broken rattle, sounding almost mature and sane, if tired:

“It’s gone… I’m sorry, I’m sorry I didn’t notice...”

“What’s gone?” he asked patiently, thoughts elsewhere. He figured emotions as high as these had their limit—they had to run out eventually. It was stilling, deadening. Easier to think this world, harder to feel it.

“A part of you. S-she stole it, or br-br-broke it.”


Thoughts scattered. The supposedly empty stores of his emotional registers gave out once last gush, an arterial spurt that had him shaking again. No words formed, in his mouth or his mind. But then everything went dead again.


Somehow though, those two sentences signaled that this ordeal was over. It cemented their positions in this life. His uncle was not a threat, but something so helpless that it put newborn animals to shame. Rell could have done without all the previous dramatics from himself, it turned out. Even if his uncle had been capable of that… Ugh, unforgiveable. He was hardly four anymore; he could do better.


Lifting himself off the ground, he gently put a hand to his uncle’s injured cheek, not responding to the flinch of pain, his eyes half-closed but placid. He tried to feel it, feel his uncle’s injuries as if they were his own. That was empathy, right? That was what he was supposed to feel?

“Nothing is broken or stolen…” Nonsense, that. “It’s alright,” he said, using tones that sane mothers used on frightened children. It had its effect on Joseph, whose eye widened and suddenly seemed much more unsure. But also stiller, which was needed, he thought.

“You just… you just don’t know it…”
“Shhh, stay still, now. I think…”
“Why do I hurt so much? I don’t understand.”
“I think I can fix it.” The world faded a little bit.

He did not know why he thought this would be possible. A monster, she said. He had to do it, had to extend the way he healed somehow. Even if it made no sense. No sense, except for the beating of his heart coordinating with his uncle’s, the certainty of the burns that scoured the man’s head, the shadow of its pain pressing against what was already his own. It was his own. And he wanted it gone.

He was soon to be eight years old. Allowances could not be made.

Rell felt his hand slip away, some of his scabs displacing with sharp stings as the purple flush faded from his irises. His uncle stared back, some glory of his prettily curved face restored. Joseph had an eye again, and his muscle and skin were restored, closed as if they had never been broken. But Rell could see he had failed. Gauging limits was something his body did automatically, even when he took autonomic control of his own healing. Rell had not a scar on his body. It appeared he did not do so well when taking the reins of someone else. Instead of injury, one half of Joseph’s face was welted, mottled, scarred by the burns in an ugly way. The color of his eye was now lighter on that side, a brown instead of his liquid black. God, his face, ruined just like that, forever. Forever, Adella. Were you proud? It was not so much sadness for him as it was hatred for her.

“I feel better,” Joseph said, eyes entreating.

That was good. Rell could not say the same. He had not thought it was possible to feel worse than he had a minute ago, save for being actively on fire or drowning, but he had expected it when he tried to extend his healing and had not been disappointed. His uncle was still in some pain, tears pouring from both eyes. It took a moment to register that the pain might not be physical. Despite his freakout of five minutes ago, Rell was having a hard time imagining anything besides physical pain right now.

“But… I can’t protect you. I can never protect you. Usually I—I never even see it. What’s… what’s wrong with me?”

He had never seen his uncle so lucid. That was two relevant contributions in one conversation.

“There is nothing wrong with you,” he lied gently, a weary smile touching his face despite himself. This pain, at least, he could remove without leaving any scars. Leaning over against a thousand needles, he kissed his uncle on the forehead. “Soldier, you were roughed up in that last battle, but you saved the day. Your friends pulled through because of you. Look at all those tears! You were worried they wouldn’t make it. But they’re all okay. You’re the hero of the day.”

He saw his uncle’s expression shift in just the slightest way, his internal reality warping to reflect another identity in a much more pleasant truth. (Rell might have been jealous if he did not consider it something akin to dying.)

“I am?” he asked in that Southern boy peal, all the innocence and earnestness a city girl could want in a man, if movies were anything to go by. “What happened, Captain? I guess… I don’t remember. I’m glad everyone’s alright.”

The world was closing in, draining of colors in an alarming way, even if Rell could not find the strength to be alarmed. His smile grew a touch amused. Everything was becoming gray in his eyes, as gray as his eyes.

“Just remember, soldier, I am not a babysitter,” he said sincerely, cushioning the words with gentleness the best he could. But his best really was not that great right now. Even his words were draining of color. It figured that it was only when he didn’t want to hurt his uncle that he was quickly losing all ability to avoid doing it. He did not feel the pain anymore, strange. “I don’t enjoy your company. You can’t take care of yourself at all. And taking care of you is something I’m not going to do. Do you un—”

His strength gave out without warning, and he was neither conscious nor standing, feeling nothing but a wall of earth slapping him in his tired, smiling face. He vaguely felt that more of a warning would have been appropriate before the gray colors drained away, taking his thoughts and feelings with them.




When he woke, it was not because he was better, but because he was biologically on the point of starvation, and he would have to take care of that.

But he did wake up in a bed, and there was a plate of cut up bananas and glass of milk on the bedside table. The glass of milk, he noted, was chunked and spoiled, a predictable oversight from his uncle. The bananas were still decent. His mind still floated in the land somewhere between hunger and lack-essential-tissues pain, but not so much that he didn’t notice a shift in his resolve.

Fiddlesticks. It seemed the whole pool snafu had unhinged his priorities somewhere. Bananas. Ha. Hahaha. The mental laughing the child endured was very flat indeed. But the point still stood, a fact very foreign, somewhat distasteful, and somehow unassailable.

Taking care of his uncle was something he was going to do.