The Untold Truth ✓

Chapter Nine | Irizzled Skipper

A L E X A N D R A | J O N E S 

He parks the car in front of what looked like an abandoned house. I look towards him as we drove out to the countryside of New York, Ares stared at the house, and I could almost tell he was having flashbacks. He looked at the house for a good fifteen minutes, and I did nothing but stay in the detaching silence.

He opens the door and as do I, we make our way to the front.

The recent rain has made the old, unpolished steps slick. I grab the rail with my free hand, and we move up gingerly, and for the most part in silence.

The house had grown conscious of its own past and the echoes it still carried. Images of tender flowers were mingled in with the pain somewhere inside. But if the inside seemed stale, it simply needed to flow, like a river. So, one day after an unspecified amount of time, every door and window in the house were opened.

It initially shuddered because the wind felt chilly and because it was accustomed to the dust and the smell of nothing. When the scent of gentle flowers entered. Ares pushes the creaking door open, and the hallway comes into place, where on earth has, he taken us?

He takes the first step inside and walks towards the room ahead; I look down at the broken wooden floors with newspapers all over before at the torn wallpaper. Frames brokenly hung from the walls, and once I looked at the picture...I knew exactly where we were.

I feel my heart breaking into pieces.

This was Ares' childhood home.

I look ahead to see broken glass and graffiti on the walls, I pass by a shredded living room. Inside was a ripped couch, torn to shreds from the rats. And then, toys. A doll caught my eyes, I step inside and crouch down to lift it up. My fingers brush the dirt from the dolls face, a drawn face. Almost with crayons.

I meet Ares inside...a kitchen? I see him sitting on the dining chair, staring at a rectangle cupboard in front of him. It was one of the smallest cupboards in the house, the door was hung on its last screw.

"Ares..." I whisper his name.

"My father hated the sight of me, I was nothing to him back then because he thought I was worthless. I would get the lowest grades, get into fights...I just wanted his attention for five fucking minutes." He was opening up to me. "I lived in here."

"The house?"

"The cabinet." My heart literally fell on the floor. "I would be pushed inside, and the doors would be locked. I was terrified of the dark because the keyhole was the sole source of light. My mother always sneaks me out of the house cabinet in the morning, but one day they forgot I was there. I spent an entire week sitting in the cupboard." My eyes were leaking tears. "Food would be brought to me by Adonis and Alastair, who would stuff it through the keyhole. They would offer me a straw and I would drink the water through it."

"Ares..."

"My mother was on work trip; she could not sneak me out. She left me...knowing that my father hated the sight of me. The funny thing was Alex, that was not even the worse of it. You see that." He points to the dog bowls in the corner of the room, mould grew out of it. "He used to force me to eat out of that, he treated me like a dog and all she did was sit back and watch."

Word did not exist for a second.

"I wanted to take away the power of the painful memory for hurt, prove to myself that I could choose to move on. When my mind wanders back there, I direct it just to the positive memories, the healing memory. It's as if I wrote a good story on top of a horrible one, and the bad story's ink fades away with time, leaving only the good one." He looks up at me. "You."