CHAPTER FOUR – Forgetting Yesterday

"Nivek"

The park trees shield Nivek from the rain. He sits down on a bench and looks at the shiny knife in his lap. “I don’t feel any better.” Nivek says to his reflection in the knife. He takes a yellow piece of notebook paper from his back pocket and crosses out the name “Brett” folds it again and replaces it. He then sheaths his knife and gets up to walk through the rest of the park, the wind blows suddenly and reminds Nivek of the day he received the burns on his body, the day he became a monster.

The lights pass by the window, and odd orange-white color. The car window was cold on Nivek’s face as he leaned against it. His headphones blaring music in his ears, he began drifting off to sleep when he heard the break squeal and he felt the seat belt tighten around his chest. He threw his headphones off and grabbed the seat in front of him, where his mother sat. Out the windshield Nivek saw to his horror a gasoline truck sliding toward them on it’s side. The truck looked like a giant shark about to swallow up the tiny minnow of his SUV. Nivek’s short life flashed before his coal black eyes as he saw the truck in brutal clarity. He saw the truck reflect in his father’s terrified eyes. Nivek kept his eyes open for a few more seconds, just long enough to see his mothers beautiful brown hair fly into the air, and a sudden pan fill his entire body. Then everything went black.

Nivek walks a few feet before beginning to cry suddenly, he grabs on to a tree and sobs as he remembers everything in such cruel detail.

Nivek lays in a hospital bed, hooked to dozens of machines and wrapped in gauze, stuck with needles, and tubes tethered and threaded through his whole body. Nivek scream. A nurse rushes in with a shot and sticks Nivek under the skin, pumping him with whatever is in the syringe. Nivek stops screaming and lies back down calmly, whimpering. Then his eyes begin to close and he falls asleep.

Nivek lays on a picnic table in the fetal position his arms tightly holding himself, he remembers everything so perfectly, and he wants so badly to forget. He remembers the kids on the playground calling him “monster”, he remembers the kids in the high school calling him “freak”, and he remembers the boys beating him in the locker room calling him “scar-face”. He remembers it all so clearly.