What Did They Do To You?

📅 April 3, 2018; 6 days after Chey’s reappearance

►ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢ ғᴏʀ ɢʀᴀᴘʜɪᴄ ᴅᴇsᴄʀɪᴘᴛɪᴏɴs ᴏғ ᴄʜɪʟᴅ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀᴛᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛᴇᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ, ʙᴜʟʟʏɪɴɢ, ʟɢʙᴛ-ᴘʜᴏʙɪᴄ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀʙʟᴇɪsᴛ sʟᴜʀs, sᴇʟғ-ɪɴᴊᴜʀʏ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴs ᴏғ ᴍᴀss ᴍᴜʀᴅᴇʀ & (ғʟᴇᴇᴛɪɴɢʟʏ) ᴄsᴀ◄

Late afternoon and less than a week into his new life found Chey settled into the living room sectional, watching the sun slowly sink out the balcony door; one earbud in, only half-listening to the YouTube video he had up of Anthony Child talking about live modular synth setups. The rest of Chey’s attention was off, elsewhere; eastbound along Jamaica Avenue toward The Aspen, which Anarchy had recently left for...

Chey startled sharply from his reverie at the sound of nearby footsteps.

“The other day you asked what happened to me,” Kohao said brusquely, ignoring Chey’s jump and skipping a greeting entirely. He sat down, unsmiling, and crossed his arms. “You already knew I tried to shoot up my school. Practically the first thing anyone learns about me. So why did you ask?”
Chey took out his other earbud and tried to blink himself back to attentiveness.
“I mean...that wasn’t what happened to you. That was where you ended up,” he replied, raising and lowering one shoulder. “Something got you to that place. I’m sorry if it was an overstep to ask about though; I really wasn’t trying to interrogate you or anything.”
“What happened to you?” Kohao asked bluntly, ignoring Chey’s apology.
“...You already know, don’t you? Same thing as ‘Key. Heroin addiction, homelessness, prostitution. It’s not a pretty story but—”
“That was where you ended up,” Kohao interrupted, pointedly quoting Chey’s words back at him, “What about before that? ‘Key’s dad beat the shit out of him, that’s what put him on the streets, right? So. You have shitty parents too?”
Chey raised his eyebrows and sized Kohao up, weighing the merits of rewarding the rude tone with a response.
“...I mean, I guess so,” he eventually said, deciding to risk vulnerability for the sake of bonding; “I got put in foster care when I was three because both my bio parents were methheads. Staying with them might have been better, though.” He paused thoughtfully. “...My foster home was pretty hellish.”
“What happened?” Kohao asked. His piqued interest was apparent, and he leaned forward to prop his chin in his hand, his expression shrewd.
“What didn’t?” Chey could have rolled his eyes. “I’m warning you now: It’s ugly, K-O. It’s ugly and it’s long.”
Kohao blinked impassively. “I have time.”

“Yeah, well, let me know if you need a bathroom break,” Chey half-joked, shutting his laptop and putting it to the side, but he could hear the discomforted bitterness creeping into his own voice as he settled back into his seat. “It really is a lot. Because it built up over time, you know? I wasn’t there at the beginning-beginning, but apparently it started out normal. Attie and Toby said Nana used to have a husband—” Chey stopped. “...I’m already getting ahead of myself.” He shook his head and started again.
“Ok, cast: My foster mother, she told us to call her ‘Nana.’ So...that’s her. Eventually there were six of us kids in her care: Youngest was Landon, he was four years younger than me—then Jordie, me, Atla, and Alaska were spread across four years next to each other in the middle. Oldest was Toby—Tobias—he was fifteen when I ran off, so, four years older than me. A few times I straight up begged him to fight Nana because he was bigger than the rest of us. Stronger, too, she fed him more...But he couldn’t; he was too scared of her. I’m pretty sure she was...y’know. Touching him. Didn’t know at the time but looking back...I dunno. I hope I’m wrong,” Chey said, shrugging somewhat apologetically at Kohao’s curling lip before continuing. “Anyway though, getting ahead of myself again. We all lived with Nana in an old two-story house sorta out in the woods, near Poughkeepsie. I got put into Nana’s care when I was three, and Toby, Atla, and ‘Las were already there. Can you keep track of all that?” 
“Probably fuckin’ not, but I’ll interrupt you if I need to,” Kohao deadpanned, and Chey felt glad to have even a sardonic source for humor.

“Okay, good. So...Toby and Attie are the only ones who ever met Nana’s husband, but I guess he’s kind of important, because apparently he was normal.”
“Funnily enough, I’m coming to the conclusion that ‘Nana’ was really ab-fucking-normal,” Kohao drawled. Chey huffed some noise adjacent to a laugh.
“That’s because you’re a genius. But no, yeah...She...she was something else. Apparently she lost her son a couple years before she and Mr. Nana got Attie and Toby. Dunno what happened to the kid exactly—I think a car accident? He’d been in his 20’s—but photos of him were all over the house. Photos and wooden crosses. Nana was...extremely religious.” Chey found his gaze drawn to the inverted cross tattooed beside Kohao’s eye. “Always had been, clearly, but her husband had a stroke or something the year before I got there, and Atla and Toby said that’s when she really started to get delusional about it.”
Chey shifted uncomfortably; Kohao’s eyes were narrowed with some icy brand of interest that felt distinctly disquieting to feed into.

“That scar’s not from your time on the streets. It’s from that house,” Kohao said suddenly, startling Chey, who hadn’t realized he’d brought a hand to his neck. He grimaced some warped attempt at a wry smile.
“It is, yeah. We’ll get there, don’t worry.” He dropped his hand back to his lap. “After her husband died, Nana got obsessed with the idea that God was punishing her. Or maybe that the Devil was hunting her. Could’ve been both, doesn’t matter. She started out weird but just kind of strict, you know—like, normal child abuse,” Chey snorted hollowly. 
“She used to be a schoolteacher of some nature and did that whole schtick; hit us with a ruler for making dumb spelling mistakes or not paying attention or whatever. And tried real hard to make sure we had the Fear of God in us. That was the main thing: She had to make sure we were Godly. She had to make sure we were Godly.” Chey paused for a brief moment, pressing his tongue to his cheek.
“...It wasn’t just getting hit with a ruler forever. She got worse and it got worse. She started locking us in the basement at night in case the Devil possessed one of us to try and kill her. And then she’d stop giving us food or water for a few days if we were being ‘sinful.’ Disobedience is a sin, by the way, don’t know if you knew, and adding fractions wrong is disobedience, as it turns out.”
“Hm. She and my dad would agree on that at least,” Kohao said, curling his lip. “Go on, though.”
Chey wanted to laugh at the comment but couldn’t quite manage to.
“Yeah, well...Eventually she didn’t just worry about us being, like, sinful or corruptible. She really lost it and started thinking, like...we were already corrupted. She’d have these fits and start screaming about it. We were apparently ‘hiding places for the Devil;’ that’s what she told us. That Satan or his underlings would crawl into our mouths while we slept and force her to beat him out of us. Force her to hold us under the bathwater until we choked because she had to ‘wash the Devil out of our lungs.’”

Kohao’s curled lip had become a bitter, bared-teeth scowl with the progression of Chey’s story, and though Chey was no stranger to expressions of disgust, he felt glad that this particularly seething one seemed to be on his behalf. He twitched his eyebrows and offered an it-is-what-it-is sort of shrug.
“I know. I told you it was ugly.”
“How the fuck long were you living like that?” Kohao asked; “How did you even fucking survive that?”
“That’s the thing, right? I almost didn’t.” Chey tapped the friction scar at his neck with one finger. “I was eleven. It was...maybe November? So I’d just turned eleven a month before. And Nana was having one of her days.” Chey heard his own voice grow heavy, and he made tired eye contact with Kohao. 
“I’m telling you again: It’s ugly. It was bad before, this time it’s worse. Attempted-suicide worse. Is it gonna mess you up to hear about?”
“No.” Kohao shook his head without breaking eye-contact, and Chey breathed something deep and resigned, almost-but-not-quite a sigh; just a wordless, exhaled “here we go, I guess.”

“...Okay. Well...like I said, Nana was in a state. It was a Drowning Day. She’d kind of do us in shifts if she had to, like, if that day all of us were possessed or whatever she thought. Oldest to youngest: Toby, then the two girls, then the three of us kids. So...in the bathroom that afternoon it was me, Jordan, and Landon. Jordie and I had gotten to have our fucked up little baptisms and I’d just barely managed to catch my breath by the time she finished with J, and then it was Landon’s turn. I could’ve gone downstairs but I hated leaving the kids alone, so...I stayed. I don’t know—Landon was seven. He was a child. So was I, but...he was seven. He was the newest, too; he’d only been with us for a couple years. He still cried when she hit him, and like I said, he was little; he definitely couldn’t hold his breath as long as the rest of us.” Chey could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing up as he spoke, but the past didn’t seize him the way it once had and he continued:
“I don’t know if Nana forgot that he wouldn’t be able to go under as long or if she’d stopped caring, but she just...kept holding him down this time. Jordie cried out, something like ‘Nana, you’re killing him!’ and it kinda...I don’t know. He sounded so scared. It broke through my this-is-normal numbness and it’s a bit of a blur—but I grabbed Nana’s wrists and either I was stronger than I thought or the adrenaline was pumping hard as hell, but somehow I pulled her off and Landon out and shoved him behind me, to Jordie.” 
“...Jesus fucking Christ,” Kohao muttered towards the floor, having at some point dropped his intent gaze and leaned forward to better listen. Chey inclined his head and couldn’t suppress a rather hollow chuckle.
“Jesus wasn’t in that house. But I was, and even with enough therapy that I can talk about this without flashing back—the look in Nana’s eyes after I pulled that stunt? You’re welcome for not pissing myself right here on your couch. Whatever fear you wanted to see in the eyes of people looking down the barrel of your gun, Kohao? That’s what she must have seen in mine.”
Kohao glanced up but didn’t interrupt; unable to parse his expression, Chey just kept talking, tapping a finger to his leg.
“I think I told Jordan to get Landon out of there. He sorta scrambled out of the room and Nana was on me. There’s something almost poetic about watching someone rip a wooden crucifix off the wall in order to beat you with it, but I’m not a poet. It was a nice one, though; oak-carved cross with a little pewter Jesus on it. I’m lucky I didn’t lose any teeth to The Savior.” Chey glanced at Kohao, snorted, then ended up letting out something of a laugh: A bizarre mixture of hollow and genuine; half cover-up and half coping. He shook his head at Kohao’s raised eyebrows.
“Sorry,” he said, blinking a few times and feeling slightly more grounded, “Dark humor as a coping mechanism, I know you get it. Anyway—It was bad. When she was done with me she threw me down the basement stairs and my eyes were so bruised up and swollen, I could barely make out shapes. I just remember hearing Alaska say ‘holy shit’ and how painful it was to have her even lightly touch my face. I couldn’t eat for two days, it hurt so much to move my jaw. Attie thought it might be broken. I was finally able to see myself in the mirror that second day and I...I couldn’t even recognize myself. My face was all fucked up colors and swollen as hell, my right eye was filled with blood—like, the white of it.” He indicated with his pinkie. “Burst capillary. There were all these cuts on my face from Jesus’s sharp little metal body. I just kinda...severed from myself. The kid in the mirror was Kaspar. I wasn’t him.”

“So you decided to kill him?” Kohao asked. There was a strange quality to his tone; something reminiscent of respect. The intensity had returned to his gaze; Chey wished he would blink.
“...Not exactly,” Chey said, “I just kind of...Stopped thinking right. The shrink I saw later called it...disassociation? Or dissociation? Dis-something-ation. I felt distant from everything, you know? Half-numb. Nana left me alone for a bit, but...a few days after I got the shit beat out of me, Atla came downstairs, coughing, with her hair wet—and I was just kind of like, ‘It’s never going to stop, is it?’ Total hopelessness.” Chey turned his head to look out the balcony door over the city: The sun had continued to sink, tugging afternoon towards evening, brushing the skyline with gold.
“We—me and the other kids—basically lived in the basement by then. We definitely didn’t have internet access. Nana sometimes watched shows on a television that must’ve been fifteen years older than me, so maybe I’d seen a noose on TV there somewhere—or maybe there’s some sort of evolutionary killswitch where once shit gets bad enough, you unlock the knowledge that you can hang yourself. Whatever it was...I dug around the closets and stuff until I found some rope older than the fuckin’ TV. Didn’t know how to tie a real noose, so it was just a slip knot. I stole a chair from the kitchen while Nana was tutoring Toby, shut myself in the laundry room, and tied my rig to the ductwork.” Chey found his hand had crept, unbidden, up to his scar again.
“...I kicked the chair out from under me and I wasn’t heavy enough to snap my own neck—so if the rope had held and I’d died, it would’ve been...you know. Slow. Painful. Not that it didn’t hurt—” Chey turned back to Kohao and made a swift, slicing motion with his finger along his scar; “—when I dropped, the knot tightened and the rope cut into my neck here. Never knew rope burns could be third degree, but...yeah. I was probably only hanging for a split second but it felt like forever. The rope snapped, though. Like I said—it was old. I hit the floor and it would’ve knocked the breath out of my lungs if I’d had any in them...I remember laying on my back, neck hurting like hell, staring at the ceiling and feeling the hopelessness set back in. I think I stopped talking almost entirely after that; I was just...gone. It felt like I’d lost my one chance at ever getting out of that house.” Chey let his hand fall back to his lap.

“...But you did get out eventually,” Kohao said slowly.
“Yeah. A month or so after I tried to off myself, Alaska had finally had enough—she was always the least afraid. She was thirteen, the second oldest, and she tried to persuade the rest of us to run. We were all too scared, though; Jordie was afraid God would punish us if we did, I thought Nana would find us for sure and kill us or torture us or something. So...we all refused—fuck, I mean, Attie begged her not to go; she really thought Nana would drag ‘Las back and murder her in front of us. But Alaska was done. She climbed out one of those tiny basement windows and just...vanished into the night. Nana was pissed when she found out, of course, she interrogated all of us as if we might psychically know where Alaska went, but Nana never called the cops or reported her missing.” Chey shrugged one shoulder. 
“Maybe she was lucid enough to worry that ‘Las would go to the police and the last thing she wanted was to send the police to her. Or maybe she thought she was finally free of a demonic entity. I don’t know, but the more things change, the more they stay the same: Stuff kept getting worse for the rest of us after ‘Las ran off, and...after a couple months, I decided to take my own chances. I tried to get the others to come with me, but they were still too scared. Too paralyzed. So...they stayed. I left.” Chey found himself unable to hold eye contact and looked again out the balcony door, guilt chewing on the edges of his conscience.
“...I reconnected with Alaska by total chance a couple years back, but I have no idea where anyone else is. I hope they’re alright. ...I know one of Nana’s kids stabbed her to death in 2010, but the paper didn’t name names so...I don’t know who. Or if it was even someone I knew.”
“Stabbed her to death? Holy shit,” Kohao said, shaking his head with some air of stunned sympathy when Chey looked back at him. “I mean, it sounds like she fuckin’ deserved it. But holy shit.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Chey said, “So much as anyone deserves that, but...I don’t know. I ran off and never went to the police. Got employed at age eleven as a drug runner and then fell into everything else...Cops were the enemy, then. So.” Chey sighed and leaned into a much-needed stretch; spilling his story had left him stiff and tense. He glanced back up at Kohao and huffed a tired half-chuckle. 
“...That was probably a longer personal history than you really wanted, but I did warn you.”
“No, it’s fine. I asked,” Kohao said, shaking his head. “Besides, long and troubling life stories are kind of how we do things here.”
“...Do I get to learn yours yet, then?” Chey asked casually, trying to keep his tone light and the question pressureless. Kohao still recoiled; his shoulders tensed defensively and he narrowed his eyes to wary slits.


“...Mine isn’t as interesting,” he eventually said, his posture still guarded but slowly growing looser; “I don’t remember much of elementary or middle school anyway. Enough to be angry about, though. Nothing I could do was good enough for my dad. Never hit me or anything, but he yelled a lot. No love, all expectations that I could never fucking meet...I don’t know how my mom felt about me. Maybe she loved me; apparently she still tries to get in contact every so often.” 
“She tries—?” Chey started, tilting his head. His heart had lurched at Kohao’s dispassionate ‘maybe’ and he wanted to chase that ‘apparently,’ but a fuck-off flash of Kohao’s eyes abruptly silenced him.
“She has Seth’s number and he knows fucking better than to give her mine,” Kohao all but spat, the edge in his voice growing sharper; “As a kid she wasn’t there. Emotionally. Always withdrawn or disinterested or uncaring. Just let my dad yell, just let me yell back. If she managed to muster up a ‘What happened?’ when I came home from school with a black eye, she’d stopped paying attention by the time I replied. I eventually just stopped answering. Puked gutfuls of aspirin into the hall toilet in tenth grade while she was a room away. Nothing. I never mattered. I couldn’t matter. Ever.” Kohao dropped his gaze to the floor and clenched his jaw. One of his knees began bouncing.
“I’m so sorry,” Chey said softly. He wanted to reach out. He knew it would be unwelcome.

“Be sorry after I’m done,” Kohao replied harshly; “It wasn’t just at home. I guess there was something wrong with me because kids at school fuckin’ hated me too. Literally any aspect of me was fair game. I was quiet? Guess that means I’m a fucking freak. I had long hair back then, down to my shoulders—so I was a faggot or a tranny. I was kinda skinny, too, I guess, and that was apparently a problem. More homophobia, more transphobia. Then I was ugly because of my nose, I was a retard because I had ADHD and didn’t give a fuck about my grades… Whatever. ‘Loser.’ ‘Faggot.’ Tranny, retard, bitch-boy, emo...Sometimes they’d throw shit at me, sometimes they’d shove me, sometimes I’d get real lucky and the fists would come out. I didn’t know what it was like to have an actual friend until I was fourteen and I met Athena, but I sure as fuck was well acquainted with the sensation of being kicked in the ribs.”
“God, K-O, that’s awful,” Chey said, shaking his hair from his eyes and searching desperately for words of comfort; “That’s torture, you never should have had to—”
“Oh, it’s not over,” Kohao interrupted darkly; “I started cutting myself at twelve, which my dad called a phase and my mom either ignored or forgot about. The kids at school thought it was fuckin’ hilarious. From an outside perspective, my childhood nickname could’ve been ‘kill yourself, faggot’ what with how often that got thrown at me.” Kohao let out a sour, cutting kind of laugh. “Still working on it, guys. Anyway, Athena had a lapse in judgement or something and decided to befriend me. We started playing music together then, but high school was fucking Hell On Earth for us both. First person I ever fuckin’ trusted and I nearly watched her die of anorexia. That’s her story to tell, though. 
“For me—I got really into Columbine. Two bullied misfits set out on a revenge mission to blow up their fucking school and despite the relatively low body count, end up with the most iconic mass shooting of the twentieth century? Of course I read everything I could: Eric’s journal, Dylan’s diary, every book and internet article I could get my hands on. And I made a fuckin’ plan. There were other outcasts at school who didn’t treat me like a social poison and they’d buy addy off me. I got a pretty passable fake ID from one of ‘em and started going to a range. By the summer I turned sixteen, I set up a private sale through the internet and made it to a gun show where they did ‘em too. I started eleventh grade with a Glock 19, an Uzi, and a shotgun I sawed off past legality so it would fit into my backpack. I decided everything would be over the next time I got physically fucked with.” 

Chey felt increasingly torn, caught up in overwhelming sympathy for the abuse and neglect Kohao had suffered, but unsettled by the vindicated tone and the rage still flickering in his eyes; by the fact that he still told his story with a shadow of pride in his hollow smile:
“Two weeks into the school year, some asshole decides I’m prettier with a split lip and that was it. I told Athena not to come to school the next day. You know the rest: She told Seth, Seth talked me down, and I dropped out instead of blowing the heads off every fucker in my first period English class. Moved in with him and ‘Thena to spare my dad the dirty work of having to throw his disappointment of a son out of the house. Started singing.” Kohao sat up and raised his eyebrows, his mouth twitching briefly into some bitter imitation of a smirk. “Everything you hoped for?”
Chey sighed and glanced away, tongue tucked to his cheek, as he worked to piece together what he felt.
“...I wouldn’t hope for any of that,” he eventually said, meeting Kohao’s eyes again, “That’s too much to have to carry. For anyone. I knew you had to have been through some shit, K-O, to have...tried to do what you did. But…” Chey trailed off momentarily and shook his head.
“Kids deserve to feel loved. I see why you and ‘Key have such a connection, now. Your dad doesn’t need to hit you to hurt you. And...y’know, I used to resent the fact that I didn’t get a chance to go to school like a normal kid, but...What the fuck. Nobody protected you from everything that happened there? The teachers just…”
“Let it happen.” Kohao finished Chey’s sentence for him. “Yeah. They did.” 

There was a moment of silence that hung between them after that; a vulnerable quiet that felt to Chey like one at a wake. He swallowed hard and used the lull to light a candle in his mind’s eye, letting himself grieve both for the hurt child he’d been, who’d never gotten to go to school—and for Kohao’s younger self as well; who would have done anything to escape just that.
Anything.
Chey looked back up at Kohao and studied him for a long moment, wondering.
“...You really think you would have killed people?” he eventually asked, blinking tentatively as he broke the spell of silence. “If Athena hadn’t told Sethfire? If Seth hadn’t stopped you?” He knew the question was a risk but felt like he had to ask, had to hear whatever answer was given so that he could come to terms with it.
“I know I would have,” Kohao said sharply. “I don’t say it to fucking boast.” The second half of his sentence was devoid of the pride Chey had picked up on earlier, and the defiance he’d begun with had a chink in it somewhere; there was something else beneath it, something less hardened, accompanying a momentary flicker behind his guarded eyes.
“...Do you regret it?” Chey asked.

A shadow crossed Kohao’s face and his expression went stony, all vulnerability vanishing as his walls went back up.
“I don’t know,” he said, his tone abruptly flat. He got to his feet.
“No, please don’t go, Kohao, I’m not—I’m not trying to pass judgement or anything,” Chey said, his hands jumping instinctively forward as Kohao turned away, “I just wanna know you; to understand, as your friend—”
“We’re not friends, Chey,” Kohao said coldly, heading toward the hall without looking back.
“We will be, though; we know each other’s stories now. That’s not nothing. You know it’s not.”Kohao paused at the breakfast bar and silently looked over his shoulder to cast Chey an impassive glance.
“Sure.”
He turned past the kitchen and vanished, leaving Chey to stare sadly in his wake.