Chapter Text
Survival without a witness is another kind of death.
This is something that Michael Robinavitch learns the moment the car leaves him behind.
The Whitaker farm looms ahead of him, not announcing itself and yet suffocating in its presence. There was no gate, no sign, and no neighbors. There had just been a long stretch of gravel that had ended abruptly, as if the road itself had lost interest. Or maybe it knew what lay ahead of it, and this was its own form of retreat.
His mother doesn't look at him when she tells him to get out. His stepfather keeps the engine running too loud, the radio cranked as if noise might drown out whatever remains unsaid. The house squats in the distance, weathered and patient, its paint faded to the color of bone. Nothing moves around it. No dogs. No people. Only the wind, which has nowhere to go and knows it.
Michael slides from the truck with a confused whimper, standing with his bag in his hand. The dust settled around his shoes, and he waited for something to happen — some explanation, some instruction, some proof that this is temporary.
The car door slams. The engine revs. Gravel spits beneath the tires.
The sound fades faster than he expects. The silence that replaces it is not only quiet. It is the type of silence that presses. It fills his ears, as if his head were underwater. It crawls under his skin, as if infested with something he would never be cured of. There was no one — there was nothing close enough to hear how his breaths came out ragged, frightened.
But the house watches him. He imagines it had been waiting.
He knew what had led to this, the memories sinking in his brain like a body thrown into a river. They sink and sink until they disappear and succumb under the pressure of Michael's grief. He fought for it all to be forgotten, but they are only left to fester and rot in the darkness, just out of reach.
Until they float back to the surface.
Michael's body feels heavy as the door to the looming house is opened, and a man steps onto the porch with a scowl. He is older, with white hair and a long beard that curls at the end. He is stocky, tall, but not giant. But his presence was enough for a sense of dread to lurch up his throat, choking him as the man scrutinized him.
This was Mr. Whitaker. He didn't introduce himself; there was no need.
He looked at Michael with a distaste so apparent that he wondered why he didn't just slam the door in his face. His face is traced with wrinkles, the skin pulled taut against a perpetual frown and turnt up nose. His eyes cause the black-and-blue bruises that littered Michael's skin to ache, the stitches at his brow to pucker and burn. He feels the judgement before it even has a chance to be verbalized, could feel it in the air like a rain shower in the dead of summer. It was humid and scorching across his battered skin, telling him exactly what this family would think of him without them even having to open their mouths.
"You'll come inside." He says, and Michael knows that there was no room for discussion, no reason to speak at all. The man spoke the same way the house did: absolutely. He was no guest in this space; he was a project to be fixed or to be broken down into pieces for scrap. This house, this man would swallow the boy and spit him out, all bones, his flesh picked clean. "Leave the bag." Michael gripped the handle tighter, back aching with tension as the man turned in the threshold, snapping into the darkness of the house. "Boy. Get the bag and take it to the room." The man barked, and the house obeyed.
From the threshold came a boy, retched from the darkness like a sickness being starved out. He was young, though not much younger than Michael, and was dressed plainly. He flinched as he moved around his father, the movement almost impossible to notice if it wasn't for Michael's attention being in overdrive as he took in his surroundings, plotting his escape despite knowing there wouldn't be one. The boy's slow movement drew a scoff from the older man's lips as he took his firm, calloused hand and pushed the boy to the edge of the porch.
He steps off the wood step quickly, steps now hurried and yet his entire body seemingly screaming to retreat. To escape back into the house where he could fade into the wallpaper like a ghost in mist. The only sounds that came from him were the ragged breath sounds of a boy who was just as frightened as he was, and the gravel crunching beneath his worn, dirty shoes.
He stops in front of Michael, not looking at him but not turning away either. He doesn't reach for the bag, doesn't even make a move to extend his hand. The older boy simply looked at him for a moment, furrowing his brows in thought. He was pale, far paler than a farm boy should be. He was as bone-white as the house, dull and caving in on himself, too. He wore a blue-striped button down and jeans, though both garments were riddled with tiny moth-bitten holes and wrinkles, ill-fitting on his small, thin frame. He was taller than he had originally appeared, his back going straight as he finally allowed his eyes to flicker up to look at Michael through his long, dark lashes.
Michael, despite the circumstances and despite wanting desperately to fold in on himself and stay hidden, felt the corners of his lips quirking into a soft, sad smile. He finally released the death grip he had on his bag, allowing it to dangle as he extended it towards the younger boy."Hello," He said, his voice hoarse from the suffocating air and fear lodged in his throat. He spoke softly, lips barely moving, looking at the boy like he was afraid he'd keel over. He took Michael's bag, jolting as his fingers grazed the older boy's, stumbling away and back up to the porch where his father no longer waited. There was no real need to ensure he followed, as they both knew there was nowhere he could go that held any promise.
The boy entered the house, shuffling through the door before stopping briefly, waiting for Michael to catch up before he jerked his head toward the wooden staircase. The two ascended the stairs slowly, like a death march as they walked down the hall, its walls encased with crosses and black-and-white photos of people who no longer lived.
There was only one open door in the hall; the rest closed tightly as if they existed outside of Michael's knowledge. He gulped as he walked through the threshold and felt the air die in his throat. It was lifeless, with no ounce of any color or joy. There was a bed, a wrought iron frame, and other simple, wooden bedroom furnishings. Michael scowled as his eyes caught on the cross that hung above the bed, mocking and laughing at him as he sat on the bed.
The boy placed his bag beside his frame, taking care to fold the long strap so it sat neatly on top of the zipper. Michael caught his eye once more, this time entirely by accident, telling by the way the boy immediately dropped his gaze to his shoes.
"What is your name?" Michael asked, his voice a whisper despite no one else being in the room. It was as if the house itself had prying eyes, watching him and reporting back to its master.
"Dennis," he said simply, already stepping away as if to escape from the conversation. Michael nodded, offering his own name softly, eyes tired. The boy simply stared back, showing no sign that he had heard him. The older boy sighed, turning to face the single-paned window that looked out on nothing by flat, bare land. It was too early for planting, he surmised, not that he knew what they planted nor cared.
Michael opened his mouth to ask the boy another question, like where the bathroom was or what he was to do now, only for the words to die on his tongue as he caught the tail-end of Dennis' retreating form.
Another form of abandonment was added to the pile.
_____
Michael wakes with a startle, body jolting from the hard, lumpy mattress with a groan. It was just becoming dusk, the sun dropping lower and lower in the sky. It bathed the room in a sort of glow that did not seem fitting for a house such as this one. Too warm, too beautiful.
Dennis stood before him, hand still outstretched, trembling. He dropped it when he processed that the older boy was awake, looking at him with eyes like storm clouds. So many emotions swirled in them, shifting and lapping against the shore of his lashes like the moon does the tide. Neither of them speaks for a moment, just staring with an intensity that felt foreign. Dennis dropped his eyes first, chest heaving as his tongue darted out to wet his chapped, pink lips.
"Ma told me to get you. Dinner is ready, and we all must come to the table." Dennis spoke with a finality that uneases him. With a finality that caused a simmering of irritation to bubble in Michael's chest. There was a part of him that wanted to decline, to roll over and sink back into the dreamless, dense sleep he had been held captive to ever since grief had taken hold of him. A part of him wanted to resist, to hold out against the people who took him in like a sick mutt. Not out of kindness, not out of Christian compassion. But of judgment, holding firm and fast to their weekly sermon, their call to battle to save the sinners before they infested the water, before they spread their madness in the air. Michael hated it here, and he scowled at Dennis before he could think about it.
"Do you always obey their commands?" Michael bites out, his voice hard and teeth grinding. He made no move to get up from the bed, just staring at the weak, trembling boy through lidded eyes. Dennis' mouth dropped open in confusion, in something like hurt.
"No," Was all Dennis said, his voice treading on a whisper. He pulled his thumb to his mouth, teeth scraping against the already red, raw skin there. "It's just... You should eat while you are here. All of God's children deserve to be replenished through his bounty." He spoke like he was on a pulpit, reading off a folded piece of paper. There was a tremor in his voice that made Michael's eyes clench shut, irritability gnawing at him like a dog does a bone.
"Bounty of maggots and decay," Michael muttered, though from the gasp that tumbled from Dennis' lips, he knew the younger boy had heard. Michael wondered if he ever questioned the things he said, if it ever felt heavy on his shoulders like it did for him. He only held onto his faith, much to his stepfather's disgust, because of that weight. His grandmother — his bubbe, as he called her — was ever present behind him, steady hands on his shoulders as she encouraged him to question and search for answers in the Divine. Faith is personal, Micky; it is the soul reaching for comfort when things get hard.
"Just... I will set you a plate out." Dennis gave up, shoulders pulled taut as if the room itself pressed down on him, his discomfort so very evident as he blinked slowly. He backed out of the room like he was nervous if he turned him back to the older boy, he would jump him like a rabid dog. Maybe he would have, if Michael had had the energy to get up from the bed.
Distantly, he could hear the sound of praying, of knives and forks scraping against fine china. He could hear Mr. Whitaker's deep, authoritative voice, talking about the harvest and scripture. Michael wonders if Mr. Whitaker knew of his hypocrisy, if Dennis knew that there was a world outside of the never-ending fields that surrounded them. Michael had only been within the land for a matter of hours, and yet it had taken hold of him in a way that frightened him. A liminal space, he recalled the term from a book he had read once. It was too empty, too heavy despite the emptiness. Michael wondered what resided behind the floorboards, within the shadows that weighed it all down.
Eventually, the voices dwindled, replaced instead with the clinking of plates as they were taken toward the rushing of water. A TV was turned on, the chatter of the newscaster breaking through the domestic sound. He wondered if it was just Mrs. Whitaker in the kitchen, scrubbing the plates and wiping the table. He thought back to dinners at his bubbe's small Pittsburgh brownstone, at how dinner was a mutual affair, the labor shared between her, her children, and her children's children. He remembered scrapping the food into the trash, skirting around his cousins as they put away hand-dried cups and folded freshly washed cloth napkins.
The chatter never died, not as it did here.
Minutes stretched into hours, and Michael's body shook with quiet sobs. He clasped his hand over his mouth as the bed beneath him groaned as he tossed and turned.
He wondered by his mother didn't grieve the loss they had suffered as he did. She never cried, never gave any impression that she even registered the loss. She just sipped from her coffee mug that never smelled like coffee, eyes glazed over and mouth pulled into a permanent frown. He had inherited more from his mother than he cared to admit, his own frown stretching his skin like a too-small hand-me-down. It hadn't been that way once, when he was little and still felt hope, still believed in the inherent goodness of people.
Now, he knew that the only person one could trust unequivocally was oneself.
The Whitaker house slipped into a state of rest, but it never lost their watchful gaze. The room was bathed in darkness, but Michael could have sworn he saw eyes, hidden in the sun-bleached design of the wallpaper and the woodgrain of the floors.
Michael's stomach groaned with hunger, his stomach a shriveled raisin in his body.
At times, he wondered what made up a person, inside of their skin. What squishy, wetness he would find if he pulled back his skin like pages in a book. He wondered what organs looked like, how a heart looked as it pumped a person's lifeblood throughout their body. He wasn't an idiot; he had paid attention in his high school health class. He had watched as his cousins fell from their bikes — warm, oozing blood covering tanned skin; he had watched his childhood cat give birth to a litter of kittens, lapping at the blood until there was nothing left by meows and tears in his eyes.
He supposed he found it fascinating: a person's body. He often found it difficult to look away from people on the street. He liked to look at the expanses of flesh, at the stretch of skin dotted with freckles and wrinkles. He watched the movement of their limbs, taking in their gaits and the elastic joints that kept them moving. He liked how warm people were, how he could feel it through his own skin, his own blood. He liked to picture the blood as it coursed through their bodies, producing heat and life. He supposed the two were the same, in a way. Coldness starved life, as frost did to his bubbe's large kitchen garden, killing the remaining harvest she hadn't gotten around to plucking before her heart gave out.
He was starving.
He pushed himself to his feet with a sigh, rubbing soft, shaky hands down the length of his face. His fingers trailed over the stubble of his facial hair, splotchy and new. He could feel the rise and fall of acne scars and new ones coming to take their place. He left the room, leaving behind the eyes and the heaviness that had settled on his chest. But as he walked down the stairs and into the kitchen, those eyes and that denseness once again found him. He felt himself falter as he stared at the shaking back of Dennis Whitaker, the very person he had snapped at over not wanting to eat their food. And yet here he was, coming to beg for scraps. He waited for Dennis to notice him, to turn from the sink where he scrubbed the dinnerware. But the boy hadn't seemed to register the intrusion, or feel the older boy's eyes on him.
Michael supposed he was used to the eyes. Used to feeling them crawl over his skin.
"You said you'd set me out a plate," Michael muttered, voice heavy with an emotion Michael hated more than anything. Regret.
Dennis jumped nearly out of his skin, the plate he had been holding falling from his grasp. It crashed to the floor without ceremony, shattering into pieces as a simple, soft curse word fell from the boy's lips. He dropped to his knees as Michael pressed forward, an apology dying on his lips, choking him as he bent down to pick up the pieces.
Michael furrowed his brows when he noticed just how fiercely Dennis shook, at how he kept dropping the pieces further because he couldn't grasp them tight enough. It was horrifying, almost, to witness such unbelievable, unmasked fear in someone over something as simple as a broken plate.
"I got it, I got it!" Michael did not mean to snap, did not mean to make things worse. Dennis scurried away like a frightened animal, leaving the other boy to pick up the few remaining pieces. Really, it wasn't too bad. The pieces were large, and if he had been in that brownstone he tried so often not to think about, he would have felt warm hands cover his own with the promise to glue it back together. Because that was how his family dealt with such a simple mistake. They fixed it, and they moved on. No one shook with such fear, no one cried big, fat tears.
Michael watched as Dennis retrieved another plate from inside the oven, busying himself as if that would keep him from noticing how badly his shoulders shook. He placed the broken pieces on the small dining table off the kitchen, spreading them out in a single layer as he assessed the damage. With quick, nimble hands, he placed the pieces back together. Not unlike the puzzles he would do with his zeyde while his grandmother floated around humming and filling their plates until she would carry him to bed and pat his full stomach with a smile.
"There, it just needs to be glued," Michael said simply, leaning back against the back of the chair just as Dennis came out of the kitchen, placing the plate full of food in front of him. He followed suit with a glass of water, and Michael couldn't help but wonder if it was one of the glasses he had just washed. He left for a moment, only to return again with a bottle of glue. "Thank you." He said after a moment, pursing his lips as he began to eat. Dennis took a shaky seat across from him, folding his hands, his eyes never straying from the wooden table.
Neither of them talked for a long while, the discomfort spreading thick across the table. Dennis kept sniffling, and Michael kept fiddling with the shards of the plate. He finished the roasted chicken a vegetables quickly, hungrier than he had even realized. He felt his body gain back some of that strength the day had leeched from it, growing regretful now.
"I shouldn't have talked to you that way," Michael muttered, hating how his voice shook slightly. He hated himself sometimes, at how angry and hateful he could get. He knew it stemmed from a place of overwhelm, of emotional ineptitude that Michael never wanted to delve into. But still, he hated how he took it out on the people around him. Dennis wasn't the one who had trapped him here; he wasn't the one who had abandoned him with scathing words to repent. "Earlier, when you came to me for dinner. Just now, when I made you break the plate."
"I broke the plate." Dennis took the blame like a blanket. Michael wondered how many layers he wore, how suffocating it felt.
Michael leveled a heavy, disarming look at the younger boy, a deep frown on his lips. He made no move to further lighten the boy's load, to apologize when he knew it would just roll off his back. Instead he got to work with fixing the plate.
Another long stretch of silence filled the room, the only sounds coming from their breathing and the blinking lashes of the eyes in the walls.
Once, Dennis made a move to grab his plate and glass, a routine hard set in. Michael grunted, pushing his hand away as he stopped in the middle of gluing, pushing himself to his feet, and collecting his own dinnerware. He disappeared into the kitchen to wash it himself.
He returned a few moments later, finishing up the plate easily. He gave a contented sigh, nodding towards it as if he were proud of how seamless it looked. By no means would it fool the Whitakers, but it was usable; it was fixed.
Slowly, Dennis and Michael began the ascent back up the stairs. The former came to a stop earlier than the older boy, standing in the room just before Michael's. He watched silently as Michael pushed open the door to the room, trying to catch his eye against his better judgment. Michael could see it from the corner of his eye, could see how the boy's Adam's Apple bobbed like he was swallowing words like bile.
Instead of staying, instead of extending an olive branch, Michael Robinavitch pressed forward into the bedroom, closing the door with a soft click.
He really did hate himself sometimes.
——-
That next morning, as Michael trudged back down the stairs, hating how he already felt the beginning twinges of routine settle in his bones, he nearly bumped into the boy. He was coming in from the porch, back from his early morning chores, no doubt.
Michael beckoned him forward, not wanting to lead the way into what he knew was going to be an awkward, uncomfortable meal. Dennis nodded his thanks — as if it was something he should feel thankful for — and trudged into the dining room for breakfast.
As he went, Michael's eyes lingered on the nape of the younger man's neck, at the strip of skin that was visible above the collar of his shirt. There, plain as day and as obvious as storm clouds, was a stark, red handprint. Blistered and wilted, fresh and radiating with a sort of heat that made Michael's skin crawl.
Michael felt bile rise in his throat, like the walk into the dining room was a death march. He remembered the way Dennis' hands shook the night before, and how Michael had snapped at him. He thought back to how apologies and comforting words had died in his throat, swallowed down like hard pills to settle in his soul. But now, bearing witness to a different level of pain, all Michael wanted to do was to go back and say those words, to tell him that honest mistakes did not justify such cruelty. That nothing he did could justify such actions from a grown man meant to love him. That he didn't know.
He was a hypocrite.
He really hated himself sometimes.