The Star Of Depravity - Chapter 3

The dark ball bounced a few meters away from where Ervin is standing.

He didn’t find it interesting, but nevertheless, he still played with it. It’s the only toy he ever owned besides making paper airplanes and boats.

He kicked the ball one more time, and it curved, hitting the scaly, vast bark that couldn’t be measured by his elongated arms.

He used to envy the children outside their apartment who played without a care in the world. They’re friends he longed to have. Now, Ervin realized it wasn’t as fun as he imagined it to be, and that friends can be the very reason you’d find your life in a garbage bin.

Ervin tilted his head upward to have an approximation of the tree’s stature.

The large tree stretches further into the purple sky, almost reaching the nimbus clouds. Its roots were serpents concealed in the fertile soil. The serrate-shaped cluster of its autumnal leaves sat overhead, and it fell like rainfall when the wind blows a gentle breeze.

Ervin finds it strange because he hadn’t noticed it earlier, despite its size.

Then, the ball began moving on its own. It dribbled a few times before it bounced back and hit him on one arm.

He was motionless, and it didn’t hurt at all. Then, he heard the voice of the dark presence that whispered to him like death; a slither of shiver coursed through his spine. It crackled a laugh as he began roaming his head, as if to remind him that it was around, watching him with malice. The thought made him a frantic man.

Out of the blue, memories he never wanted to resurface emerged from the back of his mind. He was pried open for anyone to see like a recording tape hauled to its final end, and he unwillingly scanned through it like he’d undid an external drive.

He didn’t like the idea of dwelling in the past. He cursed as the pull won over him even if he was so reluctant to dive into his sea of recollections. He saw himself as if he was looking inside a kaleidoscope.

He found himself watching through it in his mind’s screen.

* * *

The nine-year-old Ervin sat on the unvarnished wooden floor on their newly-rented apartment.

As a child, all he ever thought of was to make friends and play the entire afternoon basking in the sun’s heat. That is if he gets to finish the math drills that his father asked him to solve. Ervin let out a quiet sigh, careful enough so that his mother wouldn’t notice.

He wiped the sweat over his forehead with the use of his t-shirt’s sleeve. Ervin always wore that shabby, green shirt he had ever since he was three years old. The size didn’t fit him well before as a babe, but now, it’s almost like a second skin. A hole protruded at the sides lining the stitches, and the threadbare was beginning to thin down.

He didn’t particularly hate it, but he wished they’d at least buy him another shirt to wear when he’s at home.

The ticking of the clock above the kitchen’s arc distracted him. He glanced on the chipped, white paint on the wall. It revealed the hidden layer of smoothened, gray cement underneath it.

Most of the time, Ervin is bothered by how it looks, so he’d secretly gouge the paint himself when his parents aren’t around.

Their apartment lacks a lot, but the landlord cautioned them already that he sold the room for a much lower price due to the occurrence of flooding around the neighborhood.

His father didn’t complain. He told them that it was better than being kicked out continuously for not being able to pay their rent on time.

The clock’s ticking hand had Ervin continue listening to it until he no longer realized that it’s already three in the afternoon. People in the neighborhood are either playing or lethargic in their bed foams.

Ervin didn’t mean to doze-off.

As if Ervin’s mother had a radar that sensed him when he’s lazing around, she lifted her head and tore her gaze away inside the bowl filled with rice. She swiftly caught Ervin staring blankly at the clock above her.

Her face altered into distaste. It became a vicious viper as the lines on her mouth deepened into a disappointed frown.

“Study,” it was a one-word command like she was the general on a battlefield.

Ervin took in the features of her mother at that time: her ebony hair was tied in a messy bun, and the lines on her deep-set eyes dug out when her almost golden irises narrowed down on him. She looked more tired, though her face never seemed to age. And so did her will to attain the life she assumed she’d have.

“Study like your world depended on it.”

For the nine-year-old Ervin, her mother’s image and words were somewhat presented to him as intimidating, cold, and insensible. He quivered a little and attempted to glue his eyes on the equation he’d been trying to solve earlier.

The young Ervin only knew how to nod; his solemn expression reflected on his mother’s striking eyes.

On the other hand, the adult Ervin was immobile as he watched from afar. He knew deep down that at that time; he craved experiencing the joys of being a child.

His mother continued what she was doing. Turning her back at him, she sat a few meters away from where he was.

Ervin knew even from behind that she was watching him like how a hawk guards its prey. That made him more cautious about his future actions.

His mother regained her focus on cleaning the rice that got infested with grain beetles. They happen to buy it for a lower price when they went out to the market downtown. The lady seller had been honest enough to tell them that the rice had been stored in an unhygienic place and hadn’t been selling well these days.

Ervin never saw his mother complain. After all, it wasn’t mainly a country that can’t live with rice in their dinner tables.

The light twitched from the constant heavy footsteps above them. The frail, four walls that make up the room trembled as if a giant had walked by.

Ervin heard the clicking of his mother’s tongue before she gently placed the rice bowl and got up to where the broom and dustpan were placed. Then, she slammed the broom’s handle on the ceiling. Vulgar words incapable of description slipped out of her slick mouth that frequent an upturned end.

The footsteps halted, and they were soon at peace.

With her apparent reaction, Ervin assumed she wasn’t fond of whoever was living upstairs.

The laughter of children resounded from the screened window filled with interlaced spider webs and dust.

Ervin needed to hurry, or else he wouldn’t be able to make friends again. It took him all the control he mustered to not turn his head and have a good peak, wondering what games they’ve agreed to play.

But then he heard his father’s voice, and there was the thing that young Ervin needs to do well in school.

Panicking, his gaze focused intently on the textbook his father bought the other day.

He was strictly instructed that it was to be answered within a week’s notice. His father had specifically forbidden him to go outside, not unless he sacrifices two hours of playing in solving at least five pages of mathematical drills in the textbook he gave him.

“You need to get us out of this rathole,” said his father when he arrived home, his toolbox was thrown down on the floorboard, making her mother shriek. She was always this jumpy whenever his father comes back late.

His slanting eyes lingered on young Ervin’s confused face, “Understand?”

He caught his mother leaning on the kitchen wall, her regard burning him a promise he’d have a taste of spanking when he didn’t answer well.

Ervin, the good son, again, only knows how to nod. The bile rose to his throat as he suppressed the need to ask if they’d let him play when he does well in school.

Adult Ervin knew it was a threat—perhaps a reminder that he owed them his life and that they’re entitled to choose what he would be in the future.

Yet, at a young age, Ervin wondered if he had a choice in being born to this world. If none, that means he owed them nothing at all. It was their sole responsibility, as the people who brought him to this world, to care for his well-being.

Though, back then, he thought of studying as some form of compensation for the affections they rarely gave him.

Ervin focused on the equation, the children’s boisterous laughter equating to the numbers he’d add.

A terrible feeling traveled inside his chest. Tears blurred his vision, and the horrible ache made his heart pound. He wants to play—he wants to go out and run with them, scrape his knee with them, build mud castles with them—

His mother shifted as she noticed the apparent longing in his eyes.

Craning an angle, she asked, “You want to play?” her voice casual, the answer evident in Ervin’s distraught expression.

Again, all he ever knew was to nod.

With her unkind, blank face, the eyes he inherited from her leveled him a stare, “Then, study. Make sure everything’s…correct.”

Since then, he made sure to attain the Ervin his parents wanted him to be.

Stop-over’s done, said that familiar dark voice that drove him to despair.

His world shattered like a mirror, and he saw himself standing in a dark space, his memories floating in the air like broken, colorful shards.

* * *

Ervin opened his eyes.

It felt like he’d been awoken from a nightmare.

Darkness surrounded his vision, and for a second, he wondered what was happening.

Am I dead? 

There was a stillness that claimed his senses as if he was floating in cloud nine.

He pondered for a minute if he would feel any pain in his body, but he didn’t. He noticed he still wore the same clothes when he went out to the convenience store. His gaze glided on his palms, turning them over, then closing and opening them several times.

I’m numb, he thought, maybe it’s because I’m already…?

The idea rang alarmingly in his chest. Where was he? What was going on?

The voice—it’s gone. 

Relief washed over him as he released a hefty sigh.

“Thank god…” he mumbled to himself.

It was eerily quiet. Ervin didn’t hear laughter nor voices that whispered about his demise.

Ervin reveled in the idea that he wouldn’t have to hear its sinister remarks again. With that, he assumed he had finally left the world of the living.

Slowly, Ervin stood, the relief occupying his mind once again.

Groaning as if he had been awakened from a deep sleep, he stretched his hands in the air.

Finally, finally, finally, …death had claimed him. He had never wanted it more than he did when he was still alive.

A red laser beamed brightly as it scanned through his entire body.

Ervin shielded his eyes through extending his palms toward its direction.

“What…?”