Stepping inside, Ghost feels the cold air through his mask.
Itās almost suffocating.Ā
He doesnāt want to be here right now,Ā
but he knows if he doesnāt find some closure,Ā
it will swallow him whole.Ā
āThis is what Price would have wantedā
āHe would want me to make peace with myself,ā Ghost mutters to himself.Ā
The first door he reaches, on the left,Ā
was his childhood bedroom,Ā
the nursery he grew out of.Ā
The one they never bothered to change.Ā
Not that it would have mattered.Ā
He never had a real childhood to begin with.Ā
Pausing at the door handle,Ā
Ghost takes a deep breath, feeling sweat trickle down his forehead.Ā
Pushing the door open, a rush of musty air fills his nose.Ā
Itās exactly the way he remembered.Ā
A mobile turns slowly above his crib
and a rocking chair that once held his mother
He stands there, absorbing every crevice in the room,Ā
allowing the memories to wash over him,
but they donāt feel warm.Ā
They feel like a sick joke
He hears his motherās voice, faint, distant, like a lullaby in a dream.Ā
But thatās not enough to drown out the venomous echoes of his father.Ā
He stumbles toward the bed.Ā
the metal joints rustle,Ā
the mattress sunken in the middleĀ
like it never stopped waiting for him.Ā
gloved fingers brushing the edge.Ā
This was where he cried himself to sleep,Ā
scoffing at the thought of being so weak,Ā
jaw locked so tight it aches.Ā
The mask clings to his skin like a second face,Ā
but it doesnāt protect him from this.Ā
The closet stares at him like a wound left open too long.Ā
Slowly drifting towards it,Ā
the floorboards creaking under his weight.Ā
still the same smell of fear and hopelessness.Ā
He crouches and peels back the corner of the floorboard,Ā
his hands remembering the motion,Ā
even if his mind doesnāt want to.Ā
Thatās where heād hidden it, his first gun.Ā
metal slick and trembling in his twelve year old hands,Ā
stolen, not for rebellion but for survival.Ā
tucked in the gap between the boards.Ā
Blonde. Matted. Tangled.Ā
Still crusted with dried blood,Ā
preserved through time out of spite.Ā
The stench hits him all at once,Ā
rotten ron and old sweat and pain that never healed right.Ā
His entire body burns with rage,Ā
every ounce of muscle in his body wants to peel from his bones.Ā
The world around him blurs,
and his thoughts become violent,Ā
Itās not just a room anymore,Ā
A siren blares in his mind that just wonāt shut off.Ā
Suddenly, heās not a man standing in a house,Ā
All control he had, is gone.Ā
He grabs the bed frame, flips it over,Ā
metal shrieking across the floor.Ā
He grabs the fake stars covering the ceiling,
and rips them off with such a force,Ā
shards raining to the floor
He punches holes in the walls,Ā
once, twice, the plaster giving away beneath the floor.Ā
He tears the closet door from its hinges,Ā
throws it across the room like it weighs nothing
his nails scraping at the wood,Ā
gouging, tearing at it with frantic desperation.Ā
anything to regain control.Ā
anything to make it stop.Ā
he doesnāt realize heās screaming until his throat is raw.Ā
And for the first time in years,Ā
itās not with an enemy,Ā
The child buried beneath the soldier.
The boy who still remembers the sting of the belt,
the heat of his fatherās breath,
the echoes of a mother who wasnāt all there.
Doesnāt know when the child became a man.
Heās a devil in a childās skin,
a monster whoās forgotten what it feels like to be small,
to be weak, to be afraid.
All he knows is the destruction.
he burning need to tear apart what has haunted him for so long.
the rage that makes him feel alive again,
like itās the only thing in this forsaken house that hasnāt abandoned him.
He rips through the room like a wild animal,
tearing down what he used to love,
spitting on what he once called home.
And for a second, in the smoke of his fury,
he can hear the laughter again.
But itās not the sound of happiness.
Itās the shrill, mocking laughter of ghosts,
of the father who never cared,
of the memories that poisoned everything he touched.
his little hands clutching the edge of the bed,
his heart a trembling thing,
and heās screaming for someone, anyone, to make it stop.
But thereās no one left to save him.
Only the man heās become.
but with the broken boy he used to be.
