Two years earlier

«Why the fuck couldn’t you give birth to a normal kid, uh?»

Something crashes on the floor and Evan squeezes his eyes shut, bothered by the sudden noise. He hugs his arms around his waist in a useless attempt to protect himself from that man’s blind fury who has started to shout once again. His words are full of rage, delusion, resentment; someone like Mr. Doyle, someone who’s very skilled at finding the perfect business deal and success in everything he does, a failure is a hard blow to digest. Unacceptable. Above all if said failure is embodied by his own younger son, and happens right after they’ve all been assured he was going to get back to be perfectly normal in less than a blink of an eye.

The man shows the bunch of papers declaring the failure of the therapies on the floor and throws a hand in his pitch black hair, letting a lock get free and fall on his forehead. If only he wasn’t that angry, if only his eyes weren’t full of homicidal fury ready to burst any minute now, maybe Evan would be able to understand better why his mom fell irremediably in love with him. He would even be able to accept it. Instead, that bunch of frustration and rage forbids him to see beyond that superficial layer. It turns the man into a monster and, whilst Uriel keeps on going with that speech he’s having with himself as he’s the only one speaking in the room, Evan asks himself if maybe Yvonne isn’t just pretending to be happy by his side. Maybe because of him and his brother. Maybe because of Evan himself.

When it comes back to the present moment, Uriel raging irises are on him. There’s a little spark behind that emotion and Evan labels it as intimidation, because those eyes look like those of someone who’s holding a ticking bomb in their hands, sure they want to die but incapable of keeping their fear away in the spare, infinite, seconds that keeps them from the actual explosion. Evan feels like he’s the bomb Uriel is holding and he’s definitely about to explode. He just doesn’t know when or how much damage he’s going to cause.

«And you!» Uriel shouts. «Couldn’t you try a little harder?! Did you really need to go and cry on that moron’s shoulder that whatever he was doing with you wasn’t working at all?!» He throws his hands in the air, exhausted.

«Grow the hell up, for fuck’s sake! Grow. up. once and for all and leave all your imaginary fucking friends wherever they belong to—Which is not in this household!»

Evan would really scream back that it’s not his fault, that he never asked for it nor wished to be like that. It just happened and he couldn’t do anything to prevent it. One moment it was there, sitting on his armchair in a very posh practitioner’s office and refusing to answer any of the questions he was being asked, and the next he had his hands pressed on the mouth. Regret was showing on his face, horrified and sorry. The dread for the consequences of those words was making him shake head to toes.

“That moron” managed to perfectly work the magic. Evan tried to resist, he was sure he was going to keep it together and the shrink wouldn’t have had any other choice but to leave him be and classify him as a hopeless lost cause. But that doctor managed to grab the information he needed and for which he worked for endless months without Evan being able to acknowledge it until it was too late. It was also him that thought to interrupt the therapies since nothing they tried was working and Evan was growing tired and more scared as the weeks passed by without any results. The doctor had been extremely gentle and professional; he suggested to Uriel it was better to stop wasting his money for something that was obviously not suited for the patient and maybe it was about time to look for someone else that could try something different, something new and more specific. To look somewhere else, in a bigger city. Evan didn’t pay attention at all back then; he didn’t ask for any of this, he never wanted to be like that. He just wanted to be left alone, get back to being invisible.

He still doesn’t understand why Uriel keeps on blaming him for something that he didn’t choose. He doesn’t get why his parents’ hands are shaking like leaves left in the wind’s care, nor why their faces are scrunched up in fear and shame. He doesn’t understand why Eean had turned his back to him once again and left the room without a word.

Eean.

The only one to blame.

Evan thinks he would’ve been better off if he kept his mouth shut, like he’s doing in that exact moment. He should’ve kept it for himself, he should’ve kept on hiding and pretending to still be not mature enough, not yet an adult so people would’ve excused his imaginary friends and surreal stories. He shouldn’t have trusted Dr. Mason nor Eean. If he had payed more attention he wouldn’t be in that kitchen, trying to find a way to cope with that pathetic scene.

Looking at the floor helps to erase the deafening noise of Uriel’s voice. There’s something in the way the tile Evan is standing on, its being static, that fills him up with peace. Maybe it’s the pattern, the thin veining that grows into squiggles all lined up next to each other, playing with lights and shadows. Maybe it’s because the tile is a perfect square next to another perfect square next to another perfect square that looks exactly the same as the previous one and the following. Perhaps it’s just the mere knowledge that anything is definitely way more interesting than all that shouting.

But Evan keeps quiet both when his parents turn against each other in the heat of the moment and also when they turn to him, filling his ears with swearing and offensive names. It could be the medicines he took that morning before leaving the clinic; he’s pretty sure their effect didn’t wear out yet, or the fact that he really doesn’t have anything to say back. He’s not sorry. Not for them, at least. He keeps his head down and releases a little sigh; his cheeks are getting warmer and his eyes feel damp. The sense of being a failure is slowly filling him up and he feels so ashamed of himself right now. But he won’t cry. Evan doesn’t have any intentions of saying he’s sorry and he’s also determined to not show his weakness, not when the only thing he’s done was finally speak up and look for help so he could stop that damned loop—Which one specifically he yet has to understand. They won’t tell him.

He’s not hallucinating, though. He’s not crazy and whoever is trying to punish him it’s real. It isn’t any imaginary friend that didn’t disappear when it was supposed to.

Evan feels his hand itch, he feels the need to fix the bin that is not aligned with the tile. Evan feels the need to lean forward and move it with so much strength he would cause a massive noise that hopefully would stop his parents from screaming at each other, the whole world from turning.

Dr. Mason once told him Evan could be developing some sort of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder due to a faulty mechanism that kicks off in his mind in order to prevent an anxiety attack, making him feel like he’s in control of something, but besides that being a mere illusion, Evan knows better. It’s not any sort of compulsion nor obsession. After all he’s always been clean and organised, but never maniac about it and that’s when he started to doubt that Dr. Mason wasn’t able to understand and work on his problem at all. So Uriel is only partly wrong. That’s why the doctor, conscious of his resources not being enough for Evan, recommended someone else who was more prepared for this kind of issues. That’s also the reason why they’ll have to move on the other side of the continent so that they could lock him up for good.

If he would’ve been able to put himself in Uriel’s shoes and Uriel was putting himself in Evan’s, if Evan would’ve been a different person and not that freak he actually is, he would be furious too. He doesn’t blame his father, not completely, hence the silence and the blind acceptance of that rage.

When the man stops talking and puts himself together, Evan forces himself to lift his eyes on his figure. He tries to not stare at him like it’s a challenge but he finds it very hard. The way his father frowns it’s almost self-explanatory.

«I absolutely hope that this Joël will really be able to fix this… mistake,» Uriel declares, pointing the papers spread out on the floor with the tip of his feet.

Yvonne nods a little, totally agreeing with her husband. She puts a hand on her chest and adds: «Try your best, please. This is our last option.»

In which moment she got back to the ogre’s side Evan missed it for sure, but he imagines there’s something going on between the two of them that goes beyond the wedding rings they wear. It must be some weird magic or understanding that belongs to some other dimension where children are not allowed, so he decides to stop thinking about it. Evan ignores the sharp pain he feels hitting his chest – betrayal, if he really had to name it for someone, because Yvonne was trying to take his side up until a few moments ago – and he lets out a bitter laugh.

He never wanted to cause problem. He always tried to hide in his own bubble, keep this secret for himself, but then Eean came along and imposed his presence that felt somehow comforting in all the loneliness, so Evan let him stay. He gave him the key for the treasure chest where he hid his secret away for years and years – which one? He can’t really remember – and Eean betrayed him the same way as Yvonne just did.

Evan’s eyes are once again fixed on the tiles, following the same squiggles as before, until he catches a glimpse of clay that shattered on the floor. Those pieces were once part of a vase he made at school when he was younger. It was showing a picture he himself has poorly drawn of his parents and his brother when they were all happy. Now it lays on the floor, broken in million pieces, each and one of them full of the same shame Evan is feeling, now sad and not as careless as they looked at the beginning. They’ll be there all night and the next day Evan will find them in the trash; the bin will still not be aligned to the tile’s frame and a few hours later they’ll be dumped at the dumpster, forever forgotten as if they never had value. The same that’s going to happen to Evan once they’d locked him up in Joël’s facility.

“Ashes to ashes,” he thinks unintentionally, ironically. Evan would laugh again if only all the situation was actually hilarious. If only he had enough strength to do it. If only he wasn’t dying to disappear.