Forever and Ever, Amen

Step. Stomp. Splash.

I'm going to die on this road. This is the only thought infecting the soft folds of my mind. It's an inchworm invading and nesting, this thought becoming a mantra. When and how did I lose my mind? In case you're wondering: by 'road', I don't mean a street, or avenue, or lane. Nothing with a discernable start and end, where one block ends another begins. No, by 'road', I mean this journey I've found myself beguiled into. Anything seemed better than my previous life, but now I'm not so sure.

I've been homeless for many years. Yes, that's me. A homeless man. I always found it interesting that my personal circumstance comes before my name, gender, identity. This is my identifier to anyone who cares. The homeless man. Not the man experiencing homelessness.

It started many years ago, I was sixteen. My parents were abusive, and that's putting it lightly. How do I even define it? What is the word for when you're so stripped down, so defeated, oppressed - not just physically but emotionally, mentally, spiritually? What is the word for when your most terrifying nightmares find it's way into reality? Is there a word for when your trauma can be seen like a necklace, your disfigurement proof that you were abused and defiled? Sure, you could wear a turtleneck, but what about when your trauma is also branded in your tongue, each word you shape like a victim evading capture, careful not to provoke the kind old woman who buys you lunch with one wrong word. What about when your trauma defines every sound and move you make? Is there really a word for this feeling, are there truly syllables that can shape around the sound of anguish? If there is, it's me. I define it.

My parents hurt me irrevocably. I have scars protruding from my chest, not so skin-like anymore, it more closely resembles carelessly applied plaster. They were part of a religious cult, and branding was a way to make penance; the number of times you were branded signified not just the sinful mistakes you made (like stealing an extra apple from the table, my personal favorite 'sin') but that you've somehow learned from them, the branding is supposed to signify the number of lessons you've incurred. All I learned was that I was a mistake, my family was a mistake, it was all wrong. And yes, I really did get branded for taking an apple. It was bright red and so big, and it looked beautiful. Not a blemish in sight. I wasn't even planning on eating it, I was planning on holding it against my chest at night, watching it overripe and decay, imagining that was the speed at which my heart was decaying, too. But the apple and me, our in sync decaying, was disrupted when my parents found the apple and gave me my first branding. They bit into the apple right in front of me, and somehow that hurt more than the burn. From then on, my decaying happened much faster.

One night, my feet did the thinking and planning for me. They moved independently of my own spirit - they had their own hopes and dreams and knew if they confided in me, I would say no, so one night I found myself getting out of bed, putting on my shoes, and walking silently out of the compound. It was the shoes that were the hardest step, so mechanical, so robotic were my motions, the laces felt elusive, like ribbons dancing in water, hard to tie down.

I hitchhiked past three states before I could breath. A true exhale, releasing more than just air. But I can't say it was much better out there. I stayed in cities mostly, and found myself drawn to Chicago. It felt like there was honesty in the air (albeit brute honesty), and even though I was now branded in a different way, with the identity of a homeless man, so were the rest of the population. The contrived, over-confident business man; the nose-in-the-air woman playing the role of walking Chanel Ad with a cloud of N5 behind her; the innocent child who sees my pain, sees behind the mask and asks the question no one does: why doesn't this man have a home?

To answer the boy's question, I had been told all my life I was worthless, so I didn't think to question these observations. I couldn't be the business man, hell, I couldn't even be a cashier. I had never operated technology - in the cult, technology of any kind was forbidden and sinful, as most manmade materials were considered. How would I operate the buttons at the till? So I resigned myself to being homeless, I was good at that, I never really felt like I had a home even when I lived in one.

The cities are exhausting. I had been in Chicago for eight years and I needed a break from the stigma, the labels, the begging. I decided to return to what I knew best: the land. I hiked until I reached forest, somewhere in northern Illinois. I learned to catch rabbits, squirrels, an occasional deer. I was good at making traps and starting fires; if an apocalypse happened I would no longer be known as 'homeless man', I would be 'hero man'. I knew which berries were safe and which were poisonous, and if I was really starving, I knew which of the poisonous weren't fatal.

It's been five months of living off the land, and now it's late fall. But I just can't be exposed the environment anymore, my body is too weak; there's not enough fat to insulate me from the outside world. So now, I'm doing something I promised I never would: borrowing people's farms for the night. I'll hitchhike down the road, and when I find an empty stable, a barn, anything, and I make a bed of hay and pile some on top of my body to disguise myself. I've had a couple close calls, last night some farmer chased me down the street with a rake. People aren't much nicer here than the city, they don't want to see or smell someone that reeks of failure. If my own parents didn't like me enough not to hurt me, why would they?

Tonight's been different, though. I walked up to this beautiful ranch, and there was a basket at the end of the road with some fruit in it. A message was on the basket that read, 'travelers, please enjoy'. The kind message was so foreign, I didn't know how to process it... Me? Take? I took a couple apples and after shifting from foot to foot in contemplation, I decided to walk up the path, staying close to the bushes for cover. I found a smaller, empty barn, looking older than the rest somewhat near the end of the property and let myself inside. No lock picking for me. For once, everything felt... Safe.

I did my usual routine of layering hay on my body and now I'm here, lying in the barn. There's a hole in the roof and I can see a sliver of moon. It's twilight, my favorite time of day. The moon is a half circ- hold on, I hear something.

Chhhhk.

I need to stand up, I just heard something mechanical, like metal on metal. What's going on? I didn't see any cars or trucks along the driveway, I assumed no one was home right n-

Ch CH CH.

"...Hello?" Shoot, that was stupid, I shouldn't have said anything.

"Hello. Welcome b-"

Who is this? I recognize the voice. Is this the angry man from last night, here to exact revenge? I didn't think he owned multiple farms in the area. Wait...

No...

NO. I need to get out of here RIGHT now. I'm running to the door, no... Oh my god. Oops. I meant oh my goodness. Oh crap the brainwashing is already coming back. And the door is locked. It's LOCKED!

"Sweetie, is that you? That's you, isn't it?" I hear from outside the locked door. "God brought us back together again. This is meant to be. You're home now, you're safe. Momma's here."

"You are...not...a...mo..." My mouth feels too elastic. My tongue feels like wet cement. I feel my limbs growing - no wait, I'm just getting closer to the ground. No, I'm falling.

"I think it's kicking in. Must mean he took some?" I hear a man's voice say. The voice is too velvet for the memories that accompany them. My father.

"Oh, you know our Brad. He always loved apples." I can hear the smile on her mouth. "Remember the first time we branded him after he took that apple? He's really our true example of sin, straight from the Bible, eating the forbidden fruit. Ha."

I close my eyes to complete blackness as I hear the lock open. I feel feet shuffle closer to me. "Yep, that's our boy. He's grown so much. Get the others. Oh, and get the brander."