A boy lie nude, in the apparent end of days. A trailer sitting on cement blocks in the open, high-grassed field surrounded by dense woods. It felt like the middle of nowhere - yet, confusingly, just a mere football field's length away was his aunt and uncle's quaint, nicer home. His uncle a budding engineer.
A few hours later from now, the boy's father would be arriving home - returning from his new entry level position at one of America's largest insurance companies located 30 minutes away in the big city.
The boy's brother, as per usual, would pick on him in every way that he could. Their broke father would cook a few of the cheapest hot dogs and canned sides and let his sons eat. The brother telling the boy repeatedly, "hot dogs are made of worm guts", just until the boy finally refused to finish eating.
The boy's aunt and uncle, too, had a son. He was a few years younger than the boy - while the boy's brother, at 7 years older, was almost a teenager. Naturally, the cousins would sometimes spend time together.
The boy hated his brother for everything he did to him. Their cousin would laugh at the jokes of the older brother, leaving him feeling left out.
Days before, the father came home - this time with the boy. They walked into the trailer just like any day before. The older brother caught red-handed watching hardcore pornography yet again.
The father sighed and threw up his hands as if to express he, as an early 30s man, was unable to prevent the 12 year old older brother from watching porn. You would have thought the older brother was a skilled hacker.
The boy was nude again. Where we started with the story. It came in bits and pieces for him how it all happened. It could have been 5 hours or it could have been 14 - he wouldn't remember anything from then until the middle of the night when everyone was asleep.
He remembered the bronze bedposts of a bed that wasn't his. Looking back, innocently, at his 7 year elder - naked, too. A stranger to him forevermore.
Evening passed like being under anesthesia. The boy awoke in his own bed - a normal kid's room. The glow of a nightlight bringing the boy to believe himself to be a transient in a dream.
20 years passed just the same.
The trailer was destructed. the aunt and uncle built a big house in those same fields, renting out the former. The father grew wealthy and the brother found Jesus - leaving the boy's life a fabrication.
The End
Footnote: This post was a submission to the BuddyUp server's Drop In The Ocean weekly show in which we compose a post in response to the word of the week. This week's word was "fabricate".
Summary: My general interpretation of fabricate is "to lie" although I know it can be a bit more extensive than that. I wasn't sure why my story came to mind when I heard the word, but as I wrote it, I started to see why it did.
The general meaning of the story is that the boy was molested and the way in which it happened left him feeling like it never happened - like it was one big lie, or fabrication.
As I told the story, I realized that the word fit in in other directions, as well. The boy had to fabricate, or invent, his life from that point forward as he didn't really know where to go because obviously you are too young to process something like that at that age.
I tried to emphasize the ignorance of all of the people that were in the boy's life in order to also emphasize how none of it seemed real and, again, almost had a feeling of a big lie even though the molestation did really happen. I also think most people don't understand the impact of something like molestation. Furthermore, the fact that the trailer no longer exists and the relatives moved to a new house also emphasizes this feeling of everything never happening and feeling like a lie, or fabrication.
Lastly, the father and the brother were both fabricators. The brother became religious and fabricated his past, per say, by taking on that new life. Many people will look at him as a good man for his religion yet won't see the things he had done in his past.
As for the father, he could have prevented the pornography and, in turn, maybe the molestation - but he lied to himself (and inadvertently the boy) by convincing himself he couldn't stop the older brother from watching porn all the time. The father fabricated his future/reality by working towards wealth - undermining the seriousness of the things that were happening right in front of him.
