Beyond Repair

Lex showered. He stood under the scalding water for over an hour, letting it wash away the previous night’s events. He already knew he wouldn’t tell anyone what happened. His father was too powerful, and he would only bring more misery upon himself if he tried to press charges. He dressed himself in black slacks and a black turtle neck sweater to hide the marks on his throat. He could do nothing about his bruised cheek but figured he could just say he’d been in a fight, which was quite plausible. He was hungry. He hated the thought of walking through the mansion to the kitchen since there was a slight chance of running into Lionel, but more than that, he hated the idea of staying in his room all day. There was blood and cum on his sheets; the place reeked of sex. The more he thought about it, the stronger the smell became. It was suffocating him; he bolted from the room.

He kept his eyes on the floor as he made his way to the kitchen. The mansion seemed very busy. The maids were cleaning, dusting, vacuuming, chatting loudly, gossiping…probably about him. They tended to lower their voices considerably as he passed. The main chef greeted him as he entered the kitchen. He offered to make Lex anything his heart desired. His stomach was empty and grumbling, but he feared getting sick again so he just asked for some dry toast and a sprite. The chef seemed disappointed but didn’t argue with him. Lex sat at the end of a vast dining room table and half-heartedly nibbled at his toast, wishing it was fashionable to have cushions in your dining room chairs. A grandfather clock at the end of the dining hall told him it was a quarter past nine. Lionel would be at his office by now and wouldn’t be home for eleven hours at least. He would have the mansion to himself.

Lex spent most of the day sleeping in a guest bedroom, fully clothed and with the door locked. When he got up that afternoon there was a message waiting for him. Lionel had sent him a fax, which simply read: Be prepared to leave for Excelsior tomorrow morning. Lex did not see or hear from his father for the rest of his stay at the mansion but he would later discover that Lionel had given the school a rather large grant to build a new library. The grant was offered on two conditions, Lex would be allowed to stay and Reynolds would be let go. He had always been a fast healer so by the next morning, his tongue had ceased to ache and his bruises beginning to fade. At Excelsior no one even mentioned them. Not that he had any real friends there, nor did he want to expose what had happened. But still, he was human, and he would have liked for someone to show some concern. No one did. No one cared.

Lex became very angry and desperate for someone to notice his pain. He stole a steak knife from the cafeteria, and about two weeks after his trip home, sat on the tile floor of their community bathroom under a warm shower and hacked at his wrist. He wasn’t sure what he intended to do. Maybe he really wanted to die or maybe he just wanted attention, but he got neither. He found he didn’t have the will to cut himself deeply enough to be fatal, and although he did have marks on his left wrist for quite a while after that, he kept them covered up most of the time. No one noticed, and if they did, they didn’t say anything.

He did get something out of it, though. He discovered that by cutting himself, by watching himself bleed, he was able to lessen his anger. It relaxed him somehow. From that point on, cutting was his drug. Anytime he had a shitty day, he would relieve his stress by committing acts of violence against himself. He had a few close calls with it. Once or twice he got carried away and cut a little too deep, though it was never bad enough sanction a trip to the emergency room, or in his case, a house call from a private doctor. Sometimes a lover would notice the cuts and ask him about them, but he always managed to brush off their questions. He didn’t really like what he was doing to himself, but it worked for him, so he never tried to change it.

Now here he was, seven years later and still cutting. After his father’s story about Prometheus, how he had been tortured not once but every day, Lex worried that his father intended to come after him again, maybe several times, but Lionel never touched him again. Looking at the gashes on his forearm and thigh, he realized that he had been tortured nearly every day. He felt like he had pretty much gotten over the rape, but it would always be with him. It would always be in the back of his mind, haunting him. It was what led him to this miserable life of cutting and bleeding.