Garden of Lies

*TW: Child Neglect, Light Gore*

           The evening chill touched his sensitive skin. Atlas watched as his mother performed her ablutions on her new gardening tool. He thought— as he washed his cloak— that it was utterly unnecessary. He continued scrubbing at the mucky vestment in a bucket of soapy water; Atlas couldn’t help but scowl at the deluge of sheets waiting to the side. Each spot of blood or dirt from his weekly fights made his skin itch with rage. Two Valley Elves domiciled in the kingdom had been hiding behind trees on one day each week with their lives devoted to tormenting him. Atlas kept count after a few times, scraping tallies on his bedroom wall with a knife. Their travesty captured his deepest emotions, causing him to take the hour-long walk home instead. After a month, he reported it to the nearby authorities that stood watch at the gate to the kingdom of Silia. As Atlas figured, the domestic men posted did nothing but told him to fend for himself. The Silia Authorities were dreaded most ever since a man named Krowl’s investiture as king. The guards constantly patrolled the streets on their horses in squads of four or more and stood by the entrance to divest any outsiders from intruding.                                                                                                                     

The snap of tree bark brought Atlas back with a blink of his medallion eyes. He turned towards the sound to see his mother stripping away pieces of dark, ashy bark from the old dormant tree in their yard. His mother had always instructed him never to go past the tree when tending to the garden while she was away, so he obediently did so, but curiosity lurked inside him. He got up from his stump and stalked towards his mother on her knees, patting a spot of dirt down with a small shove.

"Mama?” Atlas spoke, his quiet, raspy voice taking her aback.        “Atlas!” His mother scolded, wild ebony eyes staring back at him. She turned on her knees as if they were hiding the glimpse of white fabric behind her. Her shins were cakes with mud and the color of— what appeared as— rust. “What have I told you?” She barked.                     

At his young age, Atlas never realized rust could be a shade of crimson. He flickered his eyes over the piles of dirt, shaking his head with uncertainty. “I—”                                                                

“I’ve instructed you never to come back here, have I not?” His mother stood, towering above his scrawny figure. She brushed off her pallid, heather dress, but it didn’t change much as her palms were soiled.                                                                                                          

Atlas could only nod his eye, swallowing the lump of trepidation in his throat before he spoke, “I— you did tell me,” he answered under the weight of her scowl. His mumble was no shakier than a sapling in winter.                               

 With a domineering glister in his mother’s livid eyes, she whipped her hand forward and seized his wrist. She wrenched his hand, soft and tiny in the grip of her calloused, worked fingers. A yelp hitched in Atlas’ throat, and he moved his bare feet to avoid being drug across the hard earth. His cries of dissent echoed around the boundaries of their domain, going on neglected by his mother; she heard him, he knew, but she couldn’t find the littlest reason to care.                     

 “Mama, I didn’t look! I didn’t look!” Atlas persuaded, tugging his free hand at his mother’s vested arm. “I swear, I’ve never seen what’s behi—”                                                                       

“Don’t say another word!” His mother berated him, jerking his body through the doorframe, where she released his aching hand. “Don’t you ever say a word about that garden, do you hear me, child?” She barked through clenched teeth.                   

Only a nod registered in Atlas’ reaction as he balanced himself on his elbows in a half-sitting post. He watched as his mother stood straighter, leveling out her defiled dress.    

   “Look what you made me do,” she ‘tsked,’ pinching off a clump of dirt and flicking it away. “Now, I must change before leaving you here to do double the number of your normal chores. If I find you’ve left this house even to step outside, you will be sleeping on the earth for a week. Are we clear on that, child?”                                                                                                                              Atlas barely shook his head before blinking quickly and correcting himself with a few nods. He feared the dominion this woman had over him, not even his true birth mother, but he knew where he stood; at the bottom.                                 

  “Good…,” His mother concluded. She stepped back from him and grabbed her long coat hanging by the door. She pulled the sleeves over her pasty arms. “I will return in exactly twenty minutes, so do not even think about leaving. Your chores will be done by the time I’m home; you will eat supper and go to bed. Understood?”   

“Yes…” As he spoke, Atlas realized how feeble he sounded.        Seeming complacent enough with herself, his mother walked past him and grabbed her keys arranged on a wired ring with ivy. Atlas watched as she strode towards the door, nearly squashing him on the way out.                                                           

He lifted his voice from a small rasp, “Mama, I love—” his body jolted as the door abruptly shut with a crack of the wood. Atlas could only gawk with wide golden orbs at the barrier between him and the outside world. His chest rose and fell in rapid waves as he struggled to breathe normally. He pulled his knees to his chest, burying his face into them. His right hand covered his left where its fingers throbbed from being clutched. Atlas sat there, somnolence allowing only a mere effort to whine and cry out for his mother, shoulders quaking between pitiable wails.

Trudging towards his bedroom, Atlas felt as if he was somnambulating. He perceived his body to be numb. The back of his hand rubbed past his weepy eyes, irritated and bloodshot from sniveling beforehand. He extended a hand to turn the doorknob and enter his bedroom before he froze. Suddenly, Atlas was petrified of the obscurity concealing his sanctuary, the one place he felt he could escape peril. Creeping through the towering doorframe, his eyes flitted over each shadowy corner he’d memorized, retaining the longing to whimper incapably.                            

If I can’t leave through the front door…, I’ll have to climb out of my window, Atlas plotted. A cluster of other thoughts reeled in his mind, fighting to make him dizzy. After a few drumming heartbeats of indecision, he bounced on his feet and dashed towards his window. He jammed his fingers between the corroded metal bolts and hickory windowsill, making his best effort to pull down. With a gasped roar of exertion, he curled his white-knuckled fists on the unyielding clamps and planted his feet on the wall for leverage. A little further! He screamed inwardly, part of it being the start of his hands burning from tugging the latch. With a forewarning shriek of the eroded metal, Atlas fell to the ground with a snap of the bolt. His back hit the floor, landing with an oof as it concisely winded him.

           “Atlas!” An enraged howl sounded from the stairs. Thumping echoed throughout the home before the silence and then more thudding as if his mother was frantically searching. But it was just that, she was looking for him.                                       

Atlas swiveled his head to the sound, noting the door ajar. He scrambled to his feet and fought the urge to grip his tight chest alarmingly. Wide-eyed, Atlas was terrified his heart would pound right through his shirt because of how promptly it was hammering against his ribcage. Another call from the woman downstairs had him pushing up the window, but he was taken aback when it collapsed onto his shoulder mid-climb. Atlas yelped, undoubtedly assuring his mother that he was still in the home.                

“Get down here, you pest!” The gravelly shout came again. Atlas’ breath hitched when he wriggled out from under the windowsill. His hand met with nothing. He fell, letting out a terrorized screech until his back hit the hard soil. He rolled to press his weight into his shoulder, gripping his tight stomach. Clenching his teeth, Atlas dug a fist into the ground and got to his feet, trembling legs struggling to hold him. As he neared the tree, his hand fought through his hazy vision to feel the tree trunk. The bark was frigid and rough beneath his palm, matching the frozen earth stinging his soles. As though it was a crack of lightning, the front door swung aside and clashed against the side of the house.

           Atlas whined, the anguish from his side screwing up his face. He could hear his mother trekking across the yard towards him. But he was quicker. Blocking out the pain, Atlas crumbled to his knees and pulled back the cloth spread across a half-dug ditch. His throat knotted, and he could’ve thrown up at any moment. A hand slapped across his mouth, eyes wide. With a shaky hand, he reached down and brushed away soil from a thin, jagged finger breaking dirt.           W-What…? Atlas flinched his hand back when the bloodless ivory skin touched his, and as if he couldn’t be colder, it was numb and sent a chill pricking his spine. Who… is this?

           “You.” His mother’s voice raked his chest.

Slowly, Atlas swallowed, heart in his throat. “I—” His mother’s hands jerked forward, cutting his gurgled scream short. He clawed at her wrists as he dropped his body to the ground, feet kicking out wherever he could reach.

           “Nobody will know! Nobody will know!” His mother roared, locking her fingers together to squeeze until there was a bruised ring around his neck.                                                                                 

Atlas panicked but remembered what his deceased father had told him. He allowed his body to fall limp. After a few breathless seconds, his mother released him and turned away with a clap.                                                                                                               

“Now… where was I with this?” she muttered.               

It pained Atlas for how horrid she was. His chest heaved, but he begged himself not to gasp for air until the woman’s back was facing him. At that moment, he built up the vigor to stand and grab a flower pot nearly too heavy. When his mother bent down, he hobbled over, and with a hoarse yell, his eyes flooded into his mother as the flower pot came down onto her cranium. The clay broke over her face, and an exceptionally long cut began to bleed crimson onto her pasty dress. With shaking limbs, Atlas felt overrun by infuriation. He frantically looked around for the thickest shard of clay. His eyes landed upon a bloody fragment, and he grabbed it. As tears streamed down his bruised face, he shouted at nothing as the clay shard habitually broke the surface of his mother’s skin. Each puncture to her face and neck spewed a new stream of garnet.                                                                                                                     

Exhaustion had Atlas’ eyes stuttering back into his head, the clay slipping from his fingers as his body leaned to the side before becoming still on the ground. Crows of the night shrieked around his immobile body. The shaking in his legs gradually died off, and his hands felt relaxed. His eyes were no longer scrunched in misery but a sort of tranquility. A nighttime wind gusted the grass, making the strands shiver. Not Atlas, though. He lay there quietly, sides unmoving. At last, he was able to rest… the rest his father had always promised him once he overcame his fate. The evening chill touched his sensitive, dying skin for the last time.