The Alphas Solterra

Stuffy.

Crouched low in a four-walled closet no wider than my arm span, all I can feel is the stuffiness. The air is hot and heavy, a layer of thickness settling over my head and pressing uncomfortably on the nape of my neck. Perspiration encrusts my skin like a parody of gemstones, an iridescent shine on my skin.

I try to limit my movements within the enclosure and ball myself even tighter, bending low like a warping branch over my up-drawn knees, but it proves more difficult than expected. I used to fit in this space with ease back when I was a child. I was small enough to sit on the floor with my legs stretched out in front of me, bare toes wiggling in sync with the oscillating light that would slip through the blinds of the closet.

I had been growing, although unaware of it, and now at seventeen, the claustrophobic space could no longer accommodate my frame, no matter how small or petite I appeared to be. Each wall of the cupboard feels like a lung expanding, squeezing out the alien object.

I have an inkling my toes have grown numb.

Chin resting on top of my knees, I lift my head just briefly and tilt it side to side. The tension in my neck, my back, loosens by a fraction but returns with more fervour.

It hadn’t been this stuffy at dawn when I first crawled inside. It was cooler then but as the sun rose higher, it became hot and oppressive. Suffocating. Within a few hours, the smell of sweaty bodies, friction, cigarette smoke, and menstrual blood, had become almost unbearable.

I can’t help but inhale another unwanted breath and flagrant specks of dust dance up my airways in turn, tickling the back of my throat until the sensation of sneezing is unavoidable.

The sound leaves me before I can stop it.

Ah-choo.

The creaking of the bed draws to a standstill.

“D’ya hear that?”

I hear my mother shifting at the gruff voice, maybe turning her head weakly to watch the greasy overweight man that mounts her from behind with wary yet alert eyes. “Hear what?” She tries to keep her voice nonchalant.

Despite not seeing her, I can almost envision her hands slowly fisting the worn-out sheets, a weak muscle-flexing in her forearms as she braces for something, anything.

“That,” The man spat in exasperation.

“Oh,” feigned understanding, “I--wait-” The bed groans as the man eases himself off of it. “The hostel’s been plagued with rodents since last week, I’m sure it’s just that.” My mother is quick to feed his curiosity and parry whatever direction he was heading.

The silence that follows settles like a thin blanket over us. My pulse quickens — a flutter, like little bird wings trapped between my lungs. It was hard to see with the spaces so thin, but fear forces me to shift and lean forward enough to peer one eye through the space.

I freeze at the sight of the man’s nether region.

The straining, olive-brown cock springs up like a grotesque, carnal jack-in-the-box. Thick knotted veins ridged its slightly curved shaft. A bloated purple glans, tipped by a raw-looking eye completed the monstrous tool. Shadowed beneath was a pendulous, wrinkled scrotum now sagging under the weight of his ready sex fluids.

A smatter of bile rises up my throat.

He moves to stand directly before the wardrobe, arms crossed over his chest, face angled to the left as he scrutinizes the cramped room with an apparent scowl.

“It’s a rat,” my mother’s voice is suddenly near, I catch a glimpse of her bony hand tentatively resting on his bicep, urging him back to the bed. “Really… come back to bed, I’ll have my son look at it.”

He does not move immediately. He stands there searching, haughty black eyes pressed into a doughy white face that glossed along his wide forehead and upper lip with perspiration. I curl into myself and hold my breath with the sudden irrational terror that he could somehow hear my breath.

A hand presses on his rough cheek now, gently urging his face back on my mother. Her expression of alarm is thinly veiled with practiced desire, grey eyes darkening slightly. “Come,” she reaches for his hand and tries to guide him back to the bed, “make love to me.” The wariness in his eyes dissolves at the sight of her, as though he had just clocked where he is, who she is.

His face hardens in disgust, lips curled in a snarl while snatching his hand from hers as though she had burned him. “Don’t touch me whore,” his voice snaps like a belt on the skin, already forgetting my hovering presence, he turns and shoves my mother towards the bed watching in mild satisfaction as she loses footing and stumbles. “On your back.”

I should look away.

I always looked away. It had been an autonomous reaction to the words, trained and rooted deeply within me, but something stiff holds my neck in position, forehead pressed to the warm wooden slat as I peer through.

Hardly does my mother collapse on her back when his hand curls around her delicate ankle and drags her towards him, spreading her legs far wider than humanly normal.

There is blood, still partially dry, smearing her inner thighs. Bruises shaped like dark petals splotching the soft sensitive skin on her legs. Her face is tilted to the ceiling, lips pursed in a line that twitches once when he shoves himself in, battering until the full-length bottoms out.

“Well?” He utters, drawing her closer with a yank. He begins to move just as her thighs rise to his waist, her legs enveloping him. Her urgency becomes his, and his slow pushes hasten into grinding strokes as their flesh unites again and again. Like a galley slave rowing ship into battle, his strokes come faster.

Dropping my gaze, I study the planes of my hands, turning them over to rub idle thumbs over the callouses and hardened blisters from working in the pig. The sounds dull out to a rhythmic thump of the bed against the wall, the creak of bolts coming loose, the grunts and smothered huffs of breaths that I am painfully accustomed to.

This session lasts longer than the previous one and by the time my mother opens the wardrobe, I cannot move.

She does not talk, only hovers and I know the expression she is making before my eyes lift in search of hers.

A guileless smile plays at my lips and our gazes meet, I breathe out a nervous chuckle, “Well that was painfully close.”

The look on her face is of slight annoyance but she offers no tongue lashing and instead holds out a hand for me. The robe she had dawned on now covers her bruises but the iron tang of blood still lingers like fine mist in the air. “Are you okay?”

My hand slips into her delicate one with a wariness that I might break her. Her skin is cold and clammy against my own, and her hold is weak but the pull is surprisingly strong as she hauls me out of the constricting space.

My bones creak and I let out a drawn groan whilst stretching my arms to the low ceiling, rotating my stiff waist, rolling my neck back and forth in saturated relief. She watches me patiently, her expression is unwavering.

I release a long sigh and smile, “I am now.”

My mother’s gaze sweeps over my face briefly then slips past my shoulder towards the wardrobe, the ghost of a frown twitching at her lips. “It’s too small, isn’t it?”

I shrug half-heartedly, “It’s okay.” When in truth, the thought of cramming myself back into the claustrophobic space drums a patter of reluctance down my juddering spine. “I can manage.” I would do it for her again if she asked me to, and I know she will, again and again until I turn eighteen, and perhaps even after.

As if reading my mind, her eyes dim like a candle snuffed and when she speaks, her voice is quiet. “It’s not forever.”

A thin promise that our poverty and suffering are only temporary, but time is an infinite thing. And temporary could simply mean until the death of one of us.

Determined not to let the uncertainty of our future dim the present, I suck in a deep breath and muster a smile while rounding her small frame, “Don’t worry, Ma, if I grow too big for the wardrobe, I could always hide beneath the bed.”

This, it seems, gets to my mother for she begins to laugh-- the softest of chuckles like falling leaves only to be disrupted by a sharp cough. Her face contorts in pain as the violent shudder wracks through her center and she coughs again, a faint rattle like loose seeds inside her chest.

Alarmed, I reach for her but she swats my hand away and leans against the worn-out bedpost, head bent low as thin strands of her flaxen gold hair sweep across her face like a curtain purposefully shielding herself from me. The sound is jarring in our little room.

The collar of her robe along her neck slips down slightly, revealing the bony column of her spine beneath pallid skin-- so jarring and prominent. You lift spines like that out of cooked fish.

“Water?” I murmur after a long time.

Still crouched, my mother nods.

Relieved to no longer watch her slow undoing, I turn and pace across the room where a bowl of water lies. Plucking a random cup, I lean forward and blow at the warm stale water with a film of dust on top before plunging it inside.

Four sharp slits of light lay across the moth-decayed rug beneath my feet, bright enough to hurt my eyes, though the bed is in near-darkness.

Mother is still bent over herself but no longer coughing, only wheezing with the familiar sound of nickels rattling in metallic tin. She hastily begins to withdraw her sleeve from her mouth but the action is too late, I catch a glimpse of bright red blood— a fine splatter on the rotted hem of her sleeve.

“I’ll get your medicine today,” I say while handing her the cup, watching as she begins to drink greedily, her wasted throat jerking with every gulp. “We should have enough money…” Automatically, my eyes sweep the carpeted floor in search of the coins the customer recklessly tossed at her.

One silver coin and two copper nickels lie there, unpicked.

I crouch low to pick them as she empties the contents of the cup and leans heavily against the bedpost while delicately wiping at the corner of her mouth with the non-bloodied sleeve. “Is there any medicine left?”

“No.” Straightening, I pocket the coins. They feel foreign and heavy, worth so much in the face of our destitution. Gathering the remnants of clothes strewn on the floor, I make for the opposite side where our makeshift kitchen is; a charcoal stove, one aluminum pot, and an oblong of heavily carved oak, squatting on its own shadow against the wall with our foodstuff and mum’s medicine. It was the only valuable item we owned.