Leopold Schultz // D9 // FIN

[Gryphon]

. leopold schultz ♔ 18 ♔ district 9 .

I was always one for the bedtime stories when I was a kid; when I was paler, skinnier, more scared of anything and everything than anybody and everybody else. It all made me shake in my heels, my hands tremble, my entire body quiver like I was a building being rocked back and forth by tremors in the earth's plates trying to and waiting for me to fall apart. Spiders, noises and bumps in the dead of night, failure and disappointment. They all made me so afraid.

I had a nightmare about being eaten alive once--by a lion. They all at school thought it funny to take advantage of my cowardice, feed me lies and exaggerations and absolute terror. This one kid in particular told me about lions that same day, even showed me a drawing of it. Said they were like cats, but bigger. Scarier. Hungrier. That they'd gobble you up in one bite if you got any close to them.

Ma never heard anything like it, she recalled. The screaming, the horror, I was genuinely frightened by the idea and by the images and sensations my conscious brought me, I even scared her. I slept in her and Dad's room for the rest of the night, but the next is when it all started--the bedtime stories. Unlike everybody else, she fed me the most amazing ideas imaginable--flowers so tall you could climb them and pull off chunks of candy petals from, money trees, wild animals that can be your pets and rain and snow you can taste. I would always sleep tightly with good dreams from what she would conjure up, she made me believe anything and everything was possible so long as you believe and try.

So the days after school when all the name-calling and bruising and hurting had past with the sun across the sky, came me flying like dragons and swimming like mermaids. I held grand feasts with toys in medieval kingdoms. I made cities with anything I could find, I explored every single world my ma made for me. It was an era of bliss.

An era that was cut short.

An era that made Dad angry.

They loved each other to the moon and back but it was something they could never agree on, what they should teach me. Ma wanted me to feel like everything could be anything I wanted it to be, that the world could be a scary place for me but it didn't have to be. I didn't have to see it that way.

Dad wanted me to see it for everything it really was, to deal with it, to face living in it and learning how to.

It was a long while since the incident but when he had enough, the stories stopped and the nightmares came back. There was nothing to ease the pain, the name-calling, the bruising, the hurting--there was just me.

A scared little mouse.

He wanted to know why I liked them, why I wanted them and needed them in the first place. When he heard about the lions, came the time where he started forcing me to learn how to become one, to become what I had feared for such a long time. Everything I was and everything she taught me angered him so damn much, Ma was scared to silence and I could no longer look to her for comfort; only to him for another push and another shove.

The days after school became a battleground between me and myself, Leopold who had to try and Leopold who wanted to give up and retreat to the world Ma made for me.

Dad's scared me so fucking much, but I had no choice. He wouldn't rest until everything changed from the inside out, he had always been stubborn.

All I heard for the next few years were yelling and screaming, words of hate and pain, but he was just showing me what it was like in the real world. He never meant it.

Did he?

I was made to run, to climb, to jump, metaphorical obstacles that he said Life threw at you and I had to learn how to overcome them all. Muscles ached, eyes teared up, heart beated so fast in sync with my lungs.

Slowly but surely I had started to change, but it wasn't enough for him.

It was never enough for him.

I was halfway there by the time he was spent, he could no longer bother. It was a stalemate in a way, because he gave up--not me.

So I kept going without his help. I kept moving, I kept telling myself I could do better, I kept repeating to myself all the words he and the others would say to me.

The nightmares stopped, but it still wasn't enough.

He had marked Ma's world a hell for me, the real world a heaven and I was kinda just stuck in limbo.

I wasn't a mouse or a lion, but just a cub.

I was left with warmed skin from hours out in the daylight, a fit body with more definition and a more rugged appearance but still uncertainty raged on in my head. Was I really ready to take on what the real world had to offer me? I looked the part, but I'm still a coward. Anything and everything still scares me, I'd rather run away than take the entire planet head-on.

Would I ever really become the lion I had never wanted to see in my sleep?

I get home from my first day on the job at a factory, some weird place that makes gels for hair and as adhesives. I never thought anything could be so painfully dull and tedious, not even any kind of thought like the ones Ma, Dad, and the schoolkids gave me are able to worm their way into my marbles when there's processes and packaging to worry about from the moment you clock in to the moment your shift is done.

I sigh as I take a seat on the steps of the porch to the front door, moving a hand through my dark hair as light blue eyes stare down at my boot-covered toes.

Maybe someday.

Maybe one day.

But for now, my efforts will never be enough.

[Gryphon]

Bio 2/7 for my own personal character-writing challenge LMAOOO
Finished. <333333

[Deleted]

"I was halfway there by the time he was spent, he could no longer bother. It was a stalemate in a way, because he gave up--not me."

go AWF leave those lions SHOOK