L U K E

Suspense Stories | Nov 22, 2012 | 6 min read
24 Votes, average: 4 out of 5
Tortured, cursed, and forsaken. That was Luke's lot in life, like it or not, and he could have hoped for no more. At least that was what his mother always told him.

It was true: life had been a cruel mistress to Luke Crosswood. It had dealt him an unfortunate hand, and scoffed when he turned his head skyward to ask why it had picked him, of all people, to torture and humiliate.

Nonetheless, what was done was done and no amount of lamenting would change the fact. He was a tortured child, to be sure, cursed with a face only the devil and a mother could love. It was not surprising then, when his existence began to sour so early on, things happened the way they did in the manner they did shortly before the trial of the monster they claimed him to be.

As a child, he was meek and withdrawn and never been beyond the ridicule or humiliation of his peers. No second or unoccupied moment passed before the kids in the schoolyard laugh and point at him, forsaking their balls and their ropes and their juices. Even the parents; surely old enough to know better, would jeer and cuss at him. Teachers, too, in thinking he was beyond earshot, would pass acid comments and cross themselves with every fresh sighting. Here comes the boy with no face, they would say, while others, unremarkably, simply wondered what kind of accident – or curse – had befallen him to make him so nightmarishly rendered.

Little by little, the comments ate away at Luke. There were few definite answers to their queries; and fewer from the doctors who had long since given up trying to decide what had happened to him in the womb. Nobody knew why this had happened to him; only that he had simply born this way for a reason ... Gods only true original ... the kindest words for mistake ever been offered.

Segregation was another issue, too. He seldom found invitation to sit at a table or share a lunch hour with the other kids. Indeed, he often found himself ushered into corners; table and chair turned away from the gorging masses, and forced to eat facing colourless walls. Nor was he invited to attend school parties or day trips, and seldom appeared on any school photograph, because people, it seemed, simply did not want to remember him or his likeness.
His mother had fought his corner with tooth and nail on more than one occasion, attempting to claim a victory, no matter how scant, for her unfortunate son. Eventually, she even came to realize the harsh reality of life and understood, perhaps for the first time in her own, that few people beyond his immediate family (and he really did only have her) would ever come to accept the malformed child as much as she did. The abortion, though nonetheless human, simply was not wanted.

And so it was that Luke Crosswood, the child born without a face, steadily grew up knowing nothing of friendships or love. His milky eyes, his half-rotten nose, and the tattered lips hiding a multitude of yellowing teeth, had ruined all but the knowledge of hatred and contempt.

It was a bitter blow, of course, but one he quickly came to terms with. There had been times in his youth when surgeons had attempted to put right what nature had only half considered, but they too had failed and few of the operations became accepted successes. In fact, it was on his thirteenth birthday that the surgeons eventually refused to mould him further – their work, they had said, was proving little more than an exercise in futility.

The more they worked upon him, the worse his features seemed to become. His face simply rejected the remoulds.

So life went on. Luke came to learn more of bitterness and resentment than was necessary for a child his age. He was withdrawn from school at fourteen with little opposition after an assault took place at the school gates, without warning, and left Luke with a broken jaw and a dislocated retina. A lucky escape, according to some, considering the revolt felt towards the aberration.

Few people saw Mrs. Crosswood or her son afterwards, and it became widely understood, through rumour and misplaced belief, that mother and son had taken to a life of self-sufficiency in an attempt to find peace. Some even claimed the boy only came out at night in the weeks and months afterwards in order to scare the children who had made his life a living hell. However, nobody was able to corroborate such claims.

Rumour and a small-town-mindlessness took hold within days of the claims, and a posse of fearful, outraged, parents gathered at the doors of the village hall demanding action against the Crosswood's.

"– that boy and his mother are a –"

"– my daughter refuses to cross the street close to where they –"

"– it's time you stopped sitting on your asses and did something!"

Their demands failed to meet with a measure of agreement, and the posse, told in no uncertain terms, countless times over by police and town officials alike, to leave the boy and his mother alone, unanimously despaired.

Then the worst of events happened a week later.

A fifteen-year-old boy named Leigh Foster vanished en route from school. The finger of blame was immediately pointed as the police searched high and low, and the raging hullabaloo of concerned parents rang loud and clear through endless neighbourhoods for all to hear. There was no question who was to blame, the cause of the disappearance blatantly obvious for those with an ounce of sense. What more proof did they need? How many more had to vanish? It was all they could stomach.

Despite being forewarned warned against further talk of sedition, they continued to plot as stealthily as they could, only drawing aid from those they could trust implicitly. And so it was that the blood thirsty tribe was born, spearheaded by the vitriol and the vindictive, and only ever held one intention in their collective minds: how best to end their turmoil.

#

And world outside went on its way, leaving Val Crosswood to sour, stew, and rant at her son's consigned relegation. Hadn't he already needlessly suffered enough of spite and bile in his short life? Hadn't he been tortured enough? Of course he had. There was no question about it.

There were few who had loved him as they should have (his father, for example, for one. He had elected to abandon them both while he was still a pup), and for what? A face: nothing more or less. Yet in her attempts to put right what nature had wronged, Val Crosswood came to realize her folly and thought nothing of it.

Let them suffer.

She had found a use for her son's tormentors, however, having found them repeatedly upon the porch without invite of reason, and set about weaving fresh beauty for her son's wretched form. They would love him then, of course, in time, given his newly rehabilitated perfection.

#

The clan marched under cover of darkness days later, plans and intentions set in motion, and crossed town without fear of reprisals, in masses no single minded officer would chose to oppose without backup.

The house was a testament to atrocity. Blood and bone found, strewn, in all directions. Pots and pans bubbled and boiled on the wood burning stove in the kitchen, while the laundry room, brimming with soiled garments of varying sizes, bore the body of proof to the horrors they had surely only once dreamt of.
As they passed through the house in search of Luke, they found more horrors to be unearthed. There were bodies of unidentified children crisping in the oven: their tiny, upturned faces blackening with open maws as the remains of flesh blistered and burnt. A further three found much later, hanging from the rafters – skinned or slit from throat to groin.

Their revulsion grew with every door they threw open, and they crossed themselves with every new abomination they discovered. Their fevered eyes revolted by all they saw.
Four of the tribe had bolted from the house and vomited in a patch of upturned earth just beyond the door. They never went back into the house.
It was the mother and father of the first missing boy who discovered what had happened to their only child. They found him, or his likeness at least, lurking in the gloom of the cellar. His face reduced to little more than a fleshy mask crudely sewn together with coarse thread around the deformed child's features. Upon being found, the newly faced child turned towards the couple and simply whined only one frightening word: "Mummy."

Val Crosswood did not resist the angry mob when found. Indeed she seemed happy to see them and boast of her butcheries, just as a child would boast about the simplest of victories. She was beaten, kicked, cussed, and eventually bound in her bloodied state and left for the law to do with her what they would – a justice, according to some, too good for the likes of her.

She was much pitied at the trial, and though judge and prosecution were obviously sickened by all she had done, perhaps because they too were parents, it was the jury who showed the most remorse. They felt for her, or so it seemed, and her sick story held a resonance none could refute. They saw pictures of Luke, too, and gasped at the sight of him, and voicelessly wondered, in light of his appearance, if they would have done the same, too. In the end, the choice was no choice at all. They had little option other than find her guilty by reason of insanity.

The world cried out with indignation and demanded something new be done about the monster and his mother. They wanted better justice, a fitting epitaph for their lost kin. But the jury had decided and the judge's sentence made stolid.
After the trial, the judge claimed his decision for mental questionableness to be the only option. And although the case had been fought and won (and Luke made a ward of the state), he also declared that if a fresh judgement was ever sought and passed, then they too stood the chance of making fresh monsters of themselves in baying for a much harsher sentence.

Or as much of a monster as the world dared to become at any rate.

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Avery Dec 16, 2012

This was excellent at every turn, even the mob's decision as to how they dealt withVal. Who was really the monster here? Well-written.

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