Chapter Text
Paul Simon Matthews is born at St Damien’s Hospital to James and Susan Matthews in the middle of a cloudless August day. The sky outside the delivery room seems to pulse with heat and purpose: a solid, endless, unforgiving blue that offers no reprieve from the sun’s rays.
There is a tenuous anxiety beneath the new parents’ joy; the labour itself had been quick, but after Susan’s cries of pain and effort had trailed to a stop a frightening quiet had swept over the delivery room.
The expected piercing yowl of newborn lungs taking their first breath of air did not come- those first few critical seconds had passed before the midwife had fluttered into action, gently but firmly wiping syrupy effluvia from the infant’s delicate skin in an attempt to provoke a reaction.
At the unwelcome sensation of being frantically poked in the mouth and nose, the tiny face had crumpled in discomfort, the slight blue tint of deoxygenation beginning to leave his lips followed shortly by a robust wail. The room echoed with a choral sigh of relief; both mother and child are blissfully alive, alive, alive.
Now, through the baby’s wails, the midwife expertly clamps and cuts the tether of sinew connecting him and his mother, before transferring the squalling infant to her hold. Her son- Paul - kicks and writhes as Susan, disregarding his damp and bloody state, presses his tiny body to her chest. They had decided on names months beforehand; Paul for James’s brother, who had died in childhood, and Simon just because they liked the way it sounded.
His little hands grasp indiscriminately at the air, clammy pink fingers clenching like frightened starfish, but he stills, brow slackening, as the shell of his ear presses against her heart.
This closeness is important for multiple reasons: first, to reaffirm the connection between mother and child severed along with the umbilical cord. Paul’s silence had fired a white-hot lance of fear through Susan’s body, and here she trembles with relief and exhaustion, ghosting her lips along the translucent skin of his temple and whispering breathless praises to God.
Secondly, the contact relaxes and calms the pair, though James Matthews remains tense and stares blankly at the space between his young wife’s shoulder blades. She, in turn, gazes down at their newborn son, whose cries have once again trailed to silence. This time, however, the quiet is expected.
The third reason is to allow the friendly bacteria on Susan’s skin to colonise Paul’s; to build up his immune system and provide greater defence against potential infection that would otherwise wreak havoc on his fragile, helpless body.
Outside, unseen by the occupants of the room, a bluebottle slams headfirst against the glass of the shuttered window, chitin flashing teal in the sunlight. A second fly joins it, then another, and another, until a quivering string of insects bisects the pane of glass, thudding quietly against it with an eerie, mathematical precision, each impact accompanied by the droning buzz of wings displacing air.
The humming grows in volume and ferocity, morphing into something like the rasp of a horsehair bow drawn carefully across the taut strings of a cello. Flies beat against the glass with growing speed and force, uncaring of the damage to their own bodies. Translucent fluid spurts violently from crushed compound eyes and twisted mouthparts.
The orchestra continues to tune their instruments, the sound now permeating the delivery room, if just barely. The midwife turns her head to the window, called by some invisible voice to act.
Without sense or warning, she strides across the room and retracts the blinds in one smooth movement. The flies scatter wildly into the afternoon air as if suddenly released from containment and the midwife stumbles back, the spell broken.
The cool, quiet atmosphere of the room is instantly shattered and Susan yelps in surprise at the flood of light, shielding her face with the hand not supporting Paul. James’s face goes taut with anger as he rounds on the woman, demanding an explanation for her insensitivity, but Susan’s attention remains fully on her son.
Paul’s eyes are fully open - his irises are a startling electric blue, pupils constricted from the glaring light under ash-pale lashes. Susan coos at him, hello, hi there my darling, it’s okay, attempting to soothe any impending distress from the sudden brightness or his father’s raised voice. But, once again, Paul stays silent, looking intently past her and out of the window.
The infant’s gaze seems to hold an unusual focus as he stares through the glass into the searing blue of the sky, as if hearing something millions of miles away.
----
The morning had started off bad and grown stubbornly stranger.
Paul awakes from a vague and sickening nightmare: he can’t remember what had happened in it precisely, only a blinding blue light and a distant song that left a seething feeling writhing in his stomach and a ringing in his ears.
His star-patterned pyjamas are crumpled, the left pant leg bunched up around his shin, unpleasantly clinging to his tacky skin. The boy’s heart flutters wildly against his ribcage… like the frightened moth currently trapped in the bathtub.
He’d run to his parents’ room at the crack of dawn, face slick and red with tears. Papa had groaned in irritation and rolled away but Mama wiped away his tears with a soft handkerchief and suggested he take a bath now before Mass instead of in the evening to remove the yucky sweaty feeling from his body.
Paul is five whole years old; certainly old enough to run his own bath.
He knows exactly how to do it from watching his Mama run his baths: where to turn the knobs for hot and cold so it isn’t too much of either, the spot the bubble bath is kept in the cupboard under the sink and to use a washcloth to turn the knobs if they get stuck. He knows where to put the bathmat down and to wipe down the tub afterwards, because, like Mama says, ‘if the bath isn’t clean, you won’t get clean either’.
Papa says Mama is scared of germs. Mama says “Cleanliness is next to godliness, James.” She won’t buy unpackaged food or fast food or fruit with bruises. She carries little bottles of hand sanitizer everywhere and doesn’t like for Paul to pat dogs and holds him dangling by his armpits over public toilets. Paul observes the feverish intensity with which she scrubs down the kitchen counters and thinks he might be afraid of germs too.
Before Paul’s first day of school, she told him not to play in the sandpit or the garden because animals poop in sandpits and gardens and animal poop can carry diseases. Paul dislikes sand because it gets under his nails, and it is against The Rules to play in flowerbeds anyway, but Papa had scoffed and said she was ‘going to give him a goddamn complex’. Paul had asked what that meant, because ‘complex’ means ‘hard to do’ or ‘with a lot of bits’ and it isn’t a thing you can give somebody. Papa told him to shut the hell up.
Mama often says he’s the most responsible little boy in town. Paul can’t help but agree. All the other boys at school tend to shout and play too rough and throw tantrums, which is when you’re bad on purpose to get something you want (and is also against The Rules).
Mama and Papa say Paul does throw tantrums, but that’s different; Paul doesn’t want anything or mean to be bad when he yells and kicks. It’s just that everything hurts. Someone doesn’t understand what he means, or the lights burn his eyes or a sound slams roughly against his ears, and every single bad feeling inside Paul writhes up and out and explodes.
For example, Sam Sweetly from school throws real tantrums all the time. Last Wednesday it was Paul’s turn to be line leader, but Sam wanted to go first. Paul told him that wasn’t how it worked because it was in roll call order, not just whoever wanted to, and it would be Sam’s turn tomorrow. Sam had yelled, which hurt Paul’s ears, and thrown his pencil case at Paul’s head and punched Mrs Clarice in the legs.
Sam got to be line leader that day and the next. When Paul throws a tantrum, he gets in trouble.
Paul doesn’t like Sam Sweetly at all, but Sam decided not to like him first. Paul doesn’t know why, but on that very first day at recess while Paul was reading quietly (deliberately avoiding the dreaded sandpit), Sam had yanked the book from his hands and accused him of pretending to be able to read and didn’t believe him and called him a wuss when he’d started to cry. Sam calls Paul nasty names all the time; like cry-baby and stupid and bug-eyes and—
…Right. Okay. Okay. The actual bug in the room frantically beats its delicate wings and scrabbles its legs against the smooth white porcelain with a quiet susurrus.
Paul shakes his head and flaps his hands to help push away his racing thoughts. The strange ringing in his ears worsens. His brain hums like a hive of angry bees; popping candy bursts on the backs of his eyelids, each explosion a dissonant cluster of notes. The boy winces and draws in a quick, shaky breath. He knows when he has headaches like this a bath will make him feel better, it always does, he knows what to do, he knows The Rules- but he has to get this stupid moth out of the way first.
Some sort of gross dusty residue falls from the moth’s body each time it jumps. Paul groans in disgust. He’ll have to wash the tub before he gets in as well. If he can even get in. What to do? Is it hurt somehow? Has it forgotten it can fly? The pressure behind his eyes swells, heartbeat drumming in his ears.
Paul really, really, really doesn’t want to touch it, but he doesn’t want to kill it either. It’s just living its life, and Father Martin says that all of God’s creatures are worthy of respect, no matter how small or germ-ridden.
Paul eyes the creature nervously, peering over the lip of the tub. As his head casts a shadow over its tiny form, it stills and tilts its body upwards to face him, feathery antennae held rigid as iron.
All at once, the ringing in Paul’s head builds to a deafening crescendo. He is no longer standing in the bathroom, but in an endless, impenetrable darkness that shifts near-imperceptibly.
Something colossal has focused its attention on him.
Its eyes are blue giants in hollow sockets, the dizzying brightness of a hundred thousand spotlights bursting in unison.
Phosphenes flash like dying stars in his peripheral vision. Every muscle and nerve in his body is pinned like a butterfly under the gaze of the thing, the insect, the God whose mere presence engulfs the air around him.
Paul can’t move. He can’t breathe.
(HELLO, PAUL.)
Paul screams his throat raw, stumbling backward and landing painfully on the frigid bathroom tile. The boy squeezes his eyes shut and claps his hands over his face, pulling his knees to his chest.
Papa charges into the bathroom, head swivelling wildly around, eyes wide and assessing the scene. Upon realising that Paul is not, in fact, being murdered, his concern gives way to annoyance. “What the fuck are you screaming for?! What is it now?” Wordlessly, Paul points one trembling finger towards the bathtub. Papa crosses the room in two long strides and inspects the basin.
“Jesus Christ, Paul, you’re scared of a goddamn moth?” the man mutters, face tight with contempt.
The boy watches, shaken, as his Papa crushes its paper-light body in a crumpled tissue and drops it into the trashcan with a dull, toneless thud.