Damaged
Chapter 3: Slow Disintergration
Part 2: A Little Underground Secret: Chapter 5: Introspective
Part 3: Adam and the Girl: A Change for the Better
Chapter 7: A Day to be Remembered
Part 4: Damaged: Dark Transition
Chapter 9: Adam's First Victim
Chapter 10: Adam's Second Victim
Chapter 11: Save the Worst for Last
Chapter 12: A Beloved Casualty
Chapter 13: Realizations and Preparations
This book
is for those who've been bullied, teased, and shut out by the world. It is for
ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY
. I will
NOT
be held responsible for any part of this book being acted upon in real life. Reader's discretion IS advised. Enjoy… the most brutal novel ever written!
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Troy Ray McCombs
Licensing Notes
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews.
Damaged
by
Troy McCombs
“Society creates its own monsters”
Fight to Stay Home
“
Adam!” his mother cried out.
—Every day it was this loud and annoying, like a broken submarine alarm set on high. Adam rolled onto his side and ignored her, but he knew it would not work for much longer. One more minute sleep, two tops. Then that cock would crow again.
"Adam, get up! Time for school!”
"I'm getting up," he mumbled into his pillow.
"Adam! Adam, come on, get up. You need to get ready. It's almost seven."
Adam sighed.
I'm not going to prison today
, he told himself. Prison, damnation, school—same difference.
"Adam, dammit, come on now. I packed your lunch. Adam!"
"Go away...”
"Get up!"
"
I'm coming!"
he screamed. It used to work... telling her he was getting out of bed, ready to take a shower and head to the place of supreme punishment, when his real intention was to drift back into darkness, hoping to escape the harsh reality of the world through endless slumber.
“
Adam, get up now!"
But that was not going to work. His mother had a job to do besides her physical nine to five: get her sixteen-year-old son to school, a task easier said than done. Getting Adam to willingly go to school three times a week was probably harder than fitting a camel through the eye of a needle.
"Adam, you're going whether you like it or not. Don't make me come up there."
He sat upright and looked toward the door. "
I ain't going to school, goddammit! Just leave me alone! Jesus Christ!"
Again, he collided with the mattress. He knew she was probably ticked off now, for he could hear her feet pounding up the steps like two giant bongos.
Want a fight, mother? I don't wanna, but we will if you make me go to school.
Her footfalls fell closer and louder.
Yep, definitely mad. Oh well, what's new?
He knew a fight with the nagging woman warrior, who seemingly had no other goal than to piss him off, was about to begin. Like clockwork on another average weekday morning.
The door flew open. She thudded into the room. "You are going to school, Adam, whether you like it or not. Now here's your socks. The other stuff is downstairs in the bathroom, already—"
Adam began before she could finish: "No, I'm not taking a shower, and no, I'm not going to school!"
"Yes," she said, very strongly.
“
No, I'm not," he countered, equally as strong.
"Fine," she said, throwing the socks at him, "then don't go. Stay home. Fail. Do nothing. Don't go. I can't do this anymore."
"Can't do fucking what? It's me that has to do it, and I just can't. You don't have to go to fucking school. You work. You got it easy!"
She threw her head back and laughed, scratching her scalp roughly. Adam was hurting her, upsetting her, frustrating her. It hurt him tenfold worse. It infuriated him even more than that.
"I—no—
fuck
school! Fuck all that bullshit. I shouldn't have to do it!"
"You're going! If I have to drag you out of that bed, then I will. You got it?" she said, eyes gleaming.
Adam felt a lump of fire burning deep within his throat. The fight was just getting warmed up. "Nope, not going," he said very casually, as if he did not care one ounce.
"Every day, Adam. Every day you do this. You won't wake up, you won't take a shower half the time, and you refuse to go to school.
No more
!"
The lump burned hotter. "No!" he said, tensing his neck muscles. "I don't give a shit about what you want me to do. You're not me. It's my life. You and—and—David—"
His father.
"—want to tell me what to do. You can't control me. You can't make me do
shit. All right?
!"
She was so angry she began to tremble. Both of their faces turned peach red. The air was an exploding mine-field.
"Don't you yell at me like that! I'm your mother. I—"
Adam interrupted once more, "You are
nothing
to me. You don't care anything about me. So you know what,
Angela? Fuck you
!"
She stepped back, stumbled back. She had heard him say it before, but that was one phrase that could have bruised her on even the millionth time. His words were deadly sincere.
"I hate you for
everything!"
"Fine, then you hate me," she cried. Some of her anger had subsided, but the pain was worse. It was the opposite for the young teenager, who looked as though he could strangle her at any moment. He was, for the most part, nonviolent; however, he was prone to breaking things. He had busted some major holes in his bedroom walls with his fists, had shattered two windows in the living room with a baseball bat, had caused significant emotional pain to his parents, but had never once laid a hand on her or his father... or even a fly.
Angela looked confused. She always did when her adrenaline began flowing. Tears bloomed in Adam's eyes as he stared her down.
She stormed over to him and clutched hold of his wrist. "Come on! You'll be late!"
"Fuuuuuuck
!" he screamed, pushing his voice box to the limit and yanking his arm away from her grip.
"Leave me alone
!"
They were both crying, both semiconscious of the situation.
She tried again to grab his wrist, unsuccessfully, then grabbed his shirt, but Adam was too elusive. He fought to stay put.
"Leave me alone
!"
"Adam, let's go! You're going
!" she said, trying to clutch onto something, anything.
He slapped her hands away without causing bodily harm. And when she finally managed to grab onto his leg, he quickly latched onto the bed post, screaming:
"Goddamn son of a fucking bitch! Noooo!
"
Adam looked like he was being dragged unwillingly to his inevitable demise in an Iron Maiden. His voice did not let up. His poor mother, who only wanted the best for him, kept pulling him, wondering why her son was, and had been for the past four months, giving her such a tedious time.
"Leeeet meee gooo
!" he said, throat burning.
She pulled him off the bed, where he again squirmed out of her grasp. Her will was faltering. His was already gone. Angela had endured this inexplicable scene every day since the beginning of September, when school had started back up. However, she was completely ignorant to her son's emotional problems. He, himself, wasn't fully aware of them, either. She was only beginning to realize that they were growing worse. Deep down inside, she thought it was just a temporary phase of teenage adolescence. But this was a cancer that could not be cured from the surface.
"Adam," she said, a little calmer now, "stay the hell home then, but you're going tomorrow. No ifs ands or buts about it.
Understand?
"
He just stared, wanting her sorry ass to leave so he could release the tears. "I guess I will if I have to." But he already knew he wouldn't. School scared him... scared the
shit
out of him.
Angela, less tense but still shaky, sighed and walked to the door. "Come hell or high water, school tomorrow morning. If you don't go, I will drag you there."
He nodded.
She left the room.
He covered up and bawled.
A cancer that cannot be cured from the surface...
The problem had always been there, hiding like a stalker in the night, slowly eating away at Adam's soul like acid on a nail. It was not just one single problem but a slew of moderate-sized ones that had been triggered by adolescence, his parents' recent divorce, and a new school. Little did anyone know how monstrous it was growing, how quickly. Adam was too confused to understand it, and his parents barely acknowledged its existence at all. The problems seemed to have no cure, no treatment, and they could not be classified specifically. Adam knew
how
he felt, but not
why
he felt the horrible way he did. While the formidable opponent inside him snowballed, he continued living, writing increasingly more violent and disturbing horror stories in his spare time, intent on becoming the next Stephen King or Clive Barker.
Adam wrote a lot. About demons, devils, murderers. Some dark poetry and philosophy... to spontaneous thoughts and beliefs.
Adam watched four times as much television.
For the rest of that Monday, Adam's most loathed day of the week, he watched a mini-marathon of Full House, his favorite television show, and began handwriting an outline for his new horror story entitled, Damaged. It was about a sixteen-year-old boy who goes crazy and blows up the world with a nuclear bomb.
But, like everything, the day did not last—
School (aka Hell)
"Adam! Adam!" the long-haired beast bellowed from downstairs.
Tuesday already?
School was closing in. He hung on dearly to the dream world.
"Wake up! Chop, chop! Time to go to school. Come on!"–louder, adequate enough to jar him from his glorious slumber.
He opened his eyes; the sunlight blazed through the blinds like a retina-burning laser beam.
"You awake?" she hollered.
He wanted to tape her mouth shut. "Oh, no," he grunted, closing his eyes. He breathed deeply, drifting, floating, free—
"Tiiiiime tooooo geeeeet uuuup!
"
Annoyed, sleepy, confined.
"Mom," he mumbled, "let me sleep for five more minutes."
She couldn't hear him. He barely heard himself.
"Aaaaadam!
"
His eyelids opened, shut, opened, shut. That harsh sun was bugging the shit out of him.
The darkness soon welcomed him back, drew him away from the looming light, tempting him.
"Wake up!" she yelled, louder and edgier.
Adam jolted upright and threw the covers aside, as if prodded by a taser
. "All right!"
he screamed. For a brief second, he looked homicidal.
He rubbed his crusty eyes, contemplating a way to skip school today. Fake sick? She wouldn't buy it. It had worked once, but not the second or the third time. Climb out the window, shimmy down a gutter, and then hide out at the playground until three when school let out?