True Names
by maelucky
A depressed traumatized eggs suicide plan is foiled by a mysterious stranger in the forest by a river and in untangling the mysteries this mystical enby brings she might just find herself.
CW: suicidal ideation, description of and talk around planning an attempt, ABA therapy mentions, internalized homophobia ableism and transphobia
Prologue: An Tranglam
Across from the school sits a massive bookstore. It’s chock full of teen magazines, novelty items and decor profiting off of pop culture and whatever new trend is in the cultural zeitgeist. Its chill atmosphere and in-building Starbucks makes it an easy and popular choice for truants like me. Sure, the school has plenty of SROs, but the pigs are all lazy and incompetent. Anyone with a shred of intelligence can sneak off campus, and they almost all do. Who can blame them? High school is hell and teaches very little if it can’t be somehow tied into the curriculum of blind religious nationalism. Even the classes they teach with the sole aim of producing useful working class members of society, like math or science, are not structured with the goal of teaching anything, only teaching memorization.If you don’t understand the lessons, you might be lucky to earn one minute of attempted rephrasing of the subject if you’re brave enough to admit your ignorance in front of the entire rest of the class. Then the class must go on as there are thirty-four other kids in the classroom and every class is always somehow three weeks behind. If you misbehave somehow, “disrupting the peace of the class,” best case scenario you are sent to detention, worst case scenario your teacher calls in your school resource officer and you quickly become another victim in the school to prison pipeline. Students are given no agency. They are punished with homework and the teachers aren’t paid enough to care. It's also not easy socializing with fellow students. Too many stupid unspoken social rules.
All that turmoil and that’s even before mentioning the horror that is… P.E. *shudders*. P.E. is probably the class me and the other students leave campus for the most. Nothing is worse than being forced to disrobe in front of all of your peers in cramped sweaty locker rooms and then being pitted against the strongest and fastest of your peers in violent competitive sports. So it’s no surprise why the bookstore tends to fill up fast from 12pm to 3pm as dozens of kids from all different lunch shifts desperately try to avoid getting pelted in the face with any and every variety of sports ball. The bookstore staff all know what’s going on. The SROs all know where the kids are hanging out, but there is generally an unspoken truce. As students’ schedules end at different times, there’s no real way of knowing right away who is and isn’t supposed to be in class, and the bookstore often employs seniors anyway. Nonetheless, if truant officers are ever facing crunch time on their quotas, all bets are off and the outside of the bookstore becomes their sporting ground.
Hard to say whether or not the students hiding in the Starbucks or the kids doing drugs under the overpass are smarter. Depends on who will end up in juvy faster, I suppose. Although I’ve been known to frequent the bookstore every now and then, personally I much prefer the third option. The freeway overpass is divided down the middle by a large barbed wire fence, separating the street from the train tracks. Just beyond the train tracks there is a small forested area surrounding a river. Some of the more daring kids will smoke pot on the tracks, but few tend to go beyond into the forest. A lot of the kids are more afraid of the homeless people who like to camp out there than they are impulsive and reckless. I sneak out to the river a lot. There’s a beautiful open field on the other side if you manage to cross the deep quick current on the slick wet stones. Perhaps it’s a disregard for my own life, or the fact P.E. is my last class for the day, but I believe it’s worth the effort. Besides, the longer I stay in these fields, the longer I’m not at home. It's not exactly easy being an only child. Especially not when you're such a disappointment. I guess even the homeless folks aren’t dumb enough to cross the river, as I’ve never seen anyone else on this side of it. I spend my hours looking at bugs and climbing trees. Ironically, I think I do more exercise out here than I ever would have in the gym.
I sit on the bend today, tossing stones, contemplating the irony of my reckless form of escapism, when I see a large dark shape moving behind one of the trees. Fear teaches people things about themselves, as it seems I don’t mind drowning in the river, but very much do mind being eaten alive by some wild animal. Whatever the shade may be, it is in the direction of the river crossing downstream. Luckily, there’s another overpass not too much further upstream. It would not be the first time for me to leave through the other overpass. There’s a bus that crosses that bridge, and it ends its route not too far from home, so I grab my backpack and head deeper into the forest in order to avoid the muddy disappearing bend as I go upstream. I know at some point, as I get closer and closer to the overpass, I’m going to have to cut through the open field. I try to avoid it for as long as I can, just in case whatever I saw on the bend might be following me. I stop walking every few feet to see if I can hear anything, keeping my head on a swivel. I know most wild animals would rather keep their distance from humans, and are generally harmless if left alone, but for some reason the thought of the shadowed creature following me fills me with immense dread. I hear the soft rustling of bugs and the sounds of the river and am convinced they are the sounds of the mystery beast. Perhaps it is the mystery that freaks me out the most. It’s hard to say. I walk and my brain convinces me the sound of my footsteps aren’t my own.
After several paranoid minutes of walking through the thin line of old trees, hearing branches and twigs snap behind me as I push through trees and walk through forest debris, I can see the trees clear up as the thick cement pillars holding up the bridge that looms overhead come into clear view. There are very few plants surrounding the cement pillars, probably cleared decades ago for construction. The bend around it has eroded to naught but mud. The walk from the river’s edge to the other end of the overpass through the field has to be about a four minute walk. I look behind me, trying to see if I can spot whatever shade has been following me. I see no unnatural shadows and I hear no unnatural noises. The river is eerily silent and no path forward offers me any coverage. For some reason, the silence unnerves me even more. I wait at the edge of the trees for what feels like an eternity, hoping that my imagined predator might twitch revealing its location, delaying my inevitable vulnerability. Each second of stillness that passes makes my heart beat even faster. Something builds up in my chest. I know it’s fear, but I chose to believe it could be courage. Regardless, it compels me to move.
I step out from the treeline and make a beeline for the fence on the far side. I start out at a brisk speedwalk, fervently looking behind me like a horror movie protagonist. I see nothing, but feel chased nonetheless. As I pick up my pace, I hear the tall grass behind me crunch and flatten faster and faster. I pause to search wildly and it pauses. I step forward and it steps forward. I run and it runs behind me. Before long, I hear the thing chasing me at a full sprint as I bound through the field as fast as I can. I’m scanning the fence the closer I get, desperately looking for the hole in it. When I finally spot it, I make a quick turn and aim for the spot where the metal wire bunches up and folds like crumpled aluminum. I slow my pace as I reach the fence. Looking behind me, I still see no creature, but I can feel it approaching. I slam into the fence as I am looking behind me while running. The fence rattles with the force of the approaching horror. Quickly scrambling to my feet, I see the hole sealed closed by two strands of metal wrapped like a twist tie around themselves. I hurriedly undo the top tie, knowing if I am not quick my death will surely be imminent. It takes a not inconsiderable bit of strength pulling apart the thick metal, as it tears at my skin and threatens to form blisters. As soon as the tie is free, I squeeze through the fence. My backpack slips off the single shoulder it was resting on as the coiled-up fence shreds the same shirt sleeve. I reach back through the fence, grabbing the backpack, and hold open the fence to pull it through. Out of breath and wildly disturbed, I jog down the road to the bus stop going eastbound. I can’t describe it, but given a moment on the bench to catch my breath, I feel a fog lifted from me. Why was I worried at all? What was I even running from? Logically, I knew the whole time that nothing was behind me. I check my phone at the bus stop, and find that I ended up making the trip across the field in half the time because I was running so fast. Was there ever any danger at all? What had really frightened me so much? Why do I feel so compelled to return tomorrow?
