Xion Island Carrier: Chapter 3.

I am filled with hatred. My name is Travis Bernstein. I’m thirty years old. Not safe around children—or adults. I close my eyes, and memories haunt me—a grainy, scratched film of strobe-lit scenes flashing at me in fragments. People say you can’t remember much from when you’re very young, but I remember plenty—the bits that matter. I recall the easy-mop floors with no carpet and the puke-green painted walls of the residential children’s home in England. The smell of scratchy blankets and disinfectant clinging to every corner comes back to me, and even now, I gag. I hear the children crying. It echoes down the hall, the kind of wailing that fades to whimpers after a long time when they realise nobody cares. I don’t remember a time when a kid wasn’t crying.

I didn’t. Not me.

I don’t know my bitch of a mother. Somebody said she was too young. When you’re a shade without a past, you do that. You take every scrap of information about you and keep a tight hold of it. My mother had brown hair and loved dogs. Snippets, you see. Tiny fragments of a person’s life have nothing to do with me, but they are strings from me to her. To them. The ties that bind. She wasn’t ready to be a mother.

And maybe I didn’t want to be born, nobody asked me. But I should have a say in my existence. However, here we are. My biological father was a dick who discovered his dick had more uses than peeing. A schoolboy. He didn’t want me. He denied ever going there and called my mother a slag. I was an unfortunate but disposable part of his life. I want to stamp on his face and grind his dick into his intestines with my heel.

Hatred can’t be born from nothing. It needs a reason. I have reasons.

The day I met my adoptive parents was a red-letter day—blood-red, dripping. The staff had dressed me up; they wanted rid. I was scrubbed and polished like a doll in a shop window. ‘Pick me. Pick me.’ I laugh because it probably wasn’t like that. I imagine us lined up with our shiny shoes and spit-licked hair and them walking down the line and stopping at me, the golden prize. But that’s just a fantasy where I pretend I’m special.

There was no choosing me involved. My fate was decided over a random paper clip. A bunch of papers, sent via snail mail, that were held together with that twisted piece of wire. There’d be a 5-inch photograph in the top left-hand corner. Just a formality, they’d already seen my picture in an email. No choice, just, ‘This is the unit allocated to you. Sign here if you want it.’

They did. Apparently.

I was six, and the social worker had brushed my hair and told me to smile. I was small for my age and quiet. I’d learnt that if you cause trouble, life is difficult. Keep your head down, stay out of sight. Be invisible. I was good at it.

 They walked into the room with Playdough-moulded smiles bigger than their faces, and I studied them as they looked down on me.

She was nervous and kept pulling her skirt. I was six, but I knew she couldn’t walk in heels and didn’t often wear a skirt. Even back then, I studied people.

James and Susan Bernstein. They looked nice enough and belonged in a middle-class house with vertical blinds. And they wanted me so they could have big family photos on their huge bare walls. My case leader had told me they didn’t have other children. I was a one-time deal.

They shook hands with the social worker, grinning all the time, and I wanted to break their teeth by hitting them in the mouth with a metal toy truck. But when they looked at me, I flicked the switch and didn’t feel anything—just the numbness that settled in my chest. It was easier that way. No expectations or disappointments.

Just a transaction.

My neatly pressed shirt was itchy, and they sized me up, ‘Which turkey should we have for Thanksgiving, dear?’ James and Susan Bernstein. They were polite and hopefully awkward. They didn’t know how this was supposed to go, and I was detached, watching it unfold through vacant eyes. Their smiles were careful when they saw me—just a glimpse, mind. I wouldn’t let them in, but there was one second where they saw the damage in me, not even a second, just a blip in time when I was there. But silence doesn’t draw blood—not until I want it to.

They looked beyond the spit-on hair and saw a monster in the molecules. And they glanced at each other, not a proper look. Just a flicker of the eyes. They could have backed out, turned around and run away—but they’d touched my photograph, read the small print, and signed the paper.

Too late, Buster.

They should have run away.

They were taking this fiasco seriously. At six years old, I read them. They were people with a couple of cars parked in a neat driveway and a golden retriever called Beauty. That bit was a fact; they did. The social worker with bad breath told me, and I wanted to barf because of the dog’s pathetic name. They were a catalogue family but had to pretend to be the outdoorsy, rugged types because they couldn’t have kids. Everything pivoted on them being broken because there were no offspring in that fluffy nest. Being childless at forty, James and Susan didn’t quite fit with the church congregation.

James Bernstein was dark-haired, with wire-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose. There was a stiffness about him and a formality in the way he held himself. He wore an expensive coat. I was observant. I knew things. I saw what I shouldn’t and listened at doors. I smelled the money dripping from them like stinking perspiration.

They’d have good eats.

He’d probably bought his new coat for the visit, wanting to make a good impression. Susan’s smart jacket was a soft pale salmon colour. She had a well-groomed look, with every hair lacquered in place. It was blonde and pulled back in a perfect twist. I wanted to smell it, but she wore a smile like fake Tiffany diamonds. It didn’t reach her eyes. She tried too hard. Relax, Susan. I’m a cutie. How bad can it be? But nobody wants to raise a storm—they want sunshine. I was thunderclouds in damaged skin.

She looked at me as though she’d practised in the mirror first. And when James crouched down to my level, I held still, letting him have a good look. Even monsters were children once. My eyes gave him nothing. I was used to being inspected, tested, and assessed. Adults did it to me all the time. Sometimes, they didn’t even know what they were looking for. I was a case file in a school uniform. I stared back, my face empty. The social worker’s words were fresh in my ears: ‘Smile and look nice for them.’ So I’d let the corners of my mouth turn up enough to look polite but without showing any teeth. If I hadn’t been so damned good-looking back then—and even now—it would have been an evil grin, but adorable won you votes in that election. People didn’t like it when you smiled too much. It frightened them.

‘Hello, Travis,’ James said, his voice gentle, like talking to a scared animal that might attack. ‘We’re very excited to meet you.’

That was the first time I’d heard my new name spoken directly to me. Though, I’d been primed for it in advance. ‘We don’t want him to have a meltdown now, do we, Mr Bernstein?’ I think it was a crass move. If they’d wanted to change my name, I should have had some say in it. But I didn’t care what they called me.

Excited. Sure. Maybe they were. It wasn’t every day you bought yourself an off-the-peg kid. I nodded, enough to show I was listening. I didn’t speak because it was always better to be quiet. Words got you into trouble. I didn’t feel any excitement. I’d been through this before. Adults trooped in and looked me over like a piece of meat. Then they’d leave, often without saying why they didn’t want me. Sometimes, they’d whisper as they went, glancing back at me with simpering looks. But beneath their pity, I scared them. Sometimes, they didn’t bother looking back and couldn’t get out fast enough. Not everybody cared that they’d touched the photo and signed the paper.

‘You have fourteen days to change your mind, folks. After that, it’s all yours. No returns.’

The Bernsteins had made up their minds. I heard her whisper, ‘It’s a shame there isn’t a baby.’ They were so desperate that they’d take whatever was left on the shelf. I was the consolation prize, the kid they settled for because life didn’t give them what they wanted. But I kept my face blank and gave them nothing. They could do whatever it was they came to do.

They smiled in unison, like happy-simulating robots, and they took my hands—one on each side—leading me out of the room. They led me from the familiar coldness into their warm car, with seats that smelled of leather and Susan’s expensive perfume.

We pulled away, and I watched the children’s home fade into the distance; its grey walls grew smaller until they were just a painful memory.

Xion Island Carrier is book 6 in the DCI Nash series. They're all on KU and stand alone. Hush Hush Honeysuckle is Book One, and this is the Amazon link.

https://books2read.com/u/4EB0zg(link is external)