Armour: Lonely

https://www.facebook.com/groups/RainbowSnippets/  #RainbowSnippets is a Facebook Group in which LGBTQIA authors gather weekly to post and share six sentence snippets from a work in progress or a finished work. Check them out at the link above and get your read on!

 

This snippet is coming from deep inside of both Derek and Lloyd. I think their song is definitely “Sometime Later” by Alpha. The song describes “a lonely bird”. And it’s such a gut punch of a song. It’s featured in a very sad movie that was shown to us during a hospice nursing class back in the day called, “MY LIFE WITHOUT ME” starring Sarah Polley, about a young woman who learns she has terminal cancer.

There’s nothing about cancer in ARMOUR, but that song is just so…well, there’s no sense trying to describe a song in words. You’d just have to listen to it. In the meantime, my snippet is about how Lloyd, after a long time of just being Derek’s “neighbour/friend”, a kind of casual companion, while Grandma Negdar is the real provider of comfort and warmth to Derek, finally comes to understand just how tortured Derek is, and how alone he would truly be without them. In a scene where Derek turns his head away for mere moments, little Joey wanders away with another five year old to see a batch of newborn kittens down the street. Derek goes into full blown meltdown mode, and asks Lloyd’s sister, Lilit, if she saw where Joey went. When Lilit’s reply is too vague for Derek, his “berserkery” goes a notch or two higher, and Lloyd speaks sharply at him, “Now don’t start in on HER!” Lloyd was hoping to protect Lilit and cool Derek’s jets so to speak, but what Lloyd didn’t expect was how badly he hurt Derek’s feelings. It’s only when Lloyd’s Grandma scolds him that he truly decides to accept that Derek is more than just overprotective. Derek is traumatised, mentally abused and living in a nightmare.

“And I felt something changing inside of me.

I finally began to feel it in the shaking of his sobs.

I felt the horror of what Simon was doing to this poor little kid.

I tried to really feel what it would be like if that worthless lump of shit, Sam Tafford, had whispered scenarios of rape, torture and murder about Lisbeth and Lilit, into my ear late at night.

I tried to be Derek Rollins.

And understood.

Why he came over every day…not to pester me. Not to pester Grandma for her cookies and soups. But because he needed us.”

Song of the Week: “Sometime Later” by Alpha, the song described above.