Year 2 - Give Me the Truth by Lydon Colston

Give Me the Truth

Lies, a corruption of justice invented by the human psyche – unable to do any real physical harm to the ordinary.

I’ve always aimed to tell the truth; Mother always told me that lying was bad. And I trusted her. It wasn’t until I was eleven that I told my first lie. I only lied because I felt like I’d had no other choice, time was ticking ever so fast as Father demanded to know where Sister had gone. But sister swore that she’d hurt me if I told Mother or Father that she was out with a boy. She placed me in a position where my only option was corruption – all because she wasn’t careful enough to check who was around before discussing her plans.

So I lied.

I had no other choice.

Fear of pain lead me to the most intense state of despair induced suffering that I’d ever experienced. As each un-truthful word vibrated through my lips, the smell of seared flesh intensified. As if a scorching hot fire poker was practising it’s calligraphy on my skin – the lie etched itself through heat, branding the inside of my right thigh.

Mother and Father stared at me wide eyed… as if they’d just witnessed a massacre. Nothing was the same after that day, they never looked at me with love, never showed any affection towards me. Despite the pain I was in, religion convinced them that this was the word of Lucifer, or some demon. I stopped listening to them after a while.

Twenty-seven. I am twenty-seven now. My body branded with only three marks of dishonesty. The time is 1:56 in the afternoon and I sit, staring into the abyss of judgement that is the full body mirror that I’ve been left with. My eyes meet that of my reflections and I listen intently to the chirping of birds, the spring sun pressing down on me through a small window.

I hated spring weddings. But Elly had said that she’d always dreamed of having one.

“Really! I love spring weddings too!”

That mark of dishonesty resides just at the tip of my left leg, close to my crotch but just lower than the beginning of my stomach.

Elly was good to me; she loved me with all her heart. Her presence made the marks tingle.

We’d been dating for four years after meeting at a work event. Turns out you can find love at an over-crowded court house. A steno-type operator was really the only job I felt comfortable doing… there’s no way to lie when you’re simply repeating someone else into a written form. However, she was a lawyer, and while her lies didn’t scorch themselves a place within her skin, I could still feel them. Her only flaw.

I’d become a very cold person, but still she didn’t seem to mind. I tried to keep to myself and avoid social events, just like Sister, people force you into corrupting your own self. I didn’t see the point in being hurt just through someone else’s dishonesty, why should I put myself through that? But still, being that way was lonely… I didn’t like being alone. So when Elly seemed to show some form of attachment to me, I let her. Keeping one person around eased the pain, and just one couldn’t beat my body with influenced flicks of my fire filled tongue. I was wrong about that though.

She proposed to me on February 29^th – joking that she knew I’d never get round to asking her, making fun of my nervous nature with a playful grin that conveyed that she knew I had my reasons for my anxious ways.

“Yes Elly! Of course I will! It would make me so happy to become your husband.”

I wasn’t very good at lying, my speech always seemed forced, unrealistic, like a film with terrible actors and a horrendous script.

That was my third mark of dishonesty. It wraps around my right ankle, twisting down onto the sole of my foot.

The door knocked and I’m brought back from the kaleidoscope of my memory.

It was time.

The Catholic Church, (her choice), was filled entirely with her friends and family. Mother, Father, and Sister weren’t invited. I knew they wouldn’t even look at the invitation. And I never made any friends other than Elly.

Standing at the alter I gaze towards Elly. Her face glows in the natural light as her dress envelopes her like a white ocean, flowing behind as her father walks her down the aisle. The priest begins the ceremony and Elly began saying her vows as I stare into her chest admiring her physique. When she finishes she slips the ring on to my finger and smiles at me expectantly.

“Elly… you have blessed my life just by staying by my side. I vow to always take care of you, and to support you through all hard-ships that you may face, be they yours or ours. And most of all…” I take in a deep breath and calm my shaking slightly. “…Most of all I vow to always love you.”

I mimic her reassuring smile, only I grind my teeth together in order to cope with the intense pain that I felt as my fourth mark of dishonesty made itself a home on the bridge between my shoulder blades.