second chances
for november 2021 fic a word challenge by @writeorwrite with the prompt,
DAY FOUR: eunoia “beautiful thinking, a well mind”
fandom: strangers from hell / hell is other people character: seo moon-jo
18+, dead dove content. be warned.
not limited to murder, violence, blood, gore, child abuse.
inspired by the song “second chances” by imagine dragons.
little trivia on my part, where some parts of my characterisation for seo moon-jo also derives inspiration from kang moo of Lee Hyeon Sook’s The Beast Must Die. character introspection is also influenced by darling, dearest, dead on ao3.
my writing style borders on my preference on being open-ended and thought-provoking, using descriptive language to show my love of unreliable narration that seemingly drifts the reader in and out of reality and fantasy. to stimulate and make them question: which is real, which is an illusion, and which is a delusion. so, you’ll see lots of nods of this writing preference everywhere and my love for throwing in references from music, literature, poetry.
i hope this is an enjoyable ride for you.
see notes below.
“ Here are two Jeffs. Pick one. This is how you make the meaning, you take two things and try to define the space between them. Jeff or Jeff? Who do you want to be?
“You just wanted to play in your own backyard, but you don’t know where your own yard is, exactly. You just wanted to prove there was one safe place, just one safe place where you could love him. You have not found that place yet. You have not made that place yet.
“You are here. You are here. You’re still right here.”
— Richard Siken
Your head is in the clouds again, they told him. Come back to earth, boy, you have shit to do.
Small fingers dug into soil. Clawing towards him, clawing into it, clawing into the flesh. Moon-jo hated the dirt, hated the way it stuck into his nails. Hated the crust of blood dried on tips, staining his pale fingers with filth. Beggars cannot be choosers, though —— behind gritted teeth and painfully wide tug of his lips, he says “thank you” with delicate politeness.
Like he means it.
Sure does when gratitude is beaten straight into his bones, rendering his little body immobile for days; as continuous as appreciation is carved into his skin with every waking hour, every day, every month, every year he’s grown into. From his mother. From this mother. From this stranger with too big curls, too red lipstick, too deceitful hands accommodating to cuts that it inflicted a minute ago.
Like a golden child. Their golden boy.
A child that is supposedly one to fill these shoes; one that they wished for. A boy who does not seek unfamiliar places where they cannot reach him, who does not stare for far too long, who does not grin far too broad. A boy who does what he is told, who does only good things because he’s a good son, he’s the perfect child.
A boy who does not bring in dead things with dead eyes and dead smiles into a home that he promised to invite death. Because good boys uphold their words and keeps their promises. Because that’s what good sons are taught and what he is expected to do.
— But he loved them, he really did. Or he believed he loved them, in a way he could. Couldn’t.
That was why he doesn’t understand why Mother looked so terrified and looked away. That was why he still doesn’t get it why Father had to strike him with heavy hands, his heavy punches. And despite the blues and purples that painted his skin, he laughed so hard that tears fell and for the first time in his life, he felt something ——
Nothing to it, really.
The color black caught his sights after, because it engulfs even the reddest of blood. He found it appealing as how it is found unsettling by many, because it does not give him slightest inconveniences to wash off his sins.
His sins that they told him about — where he finds beauty in the macabre and morbid, not in the mediocre and middling. He still doesn’t understand why they were stressing that he’s out of his mind, that he’s broken and unfixable; his soul non-existent and years will later prove that he’s been burned out early, where apathy is an ivory cage wrapped around his withered, bleeding heart.
The voices in his head never stops singing for the idea of grasping the concepts of nothingness and fullness, difficult to be accomplished through mortal hands, but he knows it is entirely not impossible. After all, even beyond the most minute movements and conversations, Moon-jo always felt out of touch with his own body; as if he’s wearing another person’s skin.
Perhaps, he does. Perhaps, that’s why his parents loathed him. Perhaps, because he wore the skin of the perfect child that they wanted, and their claws dug and tug hatefully to tear this skin from him.
Perhaps, because they cannot accept that they had a monster in their dwelling.
Perhaps, maybe this sparks Moon-jo’s fascination into creation and destruction.
Many times he had deconstructed himself and recreated himself from pleasingly efficient pieces that he took from other people. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, but they sawed through it. So, the wolf thought of skinning his shepherd and sawing their flesh off to replace his fur. But sooner it did, they didn’t get to see how their skin dangle off his young form, unfortunately.
Many times he tried to patch up fragile dead butterflies with scavenged bones and tried to make them fly again. Collect empty cocoons and place salvageable snails into it, to make them crawl from wires pierced through as their new spines. Gather dragonflies and pick their wings apart, sew them into caterpillars to give them wings.
Many times, no matter the trial and errors, it always bring him back to the day that they said he destroyed their home, not his, theirs and they reconstructed it without him. Without his pictures on the walls, without his shadows in the rooms. Without boiling heat in those void eyes and too sharp teeth of a cornered animal who slowly exposes its jagged edges against its captors.
And where they discover utter repulsion and fear of what they had dismantled and conceived, Moon-jo’s bright laughter bounces of too white walls.
Too white for his tastes.
— Your head is in the clouds again, Mrs. Eom told him. Come back when you’re finished, we have lots to do today.
Deep inhale takes him away from overseeing a golden, perfect child holding heavy stones in light-feathered hands, who drops them on unmarked graves in the middle of a stormy night. Their golden, perfect child buried alongside with its parents; rottenness from their cores permeating from holes torn into their flesh by the creature they nurtured.
Moon-jo looks at this mother, this stranger with still the same too big curls, too red lipstick, too deceitful of a tongue lovingly wrapping him in a blanket. A body bag.
And he smiles — with far too burned out embers slowly growing in his stare and mouth curled to hide far too honed canines — because he means it.
“I’ll see you soon.”
i had to clarify that i portray moon-jo as a psychopath. at times, he displays sociopathic qualities such as “having semblance, or weak possession of conscience and empathy; awareness of what he’s doing but rationalising it; impulsiveness and prone to rage” but he’d only done for the sake of, or as part of what he wants to show people like the tip of the iceberg. the iceberg being his true self, the tip is this surface of a sociopath — which he isn’t.
diving deeper, although research studies state that psychopathy is believed to have genetic components (underdevelopment of the brain that regulates emotions and impulsivity), the environment may also be a factor which does not limit to unstable family life, neglect, abuse, etc. however, in my take, i think moon-jo’s psychopathy is inherent (“nature”) during his childhood and only amplified as “nurtured” by his environment. perhaps, if his childhood had been different, will moon-jo have a truly normal life?
sociopaths and psychopaths both exhibit APD (antisocial personality disorder): termed for a condition characterised by lack of empathy, conscience, no regards for right or wrong, insensitively or unfeeling towards others and others’ feelings. if seen during childhood, the symptoms are shown as: difficulty with authority, cannot conform to social norms and gets in trouble with legal norms, cruelty to animals, no remorse or guilt towards their actions, shows difficulty empathising with others, prone to abuse or neglect others — among other things.
in conclusion, an hc of mine is also referenced: moon-jo’s observational skills enable him to mimic how people usually portray emotions through verbal and nonverbal language, because moon-jo himself is not capable to feel emotions. he shows his emotions in peculiar ways that he only knows how to, even if they are deranged, twisted and intrusive compared to accepted social norms. this drabble also aims to paint a picture of his psychopathy.