Prisoner of the Castle
Memory 7
How quickly this had all happened.
Just months ago, if someone had asked Wanda who Victor was, she wouldn’t have had an answer. Despite all the time she spent teasing and chasing him, he had been an impenetrable fortress. Unwilling to let anyone into his little castle, his world. To see who he really is underneath all the fancy columns and architecture, perfectly planned and sculpted to hide the secrets buried deep within.
But somehow, Wanda had infiltrated her way in. She’d braved her way across his crocodile-infested moat, found an unused back entrance, and she’d slipped right in. Wanda was a mere thief, but not for need - for pleasure. She loved shiny, valuable objects; the way they glittered and brightened up the world, illuminating reality from its gray mundanities. So when Wanda saw his castle, taller and more fortified than any conquest she’d embarked upon before, she knew something valuable must be inside. Something so precious and radiant that it would outshine her whole collection.
Imagine Wanda’s surprise when the secret of the castle was not the shiny jewel she had envisioned, but a lonely prince. Locked away like Rapunzel, but with no long hair to let down as a cry for help. No, locked inside, behind many stone corridors and winding passageways, in the heart of the castle, was a boy, afraid of the world.
That’s how it felt to get to know Victor. Talking to him over hours and hours of text conversation, they had begun to wage a new war to peel down each others’ barriers. For Wanda, that meant infiltrating his castle, looking for intel or clues about how it was constructed, figuring out the fastest routes she could take to reach the boy inside.
It wasn’t easy to reach that boy. Despite her best laid plans, the interior of his castle was ever-changing, and she had to adapt with every journey into his heart.
But when she reached him, looked in through those iron bars, and he looked back, a slow, hesitant smile that bloomed into a wonderful grin, a grin so radiant that it outshone her whole collection, she knew it was all worth it.
It was worth it when he would let go of his inhibitions for a small moment and ramble about something he loved. Like his flower collection. Victor’s texts would ping onto her phone, faster than usual, his short messages turning into towers that took up her whole screen, and she could almost imagine the electricity of his long fingers rapidly dancing across his keyboard, waxing poetic about his love for nature.
Wanda would just sit and grin stupidly at her phone, let him have his moment. Her eyes absorbing his words, imagining the sound of his excitement in her ears, an experience she hadn’t been lucky enough to have yet. She had begun to craft plans to elicit this response from him in person when they resumed school after Christmas.
Wanda had gotten so wrapped up in their exchanges, a constant trade off of letting the other ramble (although she admittedly rambled much more than Victor, but Victor didn’t seem to mind), she ended up blurting out the truth about her depression. She thought she’d be more afraid, but telling him felt so natural, like every conversation they had, that while a part of her played the part of being hesitant, a part of her wanted to share more than anything.
Because Wanda wanted to tell him everything. Even the bad things. Unlike everyone else in her life, he listened. He listened, and he didn’t judge, and he understood. And all of the feelings and experiences and words she had held in her whole life came flooding out, and Victor drank it all in like a man parched.
But of course, this is Wanda we’re talking about. The Wanda who isn’t allowed to have good things in her life. Who seems destined to suffer. Because as soon as she had grown accustomed to talking to Victor, it happened.
The week before new year’s. In the middle of break, Wanda stretched herself groggily awake around one in the afternoon. She’d stayed up late talking to Victor, talking about some of her deepest, darkest thoughts, and after he had passed out, Wanda stayed up even later with her thoughts. Plagued by their torture, their voices shouted extra loud in her mind last night.
But today was a new day. A slate wiped clean of yesterday’s sadness. So she rolled over in her queen sized bed, engulfed by her large, fluffy, purple duvet, and checked her phone on her nightstand.
No new messages. Odd. By this time, she’d usually hear from Victor. But there was still time in the day.
Wanda preoccupied herself with her usual mind-numbing activities, browsing social media and binging TV shows absentmindedly. She couldn’t be left alone with her thoughts; she needed stimulation to fill her mind, or self doubt and depression would creep in.
She was especially lonely because there was simply nothing else to do. Wanda lived far from her high school, an hour’s commute each way, so she lived too far from any of her school acquaintances to meet up with them. Even if she did live close by, she wasn’t sure they’d want to hang out with her anyways. While people were friendly with her, tolerated her existence, Wanda never felt like she belonged anywhere. As if her existence was more of a mistake than something purposeful.
The day slipped into the evening as hours marched by at the steady pace of her binge watching episodes of a tv show. The light shining through her sheer blinds in her second story bedroom turned from a bright white to a gentle orange until the light disappeared altogether, the moon’s glow not enough to reach inside her room. With the lights off, there Wanda sat, wrapped up under her blankets and covers in a cocoon, willing time to go by, waiting for something to happen and simultaneously thankful that nothing was happening. No news felt like good news when you didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility of looming bad news.
A notification slid over her TV show on her phone. A message from Victor, finally. Her brain fuzzy from hours of watching TV, she clicked his message without a second thought.
8:57pm
Hey. Sorry I haven’t answered you all day.
It’s fine, no worries. What’s up?
I have some bad news.
Ok? What?
Wanda’s stomach fluttered as she watched the bubble of him typing wobble at a steady rhythm. She didn’t know what to expect, but Victor rarely discussed bad or negative things about his own life, so it had to be serious.
9:01pm
I’m not sure how to say this, but. I found out today that Ultron, my dad, has been reading our messages.
Wanda’s heart plummeted into her stomach. His dad had… read their messages? All of them?
She felt sick. She felt exposed. Wanda told Victor… everything. She trusted him with that part of herself. It was meant for only his eyes. And his dad had read all of it? All of her feelings, experiences, words? Even her darkest and worst thoughts about herself, thoughts she hadn’t even told her parents?
9:01pm
What? How much did he read?
Everything.
Breathe in through the nose for four seconds, hold for four seconds, release for four seconds. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one -
9:02pm
He read the stuff about your depression. The self harm. And he says I’m not allowed to talk to you anymore.
Wanda’s breathing stopped. She blinked, re-read the message, again, then again, then again, then again -
9:03pm
What?
My older brother, Jarvis, used to have a friend who was depressed. But she was a “bad influence on him”, according to Ultron. So eventually, Ultron intervened when things got sorta intense. He says he doesn’t want me to go through the same thing Jarvis did.
He’s going to call the school and demand we not be allowed to work together in class or hang out during school hours. My hands are tied; there’s nothing I can do.
I’m sorry.
I’m really, really sorry.
Those were the last words Wanda would ever see or hear from Victor for nearly half a year.
Memory 8
Victor gasped awake, his body shivering from the sweat coating his body. He hugged himself, rubbing his own arms soothingly, and curled his knees up to his chin, flexing all of his muscles.
He could move again.
Victor didn’t know how long he’d been caught in the night terror, his consciousness half awake, but his body fast asleep. Trapped in his bed, in his skin, unable to control himself, to move, to wake up, to scream.
He quickly slid out of bed, desperate to escape the setting of his nightmare. Stripping out of his soaked pjs, he threw them in the laundry basket by his door haphazardly as he took long, quiet strides towards the bathroom. Victor didn’t want to wake his father.
Once in the bathroom, he flipped on the light and pressed his hot palms onto the cool sink, the cold contrast almost burning his skin. His face looked gaunt and paler than usual, cheekbones pronounced, blue eyes almost appearing navy in his sunken eye sockets. Chapped lips were subconsciously parted, breath whistling in and out as his lungs tried to regain control of his heart.
Victor splashed cold water on his face, trying to bring his mind back to reality. But the ephemeral nature of the night haunted him, its transience and mystery wrapped in darkness the lights of his eyes couldn’t pierce terrifying him. In his sleep, he was defenseless. Unable to see or know the enemy of the night.
After rubbing his face raw with an old hand towel, Victor returned to his room just as quietly as he left it. He mindlessly grabbed a new set of pjs and tugged them on, then slid back into the bottom bunk of his bed, reversing all the steps he’d taken as he left, as if trying to rewind the VCR of his life back to before any of this had happened.
But the damage had been done. He wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. The thought of being dragged back into another nightmare was too much. Victor let go of a breath he forgot he was holding, his chest sinking into itself with anxiety.
He shouldn’t have bothered trying to sleep. He knew a nightmare had been bound to happen. But he had been so tired, had wanted to turn off his mind so badly, that he took the risk anyways.
Exhaustion loosened his grip on his conscious thoughts, and his anxiety took control, replaying the events of the day. Events that had already been looping in his mind for hours.
He’d slept in this morning, relishing in the late start granted by his father for getting good grades. When he came down for breakfast, Victor knew something was wrong when he saw that breakfast had already been prepared and was waiting for him on the table. Bacon, eggs, and toast, except they’d all clearly been prepped hours ago, the aroma of cooking barely lingering in the air. The cold breakfast was an omen of what was to come.
Ultron sat at his usual spot at the head of the table, one leg crossed over the other as he perused the morning paper. When Victor paused at the bottom step to take in the scene, Ultron lowered his paper with a practiced flourish, and looked down at him through the reading glasses balanced delicately on the end of his nose.
“Finally awake, huh?”
Victor suppressed the urge to swallow and took his place at the other end of the table, gathering the cold food onto his plate, not meeting his father’s piercing gaze.
“Yes, sir.”
“We need to talk.”
Victor looked up at his father then, tightening his jaw in self control, fighting his micro expressions to not express any fear.
“About what?”
Ultron removed his glasses from his face, setting them on top of his paper, and he let out a weary sigh.
“Look, son… I know you aren’t as social as your brother, that you’ve struggled to make friends since switching schools…”
Victor blinked. Yes, he was much more introverted than his older brother. Yes, he didn’t make friends easily. But he also hadn’t wanted to.
“But… that doesn’t mean you should just be friends with anybody.”
Victor’s jaw began to hurt from how hard he was clenching it. Wanda. He was talking about Wanda. He had to be. He didn’t have any other friends. Oh God, what had he done?
“Victor, I’ve read your messages between you and that girl. Wanda.”
His heart dropped to his stomach, and the tight clench of his jaw released as his mouth hung slightly ajar at this reveal, the wind and the fight knocked out of him like a punch to the gut. Ultron read their messages. Knowing him, he’d probably read all of them. Over a month’s worth of messages, hours every day. And he’d seen it all.
And the worst part was, Victor hadn’t seen it coming. And he should have. God, he should have. Victor knew Ultron had the account details for all of his emails and apps. He just hadn’t predicted he’d go that far. To read the messages between him and his friends.
“I… why?”
“You’ve been different lately, Victor. Your night terrors have been happening more frequently. I know you don’t always wake me up when they happen, but I know. So I wanted to see if there was something making you more… stressed.”
Unsure of what to say, Victor let his father speak, certain that whatever course of action he’d decided upon, that his mind wouldn’t be changed. Ultron reached across the table, pulling one of Victor’s hands into his, holding his hand tightly, looking at him with eyes wide and full of sympathy.
But Victor knew the truth. Knew that the sympathy was nothing but a perfect replica of the emotion. Behind the veil of his father’s dark blue eyes, behind the veil of fake sympathy, there was nothing. Victor could feel his own heartbeat in his wrist as his father squeezed his hand tighter. Too tight.
“You’re my son. I want you to be okay, to succeed. I know you’re capable of great things. And this girl… is a mistake.”
The castle of his heart shakes with the blow, walls crumbling and collapsing as he attempts to hold his fortress together. To remain strong in front of his father. But his words are killing him. The way his father’s sympathy twists into disdain and disgust makes Victor feel nauseous.
“She will only hurt you, make you feel worse. Just like Jarvis’s old friend. A bad influence.”
Ultron releases his hands and leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest.
“I’ve decided it’s for the best that you cease contact with her.”
His face is wet. Victor swipes his hand across his cheek, attempting to hide the moisture, blinking rapidly to hold in the tears, but they roll silently out of his eyes, no longer able to be hidden behind his eyelids.
With a coo of reassurance, his father stands from the table and walks over to Victor, pulling him into an embrace. His resolve breaking, Victor clings to his father, smothering his sobs into his chest as if he was a little boy who’d scraped his knee for the first time. He’s going to lose his best friend, his only friend, all over again. All he had was his father. The only constant in his life. So he drank in this moment, his father’s comfort that he rarely gave, desperate to fill the rapidly growing Wanda-shaped hole in his heart, desperate to be comforted from the loneliness squeezing his chest so tight.
Ultron pet the top of his head and rubbed soothing circles on Victor’s back as he cried.
“There, there… I’m sorry, Victor. I know you really liked her. But this is for the better, you’ll see. One day, you’ll see how right I was. That I’m only doing this because I love you. My son. My precious, brilliant son.”
After a few minutes, the hug ends, and Victor paws lamely at his face, attempting to hide evidence of his tears. Ultron rubs one of Victor’s shoulders as he looks down at him with a mixture of sympathy and pity, a wistful smile on his face.
“You’re still so young. So soft and emotional, unlike your brother. Girls like that can take advantage of your kindness. You’re destined for great things, Victor.”
Victor averts his gaze down to his lap, his chest still tight with sadness. Then he feels Ultron’s hand against his cheek, and he leans into his palm, like a small boy desperate for attention and love. His father tips Victor’s face up to look into his eyes. Ultron’s eyes wear that same calculated veil of sympathy, eyebrows creased into a sympathetic sin wave. But the tips of his mouth are creased into the smallest of smiles of pride for his son, the gears behind his eyes turning with the machinations of his plans for Victor.
“And I won’t let anyone get in the way of your brilliance.”