I can feel the soil falling over my head

name :: Cedar Arturo // Chi Tian-Ya

player :: Melissa Malice [[herbloodyremains]]

position :: Human Curiosity
"The Astounding One-limbed Tree Boy"

group :: Asile

Appearance.

Cedar is almost too tall for his bed.

If born right, he would have been called normal, his mouth full and pink, teeth straight and shining.
His eyes a dark-dark brown and hair only a few shades lighter or darker depending on the season, messy and combed foward, reaching his eyes if not cut the way he likes it.

But it is never cut the way he likes it
because he is not normal.

I don’t have a right arm, he says, I won’t say I’m missing it, becuase that would imply I know what its like to have one.

The arm thing doesn’t bother me much, it’s this... His hand, as he’s lying in the small bed, travels up his mildly developed chest, ghosting the thick black lines contrasting his skin. Each line like a branch on a sketched out tree, bending and swaying right towards his undeveloped side. Otherwise, his body is unmarred, no cuts or scrapes, scars or bruises. He hardly works, hardly can do anything that would compromise his odd markings.

They bleed...He thinks to himself, telling no one else. Since he was twenty, only a year before, several have welled to the surface and split, red-black blood spilling out,

staining his almosttan skin,
staining his small small bed
staining his only hand.

It’s his only secret.

Otherwise, he smiles. His grin is sharp and his laugh often heard.

Everyone else would say that Cedar was a happy boy,
a cute young boy destroyed by a biological mistake.

Cedar just thinks he’s ugly.

Background.

No one wants a baby boy who looks different every few months. It started at birth and his parents could deal with him just having one arm.

If you teach him, he can work just like he could if he had two. A doctor says.

And so, the baby was accepted.

And then, months passed and the markings showed,
faint,
but a sick brown-black-purple, bubbling under his skin.

They don’t seem to be hurting him, just look past it, they could just go away. A doctor repeats.

And so, the baby was still accepted,
parents just cringed when he was held.

And then, months passed into years and years
and fiasco after fiasco occurred Leaving a boy to puberty:

Acne,

Voice changes,

Skin disorders - gone terribly wrong.

The markings stretched and darkened, nearly black and flowerless branches over his skin.

His mother cried.
His father wanted to dispose of him.
His mother cried.
His father thought of killing him.
His mother cried.
His father sold him to a traveling circus.

The beautiful teen freak,
Smile of pure ivory and skin of lightly sun-licked tan,
One armed and dark-lined, a missing limbed tree.

His mother cried as the circus pulled away.
His father counted his change.

There are some people who just never could care.
He whispers years later.

Activities.

"If you're so funny
then why are you on your own tonight?
And if you're so clever
then why are you on your own tonight?
If you're so very entertaining
then why are you on your own tonight?
If you're so very good-looking
why do you sleep alone tonight?”

How do you explain a puddle of blood under the table at a restaurant?
The smear on your cheek before I kissed you goodnight?

He says through a song he thinks about in bed
Knowing the lyrics were never written for a boy like him.

It's so easy to laugh at me
It's so easy to hate me

When I’ll stain your dress and the silverware
And turn the lemon butter red,
Our fish dinner a massacre.

And you’ll just slam the door in my face

“tonight is just like any other night
That's why you're on your own tonight”

that’s why I spend most of my time alone,
tracing the curves of my veins
and cleaning the mess it leaves in my bed.

But usually, if you pay me enough,
You can at least watch.

He sighs, looking at his jar of change,
His money
His tips
His job being all he has left.

Ideals/Motivations.

He says to the dust they kick up,
as the circus travels across,
I’d like someone to look past this
But he knows that’s not the business he’s involved in.

Maybe someone with a heart as ugly as my skin
Can smile,
Thinking at least they don’t look like me.
He decides.

Ugly boys are good for something.

Attitude.

He smiles,
because he doesn’t have to look at himself.

But when he’s alone,
he frowns,
tracing the lines on his chest,

tracing the arm where nothing is.