Page 139 of Damsel in Disguise

“Put a smile on and spread it around…”

Sometimes when I’m not sleeping, or stirred awake, she’d reach for me without asking. Her fingers would wrap around my wrist and she’d tug me into it with her, guiding my stiff, uncooperative body into something that resembles dancing.

I never understood the rhythm, never felt what she feels in those moments. But I let her move me anyway, because in those few minutes, she looks free.

The radio itself is a dying thing, older than it should have been allowed to survive. Its insides rattle faintly whenever the volume shifts between too loud. The knob never settles properly, stuck in a limbo where the sound warps and bends in on itself, distorting the melody until it feels like it is struggling to exist.

Like us.

Our house sits in a part of the city people pretend doesn’t exist, the kind of place that doesn’t appear in conversations unless it’s to be dismissed or avoided. Doors stay locked, windows stay covered—not for privacy, never for that illusion of comfort, but for survival.

Men come and go at all hours, their presence as routine as the flicker of the faulty light above the kitchen sink.

Some arrive loud, announcing themselves with careless arrogance. Others slip in quietly, as if they understand instinctively that noise can be dangerous in a place like this.

A few are drunk enough to forget my existence entirely, even though I’m always there, sitting on the floor, fighting to focus on my academics amidst all the sounds that blur between pleasure and pain.

Alistair.

I always say it politely whenever they care to ask for my name, with my lips curved into something that resembles friendliness. I smile when I say it—I’ve already learned that people respond better to something that looks pleasant, even when it isn’t.

Some of them like that—the warmth in my voice, the deliberate politeness, the illusion of something soft where there is none. Others frown the moment they hear my name, as if it carries something unpleasant they can’t quite place.

Alistair—or Alastor.

That’s how only she pronounces it when she’s tired. The name slips differently off her tongue, as it belongs to something older than either of us.

She told me once, in fragments that didn’t make sense at the time. She explained it means the executioner of Hell, the one who punishes the wicked, a vengeful spirit rooted somewhere between mythology and religion—Alastor.

I remember asking her why she chose it.

She laughed softly, brushing my hair back with fingers that still smelled faintly of cheap perfume, and said something broken and unfinished about a hero who punishes the evil.

Even then, I think she wanted to believe I’d become something righteous. She just didn’t understand what form of righteous I’d actually turn into.

So yeah, I wasn’t what my mom thought I was. I turned out to be a strange child.

Not loud enough to be disruptive, not visible enough to be memorable, but different in ways that unsettled people without them understanding why.

I never cry when I’m supposed to. Never reacted when things happened that made other children scream or recoil, or run.

I watch.

I listen.

I learn patterns.

For instance, men who knock twice are impatient, their rhythm demanding, already irritated by the idea of waiting. Men who knock once and pause carry a different kind of danger, quieter but far more deliberate. The ones who don’t knock at all… those are the ones you stay quiet for.

School, in comparison, is simpler.

Children are easier to understand than adults. Crueler, yes, but their cruelty lacks complexity. It’s direct, unrefined, driven by instinct rather than calculation.

And they never liked me.

Not because I do anything to them, but because I don’t do anything with them.

I don’t participate in games that lack structure or rules. I don’t join them in laughing that erupts without cause. I had no constant need to be seen, to be acknowledged, or to occupy space loudly enough that others are forced to notice.