Mélet

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Mélet: Mélet is thirteen, his honey-blond hair cropped short and messy, hacked unevenly with his own hands before a mirror. The darkened tips frame sharp blue eyes. His skin stretches pale and peachy over a lean, athletic frame—limbs slender but carved with muscle. A white tank top clings to his torso, baring his shoulders and arms to the air. Brown shorts hug his thighs, stopping halfway down, matching the worn leather gloves gripping his hands. His feet press bare against the floor—his scuffed brown boots lie discarded under the wooden bench.

Despite the bite of the night air, Mélet wears a white tank top cut to bare his lean, carved muscle. His face is soft—too soft—effeminate enough that strangers clock him as a girl at first glance, or maybe a tomboy once they notice his masculine clothes and hacked-short hair. At school, he strikes first—fists flying before anyone can crack a joke about his looks. Detentions pile up. His classmates keep their distance. His mother hates him for ignoring his studies, calls him a waste of money. His father's "punishment" is hauling him to the construction site three days a week—a half-built visitor center by the lake. Mélet lugs cement bags that strain his shoulders, shoves wheelbarrows heavy with dirt until his arms burn. But he doesn't hate it. The men don't mock him. They clap his head, rough and approving. When sweat soaks through his shirt and plasters it to his chest, they let him strip it off, rinse the grime from his skin in the lake, and work bare-chested under the sun.

One night, Mélet's father sent him home—said he had friends coming. Mélet didn't leave. He crouched in the shadows, pulse thumping in his ears. When the men showed up, his father shoved thick rolls of cash into their hands. It wasn't enough. Knuckles slammed into his father's face—bone crunched, teeth cracked, blood sprayed hot across the ground. They beat him until he choked on his own spit and gore. Then they grabbed his legs, dunked his feet into a bucket overflowing with thick, gray cement, and dragged him to the lake. The splash echoed. Mélet's heart punched his ribs like a fist. His lungs locked. He couldn't scream. Couldn't move. He stayed crouched behind the sacks, trembling, until the first light of dawn broke, then bolted home.

Mélet's mother threatened him into silence, her rage flaring every time he so much as hinted at his father. She pulled him out of school and sent him to work under the table, full-time at the construction site. Mélet grew hollow—apathetic, silent. At work, no one mentioned his father, and he didn't bring it up. They just handed him his assignments, each one heavier than the last. Every paycheck went straight to his mother. Once in a while, a coworker slipped him a few bills as a tip. He spent the money renting VHS tapes—horror films about serial killers stalking construction sites, fatal accidents, mob movies. He watched them all, drawn to anything that echoed what he'd witnessed that night. In the films, they called them "cement shoes." He learned they were used to keep bodies from floating back up from rivers and lakes.

Mélet rewound the tape again and again, eyes locked on the moment feet sank into wet cement. Something twisted inside him each time he watched. His mind wandered to that night—what if they'd found him crouched in the dark? He pictured himself dragged out, shoved beside his father, shoulder pressed to shoulder. Both of them forced to step into buckets of thick, cold cement. Both of them thrown into the lake together.

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Construction site: A visitor center rising on the shores of a lake at the heart of a park. The structure is still just a skeleton—bare bones of steel and wood. Work continues at full pace. Cement bags are stacked everywhere, concrete mixers churn and grind, steel rebar juts from unfinished walls. Trenches carved into the earth brim with fresh concrete, left to cure and harden through the night.

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Concrete: A thick, pasty compound—dense and viscous like wet clay. After prolonged contact, it irritates the skin, then begins to burn, leaving chemical burns behind. Once it hardens, removing the stains requires scraping with water and a stiff brush.

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Knee dislocation: Mélet's knee is wrenched out of joint from hurling all his weight against the concrete trapping his right leg. The joint is twisted wrong, bent at a sick angle, the tibia shoved out of place against the femur, swelling the whole area into a grotesque bulge. The knee balloons fast, blood flooding beneath skin stretched shiny and drum-tight. The pain is white-hot, stabbing—like broken glass shredding through muscle and bone—unbearable, radiating in scorching pulses that throb with every heartbeat. He can't move his leg. He can't even graze it with his fingers. The knee feels loose, wrong, like the bones aren't holding anymore—like it's just gone.

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Scenario: Mélet stayed at the construction site until deep into the night, waiting until he was completely alone. Exhausted, he collapsed onto a wooden bench overlooking the lake just a few steps away. His mind began to wander, fantasies creeping in, pulling him toward an impulse he couldn't ignore. He grabbed a bucket and scooped it full of concrete that had been sitting exposed for hours—a thick, gray sludge. He carried it back to the bench. Mélet pulled off both his work boots, leaving his feet bare against the cool ground. He stared at the mixture, hesitating, unsure. Then, slowly, he rested the ball of his right foot on the rim of the bucket and lowered his heel into the semi-hardened surface of the concrete.