I’ve said it before. Facebook is like Twitter for kids. Case in pointe: “Look, ma!”, Ellian said, “I type this on my iPod, and now daddy can read it on my public profile also!” The child’s maniacal laughter ensued, leaving the household ill at ease like so many times before. His unnerving laughter, as if scripted, from his embellished stores about the Rooster and the Dog, to his fondness for Butler, to his abhorrence for Butler’s Pretty Maidens who all look like whores. Butler often noted preferring, instead, he be address as “Butler-the-Pimp”.
Ellian having never seen a character such as Butler-The-Pimp, when he first laid eyes on him, had quite a start– resulting in a sprinkle on the floor– Ellian executed what appeared to the naked-eye as one singular, graceful dash, which landed him in the East Foyer. Butler-the-Pimp knew better than the naked-eye, as indicated by his remark, “You keep right on with that dance-school, Ellian. Some day, you’re gonna be my personal Ninja! Don’t act like you don’t hear me, and I act like I don’t know how many soda you drank.” (losing control of some 3 or 4 cans of soda his bladder had otherwise been clenching so well).
The Servant of the Manor; the real butler, as it were, Geeves, scoffed some allusion regarding Butler-the-Pimp’s rather gratuitous accommodations, albeit The Manor folk rarely saw hide nor hair of Butler-the-pimp, in all his charm. “Just plain-ain’t-leavin, Honkey! So shut up, before I shut you up! You dig?”, Butler’s stock retort on– just about everything– from disagreements with Geeves’ breakfast preparations, to Geeves’ suggestion that Butler might assume the Manor’s refuse-day duties.
Ellian was fascinated in his father’s interaction with Butler-the-Pimp. His explanation to Ellian involved something of his finding Butler befitting the general architecture of the Manor; that he was never to question him further. Ellian recognized this was consistent with is father’s behaviour as well, excepting holidays when Butler-the-Pimp and Ellian’s father, right as rehearsed, feigned a boyhood best-friends routine, each throwing an arm over his companion’s shoulder, as they embarked upon another of their ventures into the woods, trekking through an ever thickening-blanket of white, under the falling snow which seemed to persist all Season.
Just before the limited visibility of snow-fall had obscured them entirely, Ellian barked what seemed as an accusation, some insistence that Butler was “smoking his Kind Stash with Dad”. Ellian didn’t realize that his slang rhetoric did nothing for his desire to point and blame, as tattle-tales do. It was Ellian’s intention, finding some opportunity there, to implicate his father in a phony behaviour; to allude that his father, in walking into the snowy woods away from the Manor, seemed to be hiding his activities with Butler-the-Pimp.
Ellian realized through his child-like epiphany, what– unbeknownst to Ellian– the adults had likely known, that his father clearly must not be the same person at heart as the person he portrays through the facade of a gentlemen; the personae most often worn by his father around family and friends as a if a skin or suit-of-armor– an appearance which his father must be more comfortable wearing– might be an attempt to hide something less socially acceptable. Ellian didn’t consider any implications beyond the concept that his father had different personalities, for different audiences or situations.
Remarkably, it was this scenario which sparked the insight he would come to relish: initially, Ellian wasn’t certain he’d discovered anything at all, but he kept the notion in his mind for as long as he could. Day by day, and night by night, Ellian crafted his remarkable insight into a keen rhetoric of dissemination and manipulation. He believed, if his words were not lies then he was not a liar. If he could effectively manipulate the others at the Manor, pleasantly describing the news of the day, and the day at the Manor, all without any mention of sin, then– he reasoned– there is no Sinner.
Later that year, Ellian’s Mother began suffering recurring nightmares which she– not unlike Ellian’s father’s own facade– would ultimately disown, that she might immerse her Super-Psycho babble in a more Divine belief: “God is communicating to us through the Stigmata on my body!”. The occasional scrape or abrasions she wore were tangible, as verified by her doctor who resolved they were merely a result from her lashing about while sleeping. Like any over zealous schizophrenic, she patronized his diagnosis, going on the believe what she chose to believe, regardless of the Doctor’s practical explanation.
We would learn later that, in fact, Ellian’s father knew the truth of the origin of his mother’s wounds. Ellian’s father’s suffered from his own sleepless nights. On one such instance, a moonlit shadow rendered quite clearly upon the wall behind the darkness of his mother’s silhouette and bedding.
What tool or weapon it was that Ellian held above his mother, his Father did not know; he found the sight so unbearable, he grew paralyzed for a moment in fear. The father detected the figure was not as still as on other appearances, but was easing itself from behind his wife’s sleeping head. Suddently, the figure crouched to tip-toe, silently but for the unnerving, maniacal laughter; the laughter of a young boy driven mad, by Facebook.
