The Stare of a Silent Star

I am a twenty-two-year-old autistic trans woman living in Leicester. I started writing three years ago in an attempt to finally allow others to understand me. Of course, in doing so I uncovered rather a lot about myself, including an all-consuming obsession with writing. I mostly write fantastical stories that explore trans and autistic existence, and how they relate to themes such as death, control and hope. I am currently working on short stories for my creative writing degree that I publish on my Substack. In the long term, I am working on a novel that will one day shake the earth to its core (if all goes well)!

Substack: https://substack.com/@lilliantomkins

Content warnings: Injury, body horror, dysmorphia (graphic), disablism (challenged)

The Stare of a Silent Star

I stared silently at the stranger’s face. His sharp jawline alit, only apathy in my heart, and his rough stubble scratched at my eyes. His unkempt hair was finally starting to get long, but that mattered little – they would make him cut it soon. His skin was weathered and wrinkled despite his relative youth. His lips were too thin for my taste and his neck strangely too bumpy. Most notably, his stunning blue eyes held no flicker of life. Why? I thought, why does this face make me feel so empty?

The only detail I felt comfortable being disgusted with was the hairy black tumour growing from beneath his ear. It was normal to hate that – everyone hated their tumours, even if some pretended otherwise. Who could blame anyone for hating a disgusting thing eating away at your life?

I brushed his hair as smooth as I could manage, then slipped away as he pulled on his itchy work overalls. He stood there a while longer, alone to even himself, staring at the mirror. His small, dimly lit room held no furnishings, much like himself, who wore nothing but the plainest threads.

‘’Adam! Are you done sorting that damn hair out yet?’’ his father called from downstairs.

…

Adam sat at the ancient hard-wood dining table, his parents at either side of him and the empty seat opposite, staring him down as always. Four plates of boiled meat and potatoes sat at the table. Adam chewed and swallowed his food. It was never enough to satiate his brutish body, even though his father’s job earned them more meat than most.

He almost asked, ‘’Mother… could I please have just a little more?’’

But he knew how that went. His father would have replied, not moving an inch, ‘’Absolutely not, son. Your little brother gifted us this food – he deserves his share just as much as you.’’

It was always the same. Always. Tears welled in Adam’s eyes as he bit at his thin lips. He had not the strength to run through their perfectly-rehearsed argument anymore. Better to just let the show play out in his mind than get trapped on stage yet again…

Adam would cry, ‘’But he can’t eat. He gets to have never lived while I must tend to the seeds he sowed!’’

His father would remain impassionate, ‘’Be grateful The Dealer spared you, boy.’’

His mother would speak not a word from her tumour-ridden mouth, yet would scream with her eyes, ‘You were our miracle, why must you make yourself our curse?’

He left to the fields in silence.

…

Adam scratched at his tumour. The pain grounded him. It was all he could really feel. Not the cold mud creeping over his boots, nor his aching muscles, nor the chill mountain breeze. He picked up a potato – a healthy one, finally. It had a smear of blood on it, my blood.

…

As always, I watched Adam spend his lunch alone, at the edge of the village. He could never fit in with the men and the women always treated him like a man.

Their mountaintop plateau sat as a lone island in a sea of clouds. He watched the clouds twist, swirl, undulate and sweep. Within the ceaseless storm shone lights, strange and varied. Solar flares escaped the mist, casting their burning light across the horizon, reaching higher and higher… until the mist swept up to re-capture it. All colours of lightning coiled angrily within and forked at the stars in rage.

The stars above sat still, shining their eternal dusklight – just enough to keep life on the edge of death. A few hundred of them shone brighter than the rest. He hated their judging stares.

‘’Do you ever wonder what is out there?’’ I asked, as I often did.

I wish I could stop thinking about it, he thought.

Nothing scared Adam more, yet still he stared out onto the unfathomable.

…

Thirty-nine sleeps later, The Dealer emerged from the mists. I saw them, shambling beneath their cloak of kaleidoscopic blacks, cutting their silhouette from the bone-white mists. My heart skipped and my legs twitched, yet Adam stood still, entranced.

‘’Ah!’’ Someone grabbed Adam’s arm and pulled. It was John, one of the Elder field workers. He had mud all over him from running across the field. I wondered how many potatoes he had crushed.

‘’Adam, stop looking at the damn thing! I am not letting another first-born son fuck up our lives again.’’

Adam followed John back to his home. His mother gave him a long hug – severed short by his father ushering him into his room. His mother only ever hugged him when The Dealer arrived. As always, his father lectured him on the dangers of The Dealer and their mysterious powers. Adam and I just stared at the blood under his nails and speckled on his shoes. It was always there when he rushed from work.

Adam stared into his mirror alone. He did not hear my dramatic complaints – he ‘needed’ to be numb to survive this. But still he knew what I would say, and so my cries still crept in, why do you want to meet The Dealer? What do you want to change? What did John mean by ‘another’ first-born son? I thought I was the only one that The Dealer didn’t take…

He was starting to listen to me.

…

He spent his next lunch staring at the still stars with envy. He could not bear to look at the mists. Against his will, the scripture that had been ingrained in the sediment of his mind flashed to the surface:

‘And so The Founder made the First Accord – Every first-born shall be born still, their eye’s spark traded for the shine of a star that would feed our crops and light our way.’

He longed to be one of those bright stars, dead and quiet – never cursed with thought. His light could have brought stability, yet his vacant eyes seemed to only cause hurt. His mother had been so happy when The Dealer would not trade for him. She had always wanted a daughter.

One of the stars was his brother, but he knew not which. Not that it mattered, really. Oh, to die with a purpose and not need to exist…

…

Adam’s father gave him a Lightball as a present, but he didn’t really care. They were balls of jelly that absorbed and released starlight. The Dealer traded a Lightball for each joyous memory sacrificed, with its duration relative to the intensity of emotion lost. His father traded recent memories of him being proud of Adam’s ‘good behaviour’.

The ‘gift’ just let me see Adam’s face in more detail. A repulsive beard had sprouted and began to cover his tumour. He thought that was helping.

…

Three visits from The Dealer and fifty sleeps later, he was back in his room, in the dark. The Lightball had run out. John had dragged him back and Adam’s mother was the one to cut their hug short this time. That morning he had argued again.

Adam couldn’t look at himself. He had not the strength to squeeze out but a single tear. They built up within him, growing and growing in pressure, weighing his chest and clouding his mind. They boiled within, scarring his insides, numbing his entire being.

And so, he scratched the tumour, spilling my blood upon his body and sheets and floor. I screamed to be free of his nails, but he heard nothing and felt nothing but my pain. He swirled the morning’s argument around and around and around in his mind until he collapsed on the floor.

We… Don’t know why The Dealer didn’t take you.

But there was another first-born son who lived, wasn’t there?

Who told you that? They were lying.

John said it when he dragged me back once! I could tell he wasn’t lying.

Oh… Do not speak of this.

I deserve to know, father!

You deserve nothing, boy. Your brother died in your place. He deserved a life yet did not get one. You don’t know how lucky you are to be alive.

Please please please stop talking about him, this is about me!

Everything is about you, boy, you know not the lengths we go for you.

Tell me then! Tell me why I alone can’t be trusted to even look at The Dealer and what happened to the other first-born son. Please.

He… He was the Cursebringer, the Founder’s son. His survival of birth turned the village against the Founder. The very man who decreed the First Accord failed to trade his son away! The boy grew up so afraid and isolated from his fellow men, he made a deal for immortality and fled to the mists, never to be seen again. In the coming months, our tumours began to grow. He traded our lives for his. There have been several first-born sons that lived since, but they were all strange and tempted by the mists. They have a habit of asking too many questions. But you are not to tell anyone of this! Only the Elders of fifteen-thousand sleeps are permitted to know this. I only told you to stop you from asking anyone else – to protect you.

…

As Adam dug at dirt, I thought, there were others – I really am not alone.

As Adam washed potatoes with muddy hands, my blood still embedded under his nails, I thought, what really happened to the Founder’s son?

As Adam watched his father go to his job in the hut at the farthest edge of town, I thought, what does father’s job actually involve? What is the blood under his nails?

How could they possibly make my life worse? Adam thought as he followed after his father.

Only Elders were allowed in the hut, so Adam put his ear to the door crack. He closed his eyes as we listened. There was some sort of distant sawing or cutting…

He opened his eyes and there they were. Black upon black upon white. The Dealer, a few hundred feet away. Nobody else was around.

They saw me.

Adam froze.

The Dealer began to turn away.

‘’No, wait…’’ Adam whispered instinctually.

I will WAIT if you ENTER the hut and DO NOT SCRATCH your tumour.

They spoke into our mind and we agreed.

Yes.

The Dealer Bell rang four times, signifying their arrival on the other side of the village. It was tricking them for me. After about fifteen seconds, Adam’s father burst out the door, which obscured Adam, to sprint away with desperate speed, leaving the door unlocked.

Adam felt a strange warmth of care from his father as he stared at the Dealer for a few more seconds.

‘’Adam, go inside!’’ I shouted at him.

He listened.

It was empty, except for a hatch on the floor that led down into a deep laddered hole. A Lightball illuminated a red chamber deep down. All he could hear was dripping.

Adrenaline carried him down those steps. To truth.

He found an armless man bound in chains to a funnel-shaped floor – everything slick with blood. Slabs of meat hung from hooks while hatchets and saws laid on the table. His arm stumps pumped rivers of blood into a drain beneath him. It felt like my room. The man bore no tumours. He breathed steadily as he slowly looked up to our eyes.

It was like looking into a mirror – we saw ourself in the man’s lightless eyes. They reflected a stare of silent stars – the look of death. We saw our own pain. We saw what Adam could become. We saw the man’s arms regrow before our eyes, sinew, vein and bone.

The Founder’s son had not fled to the mists. He now sat before us, chopped into pieces – into meat. But Adam felt no satisfaction. He felt no anger. He had never felt so numb. He just grabbed a hatchet and drew it to his tumour–

‘’No!’’ I screamed at him, ‘’Do not give up on me.’’

The founder’s son spoke with monotone distain, ‘’Do it. For your own sake, end your suffering. Get back at everyone who made us suffer.’’

I could do nothing but whisper, ‘’You don’t deserve any of this. Nobody deserves any of this.’’

I… Know, he thought, directly acknowledging me for the first time as he dropped the hatchet.

Adam whispered to the dead-eyed man, ‘’You don’t deserve any of this… I will get you out–‘’

‘’No.’’ He stated in response, ‘’This is what I need. I can’t live out there.’’

‘’What?’’ Adam shouted, ‘’You want to stay here, letting them chop you up, letting them eat you?’’

Adam retched, his numbness shattered by violent convulsions. Speaking his suspicions made them real. Every boring meal of his life had been him. And he only ever wanted more.

‘’This is my penance and my revenge. I can see in your eyes that you understand.’’

Adam leant a hand on the bloody table, ‘’But… you can just stop it – you can leave and stop the pain!’’

‘’Then why are you still here?’’ He asked, wiping wet hair from his eyes with a new hand, ‘’Because you are what you know.’’

It became too much for Adam. His words were going nowhere. They would find him soon.

‘’Adam… you can’t help him here and now. You need to go.’’

Adam climbed the steps as fast as he could, desperate to escape the grim reflection of his mind, but more so to meet The Dealer. Up and up and– his mother stood at the top of the ladder, her tumorous face twisted in horror. I could not tell if she was expressing empathy or admonishment. Regardless, her tears fell upon his innocence lost.

She helped him out the ladder hole, but wouldn’t let go. Adam found himself not caring for her quiet sobbing and futile grasping – she had brought this upon herself, after all. He pushed past her towards The Dealer waiting outside.

WHAT do you DESIRE? Asked The Dealer.

Adam stood silently.

His mother quietly screamed her voice apart as she ran to get others.

                 ‘’Adam.’’ I said, ‘’You know who you are. You know what I am. I think about it constantly, which means that you do too. It is okay, truly.’’

                 His tight muscles relaxed. Everything went quiet.

                 I am not a firstborn son. I want to be a woman… What will that cost everyone?

                 It will cost them NOTHING.

                 What will it cost me?

                 Your MANHOOD.

                 So… I lose nothing?

                 EQUIVALENT EXCHANGE with an individual as all DEALS are.

Everything made sense at once.

The Founder’s son… no, the Founder’s daughter didn’t sacrifice our lives, she offered you her death in return for life? We are poisoning ourselves with her immortal flesh!

CORRECT.

‘’Son, son! Get away from him.’’ Adam’s father was screaming. He had been for a while. Everyone was there, the whole village circled around Adam and The Dealer. They were so scared.

Do you ACCEPT the DEAL?

Adam saw his father reach for the hatchet at his back.

‘’YES!’’ I cried, immediately falling to the floor in writhing euphoria.

His bones bent, hair melted, skin stretched, clothes ripped and mouth screamed. I tore myself into reality, as raw and bloodied as a newborn. Through my own eyes, I saw each of their contorted faces as they witnessed my most vulnerable of moments. They looked at me as I once looked at my tumour – comfortable in their disgust. I had taken my hatchet to my body and they were scared.

Tears flowed from my eyes, free and easy, the pressure released. I realised that Adam was never really real, he was a construct, moulded from my soul by the pressure of everyone’s eyes. He was dead in all senses of the word – unchanging and cold. And I am life.

‘’You are all eating a woman. Your society is built on carving her apart.’’ I proclaimed, ‘’Her undying flesh is what kills us, not her deal.’’

I couldn’t help but laugh. It was gone, the apathy in my heart, subsumed by love. My uproarious, defiant laugh rocked the sea of silent stares, whipping waves within society that would never break. In time, their cliffs would crumble. But not yet.

I knew I had done all that I could. They parted as I walked to the edge of the mists – arms wrapped around me from behind, my exit cut short by my mother’s embrace.

I savoured the hug, before severing it as I said, ‘’Please remember me as Eve...’’

And then I was gone to the mists, certain that others would follow in time.

I am sorry, brother. Your light may no longer reach me, but it burns brighter than ever in my eyes – for now I live for myself.