again.
Fresh tears spring into my eyes as I reach for the lamp by my bed. I need that light. I need to see what’s coming from now on. That bastard death stole my aunt in the middle of a dark night like the cowardly shit that it is. When it comes for me, I want to see its hateful face.
As my hand pulls away from the chain, I see the scrap of paper with my meager songwriting scrawled across it like chicken scratch. Grief closes my heart in a vice as I realize that Aunt Susan would never be able to help me finish the song like I had hoped. She’ll never even hear it.
For that reason alone, it was no longer worth singing.
I pull the covers up to my ears, close my eyes, and pray for morning.
CHAPTER FOUR:
I let Christmas 2004 come and go without me. I don’t answer the phone. I don’t rise from the bed unless I have to go to the bathroom, the one pressing physical need that cannot be denied. Each minimal task is done with effort, including a return call to Lori at last, sometime around two-thirty in the afternoon, Christmas Day. I might not have called her at all, but I figure she needs to know what is going on, and it’s better to hear it from me.
Her sobs reduce me once again to tears, as I relive the moment where I found my aunt, cold and dead in her bed.
“I can be there in a few hours,” she promises. I shake my head, though she cannot see. There’s no one to see. No one. My throat closes over the painful lump I just can’t swallow.
“Stay with your family, Lori. It’s Christmas.”
“You shouldn’t be alone,” she says. Little does she know that’s all I want.
“I’ll be okay,” I promise, though it’s complete and utter bullshit.
Bullshit . That’s a word I can use now. Gone is the threat of foul-tasting homemade soap. It seems a hollow victory, but he minute I get off the phone with Lori, I try the words out, speaking them to the cold empty room. It is as each word can summon Susan to return, if only to beat me with her yardstick for being such a naughty boy.
“Fuck this shit,” I say, slowly, annunciating every word. “You cock-sucking, motherfucking, ass-munching son of a bitch.” My voice rises with my anger. I don’t know who I’m attacking. Death, maybe. God, probably. The capricious hand of fate. Either way, “You fucking suck!”
Finally I bring out the big guns. “Goddamn you, motherfucker. Is this some kind of fucking game? Are we just your goddamn pawns to push around? You can suck my big, fat cock!”
Just saying the words fuels me, like pumping gas into a car running on fumes. I hop out of the bed, buzzing with newfound adrenaline. I grab a baseball bat from my closet. I string together any curse words I can think of as I swing at my computer, my desk, my dresser drawers, my bed. Every crack and boom is strangely rewarding.
Debris flies everywhere as I dismantle my room. It was the first real room I had ever had, but it’s meaningless now. Now that Aunt Susan is dead, I probably won’t get to stay here in her house anyway. I’m used to things being taken right out from under me, something that started when I was two years old. Why should my home, the last thing I have in this world, be any different?
Let them sell it now , I think to myself as I start bashing big holes in the walls. At some point I start crying again, though I’m not sure when.
Finally I end up on my knees amidst the carnage. Feathers float around the room like snow, released from my down pillow and comforter with repeated blows from my baseball bat.
I look around the room. It’s wrecked every bit as wrecked as I am.
Yet the door doesn’t open. Aunt Susan doesn’t charge in, her trusty yard stick in one hand and a big chuck of soap in the other.
I realize with a start that there’s no one there to stop me from self-destructing anymore. There’s no one to put me in check. There’s no one left who gives that much of a damn.
I toss my bat aside and leave the room I can no longer
Fresh tears spring into my eyes as I reach for the lamp by my bed. I need that light. I need to see what’s coming from now on. That bastard death stole my aunt in the middle of a dark night like the cowardly shit that it is. When it comes for me, I want to see its hateful face.
As my hand pulls away from the chain, I see the scrap of paper with my meager songwriting scrawled across it like chicken scratch. Grief closes my heart in a vice as I realize that Aunt Susan would never be able to help me finish the song like I had hoped. She’ll never even hear it.
For that reason alone, it was no longer worth singing.
I pull the covers up to my ears, close my eyes, and pray for morning.
CHAPTER FOUR:
I let Christmas 2004 come and go without me. I don’t answer the phone. I don’t rise from the bed unless I have to go to the bathroom, the one pressing physical need that cannot be denied. Each minimal task is done with effort, including a return call to Lori at last, sometime around two-thirty in the afternoon, Christmas Day. I might not have called her at all, but I figure she needs to know what is going on, and it’s better to hear it from me.
Her sobs reduce me once again to tears, as I relive the moment where I found my aunt, cold and dead in her bed.
“I can be there in a few hours,” she promises. I shake my head, though she cannot see. There’s no one to see. No one. My throat closes over the painful lump I just can’t swallow.
“Stay with your family, Lori. It’s Christmas.”
“You shouldn’t be alone,” she says. Little does she know that’s all I want.
“I’ll be okay,” I promise, though it’s complete and utter bullshit.
Bullshit . That’s a word I can use now. Gone is the threat of foul-tasting homemade soap. It seems a hollow victory, but he minute I get off the phone with Lori, I try the words out, speaking them to the cold empty room. It is as each word can summon Susan to return, if only to beat me with her yardstick for being such a naughty boy.
“Fuck this shit,” I say, slowly, annunciating every word. “You cock-sucking, motherfucking, ass-munching son of a bitch.” My voice rises with my anger. I don’t know who I’m attacking. Death, maybe. God, probably. The capricious hand of fate. Either way, “You fucking suck!”
Finally I bring out the big guns. “Goddamn you, motherfucker. Is this some kind of fucking game? Are we just your goddamn pawns to push around? You can suck my big, fat cock!”
Just saying the words fuels me, like pumping gas into a car running on fumes. I hop out of the bed, buzzing with newfound adrenaline. I grab a baseball bat from my closet. I string together any curse words I can think of as I swing at my computer, my desk, my dresser drawers, my bed. Every crack and boom is strangely rewarding.
Debris flies everywhere as I dismantle my room. It was the first real room I had ever had, but it’s meaningless now. Now that Aunt Susan is dead, I probably won’t get to stay here in her house anyway. I’m used to things being taken right out from under me, something that started when I was two years old. Why should my home, the last thing I have in this world, be any different?
Let them sell it now , I think to myself as I start bashing big holes in the walls. At some point I start crying again, though I’m not sure when.
Finally I end up on my knees amidst the carnage. Feathers float around the room like snow, released from my down pillow and comforter with repeated blows from my baseball bat.
I look around the room. It’s wrecked every bit as wrecked as I am.
Yet the door doesn’t open. Aunt Susan doesn’t charge in, her trusty yard stick in one hand and a big chuck of soap in the other.
I realize with a start that there’s no one there to stop me from self-destructing anymore. There’s no one to put me in check. There’s no one left who gives that much of a damn.
I toss my bat aside and leave the room I can no longer
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