CHAPTER 2
"Kyle! Get your skinny-ass in here..."
In a tedious traipse I trawl towards the tormentor's tremendous tongue. I break in stride, hype myself up on oxygen and exaggerate over Rocky movie scenes; duck and move, slip the jab, slip the jab. They say it only takes five pounds of pressure to knock someone out, that's about the weight of a premature new-born; where am I gonna' find a kid to use as a brick. I must be the type to go to war with his self-disbelief before taking on my enemies' entire pre-eminence.
"Dad, you hungry? ...You want me to make dinner or d'ya want a sandwich or something?" I woof out with a courteous chuck, as nothing ever happened twenty minutes ago; we forget a lot in this family, we see nothing, hear nothing, nor speak about things.
I notice his left eye drooping to the side; his booze has given him the power of ballsiness bottle. Caught in his mixed grey and tinctured brown scummy scuzzy beard he has let slip a dribble of beer, I focus in on this rather than his eyes. Meanwhile my eyes receive no light, only more shadow make-up.
"What the fuck were you doing earlier, eh? Talking back and trying to fight me... Me!" I flat-out falsify an instant informed fiction. "I've just had a lot on these past few weeks at school and other things... And now with this headache I have, it's just..."
Dad leans forward, struggling not to fall off his fat-ass and fall flat on his rat fuckin' face.
"No... No excuses! Come closer, closer... Stand there; no there, where that penny is." I crouch and undertake the Olympic task of picking up a penny on a flat surface with no fingernails; I cannot.
"You love your sister, don't ya? You two have some sort of bullshit family code or special agreement, to look out for each other, even if that means overruling my author... Authority."
My Superman pajama trousers have no pockets. I must cradle my hands behind my back when I get nervous; I fidget. His look has no attention span; they keep finding new things to latch on too.
"Yes, she is my best friend; we've got no secrets from one another and always promised to always be there for the other, when they need it."
His dead eyes slay over me, questioning one part of my face and body, loathing he loves, he shifts his singing sophistication where the drunk and drugs swing him.
"God, you look the double of your mother, you disgusting, little, shit. Yeah, that's right, you two look after each other and I will just sit here and die, that's what you want, eh? You know, it's your fault I take drugs, lookin' after dis... Disobedient children, it's not easy, you know. So, tell me somefin'... Would you kill or die for your lesbo' of a sister? She's a rug-muncher by the way... how does that make you feel when I call you-your sis' out like that?" Waving his arms, his fingers point at randomness.
What can I say to that? I'm standing between the Devil and my Dad, awesome combination. Thanks world. A desperate despot spots me.
"Boy! You better answer me or so help-k me God, I will smash this bottle across your motherfucking face..."
Where is he going with this? For fuck-sake, he must have something else up his sleeve; this rabbit needs to run right now, for my fox's sake.
"In a heartbeat, I would." Firm to my convictions, I may be judged as he gavels in the nails to my personalized cardboard coffin.
Revolving the battled down bottle in the faint air, he has consumed a paralytic poisonous idea.
He flicks his wrist, the brown bottle flails and somersaults as nasty gymnast before tumbling to its death where it crashes and breaks up into a million-shards; the dregs of beer twinkle over the floor. I want to back-up, I want a new family, I know I want a lot; I know what's coming next. They sold me on the idea of paradise when I was born, but they never told me, even heaven has a hell.
"Dad..." I attempt to be stupid to reason with an infertile infantile pitch. I submit, I submit. Another bottle is thrown over my head and lands near the hallway entrance; my getaway route has been ruptured. If it wasn't for you meddling adults, I would have gotten away with it all.
"Don't do this to me, please." The lump in my throat thumps down and splashes in my gut. Tides of blood rushes course through me. Two more times he chucks colliding crystals at my stumps. He needs to watch out, I'm only a teeny-tiny guy; my pencil legs will snap if he keeps throwing.
"So, would you walk over fire or even glass for her? ...We're going to play a wee game; d'ya want to play? ...D'ya? Walk over the glass for your sister..." He bites the cap from another drink.
Immovable, I am immorally amazed at his instructed second-handed self-harm.
"Walk it and you two can go to bed and whisper shit about me all you want, and I won't even bat-an-eyelid." There must be nothing good on the television for him to want to watch something like this. "If you don't want to play, Bitch-face stays down there all night and I wallop the shit out of you for making a mess of my floor." He bombs on his bombastic cloud.
A fury furs over me.
"I'll play..."
Sedated with pangs, I begin to tow away with my toes the large fragmented splinters.
"No! You're cheating! If you ain't gonna' play proper, don't play the game."
I'm waiting, waiting for his mind to change. It's never going to come, is it?
I take a step; the sound of biting into an apple springs to mind, a burst of tang with a punctured crunch. One movement hurtles hurricanes of hurt up to my face, I hold a breath; face stifled red as I totter steady-leggy across the sea of blood-relations. I don't know how many steps I take, I stopped caring about the pain, glass, Dick-Dad and Jessica, there's too much to focus on. I can't take it anymore, I can't, sorry, I can't, frontwards I crumble. Catch me, floor.
"Looks like I can add loser to the list of disappointment along with faggot and skulk." The lummox is up by this point. "Clean up this fucking mess, you piece of shit, you are no son of mine. How hard is it to walk over blunt glass? It was only like four steps. Pfft... I had worse when I was a kid, daily beatings, you dumb kids have it easy compared to my day." He spurns so sudden and slinks on his slippers then trudges over his son. He's been up for about an hour and a half and has accomplished a lot, he can't be blamed for being a time-waster. He heads back to his boggy cave of flies feasting on deformed food and lingering lush dust which flushes your nose brushes thus clutches blood rushes down your mush.
I must have passed-out. My eyes recoil open; my breaths are caught by puddles of beer and blood. I breathe in and it comes closer, I push it away with a puff-out, me thinks I found a new game.
I best get up, first I'll wriggle my toes; worst mistake ever, the pain is so severe only a prolonged glock sound is hammered out. I begin to wipe away the pings of glass from my feet and face cheeks; I need altitude to tend to my wounds.
I drive my fingernails into the floorboards and hoist myself forward, scraping my chest and belly upon the glasses jabs. Police sirens warn through the night; their sad safety is not for me. This isn't living; this is surviving between a rock and a hard-flying fist.
The whispering returns behind my ears. Why do you allow this? Your emotions are so much stronger than theirs are or ever will be; we think it's time you channel a sweet supernova, this world has seen your blood, an eye for an eye, time to see this world crease over in pain and exhume red-floods. Sometimes Kyle, you need to run away from who you are and sprint towards what you are.
"Preach it. This world wants to push me towards a dark actioned magic reaction, every time, so be it. From now on, I'm carving my own path in life in the truest of forms and words." The floorboards take upon my pain and whimper with a downtrodden creek.
They won't even know what will hit them, surprise amble ambushes and persevering anger will be your key against your villains. Time to transform... A force not to be reckoned with, nature in the simplest of forms will baffle and shiver their fears. Regain your soul by the retaining of evilest of actions, grit your teeth, stand aplomb and collide with sanity. You have always known you were different; it is our job to insure you step upon the proper bricks to deliver you to a superior notion of being... Snap. Snap. Can you hear his branches snap?
There I sit, contemplating rising as a new man, I'm no longer a mere feeble boy; laugh at your blood, its trickling chuckles with you now. The kitchen light seems duller; or is it? Am I now the Angel of the Light? Living in the land of the blind where all other tinkles and sparks can no longer surge at my rate. I exhale a fresh breath and retrieve a fresh new mind-set. I've been waiting all night for this. I clamber up to the kitchen side with a ragged drag, pushing my life to new heights. The elasticized electricity shock drives up my legs, the hunger saliva peers from my lips for more pain. A superhero is born.
Take control of your world before it takes everything from you. We will be your only critics when your brains first and final thoughts are not carried out with passion and purity. We can protect all in which you love with this and destroy all in which glance inverted eyebrows your way with your new way of thinking. Do not allow their beliefs stand in your way, beliefs are ideas clustered by mobs and enforced and forced into your eye line. You have been training for this, your entire life. If you believe murder is your only possible goal to an easier future, destruction when oneself self-destructs is your belief and what one must do to enforce a self-religion, stand firm and fight the world. All they believe is the illness, all the sanity they spread is the disease. The world is sick, time to give it its medication. Do you understand, Kyle? You are a kaleidoscope of killer instincts. We are going to make you into a Godly creature of mischief and misery. We are you. It's easier for a man to obtain power through evil crusades than pleasant triumphs. Follow us there.
A releasing high from my newfound drug of life wipes a smile across my jowls; I haven't felt this happy in all my life. Blood, I smudge my red-fingered war paint whilst feeling over this brand new hideous foreign facial expression of mine. Who are you in me?
"Be all I can be in a place which cannot help but suffocate itself, whilst I am being dragged down with the perks of an easy death and a quiet sleep within a slow-sinking-sand abyss. Mark my words, I will no longer write stories, but I will give this floating toilet something to see whilst it spiral thrusts a fucking flush of shit covered paper." A poisonous productive potion is now prepared into perfection, dig–in and eat. I am left with the recipe of war, which wrestles within me to install the best ability to inform my versatility in this hellhole.
Brains get to work. This isn't working out for us, this body, this me, this life; the Gods have summoned me to create another version, another extension of myself. Somebody who will no longer back down to foot level, someone who will no longer try and hold his head up high to life's lows and get knocked on the chin. I will kink my eyebrows at social order; a sinister smirk at a displayed hand for help; pop the heads off entire populations after my mother which I abhor, abandoned me for the dangerous angels, my repulsive father started being the after school living room live-in bully. How about when the child services disregarded these children, focusing on help the grieving father who has lost his wife, and the police were always too busy or helped my precious papa reinforce my cries for help and put my words down as a counterfeit cry wolf. Fuck you all.
Straighten out that slump in your back Kyle and stand tall when you beat them down. Getting lost in this noxious nauseous nonsense with no sense context to swim back from the deep end, my whole hole-of-a-life depends on me reinventing this evil self-centered menace with void feelings, leave your coyness in the corner steaming. Here I go, turned on within this painful monumental mental mellow moment. I cart my unkempt upper teeth over my dry cracked bottom lip; this bloodthirsty high is sensually sexual. My wits are finally losing their virginity. I'm fucked I guess, but at least you'll be the ones who'll all pay for me.
Coffee teeth chatter are followed with retarded faces as I heave out minuscule crimson gem masses from my feet, hands and bony chest. I loot the washing machine and find four pairs of odd socks, which I edge on one by one with a bitten lower lip, an old shredded AC/DC T-shirt that I rip apart, and use as bandages for my hands and to lap up the gashes of blood from my underfed torso.
I realize what I must do. I need Jessica's help, say-so and approval; she must be on my side. I need to turn a good girl, bad, for both our sakes.
With a wild weary waddle, I return to the scene of the crime, partially crying, it hurts so much when I limp. Dad has some special pills, some uncle gave them to him, when I say uncle, I mean, I was a toddler and my mommy and daddy introduced him as an uncle, he's not, he's probably his dealer.
Dead-beat-dad's grey orthopedic winged chair was my place of rest, probably found in a skip or given to him. Tobacco dust and dried up noodles have infiltrated ever crevice.
Reaching and opening the sachet of pills called, SPOTLIGHT. I've heard of these pills. The News is a broken record when this drug is brought up, it brings me down, someone has usually taken more than their bodies could handle and died, losers. This drug is a manmade opioid; it can dull pain receptors with the shroud of euphoria. With this red and purple treat in my palm, I play the game of avoid the cuts. I slot in both capsules and guzzle the stub of flat beer, looks like he forgot one.
Contemplating my own existence, I flump there staring into the mold papered corner above the television, waiting for the chill-pills to kick-in. Sniveling and tensing my jaws and sizzling saliva for around fifteen minutes, a wave of heat ripples over my body. My nose draws vague dew; I feel focused; my soul has been topped-up with the illusion of strength. The lacerations lessen, drugs are good to me. I push up and with luck, adding forced pressure to my wounds; well, this bloody glass isn't going to clean up itself, is it? Cleaner Man to the rescue, and here he comes along with his trusty sidekicks Broom-Boy and The Mop-Maiden. Clean that shit up. What will people say about this bloody mess?