Power Hour #4

Dinner was cold. I moved the peas on my plate into battle formations. Turned the mashed potatoes into bunkers. The meat became the mountain fortress. I could feel my father staring at the back of my head. Family rules said that no one eats until we say grace. The fat began to congeal. I wanted to say something, but my father was already screaming at my brother, Jake.

“When you are in my house, you follow my rules or you can just leave!” dad yelled.
“Do you really want to start a fight now?” Jake jabbed.
“I can say whatever I please. I work all day, I pay the bills, this is my house and it goes by my rules.”

My dad was all about his rules. I grew up with a bedtime like every other kid, except mine was absolute. I rebelled once, said the standard, “I don’t wanna.” My dad whipped his hand across my face. Then he’d stand over me and just wait. Wouldn’t say a word. I could feel a trickle of blood on my cheek. Dad liked his rings. I held my sleeve to my face. I couldn’t stain the carpet.

Dad said, “I expect better from my son.” His eyebrows would tense when he was mad. He’d bring his fist to his forehead and rub up and down. Looked like he was trying to erase something. He waited until I tucked myself under my covers and shut my eyes. I left my sleeve on my face; the cut was still bleeding.

He sighed, backed out of the room and closed the door without a noise. I never questioned bedtime again.

My brother crept into my room later that night. He brought in some wet tissues. Knew I would be crying. When he saw my cut, I could see his hand clench. But he didn’t say anything. He just sat next to my pillow. Jake would rub my back with his long, thick fingers. I would try my hardest to stay awake, to feel the odd sensation of a hand the size of my chest. But he’d sit, and watch me drift off. He knew I was asleep when I started drooling. I still drool.

He’s almost twelve years older. He knew how to break the rules in the house. Jake had a bedtime but Jake could never sleep so early. Thoughts would race in his head. My dad would check in and think my brother was sleeping soundly. But Jake had bought a wig that looked like his hair. He would prop pillows up under his blankets, and put the wig on a football. Dad never caught on. He just peeked in Jake’s room, then went back to his office. Jake never snuck out. Instead, he’d lie on the floor by the window and just stare out to the stars. I loved to listen to his dreams. We’d play connect the dots with the stars. I got yelled at one day at school for going out of order. Jake heard this. That night, I found a box of chocolates under my pillow.

I hated dinner. My mother was an average cook. But my dad was relentless. He’d comment on every flaw he thought Jake had. My dad hated the music Jake listened to. He hated his friends. He hated his hairstyle, which he kept the same throughout high school. Jake didn’t want to have to buy a new wig. Plus, pissing of dad was a bonus. Jake was always sly about it though. Slip a subtle insult in between his sorry’s and ok’s. I’d bite my lip to stifle a laugh. Jake would look at me out of the corner of his eye. After everyone calmed down, he’d give me the quickest smirk, one only I could see.

I hated when dinner was cold. That meant my father had a bad day and that he couldn’t wait until we started eating to dig into my brother. Usually, I’d occupy myself and try and copy Jake’s imagination. I’d look at my distorted reflection in the windows and imagine a fun house universe. I’d fold my napkin up in as many different ways as I could. I was left alone, as long as I didn’t touch my food before grace.

The night I made my food platter battlefield, Jake and Dad were really going at it.

“It’s my way or the highway.” He said that a lot.
“But I’m a grown man,” Jake replied.
“But nothing. You are too young and spoiled to know what it means to work for your meals.

Most nights, I wouldn’t be confused about what they were fighting over. I usually didn’t I care. Tonight, I listened, but I did not dare look.

“How dare you question me.”
“This isn’t about grace anymore is it?”
“No, it’s about principles.”
“Dad, can we not fight tonight. I’m really tired.”
“No, you are going to shut up and listen.”
“Listen to what?”
“That’s it, do you want me to take out my belt?”
“Listen to you? Listen to nothing but garbage? Do you think you can hurt me anymore?”
“Rules are not garbage, you are,” my dad flatly stated.
“Dad, why do you think I come home any more?”
“Because we are your family.”
“No. Because of George and no one else.”
“You are unbelievably ungrateful. I’ve done so much for you, worked so many hours for you.”
“I know. But what you can’t believe is that I don’t love you.”
“What?”
“And I know you don’t love me. But that’s ok. I understand. George was always your favorite.”
“I loved you both equally and how dare you accuse me.”
“I’m leaving, Dad.”
“Don’t you leave this table, I’m talking to you.”
“Goodbye, George.”

I turned my head around, but Jake had ran out of the house. My dad sat down, played with his food for a bit. I heard Jake close his car door and drive off. None of us said a word for the rest of the night.

I went to my room, shut my door as loudly as permissible and flopped onto my bed. I heard a crunch. I lifted up my pillow and I saw a note.

“Meet me outside at midnight. I want you to live with me. I want you to be happy.”

I tore up the note. I looked out of my window. It was a clear sky and the stars were shining. And I breathed out deeply.

Power Hour #3

The kettle shrieked, but Harold did not care; he had become far too accustomed to unpleasant noises. He was rereading a yellowed newspaper. The corners had turned upwards and the folds had browned. Harold knew each page like an old diary. He was never talented at writing, so he had long ago resigned himself to other people’s words. He didn’t particularly like the style of writing. Always grumbled about one writer in the editorial section.

“Who are you trying to convince?” he yelled at the paper. “Not like you ever changed anything. Not like any newspaper ever changed anything.”

But the newspaper was always there, sitting on his hand-me-down ottoman. It was fact, unchangeable. His memories would disappear when he opened his eyes. Always blamed his failing memory on his age. He liked to call himself a rusty blade. He turned the page with a huff. And the kettle yelled some more.

“All right, shut up,” Harold spoke.

His hips decayed from many years of marching. He leaned forward out of his rocking chair, hands on his knees. Slowly, he brought himself upright. A long plume of steam encircled his stove.

“Ok, ok, I’ll be right there.”

He turned off the rusty knobs and the kettle quieted. When he first met his wife Dotty, he faked that he enjoyed coffee. On their first date, she suggested to go to the local coffee shop. She would always decide where to go. She ordered for him that day, paid the bill too. He couldn’t reject her smile or her drink. Ever since she died, he had to drink coffee every morning. Still doesn’t like it. But she did, and he smiled at the memory.

He dumped packets of stale sugar and artificial milk in. The coffee looked like liquid caramel, his favorite candy. He smacked his lips at the first taste.
“Dotty would give me such a look if she saw me now. She’d say that real men took their coffee black. Well, I can do what I want to do now.”
Harold looked out the window to his backyard. His wife and son’s graves stood covered in ash and grime.

“I should clean those sometime.” He knew he couldn’t; the air outside was too toxic. After years of drinking sugar flavored coffee, he had grown a belly. His old hazmat suit was a somber decoration in his closet, nothing more. When he was mailed the suit from the government, Dotty gave her usual frown and tilted head. She said it was just paranoia. His son, James, thought it was the coolest thing. He’d put his own tiny suit on all the time, indoors or outdoors. He liked to take the family umbrella and pretend it was a giant gun. Harold didn’t like his son pretending to play with guns. Didn’t want James to ever get comfortable around them. Dotty grew up with three brothers. Always interrupted Harold when he would move to give James another toy. She said boys will be boys and will always want to play with guns. He’d pretend to fight her a bit, but he’d always cave in when she flashed her smile.
Harold smelled the recycled air and cringes. He remembers the day he sealed the doors and windows. It was the day after Dotty and James died. He didn’t know what else to do, so he did as what the papers said to do. They said to be safe, that it was too dangerous outside, that the people just need to wait out the war, that it will all be over soon. The writers probably knew they were lying. Harold went out to the store to pick up the sealants and air purifiers exactly twenty years ago. Harold marked down every day on an calendar in pencil. At the end of every year, Harold would take one of Dotty’s old erasers and wipe off all his marks. Then he would start again. He liked to throw himself a little party every five years. He’d crack out some cans of peas and some dried beef and some powdered beer and treat himself to a rare feast. Harold sipped some more coffee, pinky out because James thought it looked goofy. Harold thought it looked goofy too, like his hand had a frozen spasm. It was his daily chuckle to himself.
Harold returned to his paper. He was at the sports section now.

“I remember watching this game, lost twenty bucks. Threw my beer at the t.v. waste of some good booze.” The stain was still on the carpet. He tried to wash it out, but he stopped. Thought it would be a nice reminder about some normalcy that day.
“Heh, I was always a crap gambler.”

He flipped some more pages and got to where the real estate section used to be. Instead, the newspaper had dedicated the whole section to war updates. Harold glazed over this part.
“Not like reading it is going to change anything.”

Some writers wrote like it was a movie script. Some writers wrote matter of fact, just relaying the daily details. Some writers wrote like it was gospel. Harold thought they were the silliest. Trying to convert up to the very end. The editors must not have cared anymore.

Finally, he got to the obituaries. This was the biggest section in the paper. Dotty read this section first. She always worried, always worried all the time. She would trace the names down each column, hoping she wouldn’t see one she recognized. When she’d find a name, Dotty would quiver a bit. When she found some more names she knew, she’d shake harder. She’d try so hard not to cry in front of James. Dotty would go into her room to read, so James wouldn’t see. But James was smart. He knew his mother needed a hug. So he would sneak in and crawl onto her lap. She’d say to him to go to your room. She’d say it once, then she’d get back to reading. And James would stay there, nestled in her lap, whispering “Momma, don’t cry.”

Harold got to the last page of the paper. He pretended to read the other columns, pretended to distract himself. But he got to the middle of the last column. Harold stopped. He took his index finger and felt the names of his wife and son. Felt the texture of the paper. Felt each line of text around their names. Didn’t read, he had memorized each word. Harold placed his hands on his knees. And he remembered the day his wife and son died.

Power Hour #2 (Incomplete)

George sees and feels and senses and that is all. He is a man is slave to the things his brain tells him to do. Those without the Seeing Eye cannot be truly free. George is told to eat, sleep and shit because he has to, he is wired to. George intakes information, waits for the neural synapses to fire and then he knows, or thinks he knows. He is nothing compared to the rich who understand. The poor exist in the past, always waiting for their limited brain processes to complete. In the world of Simplistia, George is not, nor will he ever be.

Scientists invented The Seeing Eye so they could understand the world, not just perceive. The machine was heralded as the next step for humanity. No longer will humankind have to wonder why they act the way they do. Nonsensically. Violently. Hatefully. For the first time, humankind could see into their mind, skip the eternal barriers of time, and see the causes of their nonsense, violence and hate. The subconscious was no longer a Freudian theory. Humankind had no limitations upon thought. All was possible.

The leader of Simplistia was the first to see his mind. At the time, he was a paid guinea pig. But after gaining the Seeing Eye, he knew he could take control of the land. He slipped the scientists some tasteless poisons. He stole the Seeing Eye and took it to the capital. He bribed the senators one by one with little tastes of the truth. They promised him powerful positions, and he joined the senate. But he had tampered with the Seeing Eye. The bribed senators caught glimpses of their evil and nothing more. And one by one, they killed themselves, ashamed of their inner demons. The leader rose from the piling corpses, proclaiming order to the people. He displayed the Seeing Eye as his own invention. And the public elected him to the highest power, because he was the only one who truly knew. The rich joined him, paying him with mountains of money. And those who paid became known as The Knowers. The leader hid the machine from the general public. Outlawed any attempts to copy it. And the Knowers ruled, and no one questioned their authority.

The middle class were allowed annual momentary glimpses into their own mind. But they paid not with money but instead with their free will. And they were rewarded by the Knowers with power and lavish homes and eternal servanthood. Those who rebelled, who held on to their limited free will fell to the bottom of society. They were called The Quiet, for their voice did not matter. They did not understand themselves, so they could not understand the workings of the upper classes. The country of Simplistia grew to control the world, but the Quiet’s brains starved and no one cared.

George really wants to fuck Amy. He can say why to his friends. He likes to talk about her shapely hips, her flowing, auburn hair, her petite, ideal bust, or her melodic voice. But he bullshits. He could go on endlessly and he’d still have no idea why he was so attracted. Sarah has bigger tits. His fuck-buddy, Jamie, has a firmer ass, he knows because he liked to slap it. The models in the magazines have all of what society deemed as perfect. But he really wants to fuck Amy, and his dick hurt thinking about it.
George likes to walk about as if his cock were hanging out. He wears solid soled shoes because of the clacking sounds they make. He beats down the street and people look at him with crooked heads. His hips swivel right to left. On a crowded street, his friends would put him at the front like a battering ram. He says he’s a tall, strong man, but statistically, he’s average. He makes short jokes all the time to Amy, but he’s not that much taller. George struts to her house with some four dollar flowers. He wants many things, but right now he wants Amy.

He lives in the Quiet part of the city. He’s heard about the Seeing Eye, and he rants about the injustice. He badgers random strangers on the subway, tries to get their attention about the new march to the Knowers part of town. George will never go through with it. The Knowers put the Quiet on the edge of the city as if they were hiding a child’s mess. If a bug were to come out of this hidden mess, the parent would stomp it out of existence. George likes to live. So he bullshits some more, and most ignore him. Some people tell him to shut up. His parents tell him to shut the fuck up because the Knowers might hear. George doesn’t listen, he doesn’t know any better.

Power Hour #1

It’s been too long. This quiet of the night, an escape from continuity. Looking out of my window, I see a bird. She’s quiet and alone. Seems content in her solitude. The others know not to bother her. Silence used to not bother me. But I’ve been enveloped in a cacophany of lies, and now, when all I have are my thoughts, I feel pain.

It’s not that I regret anything I’ve done. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. I’ve had my name in the paper. People wait on my beck and call. But it’s not enough. Why is it not enough?

Sometimes I have waking dreams, moments of non-reality, fantasy absorbed. I yearn for a childhood imagination, some purity of soul. I miss that closeness with truth. Everything seems obscured, painted with a muddy black tone. I can’t figure out what to do now.

I dream, and I wish I could stay there. I remember, because I must and I wish I could forget. The past strangles. My lungs contract, as if my shadow seizes my nerves. I hate anxiety, because I cannot control it. Why do I remember this now? Why can’t I control my mind?

There are things you wish you could take back. I feel an overwhelming sense of jealousy. This bird has no regrets. She lives in the now and she does not need. Her bodily functions are fulfilled. Sleep is nothing more than an escape. But this bird needs no escape because there is nothing to fear.

I used to look out of the window all the time. I have no time anymore. I remember when time was a friend to me. I close my eyes and I remember the day my grandmother died.

That day, the fog was back. Yesterday, the fog blanketed over our town. And the day before that. In fact, for the entire month, fog was part of our lifes, ever present. The weather reporter called it a once in a lifetime event. All the flights in the local airport were cancelled. I remember hearing the word bankruptcy and wondering why all the adults were making such a fuss. Such a silly sounding word, nonsensically spelled. Nowadays, all the reporters talk about are bankruptcies. But back then, all that existed was the fog.

My room was tiny. When I was a kid, my sisters made me watch a scary movie. My sisters made me do all sorts of unpleasant things: I painted their nails, cleaned the dog’s messes, and listened to stories about older boys with hair in places I didn’t know that hair grew there. But my sisters loved to change the channel to the movie channel, but only when I was trapped in the room and something particularly frightening was playing. In this scary movie, the space man was locked in a padded cell. I used to name the characters in the movies because I couldn’t pronounce their actual names. A lisp is God’s way of saying, “I don’t like you very much.” I named the man in this movie Bob. He was like me, imprisoned by a very mean person. I was rooting for this guy. “Yeth! You can do it!” My “thisters thnickered”. I didn’t care. Bob tried time and time again to break out of his cell. He took a nail file, a tool I despised, and chiseled it down into a lock pick. For at least twenty minutes in movie time, which is an eternity in child time, he worked at that lock. When the guards came to drop off his sad meal, Bob would hide it in his shoe. He was the man I wanted to be, strong enough to fight. I remember the sound of his lock pick breaking. I remember wishing that it was a sick joke. And I remember watching for the next hour, watching Bob resort to clawing at the walls, biting at the bars, ramming his head into the door. My sisters kept asking me if I wanted them to turn off the tv. But I was mesmerized. Bob had to make it out. So I endured. Then I remember watching his mind snap. The music stopped. Bob stopped talking. I didn’t like that. He had a voice of courage. He couldn’t lose. Then the padded walls started to creep in. And they moved ever so slightly inch by inch. I counted the amount floor tiles and saw each one disappear. And then the walls had reached Bob. They pressed on his body and he screamed. This wasn’t a scream of rage against his captors like he yelled before. This was a shriek. It felt like baby spiders crawled up my back when I heard that. The walls kept on squeezing in. His cries got quieter and quieter. And then there was a black screen and the credits.

I ran up to my room, sprinted with all my limited strength. I walked from corner to corner heel to toe. The room was thirty by twenty child feet. Much too small to stay there. So I left. I packed my candy, my comics and my pillow in my back pack and I left.
When I opened the front door, the fog was there. I reached out to touch the fog and it touched back. A little remnant of the hanging cloud swirled in my hand. I tried to look out, see if it was safe to run away. My sisters were talking quietly in the tv room. I could hear them say how much they regretted letting me watch that movie. I remember them making plans to do something nice for me, take me to the park, or the dock or the puppy store, but only when the fog cleared. I stood there in the door and hated the fog. I couldn’t stay home, but I couldn’t leave. I blew into my hand and my little held fog was gone.
I tried to take a step forward. My skin felt like it was sweating, but it wasn’t hot. One foot at a time I left the house. I took another step forward and the front door began to fade away. I moved toward what I thought was the birch tree in our front yard. And then the whole house was gone, swallowed by the fog.

Then there was the scream. I remember that scream because it was the same scream Bob cried out when he was about to die. I remember that scream because that was when my sisters found my dead grandmother’s body. I was there alone in the fog. And it was all quiet for a couple minutes. For the only time in my life, I was at peace.

Power Hours

All of the following stories have been written in one hour. All of them are far from complete. I hope you enjoy.

Who Am I As a Writer?

Who am I as a writer?

Dear My Upcoming English Teacher,

This paper is my personal warning to you, for what you should expect for the upcoming term.

I am every English teacher’s worst nightmare. I am pompous, narcissistic, annoying, and unnecessarily long-winded. And worst of all, I am completely aware of all these flaws, and yet I still churn out lines and lines of nonsensical drivel that a drooling twitching, half-vegetative solitary inmate could translate. I don’t simply talk the talk. I am obligated to walk the walk, and write sentences that trail for endless miles, that even a southerner like Faulkner would spit-take his daily Hennessey if he ever happened upon such an utter travesty. My essay has such a convoluted logical structure; at this moment, Aristotle is rising from his grave simply to beat me with his femur. By the end of this catastrophe, you will be ripping your hair out, wad by wad, sanity teetering on the edge of a cliff.

Quite an ambitious statement, I must say. I have to alienate any possible reader group without going into copout lazy, overused routines, like a gross-out shtick, a racist rant, a constant stream of profanity, or an imitation of insanity. And yet, you (yes, you unlucky bastard) still anticipate something ominous in the near future. Unfortunately, you are correct. I must confess; I have purposefully sabotaged your every attempt at a successful class this entire term. Whilst you have taught your lectures, ignorant of my machinations in the back row, I have been causing mass havoc. Do you remember that child in the second grade who used to give the twenty-five year old female teacher gray hair by causing such a ruckus that she would never be able to ever have a lesson, that by the end of the term, she had to be institutionalized? I am that child, however much older and grown far more conniving with age. Many a professor have fallen victim to my devilishly good looks and my witty charms, and numerous lessons have fallen wayside to my experienced diversionary tactics. This is merely a courtesy to a fellow academic I respect. Tally the amount of times I’ve sidetracked you, subtly disrupted your lessons, or interrupted your lectures with inane trivia. Read onwards.

You must be gripping the paper, shaking with boiling rage at this point, screaming yourself hoarse, strangling an invisible neck – anything to release this frustration this essay is building in you. That rattling crash was most likely your stapler being thrown at high velocity against the wall. The only thing keeping you reading is your sick curiosity, resembling something more like masochism, a blazing intent to discover any saving grace in this windbag’s musings. Sorry, there isn’t anything.

Even behind the scenes, in the interaction between the students, I am a mastermind at work, the perfect anti-scholar. I may appear to be the perfect pupil for a class: diligent, attentive, an English major with a wide literary knowledge. Yet, this all serves only to let your guard down. I have been giving horrendous advice to my peers, while they are ever so trustworthy of my angelic grin and my mesmerizing counsel. Articles? Lose them. Conjunctions? Unnecessary. Now you can see why all my classmates’ papers, other then my glorious works of art, look like an E.E. Cummings poem. This completely destroys the curve for the grade towards my favor. Not such a teacher’s pet anymore, am I?

Can you take it anymore? Your heart must be racing. This is a full out declaration of guilt. What is your first action? Do you call the dean of students to report this long list of academic violations? Do you call a mental hospital to intern this dithering fool, who keeps on dallying onwards, butchering his usage of alliteration, throwing out grammatical terms at will to puff up his so-called reflective essay in a weak effort to appear smarter? You ask yourself one question, “Why?” Why could a student of such obvious overwhelming intelligence use his gifts for villainy? No reason, other than it is my sinful pleasure to see you squirm and bald. Your mind veers toward the religious and existential. Only Ivan Karamazov’s cruel god would plant this spiteful, scheming, yet innocent appearing pupil in your classroom. Of any of the millions of classes and teachers available, why you, why now, why this devious little Beelzebub?

Yes, the pointless rhetorical question, a dear favorite of mine. My tenth grade English teacher is currently relegated to a diet of hand-fed baby carrots and yams at the Anchorage Mental Institution due to these sinister literary devices. As a quick aside and explanation, his last coherent thought was to get as far away from any of my writing as humanly possible, even if it was to be banished to the land of Palin. So, not only am I a sociopath, but a successful destroyer of souls. Are you intimidated yet? Or are you a brave/stupid person and rather thinking, “This essay has completely and utterly no point. What will this student do with himself?”

This last paragraph is a true confession note, not that softball bull-crap I was manipulating you with beforehand. There are delusions of grandeur, and then there is destiny. I am about to reveal the latter. I will become the first Asian-American President of the United States of America. Now, before your guffaws or horrors overcome you, or before you sprint directly to the toilet and immediately excavate your insides through any orifice possible, let me tell you this – it will be done, and I have the means. I am a secret inheritor to multiple trust funds, now including Michael Jackson, and far more importantly, Billy Mays’ inheritance. What, you didn’t know the vastness of the OxyClean Empire? I will be bathing in money by the time I am in my thirties, and of course, like every worthy president, I will buy my way to the White House. Then you shall see the ancient’s ruminations, the prophecies come to fruition, a dark day.

There shall be a massive upheaval of government. It will be a dictatorship, and I will be the sole, autonomous ruler for life. I’ll most likely have an assassination attempt somewhere along the line by some misguided, jealous Democrat. It’ll of course fail, as bullets will bounce off of my impeccable muscles. Of course, as a kind humane person, I will grant leniency to the Democrat. Only three lions will eat him. All will be merry.

This is my forewarning to you. You shall have known the Great Ruler, The Phil. And when, my time has come for this life to pass, all the maidens will weep, and women will lay flowers at my gravestone.

Are you still here, coherent? Clean yourself up. You must be frothing at the mouth, furiously shaking your head in disbelief. I am just stating the facts, not embellishing anything. Now you understand why petty things such as quizzes, homework assignments and grades are beneath someone of my stature. I am your future leader, P.O.T.U.S., and eventually despot, theocrat and monarch. You may be holding a potentially valuable document, to be held one day on the same regard as the Declaration of Independence, The Voynich Manuscript, and the original copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone. Next time I see you in class, I shall grace you with a signature, as worthy candidate. You may even be privy enough to have an early royal tax collection. And so, like all great dynasties ruled by great men: Nero, Caligula, and my personal favorite, William Henry Harrison, the empire begins.

Opening Chapter to a Book I'm planning to write

“You are a useless piece of shit!” A plate whizzes by my head. My mom forgot her meds again. She says she doesn’t need them. There’s a hole in the wall that says otherwise.

“Don’t have anything to say?” she yells. What’s there to say? Any response I have will piss her off more. I avert my eyes. This happens a lot. Inexplicable rage. I’m here, so I’m the target.

“Coward,” she says. Call me what you will, you’re the shit-mother of year. I don’t care what you have to say anymore. I just ignore her. She stomps out, frustrated.

Dad’s not home yet, probably at some bar drinking away his troubles. It wouldn’t surprise me if he were having an affair. I wouldn’t blame him. Before he gets home I gotta clean up. Hide the hole. I’ll slip the pills in her food. Some mood stabilizers, a sedative, anti-anxiety meds. A hodgepodge of drugs. I’ll throw a sleeping pill in there for good measure. Should keep her quiet for a while. Then when he gets home, we can pretend we are a happy, normal family.

You know, the funny thing is, I don’t feel anything after almost being bludgeoned. I don’t tear up; I’m not upset. I’m numb, used to this by now. At the very least, I’ve gotten quite good at dodging. I grab a broom and sweep up the mess. I tell myself, “This is why we can’t have expensive things.” My mom’s outside smoking a cigarette. She says it’s the only thing that keeps her sane. Sane? That’s a pipe dream. I have to start making dinner. As per the usual.

You know, I’ll make a special meal today. It’ll cheer everyone up. I’ll make our family’s favorite, chicken pasta. Start boiling the water. Put a pan on the stove and turn on the burner. I cut up the onions, slice up the chicken, dice up the mushrooms, and crush the garlic. “It’s a bit tiresome, but it’ll be worth it,“ I tell myself. Cooking the chicken, the vegetables and the noodles takes about half an hour. I have to set the table now. The whole process takes a bit over an hour.

Wonder why Mom hasn’t come back in yet. She probably went for a drive to cool off. Well that just means I have the house to myself. I go through her drawers and steal a cigarette. Light up. The smoke comes out in waves. It’s times like these, where I wish I were the wind. I could vanish at any moment, drift aimlessly among the clouds. I would be a gentle summer breeze, caressing the cheeks of young children. I would make leaves dance. I’d probably be a bit of a prankster. I’d flip old men’s comb-overs, sail spit back into people’s faces, and steal hats and scarves. But I’d never steal a kid’s balloon. If only I could simply fly away. If only.

I hear the front door open. Damn, she’s back. Take one last drag on the cigarette, then flick it out the window. My mom walks in with a smile, as if nothing had ever happened. She’ll never own up to her violence. She always acts like she has temporary amnesia, blocking out everything improper. Like I said, everyone likes to pretend that everything’s normal. But it’s not.

She walks in the kitchen, where I’m doing the finishing touches on the meal.
“Hey Cody, I brought food from the nice Italian place around the corner. You know, that cute place with the vines on the outside. Oh you cooked? Well never mind that. No need for this junk.” She picks up the pot of pasta, and dumps it in the trashcan.
“That took me over an hour to make!”
“Oh quit complaining, it’s not that big of a deal,” my mom retorted. I simmered with silent rage.
“Don’t you give me that look,” she snaps. “How dare you give me that look. I went out of my way, paid good money and got this great food for the family, and all you can do is throw a tamper tantrum? I ought to smack your ungrateful ass.”
“No, it’s nothing. Sorry for the attitude.” I walk slowly upstairs.
“That’s right, leave you worthless piece of shit.”
I’m screaming inside. I want to turn around and throttle her.