Sorry for the lack of updates man I was writing some other stories in order to keep my touch up. Also went through a writer's block but I pushed through anyway.

13: Lost

Dad never came home. Alarming.

Dad didn't answer his phone. Alarming.

Birtz staggered off the couch; grizzling in foul morning breath. Oh God, he thought almost instantly, my alarm didn't wake me up. The second his eyes flew open he had read the hands on the clock above the fireplace. It was already quarter to nine. Class was just about to start.

"God fricking dammit," he bleated, stumbling for his backpack, "they're going to kill me."

He could imagine walking up to the doors as if on a death sentence, buzzing in shamefully: Please state your name. Birtz Robern. Then he would walk into class and the teacher would stand up with hellfire in her eyes. 'Late slip?' she would ask with a voice that jarred on the ears. Dozens of eyes fixing him with an emotionless look that would nonetheless scream at his face, the slip would quiver up like a leaf.

Last time he checked, arriving late is often 'rude' and 'disruptive.' Well what do you know? That's life. It's not like he's all, 'woohoo, we're hooking another late slip on the belt. We should throw a party with shredded homework as confetti and pairs of compasses as silverware. No, this was the second time being late out of what, 250 school days? All the teachers had been late more times than that. But of course, they make excuses and the students have no choice but to take them. But the students never get that privilege. Are you trying to give your students a sense of entitlement?

He went to his bedroom and unplugged his phone. Looking back, he should have just brought it to the couch. At least his alarm would have triggered right into his ear. That would've set him straight. If Dad was home, he would've whipped him once. Had he gone back to sleep, Dad would've whipped him a dozen times, maybe more. If some people took things with a grain of salt, Dad took everything with a fistful of it. One time Birtz walked in with a C on his lab paper. For the rest of the week, Dad fixed him with an unwavering stare and took away some of his privileges — hey, if you don't please me I won't let you be pleased, screw you. Thunderous clouds gathered at his head. He was probably seen as a leech.

Drawing himself up, he slipped into his backpack straps and took to the kitchen. Breakfast had to be simple . . . uh, a banana would do. There was no cereal. That stuff has a lot of sugar, it's like dessert for breakfast, Dad had said. Birtz thought he needed to stop speaking like he was the Pope, or even his dad for that matter (He rarely treated him like a son at all). Just look, not all cereal is sugary garbage, man.

Holding the banana to his mouth like a pistol, he peeled the skin back, clamped his teeth onto it, and ate. Then his stomach pinched. He fricking hated bananas.

It would do, though. It was punishment for being stupid. He would make sure to keep running himself over, because he wanted to be damn sure he'd never make a mistake like this again. Just like his outfit too; a wrinkled white tee and a sandy pair of jeans. Top it off with his crown of matted-with-grease brown hair and boom — this was truly apple-knocker caliber.

At the front door, he pushed his feet into a pair of red basketball shoes. Then he checked his phone again to be sure of the time. The numbers 8:52 bobbed out of the screen's darkness like a buoy that had materialized underwater out of nowhere. And suddenly something else did too; those same two words that always hooked him in; Herman Industries. Great, what did Dad accomplish? Birtz had always been told we're doing great and everything is abundant, but never got any real insight. Hopefully he'd finally get a sneak peek.

That was not what happened.

Instead, his heart did a 180 and sprung back into his chest when he saw that one word.

SHOOTING.

A shooting at Dad's company? ALARMING . . .

Birtz was rushing for Dad's room just as fast as the bad thoughts on him had waned. Above a flight of stairs and a strip of the indoor balcony was the master bedroom. Dad's bedroom. He had never had the 'authority to go in there. But now, he didn't give a flying F. Some kind of instinct had leaped up inside him: you need to make sure Dad is alright!

His brain made an effort to convince himself Dad was okay, but he saw a different truth in front of him. The door was half-open, the lights inside the room off — and a limp foot jutted out from behind the foot of the oak bed frame. Shit, it was Dad's foot. But surely he was safe right, if he was at home and not at work . . .

"Dad! Dad?!" Birtz cried, brushing through the doorway and skidding to a halt. "Are you okay?"

Dad didn't move. He clapped his hands to his forehead and slid his hair back. "Dad!"

He was just about ready to slap him on the back when Dad muttered something near a grumble. Birtz opened his mouth . . . but closed it. Dad's eyes had wrenched open, the pulse in his neck visible. He pushed himself up on inward palms. His skull was tight all around, straining the most at the back.
(Later, you better make some adjustments to that helmet because not doing so is asking for more trouble than your head is already in.)
A grungy voice. He whipped around. "Who's there?"

Birtz squinched his face up. "Me?" Something mindly made it difficult to say: "Your son."

Dad's face softened. "I'm hearing things. Voices." He fixed him with a wary glance. "He's talking. Do you hear it Birtz?"

The ticking of the clock (the one above the fireplace) turned up from the back of the room. Beneath that Birtz found nothing but silence. He stood there, taking his view from one point to another, trying not to look at Dad. He was confused. This was out of the ordinary (though he often thought Dad was speaking bullshit). A part of him wanted to believe this was just a prank — that Dad, for some reason, had become one of those overly-eccentric dads from a stale television show (often involving some family in which everything went wrong ironically). But when he finally looked back at Dad, he could see anything but in him.

"Nobody is talking," Birtz said as if he had been faced with a tantrum-bound child. "You're hearing this . . . him . . . where?"

Dad stumbled, reaching, reaching for something, but nothing. He went ear-first into the wall, driving himself up with a few extra steps, his breathing finding its way up and down, but somehow not high and low. He pointed to the door.

"THERE!" he screamed, his eyes threatening to turn to glowing amber pits. He wanted to clutch at his hair and rip it out.

Birtz went to the door and checked the hallway, his heart seized by a nervous tattoo. There was nothing. He scratched his head like an animated cartoon monkey; though his hand more so tapped it due to the way it was trembling. He stepped forward, glanced over the balcony. Again, there was nothing. The clock was ticking still, it reminded him awfully of how silent his house always was. Even in a time deemed chaotic, at least to his house's standards, there was dull silence. He turned back, and stood at the doorframe.

Dad careered at him suddenly.

He scuttered back, shuffling his feet in a way that would later guide him to his ass. He pushed himself up against the banister, its architecture digging into his back. Dad reached the doorway. He laid both hands on either side of the doorframe, his chest rising and falling with the rhythm of his frantic breathing. Now something was undoubtedly off — not because Dad was angry, but because he had never expressed it in this way before. Dad pointed accusingly. Though his finger wasn't even near him, Birtz still felt as if he had been jabbed in the chest.

"Listen here you little, stay out of my room. Don't mess with my business you hear me? I can't stand being disappointed by you— disregarding my rules, putting my work to shame, not doing well at school. After everything I've done you thank me with this behavior? Anything I've done, you've just heaved out of the window like garbage. You hear me Birtz? GET OUT OF HERE AND GET YOUR ASS TO SCHOOL!"

He stepped back and slammed the door. Now it wasn't so silent anymore, and instead of (tick, tick, tick) the whole house shook with (KA-BLAM!).

Birtz, latching onto the railing, pulled himself up, his eyes narrowed, mouth blank. Something assured him that that should've induced an immediate reaction; but nothing. His eyes were stinging, but he did not care. His nose was tingling, but he hardly noticed. His breathing was close to spluttering, but — you guessed it — he did not give a shit. He climbed down the stairs with slow deliberation, his ears now starting to ring. His movements seemed numb. Nothing seemed real.

He went to his bedroom, looked at the bed which had been neatly sheeted and pressed last night, and nudged the door behind him closed. He padded to that bed, nearly dragging himself through those motions like a zombie. His vision was blurry, but he still didn't notice. He got on his knees, bowed his head, and slid his hands under his bed. Those reaching hands closed on a case, slipped away near the back (much as he kept a can of Ginger Ale at the back of the fridge to hide it from his Dad). It was still as it had been for the past 8 or so years; glossy smooth, blanketed in dust, and out of Dad's knowledge. If Dad had known about it, his time here would have been a great deal shorter than he expected.

His chest began to tighten to a close. He opened the case. The lid unfastened in a metallic snick. He reached into the case and picked out a photo, a plastic sleeve shimmering above. Past those shimmers . . . he saw people. Now his vision wasn't blurred. Tears wormed out of his eyes and plinked onto the photo. There he was, bordering 7 years of age, head rested on the shoulder of a woman. A shoulder-length flow of brown hair, lips stretched in a genuine smile, eyes brown and sparkling. Mila Robern. Birtz's mother.

She was dead. Brain tumor. Only days after this photo they found out. Only two weeks to live. After her death, they moved to the United States and took up Michigan because that was where the main headquarters of Herman Industries had been established. The other building back home was probably not in service anymore. Maybe it had gotten bulldozed, or maybe it was put to another use. Whatever it was, he did not care. When he thought of home, he thought of Mom, not the damned business; he thought of everything as it had once been, before everything hit the skids.

He started to cry now, tears guttering his cheeks, but there were no sounds from his mouth. He was not wailing at a sudden wave of emotion, nor crying for it to be over, but just taking it all in. He had regressed it. This was not an emotional outbreak; if you were to describe that as a surge of emotions, this was a small flow.

And so Birtz, with this photo clasped against his stomach, quavered, "God dammit, why does . . . things, just shit like this, have to happen to people? Why? Just why?"