*Okay, I must once again warn you: long chapter ahead. It seemed a lot
shorter when I wrote it in longhand, but when I typed it out and checked
the word count... I'm just getting far too carried away. I took out this
whole middle Portman section; I'll stick that in somewhere in the future, I
bet. The thing is, now this chapter is nothing but bleakness, now that the
cutesy lusting and comic relief got ousted, so be prepared, hard times are
ahead for my dearest Fulton. Writing this chapter was crazy; I was pretty
far from my right mind when I did it, so let me know what you think of the
results. It's kinda... well, you'll see.
Anyway, I know I shouldn't do anything to add to the length of this update, but I have some notes to share, so suck it up!
Grasshopper: "...the innate nothingness of Fulton," huh? Have a little Jean- Paul Sartre for breakfast, did you? Seriously, I agree with you there, and I'm glad you like what I'm doing with the Bashies; getting inside their heads is always my number one priorty, so thanks for saying I do it well.
RockAndRoll: Wow, thanks for all the updates! Sorry I couldn't give you proper props for "Fatty McButterpants." Man, I'd have a hard time coming up with names that aren't the same as characters in one movie or another. Maybe I should switch to ethnic names, I've always been partial to the German ones: Fritz, Olga, Gertrude and the like.
Bottles: Come back to us! The world needs more Chadam!
Selena (and Solis and Tai, if you read my junk): My story, dark? Compared to you, I'm pure fairytale! I don't see this Ice Cream you promised, though! *growls, pokes Selena in retaliation* I doubt this chapter compares to the last one of SIDBIM for angst and pain; I should probably stick to the fluffier gunk.
Cake-Eater: Wow, that's truly the best thing anyone could ever say about my story, that they get lost inside it. That's the most to which I could ever aspire, to pull people out of their world, and into mine for a little while. And S.E. Hinton? I was heavily influenced by her for the style of the last chapter, mainly Tex and The Outsiders, but a smidge of Rumble Fish as well, and if it reminds you of her, then I hope that means I pulled it off!
Schizzie: Nearly done your vacation? Hey, you still haven't told me what the hell a vocational school is yet! Don't make me chain you up again! *towers over Schizzie, shaking her fist* Man, I'm going to end up as a vegetable if I keep researching my chapters like this... hee hee!
"All around me are familiar faces, worn-out places, worn-out faces,
Bright and early for the daily races, going nowhere, going nowhere.
Their tears are filling up their glasses, no expression, no expression,
Hide my head, I wanna drown my sorrow, no tomorrow, no tomorrow.
And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad;
the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had.
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take,
When people run in circles, it's a very, very,
Mad world."
--"Mad World" by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews.
Not only does it scream Fulton like nobody's business, but it's also flat- out one of the best songs I've ever heard. Donnie Darko soundtrack, check it out.
Fulton's POV:
I knew my mom was tweaking again when I came upstairs to take a shower before school and saw her scurrying about the kitchen in her best dress, the smell of frying bacon in the air. She was shuffling back and forth across the room, opening drawers and cupboards at random and re-arranging their contents; she kept running her fingers through her short red hair, causing it to jut out from her head at all angles. There were eggs frying on the stove alongside the bacon, and I could smell something cooking in the oven, as well.
"Hey, mom," I said, yawning loudly.
She spun around to face me, her eyes wide, her lips stretched into a manic grin. "Fulton, baby, you're up! Thank god, I thought I was going to have to throw all this away!"
"What do you mean, where's Dad?"
"Some company is paying him to haul junk for them for a few days; it starts early in the morning."
"You mean this is for me?"
"Sure is kiddo, lord knows I couldn't keep anything down. Now, how do you like your eggs?"
I couldn't believe my luck, the first meal my mother cooks in a month, and my father wasn't around to keep me away. "Uh, sunny side up, please."
"You got it, biscuits are nearly done, too. Have a seat."
"You made biscuits, too?" I asked disbelievingly.
"Yup," she said, grinning broadly as she scratched at the back of her hand. "And I cleaned the kitchen, and the living room, and I'll get to the bedroom as soon as the food's done."
I looked around me for the first time. Man, I must really be dead in the mornings; how could I not have noticed this? The floor, table and countertop had all been washed and cleared of debris; normally, you had to shift armloads of old newspapers and beer cans just to find a place to sit, and I could actually see through the window that opened onto the alley from the kitchen. I glanced over my shoulder into the living room; it was the same in there. Though the walls were still a dingy off-white, the paint rippling and peeling all along the cracked old baseboard, they had been washed free of the grime that had accumulated over the years, and it looked as if she had even vacuumed the grotty old carpet, which would be quite a feat, considering we didn't own a vacuum cleaner.
"Wow, mom, the place looks great." When I came home last night, the apartment had been a shambles, as always, and an exhaustive search on my part hadn't been able to turn up a single scrap of food, let alone a side of bacon and a half-dozen eggs. "You've been up all night, haven't you?"
She smiled at me sheepishly, handing me a plate piled high with food. "I'll take a nap once you leave for school."
Yeah, right, I thought, watching her scratch furiously at the back of her hand, her nails raising thin weals of blood from the raw, red skin. Speeding or not, though, it was hard to complain about a full stomach and a clean house, and I left for school that day in rather joyous mood. Given the transient nature of happiness in my household, it should have come as no surprise that everything went to hell in a hand basket later that night, but, in what I must say was a spectacular demonstration of my own stupidity, I never saw it coming.
***
There was no hockey game that night, so once school let out (well, an hour or so before that, no way was I in the mood for Math), I headed straight for J.J's garage. J.J. aka Jackson Jonovich, was a short, heavyset guy in his early thirties. He ran the garage, which was mainly a front for his lucrative stolen car and parts dealership. He approached me after this crazy shit I had to pull a few years back; he was always trying to get me to boost cars for him, but so far, I had managed to avoid the temptation. I worked for him sporadically, putting stuff together, or taking stuff apart, and he let me keep the car I was working on at the garage, and use his old tools and parts and junk. He always paid me a bit for the work I did for him too, and that day I picked up twenty dollars and an eighth of bud for helping him lower this VW he'd managed to acquire. The engine part I needed for the Caddy still hadn't arrived, so once I'd finished with the Volkswagon, I took off, stopping by the library to drop off some books and pick up a new batch, before heading for home.
I saw that our car was nowhere in sight, which meant that my father wasn't in, so I walked in the front door, instead of using the basement window. My mom was in the living room, hanging long strands of intricately designed paper dolls from the ceiling with thumbtacks. When she saw me, she hopped down off the chair she was standing on, and rushed over to greet me. She was now looking rather the worse for all the crank she's been taking; looked as if she'd been into the shit all day, as well. I let her hug me, and drag me over to the couch, and listened while she rattled on at high speed about her day.
There was a packet of tin foil on the table, and I was relieved to see it was nearly empty; while it was nice to have my mom fully conscious and alert for once, messing around with crystal meth could fast develop into a nasty habit, and if she got much more than a taste, I was pretty sure Tina would never let her go.
Turned out she had gone to the food bank early that morning (the only time to go, if you didn't want to be stuck in line all day), which explained the food of that morning, not to mention the potatoes and chicken she put on shortly after I came in. Man, I could really get used to this Mother of the Year shit. I was sitting at the kitchen table, watching her cook, listening to her go on about nothing. I didn't mind; this was about as "normal" as my mother was likely to get. I was just tucking into my chicken, thinking about how I hadn't eaten this well in months, when my father came home.
I had forgotten all about him, and so I wasn't on alert like I should have been; it wasn't until I heard the door slam that I knew he was back, and by then, it was already too late. "Lila?" he called loudly. "What's that smell?" He strode into the kitchen where I was sitting, frozen in my seat, and his eyes narrowed at the sight of me. "What's going on here?"
I stared at my plate, willing myself to swallow the food that had become lodged in my suddenly constricted throat. "Mom's cooking," I muttered.
"I can see that, genius," he sneered, throwing himself into the chair opposite me, and reaching into the fridge for a beer.
My mom emerged from the bathroom, which she had felt the need to re-grout. "Clayton, you're just in time; I made dinner." She was smiling proudly, though I thought I saw her glance at me out of the corner of her eye.
"You sure did, honey, and it smells delicious."
She beamed at him, and handed him a plate full of food. I could smell the alcohol on my father's breath, Wild Turkey, and figured this was probably a good time to make an exit, so I bolted down the rest of my food as quick as I could. When I rose from the table, however, my father's hand clamped down on my arm like a vise, and he yanked me back into my seat.
"I don't think so, kiddo. We're going to have a nice family meal that your mother made. Stay put."
I sat there, watching him wolf down his food, a too-familiar sense of dread creeping over me. I had been down this road before, many times, and I knew exactly where it led.
"So," he said, not looking up from his plate. "How was school?"
"Umm... okay, I guess." WHACK. He reached across the table and hit me on the head with his spoon.
"When I ask you a question, son, I expect a better answer than that."
Oh, great, here we go. I crossed my arms across my chest and slouched down, making myself as small as possible, which wasn't very small, mind you.
"I *said*, how was school?" His voice was soft, his eyes glinting dangerously. I hated the way he looked at me, like I was a worm he was going to enjoy squashing and scraping off the sole of his boot. I could feel my stomach tighten and my pulse start to speed up as my body pumped adrenalin into my bloodstream.
Though I was long past actual fear of my father, dread was something else entirely. Fear is this shifty, fluttering little thing that arises when you don't know what's going to happen, but you feel it won't be good. Dread was this hard, heavy sensation that came when you knew exactly what was going to happen, and that there was nothing you could do about it. In my mind, I felt this bored, detached sort of dread; I knew what was coming, but it was just this unpleasant, familiar thing that was as much a part of my life as eating or sleeping. My body, however, was more on edge; my father always managed to trigger a "fight or flight" response from my glands. The result was this jumble of bodily reactions, but no emotions.
"School was wonderful," I said flatly.
WHACK. "Shut up. You make me sick." He looked around him, and, seeing that my mother had left the room, turned to me. "Get me another beer."
I got up and went to the fridge. "You're all out."
"What?"
"I can get you some more," I said quickly. "But the cold beer and wine stores are closed, so it'll be warm..."
"You little cocksucker," he said, his voice calm and almost gentle. "You've been sneaking my beer again, haven't you?" He reached onto his shirt pocket, and pulled out a cigarette, looking at me slyly as he lit it.
"No," I said, knowing it was useless.
"Don't lie to me!"
"I'm not lying; you must have drank it yourself."
"So now *I'm* the liar, am I?" His voice was barely above a whisper.
Good one, Fulton. "I'm not saying that, I just meant..."
He was on me in a flash. Grabbing my right arm and pinning it to the table, he sat on my lap, holding me fast to the chair, so I couldn't get away. I squirmed, but it was no use. "You're a lying, thieving little bitch, aren't you?" he said quietly, taking a long drag on his cigarette.
"No."
"What was that?"
"I'm not lying, and I didn't steal anything." I struggled again, but it only got me a hard elbow to the stomach.
"Tell me you're a lying, thieving little bitch."
"No," I choked out between gasps.
He took one last drag on his cigarette, then ground it out on my exposed forearm. I could smell burnt flesh before I felt a thing, and then my arm flared up in pain. "Say it, or you'll get another."
"Okay, okay! I'm a lying, thieving bitch!"
He let go of my arm and stood up, looking down on me with disgust. "Tell me something I don't know."
One of these days, I thought, rubbing my burnt arm, I'm going to get you back for all this. One of these days, I'm going to make you scream. And why not today, I couldn't help thinking. Why not now?
"Well gee," I said sarcastically, the words popping out of my mouth before I could stop them. "That's an awfully broad category; I wouldn't know where to begin."
Before he could register what I said, I spun around and took off for the door, only to run full-tilt into my mother, who was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the carpet with a soapy cloth. I flipped over top of her and landed heavily on my back, getting the wind knocked out of me for the second time in a few minutes.
Fulton, I thought dimly as I lay on the ground. You're so fucking stupid, you deserve everything you get. And then my father was upon me.
Pain.
Pain's a bitch, anyone will tell you, but there's so much more to it than most people will ever know. It's... complex, my relationship with pain. Yes, I consider it a relationship, because, thanks to the ever-generous assistance of my beloved father, I have come to know it very well indeed over the years. I let the pain suck me into its world; I lost myself inside it. My father's feet connected with my chest, my back, my legs. Blood flowed freely from my lower lip, where my teeth were firmly clamped. I bit back scream after scream, sending the pain deep below, where I forced it in upon itself until it formed a bright, golden ball in my chest. I could actually see it, this glowing orb that I struggled to keep contained, though as his feet fell on me again and again, the ball grew, a heavy, throbbing heat in my hands, and I knew I couldn't hold it for much longer. Pain coursed through every inch of my body, pain like I hadn't felt since... when?
My mind divided itself, splitting into separate entities, each one dealing with another aspect of the situation in which I found myself. One part of me remained with my body; I shuffled into a corner and curled up, covering my head, protecting my ribs, because I'd been here before... Part of my mind was analysing the pain, taking me back in time, almost three years, to when I was fourteen. I didn't remember what I'd done, but it must have been bad, because it had felt like my father was trying to kill me. Steel-toed boots cracked three of my ribs, introducing me to a pain I'd never felt before, and hadn't felt since... until today.
I remember you, I thought dimly, struggling to remain conscious. We've met before...
Suddenly, the kicking stopped, and with it, the yelling. After a moment, I chanced a glance over my shoulder at my father. He was standing over me, his face red, his breathing heavy, and I could tell by the angry, hungry way he looked at me, that we weren't through just yet.
Shit, I thought wildly. If he keeps this up, I'm liable to wind up in the hospital. But my worries were unfounded; my father had a knack for causing the maximum amount of pain while inflicting the minimum amount of damage, and it was with something like relief that I watched him undo his belt, and tug it free from his jeans.
He always liked to say that pain was the only language I understood, and I'll admit I was certainly fluent in the feeling, particularly when it came to belts. I was a connoisseur of belts; I'd been tasting them my whole life. It spoke with angry tongues, pounding in a lesson I would never learn. My father was unimportant; it was his belt that held the power, its harsh leather religion, christening my skin with blows until my body sang a gospel of pain.
Bright lights danced before my eyes as my father hauled me to his feet. "I'm trying to help you, boy, you know that, don't you? You're no good, and it's my job to teach you some respect."
Everything was foggy and unclear, and there was a ringing in my ears that made it hard to make out his words, but I like to think I was in my right mind when I began to laugh softly; he was just so... predictable. "Fuck you," I whispered between hushed little laughs, extending the middle finger off my left hand. "Fuck you, Dad."
And as he grabbed my hair and knocked my head against the wall, I ran into someone I hadn't seen in awhile. Oh yes, there it was again. Hello, old friend. Pain was a constant, unaltered by space and time. So simple and pure and... I understood it, could twist my body around it until we were one, a single unit. My father's words of wisdom fell on deaf ears as he slammed my head into the wall again and again, and I finally passed out cold on the third try.
***
It was all fine and well to get philosophical about pain when you were getting the shit kicked out of you; everyone knew that was easy enough. That kind of fiery, exquisite pain made your mind do all kinds of whacked- out shit, plus there was a certain je-ne-sais-quoi, a poetry, or maybe just a fucked-up masochistic quality about it. I dealt well with that kind of pain, and riding out my father's little punishment sessions without screaming or crying or breaking down in any way always filled me with this vicious, teeth-baring, fuck-you kind of pride. It drove my father nuts; I knew he would love the chance to kick my ass all over again for being a whiny bitch, but I would never give him the satisfaction. I know, that's pretty hurting, but leave me my pithy little victories, okay? They're all I've got.
There was nothing romantic, however, about the aftermath, in slowly regaining consciousness to find myself half-glued to the floor by my own congealed blood, most of which seemed to have originated from my nose, mouth and forehead when they made their repeated, enthusiastic introductions to the living room wall. I tried to raise my head, but the motion caused stabbing pains of such intensity to shoot through my skull, that I nearly blacked out again. A wave of dizziness and nausea washed over me, and I stifled a groan as I lowered my head back to its previous position in a pool of dried blood. Son of a bitch must have given me a concussion...
And then my mother's face appeared before mine, her features not pinched with concern, but open and dreamy. She was dabbing at me with a warm, wet cloth, gently washing the blood from my face. She was smiling vaguely, and half-sang, half-hummed a tune that I immediately recognised as one of my favourites from when I was very young: "Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea, and frolicked in the autumn mist, in a land called Honah Lee. Little Jackie Paper, loved that rascal Puff, and brought him strings and sealing wax, and other fancy stuff..."
She stopped singing when she saw my eyes come to rest on hers. She bent down and kissed my forehead. "There you are, my little Lancelot. I thought you'd never come back."
"Just couldn't stay away, I guess." I shifted my head, and winced at the pain it caused.
"Are you broken?" she asked softly.
I sent my fingers over my body, checking for damage. My lower back was a wall of pain; he must have fucked with my kidneys again, but there didn't seem to be anything worse than that, not counting my head of course, the pain in which was making it hard to think clearly. Or maybe that was the concussion...
"I'll live."
She smiled, and stroked my cheek. "I know you will."
"How long have I been out?"
"Awhile. Should we try and get you downstairs?" I nodded. I wanted to be out of the way when my father came back. It wasn't that he'd start in on my again, but he'd laugh and point and jeer and... no thanks.
My mother helped mw to my feet, but my head didn't think much of that plan, and this time I did vomit, retching all over the nice clean carpet. "Sorry," I muttered, cradling my head in my hands, trying to hold my skull together; for some reason, it seemed determined to split itself in two.
She half-supported my weight as I hobbled slowly down the steps to the basement, leaning heavily on the old wooden banister, ignoring the splinters it buried in my palm, praying it wouldn't snap before I reached the bottom. She helped me onto my bed, and I curled up automatically on my side; my back was far too sore to do anything else. My mother finished washing the blood from my face, while I tried to imagine myself out of my body.
"Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail, Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff's gigantic tail. Noble kings and princes would bow whenever they came; pirate ships would lower their flag when Puff roared out his name."
She jerked her head up at the sound of the front door opening; my father didn't like to see her helping me like this. She looked down at me sadly, perhaps even guiltily, but it was hard to be sure.
"Go. I'll be fine."
She took my hand in hers and kissed it, slipping something into my palm as she did so. "I love you, my little Lancelot," she said softly.
Once she had left, I looked down at my hand, which held a tiny packet of aluminum foil. I opened it carefully; it was filled with a caramel-coloured powder, like brown sugar. Thanks, mom. Moving very slowly and carefully, I sat up on my bed, and gingerly removed my shirt. My body was covered with puffy red welts, many of which had already developed the dark speckles that signalled the arrival of a bruise. I was going to be every shade of purple by tomorrow.
Reaching deep into one of the cardboard boxes beside my bed, my fingers searched and probed, eventually coming to rest on a Ziploc baggie. I pulled it out and set it down on the bed, my eyes alternating between its contents and the packet I still held in my hand. And why not? I thought, suddenly angry about everything. Why the fuck not? I lit the fat votive candle that sat on one of the boxes, and, removing a tiny metal dish from the baggie, filled it with water and powder and held it over the flame, watching the powder disintegrate and the resulting liquid begin to bubble and percolate.
I took the dish off the fire, and filled a syringe with the sweet brown liquid. I had only done this twice before, and both experiences had followed a particularly nasty bout with my father. I looked down at the tattoo that wound itself around my upper arm; they were right about me, I was just like her. No excuse, no justifications, but Christ, it hurt so much...
I pulled the final item from the baggie, a length of thin rubber tubing, which I tied tight to my arm. I watched the veins slowly rise to the surface of my skin, those magical blue threads that would carry the poison to my brain, and make all of this go away.
I buried the needle into my flesh, and when bright red blood blossomed up the dropper's neck like a time-lapse film of a rose in summer, I hit the plunger.
Not many people experience death and live to tell about it, but I was one of those. As soon as I injected, the pain in my body vanished, replaced with a joy that could never be described to someone who has never used heroin. Everything went black, and I could feel myself sinking deep into the ground, my life slowly ebbing away. And then, in an explosion of colours and sounds and smells, I was back, but now I was so much more. I was an angel, and pain and sadness were less a memory. I could see and hear everything; my sense of touch was so intently magnified that I spent hours just lying there, basking in the sensory overload that came when my skin made contact with a book, a bong, or my own body.
My fascination (okay, obsession) with death goes back as far as I can remember, and that night, all of its secrets became known to me. If only I could have stayed like that forever... You see, I'd never before felt so alive as I did that night, the night I died. Don't you just love the irony of it all?
Anyway, I know I shouldn't do anything to add to the length of this update, but I have some notes to share, so suck it up!
Grasshopper: "...the innate nothingness of Fulton," huh? Have a little Jean- Paul Sartre for breakfast, did you? Seriously, I agree with you there, and I'm glad you like what I'm doing with the Bashies; getting inside their heads is always my number one priorty, so thanks for saying I do it well.
RockAndRoll: Wow, thanks for all the updates! Sorry I couldn't give you proper props for "Fatty McButterpants." Man, I'd have a hard time coming up with names that aren't the same as characters in one movie or another. Maybe I should switch to ethnic names, I've always been partial to the German ones: Fritz, Olga, Gertrude and the like.
Bottles: Come back to us! The world needs more Chadam!
Selena (and Solis and Tai, if you read my junk): My story, dark? Compared to you, I'm pure fairytale! I don't see this Ice Cream you promised, though! *growls, pokes Selena in retaliation* I doubt this chapter compares to the last one of SIDBIM for angst and pain; I should probably stick to the fluffier gunk.
Cake-Eater: Wow, that's truly the best thing anyone could ever say about my story, that they get lost inside it. That's the most to which I could ever aspire, to pull people out of their world, and into mine for a little while. And S.E. Hinton? I was heavily influenced by her for the style of the last chapter, mainly Tex and The Outsiders, but a smidge of Rumble Fish as well, and if it reminds you of her, then I hope that means I pulled it off!
Schizzie: Nearly done your vacation? Hey, you still haven't told me what the hell a vocational school is yet! Don't make me chain you up again! *towers over Schizzie, shaking her fist* Man, I'm going to end up as a vegetable if I keep researching my chapters like this... hee hee!
"All around me are familiar faces, worn-out places, worn-out faces,
Bright and early for the daily races, going nowhere, going nowhere.
Their tears are filling up their glasses, no expression, no expression,
Hide my head, I wanna drown my sorrow, no tomorrow, no tomorrow.
And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad;
the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had.
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take,
When people run in circles, it's a very, very,
Mad world."
--"Mad World" by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews.
Not only does it scream Fulton like nobody's business, but it's also flat- out one of the best songs I've ever heard. Donnie Darko soundtrack, check it out.
Fulton's POV:
I knew my mom was tweaking again when I came upstairs to take a shower before school and saw her scurrying about the kitchen in her best dress, the smell of frying bacon in the air. She was shuffling back and forth across the room, opening drawers and cupboards at random and re-arranging their contents; she kept running her fingers through her short red hair, causing it to jut out from her head at all angles. There were eggs frying on the stove alongside the bacon, and I could smell something cooking in the oven, as well.
"Hey, mom," I said, yawning loudly.
She spun around to face me, her eyes wide, her lips stretched into a manic grin. "Fulton, baby, you're up! Thank god, I thought I was going to have to throw all this away!"
"What do you mean, where's Dad?"
"Some company is paying him to haul junk for them for a few days; it starts early in the morning."
"You mean this is for me?"
"Sure is kiddo, lord knows I couldn't keep anything down. Now, how do you like your eggs?"
I couldn't believe my luck, the first meal my mother cooks in a month, and my father wasn't around to keep me away. "Uh, sunny side up, please."
"You got it, biscuits are nearly done, too. Have a seat."
"You made biscuits, too?" I asked disbelievingly.
"Yup," she said, grinning broadly as she scratched at the back of her hand. "And I cleaned the kitchen, and the living room, and I'll get to the bedroom as soon as the food's done."
I looked around me for the first time. Man, I must really be dead in the mornings; how could I not have noticed this? The floor, table and countertop had all been washed and cleared of debris; normally, you had to shift armloads of old newspapers and beer cans just to find a place to sit, and I could actually see through the window that opened onto the alley from the kitchen. I glanced over my shoulder into the living room; it was the same in there. Though the walls were still a dingy off-white, the paint rippling and peeling all along the cracked old baseboard, they had been washed free of the grime that had accumulated over the years, and it looked as if she had even vacuumed the grotty old carpet, which would be quite a feat, considering we didn't own a vacuum cleaner.
"Wow, mom, the place looks great." When I came home last night, the apartment had been a shambles, as always, and an exhaustive search on my part hadn't been able to turn up a single scrap of food, let alone a side of bacon and a half-dozen eggs. "You've been up all night, haven't you?"
She smiled at me sheepishly, handing me a plate piled high with food. "I'll take a nap once you leave for school."
Yeah, right, I thought, watching her scratch furiously at the back of her hand, her nails raising thin weals of blood from the raw, red skin. Speeding or not, though, it was hard to complain about a full stomach and a clean house, and I left for school that day in rather joyous mood. Given the transient nature of happiness in my household, it should have come as no surprise that everything went to hell in a hand basket later that night, but, in what I must say was a spectacular demonstration of my own stupidity, I never saw it coming.
***
There was no hockey game that night, so once school let out (well, an hour or so before that, no way was I in the mood for Math), I headed straight for J.J's garage. J.J. aka Jackson Jonovich, was a short, heavyset guy in his early thirties. He ran the garage, which was mainly a front for his lucrative stolen car and parts dealership. He approached me after this crazy shit I had to pull a few years back; he was always trying to get me to boost cars for him, but so far, I had managed to avoid the temptation. I worked for him sporadically, putting stuff together, or taking stuff apart, and he let me keep the car I was working on at the garage, and use his old tools and parts and junk. He always paid me a bit for the work I did for him too, and that day I picked up twenty dollars and an eighth of bud for helping him lower this VW he'd managed to acquire. The engine part I needed for the Caddy still hadn't arrived, so once I'd finished with the Volkswagon, I took off, stopping by the library to drop off some books and pick up a new batch, before heading for home.
I saw that our car was nowhere in sight, which meant that my father wasn't in, so I walked in the front door, instead of using the basement window. My mom was in the living room, hanging long strands of intricately designed paper dolls from the ceiling with thumbtacks. When she saw me, she hopped down off the chair she was standing on, and rushed over to greet me. She was now looking rather the worse for all the crank she's been taking; looked as if she'd been into the shit all day, as well. I let her hug me, and drag me over to the couch, and listened while she rattled on at high speed about her day.
There was a packet of tin foil on the table, and I was relieved to see it was nearly empty; while it was nice to have my mom fully conscious and alert for once, messing around with crystal meth could fast develop into a nasty habit, and if she got much more than a taste, I was pretty sure Tina would never let her go.
Turned out she had gone to the food bank early that morning (the only time to go, if you didn't want to be stuck in line all day), which explained the food of that morning, not to mention the potatoes and chicken she put on shortly after I came in. Man, I could really get used to this Mother of the Year shit. I was sitting at the kitchen table, watching her cook, listening to her go on about nothing. I didn't mind; this was about as "normal" as my mother was likely to get. I was just tucking into my chicken, thinking about how I hadn't eaten this well in months, when my father came home.
I had forgotten all about him, and so I wasn't on alert like I should have been; it wasn't until I heard the door slam that I knew he was back, and by then, it was already too late. "Lila?" he called loudly. "What's that smell?" He strode into the kitchen where I was sitting, frozen in my seat, and his eyes narrowed at the sight of me. "What's going on here?"
I stared at my plate, willing myself to swallow the food that had become lodged in my suddenly constricted throat. "Mom's cooking," I muttered.
"I can see that, genius," he sneered, throwing himself into the chair opposite me, and reaching into the fridge for a beer.
My mom emerged from the bathroom, which she had felt the need to re-grout. "Clayton, you're just in time; I made dinner." She was smiling proudly, though I thought I saw her glance at me out of the corner of her eye.
"You sure did, honey, and it smells delicious."
She beamed at him, and handed him a plate full of food. I could smell the alcohol on my father's breath, Wild Turkey, and figured this was probably a good time to make an exit, so I bolted down the rest of my food as quick as I could. When I rose from the table, however, my father's hand clamped down on my arm like a vise, and he yanked me back into my seat.
"I don't think so, kiddo. We're going to have a nice family meal that your mother made. Stay put."
I sat there, watching him wolf down his food, a too-familiar sense of dread creeping over me. I had been down this road before, many times, and I knew exactly where it led.
"So," he said, not looking up from his plate. "How was school?"
"Umm... okay, I guess." WHACK. He reached across the table and hit me on the head with his spoon.
"When I ask you a question, son, I expect a better answer than that."
Oh, great, here we go. I crossed my arms across my chest and slouched down, making myself as small as possible, which wasn't very small, mind you.
"I *said*, how was school?" His voice was soft, his eyes glinting dangerously. I hated the way he looked at me, like I was a worm he was going to enjoy squashing and scraping off the sole of his boot. I could feel my stomach tighten and my pulse start to speed up as my body pumped adrenalin into my bloodstream.
Though I was long past actual fear of my father, dread was something else entirely. Fear is this shifty, fluttering little thing that arises when you don't know what's going to happen, but you feel it won't be good. Dread was this hard, heavy sensation that came when you knew exactly what was going to happen, and that there was nothing you could do about it. In my mind, I felt this bored, detached sort of dread; I knew what was coming, but it was just this unpleasant, familiar thing that was as much a part of my life as eating or sleeping. My body, however, was more on edge; my father always managed to trigger a "fight or flight" response from my glands. The result was this jumble of bodily reactions, but no emotions.
"School was wonderful," I said flatly.
WHACK. "Shut up. You make me sick." He looked around him, and, seeing that my mother had left the room, turned to me. "Get me another beer."
I got up and went to the fridge. "You're all out."
"What?"
"I can get you some more," I said quickly. "But the cold beer and wine stores are closed, so it'll be warm..."
"You little cocksucker," he said, his voice calm and almost gentle. "You've been sneaking my beer again, haven't you?" He reached onto his shirt pocket, and pulled out a cigarette, looking at me slyly as he lit it.
"No," I said, knowing it was useless.
"Don't lie to me!"
"I'm not lying; you must have drank it yourself."
"So now *I'm* the liar, am I?" His voice was barely above a whisper.
Good one, Fulton. "I'm not saying that, I just meant..."
He was on me in a flash. Grabbing my right arm and pinning it to the table, he sat on my lap, holding me fast to the chair, so I couldn't get away. I squirmed, but it was no use. "You're a lying, thieving little bitch, aren't you?" he said quietly, taking a long drag on his cigarette.
"No."
"What was that?"
"I'm not lying, and I didn't steal anything." I struggled again, but it only got me a hard elbow to the stomach.
"Tell me you're a lying, thieving little bitch."
"No," I choked out between gasps.
He took one last drag on his cigarette, then ground it out on my exposed forearm. I could smell burnt flesh before I felt a thing, and then my arm flared up in pain. "Say it, or you'll get another."
"Okay, okay! I'm a lying, thieving bitch!"
He let go of my arm and stood up, looking down on me with disgust. "Tell me something I don't know."
One of these days, I thought, rubbing my burnt arm, I'm going to get you back for all this. One of these days, I'm going to make you scream. And why not today, I couldn't help thinking. Why not now?
"Well gee," I said sarcastically, the words popping out of my mouth before I could stop them. "That's an awfully broad category; I wouldn't know where to begin."
Before he could register what I said, I spun around and took off for the door, only to run full-tilt into my mother, who was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the carpet with a soapy cloth. I flipped over top of her and landed heavily on my back, getting the wind knocked out of me for the second time in a few minutes.
Fulton, I thought dimly as I lay on the ground. You're so fucking stupid, you deserve everything you get. And then my father was upon me.
Pain.
Pain's a bitch, anyone will tell you, but there's so much more to it than most people will ever know. It's... complex, my relationship with pain. Yes, I consider it a relationship, because, thanks to the ever-generous assistance of my beloved father, I have come to know it very well indeed over the years. I let the pain suck me into its world; I lost myself inside it. My father's feet connected with my chest, my back, my legs. Blood flowed freely from my lower lip, where my teeth were firmly clamped. I bit back scream after scream, sending the pain deep below, where I forced it in upon itself until it formed a bright, golden ball in my chest. I could actually see it, this glowing orb that I struggled to keep contained, though as his feet fell on me again and again, the ball grew, a heavy, throbbing heat in my hands, and I knew I couldn't hold it for much longer. Pain coursed through every inch of my body, pain like I hadn't felt since... when?
My mind divided itself, splitting into separate entities, each one dealing with another aspect of the situation in which I found myself. One part of me remained with my body; I shuffled into a corner and curled up, covering my head, protecting my ribs, because I'd been here before... Part of my mind was analysing the pain, taking me back in time, almost three years, to when I was fourteen. I didn't remember what I'd done, but it must have been bad, because it had felt like my father was trying to kill me. Steel-toed boots cracked three of my ribs, introducing me to a pain I'd never felt before, and hadn't felt since... until today.
I remember you, I thought dimly, struggling to remain conscious. We've met before...
Suddenly, the kicking stopped, and with it, the yelling. After a moment, I chanced a glance over my shoulder at my father. He was standing over me, his face red, his breathing heavy, and I could tell by the angry, hungry way he looked at me, that we weren't through just yet.
Shit, I thought wildly. If he keeps this up, I'm liable to wind up in the hospital. But my worries were unfounded; my father had a knack for causing the maximum amount of pain while inflicting the minimum amount of damage, and it was with something like relief that I watched him undo his belt, and tug it free from his jeans.
He always liked to say that pain was the only language I understood, and I'll admit I was certainly fluent in the feeling, particularly when it came to belts. I was a connoisseur of belts; I'd been tasting them my whole life. It spoke with angry tongues, pounding in a lesson I would never learn. My father was unimportant; it was his belt that held the power, its harsh leather religion, christening my skin with blows until my body sang a gospel of pain.
Bright lights danced before my eyes as my father hauled me to his feet. "I'm trying to help you, boy, you know that, don't you? You're no good, and it's my job to teach you some respect."
Everything was foggy and unclear, and there was a ringing in my ears that made it hard to make out his words, but I like to think I was in my right mind when I began to laugh softly; he was just so... predictable. "Fuck you," I whispered between hushed little laughs, extending the middle finger off my left hand. "Fuck you, Dad."
And as he grabbed my hair and knocked my head against the wall, I ran into someone I hadn't seen in awhile. Oh yes, there it was again. Hello, old friend. Pain was a constant, unaltered by space and time. So simple and pure and... I understood it, could twist my body around it until we were one, a single unit. My father's words of wisdom fell on deaf ears as he slammed my head into the wall again and again, and I finally passed out cold on the third try.
***
It was all fine and well to get philosophical about pain when you were getting the shit kicked out of you; everyone knew that was easy enough. That kind of fiery, exquisite pain made your mind do all kinds of whacked- out shit, plus there was a certain je-ne-sais-quoi, a poetry, or maybe just a fucked-up masochistic quality about it. I dealt well with that kind of pain, and riding out my father's little punishment sessions without screaming or crying or breaking down in any way always filled me with this vicious, teeth-baring, fuck-you kind of pride. It drove my father nuts; I knew he would love the chance to kick my ass all over again for being a whiny bitch, but I would never give him the satisfaction. I know, that's pretty hurting, but leave me my pithy little victories, okay? They're all I've got.
There was nothing romantic, however, about the aftermath, in slowly regaining consciousness to find myself half-glued to the floor by my own congealed blood, most of which seemed to have originated from my nose, mouth and forehead when they made their repeated, enthusiastic introductions to the living room wall. I tried to raise my head, but the motion caused stabbing pains of such intensity to shoot through my skull, that I nearly blacked out again. A wave of dizziness and nausea washed over me, and I stifled a groan as I lowered my head back to its previous position in a pool of dried blood. Son of a bitch must have given me a concussion...
And then my mother's face appeared before mine, her features not pinched with concern, but open and dreamy. She was dabbing at me with a warm, wet cloth, gently washing the blood from my face. She was smiling vaguely, and half-sang, half-hummed a tune that I immediately recognised as one of my favourites from when I was very young: "Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea, and frolicked in the autumn mist, in a land called Honah Lee. Little Jackie Paper, loved that rascal Puff, and brought him strings and sealing wax, and other fancy stuff..."
She stopped singing when she saw my eyes come to rest on hers. She bent down and kissed my forehead. "There you are, my little Lancelot. I thought you'd never come back."
"Just couldn't stay away, I guess." I shifted my head, and winced at the pain it caused.
"Are you broken?" she asked softly.
I sent my fingers over my body, checking for damage. My lower back was a wall of pain; he must have fucked with my kidneys again, but there didn't seem to be anything worse than that, not counting my head of course, the pain in which was making it hard to think clearly. Or maybe that was the concussion...
"I'll live."
She smiled, and stroked my cheek. "I know you will."
"How long have I been out?"
"Awhile. Should we try and get you downstairs?" I nodded. I wanted to be out of the way when my father came back. It wasn't that he'd start in on my again, but he'd laugh and point and jeer and... no thanks.
My mother helped mw to my feet, but my head didn't think much of that plan, and this time I did vomit, retching all over the nice clean carpet. "Sorry," I muttered, cradling my head in my hands, trying to hold my skull together; for some reason, it seemed determined to split itself in two.
She half-supported my weight as I hobbled slowly down the steps to the basement, leaning heavily on the old wooden banister, ignoring the splinters it buried in my palm, praying it wouldn't snap before I reached the bottom. She helped me onto my bed, and I curled up automatically on my side; my back was far too sore to do anything else. My mother finished washing the blood from my face, while I tried to imagine myself out of my body.
"Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail, Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff's gigantic tail. Noble kings and princes would bow whenever they came; pirate ships would lower their flag when Puff roared out his name."
She jerked her head up at the sound of the front door opening; my father didn't like to see her helping me like this. She looked down at me sadly, perhaps even guiltily, but it was hard to be sure.
"Go. I'll be fine."
She took my hand in hers and kissed it, slipping something into my palm as she did so. "I love you, my little Lancelot," she said softly.
Once she had left, I looked down at my hand, which held a tiny packet of aluminum foil. I opened it carefully; it was filled with a caramel-coloured powder, like brown sugar. Thanks, mom. Moving very slowly and carefully, I sat up on my bed, and gingerly removed my shirt. My body was covered with puffy red welts, many of which had already developed the dark speckles that signalled the arrival of a bruise. I was going to be every shade of purple by tomorrow.
Reaching deep into one of the cardboard boxes beside my bed, my fingers searched and probed, eventually coming to rest on a Ziploc baggie. I pulled it out and set it down on the bed, my eyes alternating between its contents and the packet I still held in my hand. And why not? I thought, suddenly angry about everything. Why the fuck not? I lit the fat votive candle that sat on one of the boxes, and, removing a tiny metal dish from the baggie, filled it with water and powder and held it over the flame, watching the powder disintegrate and the resulting liquid begin to bubble and percolate.
I took the dish off the fire, and filled a syringe with the sweet brown liquid. I had only done this twice before, and both experiences had followed a particularly nasty bout with my father. I looked down at the tattoo that wound itself around my upper arm; they were right about me, I was just like her. No excuse, no justifications, but Christ, it hurt so much...
I pulled the final item from the baggie, a length of thin rubber tubing, which I tied tight to my arm. I watched the veins slowly rise to the surface of my skin, those magical blue threads that would carry the poison to my brain, and make all of this go away.
I buried the needle into my flesh, and when bright red blood blossomed up the dropper's neck like a time-lapse film of a rose in summer, I hit the plunger.
Not many people experience death and live to tell about it, but I was one of those. As soon as I injected, the pain in my body vanished, replaced with a joy that could never be described to someone who has never used heroin. Everything went black, and I could feel myself sinking deep into the ground, my life slowly ebbing away. And then, in an explosion of colours and sounds and smells, I was back, but now I was so much more. I was an angel, and pain and sadness were less a memory. I could see and hear everything; my sense of touch was so intently magnified that I spent hours just lying there, basking in the sensory overload that came when my skin made contact with a book, a bong, or my own body.
My fascination (okay, obsession) with death goes back as far as I can remember, and that night, all of its secrets became known to me. If only I could have stayed like that forever... You see, I'd never before felt so alive as I did that night, the night I died. Don't you just love the irony of it all?