Budapest » [Clintasha]

Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Orphan

If there's a god, he was punishing me. I was convinced. Every possible trial and tribulation was thrown my way.

My ma' had been the only one who prayed in our family. My father always preoccupied with drinking and Barney, adventuring. I popped along to church with her because I appreciated the community and the respite from my father; but what can I say? Preaching didn't fascinate me as a kid; an old man in a dress reciting page after page of a complexly worded book. Plenty of the biblical passages captured my imagination and inspired me, but beyond that? I wasn't dedicated to religion.

The day our farm and butchers fell through and the bank came knocking at the door to repossess the house, I prayed. What should've been a Spring Break was turned on it's head.

I confessed every unholy deed I'd committed, I professed my apologies and I begged for forgiveness. I wanted the pain in my life to end. Barney found me, knelt at the porch, head bowed in silence.

I hoped that with a cloudless blue sky and the sun smiling down on me that my prayers would be heard. There wasn't a single barrier between me and the heavens.

I heard the hum of his voice in my ears and simply ignored it at first. I blotted out the world, focusing on seeking penance. The full buzz of his voice became more urgent. Then I received a kick to my coccyx and sprawled forwards onto my hands and knees.

"Ow! Asshole!" I spat, turning around to scowl at him. It wasn't exactly a reprise of 'amen'.

"You prayin', Clint?" My brother fleered, hovering over me and casting a long shadow that consumed the daylight above me.

"What of it?" I spat, clambering to my feet and brushing the muck and dust off myself.

Chortling at my desperate hopes of redemption, he told me "It's a bit late for that..." Shaking his head and taking a wander back indoors. "Should've thought about that before you neglected the family business and racked up the medical bills."

"'S not my fault I incurred those injuries y'know?" I said under my breath, looking daggers at him.

My brother made a noise of disbelief, wandering about the soulless house, traipsing his hands solicitously across the walls he'd grown up fortified by. It was brick, mortar and wallpaper now, with small cavities of glass slotted between. A home, by my definition, requires family and furnishings. But with the lack of either of those, the spirit had diminished and the house had lost it's personality.

Having everything repossessed was melancholic. It's like watching your life get disassembled piece by piece whilst your hands are tied behind your back. The furniture was snatched from the space article by article, swaddled in bubble wrap and duct taped up. The animals were lead sheepishly from the barn and their pens into the back of animal transportation vehicles; I could hear their distressed bleats and clucks as they were stolen away. Our vehicles were hijacked by men in pristine suits and driven away in clouds of thick black smog.

Watching the last of our goods sail away down the sandy highway, Barney slung an arm around my shoulders and said "We're leaving Waverly." The house was gone, and there was no way we were realistically going to be able to find another one in the region.

Battling to throw his weighty arm off of me, I shoved him away by the chest contemptuously. "No." I shook my head with insubordination. "You can't make me-"

"Yes I can. I'm your legal guardian," he retorted aloofly, a fiendish smirk on his face. "What you gonna do? Run away?"

"No, absolutely not! And maybe, one of these days I will!" I disputed. "That's not fair!" I yelled, standing at the side of the road.