The Specks of Smallness

Aaron| Ten

                                                                             Aaron | Ten

 

I don’t notice a change in my schedule until the morning I wake up ten minutes late, due to my alarm clock not going off. Outside is quite silent; there are no birds chirping, and the neighbors dog isn't barking at the mailman who comes earlier than ever every morning. There’s just this silence that I find very unbearable.

  Walking to the bathroom is very strange, too. Usually I would wear my slippers so my bare feet wouldn’t get cold on the floor, but today I couldn’t find my slippers anywhere in my room. It would have been different if there was a bundle of clothes on my floor, but it’s spotless. I checked under my bed, but there were dust bunnies that formed from months of not cleaning under there. I dared not touch it, the bundle of hair, spiderwebs, and other things I didn’t think should be together.

  My bathroom smells like someone drank their life away. The sink is dirty, and someone didn’t flush their vomit that’s caramel and chunky. I cringe, covering my nose, shutting the lid with my foot, flushing it after. I reach for my apple cinnamon scented air spray to cover up the foul smell, noticing a couple of beer bottles in the trashcan beside it, a bloody tampon, and a used condom with it.

  Rolling my eyes, I start to clean up the mess from the party. Scrubbing the mess from the sink is the longest, following with trying to cover the smell of smoke and vomit and alcohol, too. There’s a mess in every room I go to. My parents sheets are ruffled, a pair of panties flying around the fan. I fear to touch it, not knowing whose it is, so I get a tong from downstairs to remove it from the scene. 

  Looking at the voicemail as I clean downstairs, I see that Mom left a few messages throughout last night when the party was in the midst of a lot of drunkards yelling and a game of Truth or Dare, which turns out to be a game where people can learn about your sex life.

  There was this one girl who I didn’t really know, who had this raven black hair and piercings of different colors on her face, a tattoo taking up much of her neck. She was very pale and had these glasses with the lens popped out. The guys had started to laugh when the question came around to her: truth or dare?

  “Truth,” she whispered, and the girl I was sitting beside had called her a pussy under her breath, scoffing, too. I took a swig of the Bourbon Carson put in a flask, the lukewarm whiskey burning my throat.

  Mak, a guy who plays football but also does theater, sat cross legged with a smirk on his face. He looked at the other guys who were snickering and the girls whose eyebrows were arched higher than when the Tower Bridge in London lets cargo sail by. Mak licked his lips before saying anything, then after moments of making his lips succulent, he bluntly asked, “Is it true that you fucked the principal’s husband, and now you’re pregnant with his child?”

  The girls eyes became wide with fear and she clenched the skin on her ashy knees with her fingers that had no nails. Sweat began to fall in beads down her forehead. When she started to contradict the fact of sleeping with a married man, she began to stutter and these big teardrops formed in the corner of her eyes and she demanded, “Dare! Dare, dare! I choose dare!”

 “You chose truth. Don’t cop out now; no one likes pussies,” Mak stated. 

  “On the contrary,” one of the twins, Joe, who had just entered the game, had replied, bringing laughter amongst everyone in the game, besides the girl who fucked the principal’s husband, and now that the cat was out the bag, her parents would soon find out.