Chapter 1

21 100 26
                                    

Chapter 1

Pop! Pop! Pop!
SHATTER!
Kyron flinched and the cereal bowl he held fell and shattered on the kitchen tile.
"Dang it!" He said and grabbed the broom from behind the refrigerator..
No more gunshots followed so he assumed fate had already chosen the loser of the duel outside.
"Who the heck is shooting at 7 of clock in the morning?  Mexicans ain’t even up this early!”

He swept up the milky coco puffs and broken shards . “I ain’t even get a taste.” He grumbled.  He dumped the mess in the trash can and tiptoed to the cabinet, hoping he could eat at a full bowl of cereal before Rashad woke up and cussed him out.  He grabbed the box of Coco Puffs from inside the cabinet and reached below the kitchen sink to grab a plastic container to eat the cereal in on his way to school.
He sat the bowl on the kitchen counter and poured cocoa puffs in as slowly as hunger would let him.
" Lo and behold!  I knew it had to be yo fat ass in here making all that damn noise."  A raspy voice croaked.  Kyron’s heart stopped.

He turned around; Rashad was standing in the kitchen doorway, sneering at Kyron.  He was wearing grey sweatpants, a dirty white tank top and scratching his wrist in a way that suggested he smoked more than cigarettes in his free time.  Kyron always wondered what his mother saw in Rashad, between his pockmarked brown skin, faded tattoos and long grey speckled dread locks he looked a dying lion.
“Wat da hell you trying to devour now Fuck nigga?" Rashad snapped, “My grocery bill high enough as it is.”
Take some money out of your crack budget , and buying groceries wouldn’t be a problem Kyron thought. “I just wanted to eat some cereal."
Rashad snorted. “No, what your fat ass wants to do was eat all the cereal.” He picked his nose with a blackened fingernail and flicked a booger into the hallway.  “Last I check, school ain’t stopping serving breakfast.  Maybe if you Wobble yo ugly piggly wiggly ass up there you’d catch it. Now get the hell outta my kitchen!”
"But I woke up late today; breakfast ends at 7:45 and its 7:22, I might not make it in time.” Kyron pleaded.
Rashad smirked and approached Kyron slowly.  “Then you must not be that hungry in the first place huh?”   Suddenly he backhanded Kyron in the mouth and shoved him out the kitchen.
"Now I aint’t gon tell you but one more time, stay the hell outta my kitchen!!" Rashad roared. Kyron rubbed his sore mouth and turned away from the kitchen "Yes. “
“YES WHAT?”

“Yes sir.” Kyron said.

He picked up his backpack lying on the living room couch and walked towards the front door.  He heard the ding ding of cereal bouncing of ceramic and turned around.  Rashad was still in the kitchen, he was the entire bowl of cocoa puffs into the metal bowl that Keisha (his mother) used for making cake batter.
“.Asshole.”  Kyron cursed under his breath.
Kyron hated him.  Rashad treated him like he was his slave, cussed him out at every chance and beat on him repeatedly, assaulting him inside and outside the apartment to the amusement of his neighbors.  Body aching from the purple and red welts on his skin, Kyron would run to his mother and beg her to kick Rashad out. 

“Why do you keep making him mad?” Keisha (Kyron’s mother) would say, over and over again. “If you wouldn’t be the problem, then there wouldn’t be a problem.”
“How am I the problem when I didn’t even do nothing?” Kyron would shriek. Or “ Its not my fault he started with me!”  Or” I do everything he asks and he still won’t leave me alone!”
Yet all his pleas fell on deaf ears.  His mother would always do the same thing, close her eyes, take a hit from one of the cigarettes she hadn’t began choking on until she met Rashad and say slowly. “He really does love you Kyron, he just has a strange way of showing it.”

  That was always his mom's defense for him, "he loves you he just has a strange way of showing it." 
His mother was delusional, lost in a fantasy world. Jesus himself could knock on the door, look Keisha dead in the eyes and tell her that she sleeps in the bed every night with a no good, lazy, drugged out, alcoholic lowlife who was just using her to have a roof over his head while he snorted cocaine and popped pills. She would still come to his defense.

Before walking out the front door, he stopped and looked at the black marks on the edge of doors white wood.  When Kyron was eleven he had marked the door frame with black ink to track his growth.  He touched the highest mark near his forehead and sighed.  Sixteen years old and barely 5,2, with shoes on.  

My dreams of catching a growth spurt are hopeless.  He thought somberly.  Kyron’s mother had said that before he died, his father was a  tall and beautiful man, with a powerful presence.  Apparently these were genetic traits that skipped Kyron, because he was far from charismatic, his face, with its telephone-pole sized lips and sad eyes was the opposite of beautiful ,and as far as size, it looked like he was doomed to be the height of a seventh grader for the rest of his life..
He opened the door and a gust of freezing air blew in the apartment.
“Close my door you half retarded bastard!” Rashad yelled from the kitchen, Kyron stepped onto the snow covered porch and pulled the door shut.
Lord,  please let this day to turn out better than it began.   He prayed hopefully.
But Kyron knew it wouldn’t change, his life was trapped in an endless cycle of suckiness  Yet despite the hopeless vision of the world surrounding him, a change of fate approached that he could never imagine.

thank you for reading my art!  please click vote and comment comments comment!!!

The Black Fairy Where stories live. Discover now