The Mental Patient

Chapter 3 - Glass Shards

I escalate my noggin' up, looking down over my feet. Where did the floor go? Where and at what point did the white clouds soak up fermenting unspoken feelings and piss-out shit upon this home? The weatherman must die. I comb over to the hallway, observing my Dad locking the basement door, swinging the keys around on his index finger, and then pocket them with a treed smile, which is systematically, symmetrically, strategically stretched out; this scares me through my chattering bones to my battered soul. With his thumb aimed down the hall.

"Get back in that fucking kitchen and finish those fucking dishes, if I hear another peep out of either of you again tonight, I am really going to go out of my way to lose the title of Father and protector. Now MOVE!" Okay, you win this battle, Dad, as you always do, this is the game and it's never going to be over until one of us wins.

I retract up quick, finger documenting cuts and bruises; I've had worse.

I walk white knuckling every morsel of my miserable memories, eyes twitching with seeps of seawater, don't close them, they will fall before him and he will know he has won obedience over you. I doddle with unnerved speed back to my terrible terminal trembling, I drive my hands under the cold water and finally make a fist, I'm a pussy. Tears haemorrhage to the foamy H2O.

Kyle, do your chores and go to bed for an early night. That's if you can't hear Jessie's wilful waterworks work wonders on your warmth of thoughts. Yeah, I'm not sleeping tonight, am I?

"Kyle! Get your skinny-ass in here..."

In a tedious traipse I trawl towards the tormentor's tremendous tongue. I break in stride, hype myself up on oxygen and exaggerate over Rocky movie scenes; duck and move, slip the jab, slip the jab. They say it only takes five pounds of pressure to knock someone out, that's about the weight of a premature new-born; where am I gonna' find a kid to use as a brick. I must be the type to go to war with his self-disbelief before taking on my enemies' entire pre-eminence.

"Dad, you hungry? ...You want me to make dinner or d'ya want a sandwich or something?" I woof out with a courteous chuck, as nothing ever happened twenty minutes ago; we forget a lot in this family, we see nothing, hear nothing, nor speak about things.

I notice his left eye drooping to the side; his booze has given him the power of ballsiness bottle. Caught in his mixed grey and tinctured brown scummy scuzzy beard he has let slip a dribble of beer, I focus in on this rather than his eyes. Meanwhile my eyes receive no light, only more shadow make-up.

"What the fuck were you doing early, eh? Talking back and trying to fight me... Me!" I flat-out falsify an instant informed fiction. "I've just had a lot on these past few weeks at school and other things... And now with this headache I have, it's just..."

Dad leans forward, struggling not to fall off his fat-ass and fall flat on his rat fuckin' face.

"No... No excuses! Come closer, closer... Stand there; no there, where that penny is." I crouch and undertake the Olympic task of picking up a penny on a flat surface with no fingernails; I cannot.

"You love your sister, don't ya? You two have some sort of bullshit family code or special agreement, to look out for each other, even if that means overruling my author... Authority."

My Superman pyjama trousers have no pockets. I must cradle my hands behind my back when I get nervous; I fidget. His look has no attention span; they keep finding new things to latch on too.

"Yes, she is my best friend; we've got no secrets from one another and always promised to always be there for the other, when they need it."

His dead eyes slay over me, questioning one part of my face and body, loathing he loves, he shifts his singing sophistication where the drunk and drugs swing him.

"God, you look the double of your mother, you disgusting, little, shit. Yeah, that's right, you two look after each other and I will just sit here and die, that's what you want, eh? You know, it's your fault I take drugs, lookin' after dis... Disobedient children, it's not easy, you know. So, tell me somefin'... Would you kill or die for your lesbo' of a sister? She's a rug-muncher by the way... how does that make you feel when I call you-your sis' out like that?" Waving his arms, his fingers point at randomness.

What can I say to that? I'm standing between the Devil and my Dad, awesome combination. Thanks world. A desperate despot spots me.

"Boy! You better answer me or so help-k me God, I will smash this bottle across your motherfucking face..."

Where is he going with this? For fuck-sake, he must have something else up his sleeve; this rabbit needs to run right now, for my fox's sake.

"In a heartbeat, I would." Firm to my convictions, I may be judged as he gavels in the nails to my personalized cardboard coffin.

Revolving the battled down bottle in the faint air, he has consumed a paralytic poisonous idea.

He flicks his wrist, the brown bottle flails and somersaults as nasty gymnast before tumbling to its death where it crashes and breaks up into a million-shards; the dregs of beer twinkle over the floor. I want to back-up, I want a new family, I know I want a lot; I know what's coming next. They sold me on the idea of paradise when I was born, but they never told me, even heaven has a hell.

"Dad..." I attempt to be stupid to reason with an infertile infantile pitch. I submit, I submit. Another bottle is thrown over my head and lands near the hallway entrance; my getaway route has been ruptured. If it wasn't for you meddling adults, I would have gotten away with it all.

"Don't do this to me, please." The lump in my throat thumps down and splashes in my gut. Tides of blood rushes course through me. Two more times he chucks colliding crystals at my stumps. He needs to watch out, I'm only a teeny-tiny guy; my pencil legs will snap if he keeps throwing.

"So, would you walk over fire or even glass for her? ...We're going to play a wee game; d'ya want to play? ...D'ya? Walk over the glass for your sister..." He bites the cap from another drink.

Immovable, I am immorally amazed at his instructed second-handed self-harm.

"Walk it and you two can go to bed and whisper shit about me all you want, and I won't even bat-an-eyelid." There must be nothing good on the television for him to want to watch something like this. "If you don't want to play, Bitch-face stays down there all night and I wallop the shit out of you for making a mess of my floor." He bombs on his bombastic cloud.

A fury furs over me.

"I'll play..."

Sedated with pangs, I begin to tow away with my toes the large fragmented splinters.

"No! You're cheating! If you ain't gonna' play proper, don't play the game."

I'm waiting, waiting for his mind to change. It's never going to come, is it?

I take a step; the sound of biting into an apple springs to mind, a burst of tang with a punctured crunch. One movement hurtles hurricanes of hurt up to my face, I hold a breath; face stifled red as I totter steady-leggy across the sea of blood-relations. I don't know how many steps I take, I stopped caring about the pain, glass, Dick-Dad and Jessica, there's too much to focus on. I can't take it anymore, I can't, sorry, I can't, frontwards I crumble. Catch me, floor.

"Looks like I can add loser to the list of disappointment along with faggot and skulk." The lummox is up by this point. "Clean up this fucking mess, you piece of shit, you are no son of mine. How hard is it to walk over blunt glass? It was only like four steps. Pfft... I had worse when I was a kid, daily beatings, you dumb kids have it easy compared to my day." He spurns so sudden and slinks on his slippers then trudges over his son. He's been up for about an hour and a half and has accomplished a lot, he can't be blamed for being a time-waster. He heads back to his boggy cave of flies feasting on deformed food and lingering lush dust which flushes your nose brushes thus clutches blood rushes down your mush.

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