Simply Naughty-Joey ✔

C H A P T E R 4

Drunken voices would be heard coming from the hallway of the house. Upbeat music would sound through the walls, its vibrations hitting of the floors and travelling to the little boy's ears as he tried to sleep. His sister had asked him to read himself a comic so that he would fall asleep, but he couldn't, not with the amount of sound that was going on.

His mind was filled with strong superheros and evil villains from the comics he read, but he was told that they weren't real. Joey may have been coming onto the age of four, but the child's mind was already mature enough to understand the difference between fictional and reality. His life was an ongoing battle between heroes and villains.

Joey may not have understood what was going on, but through his eyes Josette was his hero and the men with suits were the villains. Josette was the hero fighting villains every night downstairs and the music, it was her fighting sequence. However, Joey could hear the screams and cries of help from time to time, even though the word wasn't "help".

All the fighting had been downstairs, but occasionally, he would hear the footsteps running up and down the hallway upstairs. He knew it was his mother and father, but he couldn't understand why they were running or whether they were the good guys or not. His father was a man who liked to show intimidation to give out fear; it's how he lived.

The character of his father would change from a villain to a superhero sometimes because he would be asking the men in suits to go, but once they did, the shouting began. His father's voice would thunder across the household and scare Joey to the point where he would hide underneath his covers.

His father was a man who could fight evil but be evil himself. Once his sister would come upstairs, Joey would pretend to be asleep but he would be wide awake. He would hear slaps from his father and bad words that Josette always reminds him not to listen to or copy because that wouldn't make the superheroes happy.

But Josette wasn't happy. He wouldn't question why the door was always locked, but he wondered if it may have been because he was too young to fight. He would turn to face Josette while she slept and watched the tears on her face dry and the light fighting battles on her skin get worse. She was the hero that always lived.

Josette could sleep through their parents' constantly arguing though. With each hit and each scream, Joey failed to go to sleep and wondered what it would be like if he was ever to come across his father as a hero. Would Joey be able to stop his mother from getting hurt? Or was his mother also facing the villain and getting fighting battles like Josette?

His mind would wonder to why he rarely saw his father, but at the times where they did, his hero would shield him from the sinister smile of the villain who tore apart his life.

I woke up with my hair stuck to my head and sweat dampening my body. My breathing was harsh and came out painfully as I tried to get my mind around the fact that I had a nightmare, but I was back in reality. It would take me a long time to get my breathing back in order, but the pain in my memory would burn.

"Time for a cigarette, then." I muttered to myself as I pushed the covers off of me. Unlike yesterday, the morning was now rainy and dark. The irony was too much to ignore; I still got up and walked to my bathroom, not even caring what the time was. The images of the dream burned me in my mind and I was not wanting to start my day angry.

After brushing my teeth and having a shower, I didn't bother wearing a top as I walked to my window and pulled out a cigarette from my bag along with a lighter. There were a couple stupid things I was currently doing right now, one of them being that I wasn't smoking a blunt but that was because it had a stronger clingy scent.

The other thing was that I had showered and I needed to get the smell away and being near a window would help, but a little. At this point, I couldn't care less so I opened the window and sat on the window sill, putting the cigarette in my mouth before lighting it. It took me everything not to moan because of the poison that was burning in my lungs.