Safe

-45- Rage

Luke "Coach Mo" Morrison

I pull my truck to the side of the road, staring down the road at the green house with the manicured lawn even though it's the middle of winter.

There's no cars in the driveway, they're either not home or tucked into the garage. It looks so ordinary.

I've thought about what Ava said. About having regrets. Even about the little bit of guilt that's flared up inside me. Whispering in my ear anytime thoughts of my parents surface.

I've sat outside this stupid house more times than I want to admit the past couple weeks. Trying to convince myself that I can walk back in those walls and still be in control. That I won't morph back into a child, shaking in my boots as my dad pulls his belt through the loops of his pants, face red as a tomato as I prepare for his wrath. That I won't cower in a corner as he stumbles in drunk and angry looking for someone to take his frustration out on.

My blood starts to boil as I try to burn the house down with my gaze. My fingers tighten around my steering wheel, my knuckles growing white as I grind my teeth together.

I don't owe that prick anything.

And this feels like he's trying to make me think I do.

Like if I don't see him I'll be forever stuck as that frightened little boy who grew up to a rebellious, angry teen and a combative young adult.

My heart is not full of hate.

But it has hate for him.

And he deserves it.

How my mother stayed with him is beyond me. I don't know how anyone could look at the person that made their life hell for years and choose to stay.

As soon as I hit sixteen I was gone and I never went back.

Packed my stuff into my piece of shit car I bought with some money I saved working over the summer and I drove away without a word.  Eventually my mom caught word I was couch surfing, showed up one day at the car wash and begged me to come home.

I didn't.

It was that summer I met Ruby and over the course of the winter I either slept in my car or Ruby snuck me into her place after her parents went to bed when my friend's parents started asking too many questions.

I knew my mom was worried, my dad pissed. And the more mad he got the more trouble I found. Even moved out, I knew word would travel back to him but he couldn't touch me anymore. He didn't know where I was ever. I finally had the control.

I finished school by the skin of my teeth, working as much as I could, saving every dime and when I turned eighteen I got myself a dirty run down one bedroom apartment above a liquor store. And there Ruby and I spent our days tangled in the sheets on my mattress on the floor.

My eyes catch movement as the front door opens. He's old and frail looking in his housecoat and slippers. His dark hair is snow white, shoulders slumped with bad posture as he leans onto a cane. He doesn't look like a man that should be feared. Yet I still feel that heart thumping, stomach turning, dread trickle into my veins.

I watch him shuffling around, closing the door behind him before he turns back to the road. His cane stands between his front feet as he folds his hands over it and straightens his back. His cold stony glare raises to my truck.

Everything in me freezes, my mind flashing memories of begging for mercy, down on my knees as he shouted at me, hand raised far above his head ready to swing.

I shift my truck my into drive, slamming my foot down onto the gas. The tires squeal and chirp as they grab hold of the concrete and send my truck hurtling down the pavement.

We lock eyes as I fly by and I feel every bit as defiant and angry as I did when I left. He's a monster.

My truck whips out onto the main road and it's then that I realize how labored my breath is and the tremble that's rocking my body. Anger has boiled up inside me, I'm like a bomb about to explode.

A scream bursts out of me, the muscles in my neck straining as my body tries to release the anger and pain that's pulsing through it.

Pulling onto another side street I yank my car to the side of the road and jam it into park. My fingers are aching as I jerk the steering wheel, my back slamming into the seat behind me.

But just as I'm about to completely lose myself to rage my car starts ringing, Ava's name flashing on the radio.

I hit the accept button taking as deep of a breath as I can manage.

"Hey babe." I can hear that I sound off.

"Where are you?" She asks.

I glance around at my surroundings, shaking my head.

"Had to run an errand." A lame excuse but it's all I have at the moment. I pull a U-ie gunning my truck back into motion on the main road. "On my way home."

"Everything okay?" She's skeptical.

I nod even though she can't see me. My hands are still gripped tight on wheel, anger still blasting through me but the farther I get from my parents house the more it recedes.

"Yeah, just a lot of traffic."

"I'll let you go then, I was just calling to tell you you're in the paper." She tells me.

Answering absentmindedly my mind still focused on the events that just unfolded and fighting back my anger I say "oh yeah?".

"Holt beat a cop?"

And all the anger I've been fighting to contain bursts out of me.

"Damn it!"

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By some miracle I've increased our buffer! Two more days of daily updates are guaranteed if I absolutely do not write but let's be real, I'm writing.