Bread, Love and Promises (On going)

Chapter 2 The Boyfriend

Trigger Note

Mention of alcohol, drugs, negligence and language.

Liam Price

The front door opened allowing the ring for their laughs and slurred words inside the small apartment. Their breathing was heavy, their moves were sluggish and they reeked of alcohol and sweat. She dropped her studded purse and keys on the table before staggering to the kitchen while he tottered to her bedroom. She grabbed the bottle of wine she opened earlier this morning to infuse her coffee, more alcohol than it was coffee. She didn't bother glancing at the living room and went straight to her room slamming the door behind her.

Liam gathered his unfinished homework and slipped it back inside his school bag. She brought that man home again, Bob. He has been coming here a lot lately, unlike the others she had over who he has only seen once or twice. Liam could hear their muffled voices through the thin walls and he couldn't stand to stay there any longer. He opened the front door leaving his mother with one of her many 'friends'.

There wasn't a place for him to go to in such late hour of the night, he settled for sitting on the age-stained stairs outside the apartment building, looking at the empty alley. The smell of unpicked trash mixed with the dampness of last night's snow filled the air with inescapable sickening fetor. The unforgiving cold gusts of wind whipped his small body breaking him into shivers as the night grew darker and nippier. His breath came out in puffs of white clouds and his body started shaking. He didn't want to go inside, not while they were still there. Maybe Bob was going to sleep over like the last time, or perhaps stay for an hour or two and then leave like all the other men who visited. Bob wasn't just his mother's friend, he was also her dealer, and eight-year-old Liam knew exactly what a dealer was.

There were times when Liam walked in on her while she was passed out on the bathroom floor with a syringe sticking out right under that rubber band she tied around her forearm. If it wasn't a syringe - then it was pills or powder. She wasn't discreet about her addiction to hide it from her son. She used anything she could get her hands on; her 'friend Bob' made it easier for her.

Liam asked her to stop when he failed to wake her up after she used and he had to run to find help. Many of the tenants in their building shut their doors in his face refusing to assist when they knew which apartment he lived in and the reputation of his mother, while others didn't even bother to open their doors. 

"Why will I give up the only thing that brings me happiness and makes me forget this shitty, miserable life I'm living?" she stated with a bitter, humorless laugh. Then she leered blankly at him, "Not even you can make me happy. You're no better than that bastard father of yours."

It wasn't the first time Liam heard those words, and they weren't the only loathsome Kelly bestowed on him. It no longer mattered what she said to him or what names she called him. His mother told him countless times that he was a 'useless bastard'. She wasn't the only one who called him that, he heard it from other kids at school too. Liam wasn't oblivious to what other parents called him; neither was he unaware of what they titled his mother and her... line of work.

He rubbed his hands together for a friction of heat to rid his ice-cold fingers off the agonizing prickles. Liam pulled his paled old jacket that was missing a few buttons around his scraggy body. He fought off the frigidness and shivers the longest his small body could bear before giving up on the chances of Bob leaving and went back up to the apartment. There were no noises coming from the bedroom. He took off his dowdy shoes, but kept on the socks and the jacket on as he curled on the couch to sleep- the living room was bone-chilling during winter.