CHAPTER 14
PAST
MIKEY AGE 15
“Get me a bottle,” shouted the voice I hated more than anything. I had to dig my fingernails deep into my palms to act on the urge.
I ignored him and walked straight to the kitchen.
“Hey, Mama.” I hugged her from behind.
“Hey, sweetie.” She turned from the pot she was stirring and ruffled my hair like always.
“Mom, stop.” I laughed, pulling away. I’ve been trying to grow my hair because I am older now, and the little mouse is right; long hair does look good on me.
Momma’s eyes smiled at me in a color that mirrored mine. I was thankful that most of my genetics came from her because I had the same golden hair, pert nose, and green eyes. Not anything like my sperm donor.
“How was school, baby? Do you have practice today as well?”
“I’m not a baby, Mama.” I stole a piece of carrot and munched it down. “And yes, it’s every day now. Emmie has been adamant that we practice, or we’ll never be good enough to make it.”
“You will, sweetie. I never knew you were so talented like that, but he’s right. You have to practice…” Her words were cut short when an empty bottle crashed heavily on the wall. Right next to her head.
Her rounded eyes laced with the familiar terror bounced from mine to the monster behind me.
The urge ticked its way back again as I snapped my head in his direction.
The man whom I was ashamed to call my father.
Riddled with a constant sneer and deep wrinkles on his face, deeper than a man of his age should have. His smoke-caked fingers itched the dots spotted on his forearm. Mark and marks of the pinpricks from the needles that filled the blood of the monster.
“I asked for a fucking beer, you brat.”
A soft grasp on my forearm pulled me aside. “Mikey, go to your practice.”
I clenched my teeth. “No, Momma.” I wasn’t a little kid anymore, a kid that Momma hid in the closet because it got too loud or too painful. I’ve begged Momma to leave him, to run away and go somewhere. I promised that I would take care of her. But she never listened.
She loved that man who fed her lies and punched her face.
But I wasn’t going to stand by if he did it in front of me.
“Adam, I was just getting it for you.” Momma’s shaky hand retrieved one bottle from the fridge and handed it to him .
“Right.” He grabbed it from her, and it took everything in me not to draw a straight hook to his face. “Ask your boy to learn his manners. He’s being an ungrateful brat,” he leered and fumbled out.
A heavy silence filled the kitchen till the sound of the TV turned back on.
“Sweetie, go on and get to your practice.” She lowered herself to the ground to pick up the shattered amber shards. “You know how your father is sick; you don’t want to disturb him.”
I dropped next to her and pushed her hands away. “Stop, Momma, you’ll hurt yourself.” My jaw tightened as I stared at her. “And stop pretending that man is sick. He is an addict, an addict to that vile shit. He’s a monster who hurts you.”
“Michael.” Her eyes held me in a stern gaze. “Enough. Your father doesn’t hurt me.”
Rage fired my rib cage. “Fine,” I said, storming out of that place, which was just an address but never my home.
The older I got, the harder it got for me to keep watching this unfold every single day. To watch my mother tend to that monster in the name of love and write excuses for him.
He’s never laid a hand on me, though, because he knew I would fight back, and he was a coward.
My raging breath came to a halt at the sight of her . All my previous anger faded just like that.
As usual, I’d walked here, straight to her.
She was the shining star of my bleak life.
A smile wormed its way up my lips. She was huddled under the tree in her backyard, her face scrunched in concentration as her fingers traced the sketch pad she held tight in her lap. Lily had upgraded from crayons to charcoal, and it was her new obsession.
She looked up as I neared her. The violets glittering from the disappearing sunlight. “Mikey.” She beamed, and it did something to my heart.
“Hey, little mouse,” I mumbled as I crouched to sit beside her.
“I told you not to call me that.” A stark flush of pink painted her cheeks.
I brushed my shoulders with hers. “Hey, but you are a little mouse. Look at you, doing mousy things.”
Her pillowy lips folded to a thin line. “It’s getting old. You’ve said that a million times. How can I be a little mouse? They are all small, creepy, and annoying.”
“Exactly.” I grinned.
“Ass.” Her elbows dug into my ribs with full force, but I didn’t feel a thing. She was tiny. Ever since I hit a growth spurt, I’ve gotten a whole foot taller than her. I wasn’t skin and bones anymore. I was developing some muscles and getting stronger. Also, I’ve been seeing Lily differently, like the way I shouldn’t be seeing my best friend’s sister. I know Lily would be mine one day, but she was still young. And we had all the time in the world.
“The girls at school have all had their first kisses already.”
“They shouldn’t be. You’re just thirteen.”
“Oh, come on, everyone kisses when they are thirteen. Even my brother did. I happened to see it, and it was the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen in my life. ”
Every cell in my body froze. “But you haven’t kissed anyone, have you?” My heart thudded as I waited for an answer.
Her hand stilled, and she brought her full attention to me as her gaze locked on mine. “No.” She swallowed, not before her eyes darted to my lips.
A jolt of relief swept through my gut. “Good.”
“Have you kissed anyone?”
I shook my head. “No.”
Her face broke into a smile that made my heart feel like it was on top of a roller coaster. In a sudden motion, she kissed my cheek and went back to her sketch pad like it didn’t just happen.
“What was that for?” I could still feel the softness of her lips on my skin.
She shrugged.
I couldn’t help but cradle her face and plant a kiss on her cheek, lingering there for a second unlike her quick kiss before I let her go.
She was red before, but she was like a tomato now.
A chuckle broke out of me as I leaned back against the tree and watched her. Like I did all the time.
“Hey, Mikey! It’s time for practice,” Emmie called out, peeking his head out of the back door.
I groaned.
“Are you leaving?” Lily had a sad look in her eyes as she asked me. It’s been well over an hour since I’d been here.
“Yeah, your brother is adamant about his practice schedule,” I said, rising to my feet .
“Are you staying over? We can have midnight ramen and talk more.” She looked hopeful.
“No, little mouse.” I sighed out a breath. “I have to get home today.” Especially after what had happened this afternoon.
She nodded sullenly. “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
If I knew everything would change after that night, I wonder if I’d have done things differently.
If I had known that was the last moment of happiness with my Lily…
“You better be on time tomorrow, you ass.” Emmie gave me a pointed look as he carefully placed his red guitar in his trunk. He took more care of it than he did himself.
“Fine.” I rolled my eyes. It was well past nine o’clock when that ass decided it was time to pack up.
I lived on the other side of town, so it took me over thirty minutes to get back to the place I called home.
I knew something was wrong the moment I opened the door. The dark room was lit by the flicker of the light bulb from the one standing lamp we had that wasn’t standing anymore.
It was strewn across the red-smeared floor. Shards and shards of glass were scattered everywhere.
A whimper made me head farther down the hallway.
And there he was, my father on top of my mother, punching her repeatedly. A pool of blood increased on the floor beside her head. Her face was hardly recognizable. It was a myriad of reds, purples, and blacks.
The urge brewing in my blood all these years came out in full force. My vision grew blind, and I didn’t know what came over me as I screamed, pushing him away from her with all my strength.
The unexpected push sent his body crashing into the wall, and the side of his head hit the corner of the table. I took advantage of his disoriented state and climbed up on top of him and threw punch after punch at his disgusting face. The silent whimpers of my mama made the fury in me heighten.
“You fucking brat. Get the fuck off me,” he wailed, swatting his hands at me. But that didn’t faze me a bit. I just went in. The screaming burn in my knuckles felt like nothing as I ruined his face.
But through my focused motion, I didn’t see the kick that came out of nowhere and sent me toppling to the ground. My back took the hit hard.
“Michael,” Mama shouted.
I looked up to see the end of his fist clock the end of my jaw.
Another kick of his feet rattled my ribs.
“You fucking bitch, this is all because of you.”
I watched through my side gaze as he stomped over to Momma and dragged her by the hair.
I hissed a breath, spitting out the maroon spit on the floor as I lifted myself. I didn’t feel pain. The surge in my blood asked me to do just one thing. To destroy him.
My eyes landed on the desolate chair on the ground. I didn’t even think as I grabbed it and slammed it over his head.
He screamed in pain, and I didn’t stop there. I grabbed a shard of jagged glass and stabbed it in his thigh over and over again. The whole time, he howled like a hyena caught by a pride of lions.
“Michael, stop,” Momma shrieked from behind me.
I didn’t even feel the pain of the red streams coating my hand as I destroyed his leg. Bloody dots from his cursed blood sprinkled my face.
Over and over and over again, like he did to Mama.
“Michael, stop. You’re going to kill him,” Mama cried.
But I stabbed him over and over and over again. I just couldn’t stop until all that I could see was painted crimson.
Until all I heard was silence.
He wasn’t moving.
Only rivers of blood flowed out of the wide-open gash on his thigh.
I blinked through my heavy breathing, coming to my senses.
“Mama,” I whispered, twisting around to find her rounded eyes. Full of pain and something I couldn’t place.
“Mama,” I mumbled.
She was hurt. Mama was hurt.
But the eyes that looked at me with only love had a look in them I never wanted to see.
Fear .
“Mama,” I said again, lifting my hand.
“No,” she whimpered, cowering back.
And all the air left my body. My heart stopped.
My eyes dashed to the glass shard I held in my lifted hand. I dropped it from my hand, and the sound was biting as it clashed on the ground. Shattered. Like my heart because Mama was looking at me like she looked at the monster .
Like she was scared of me.
Like she was terrified of me.
Of the monster that I’d become.
I didn’t know how the night passed after that. It was a blur of red and blue lights and the sound of sirens and hushed whispers.
Only this morning, I was glad I had inherited nothing from that monster. That I was all my Momma. But that was far from the truth.
On the outside, I might look like Mama, but on the inside, that monster’s blood was pumping my heart.
Tonight, I’d acted on that urge.
The urge that made me as sick as my father.
The urge that told me that I was the same monster as my father.
I was whisked away to Uncle Stephen’s house. Emmie came in to visit me that night just as I washed his blood and mine off in the sink. The water turned pink as it swirled down the drain.
“Hey, man, you okay? I heard what happened.” Emmie’s sad eyes swept over my face. “I’m sorry.”
I nodded but didn’t say a thing.
Just like I hadn’t had the whole night.
Not when the doctor asked me if I was okay.
Not when the police questioned me.
Not when Mama asked me if I was hurting.
She asked, but her voice sounded nothing like it used to. Her eyes couldn’t even meet mine.
It felt like I died a bit there .
“Uncle Stephen asked me to stay here with you,” Emmie added with a soft smile on his face. “You don’t have to worry anymore. You’re safe. He won’t be coming back again.”
I nodded again as I lay on my back, staring at dots on the ceiling. It felt like a dark shadow had consumed me.
There was only one thought on my mind.
“Don’t tell Lily.” That was the first thing that came out of my mouth as my eyes darted to him.
Understanding flickered in his eyes, and he nodded.
“I don’t want her to ever know.”
Because I was scared, scared that one day I’d turn into a monster in front of her, and she’d look at me the same way that Mama did.
Then that would be the day I actually died.
TEN DAYS LATER
“How was your trip? Why didn’t you tell me you were going on one? And why haven’t you told me that you were back?” Lily questioned without a break, sliding in next to me.
I was at Emmie’s place, and things were back to normal. Well, as normal as it can be. I was still living in Uncle Stephen’s house. Since he had spare guest rooms, he asked me to stay with him for a while till Mama dealt with everything. We’d lied to Lily that I’d gone on a trip with my so-called family, a reason for my disappearance.
I shrugged but didn’t say anything .
“Mikey, what happened? Have you gone mute?” She laughed, clasping her arm around mine. “I asked you so many questions and you didn’t even answer them.”
My hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her away from me as I rose to my feet. “Yes, I went on a trip, so what? I don’t have to say shit to you.”
And my heart clamped at the crestfallen look on her face and the glassiness in her eyes. “I just missed you, never mind,” she mumbled, running off to her room.
A painful breath escaped my lips.
That day, I turned into a puppet to keep the monster in me at bay.
To keep her far away from me so she’d never get the chance to see me like that.