Lacerations and trouble

“Are you here?” A voice called from the hall.

Seattle leaned out her door and began whispering to someone, probably the roommate.

I continued to study the pictures as the girls spoke. There was something amiss in the pattern, places where it looked patched up. Just in the say that some photos looked like they were pulled further out of the group, like a cut tightening the skin around as it sealed.

Seattle closed her door softly and strode back beside me. “Are there pictures missing?” I inquired.

She didn’t have to look at where I pointed. “Yeah they were of someone who’s since fallen out of favor.”

“The old boyfriend.” I asked.

She nodded slowly. I didn’t feel the need to press her for more. <y discovery was apparently not planned and had soured the moment. “I like it, different style to hanging pictures up.”

She smiled. I wasn’t getting tired of seeing that, “Beats frames.”

For a while we talked and she explained the places she’d been and what they did. She didn’t bother too much with names, instead focusing on the experience of each location that was shot and tacked to her wall.

There was a quiet knock on the outside door. A shuffling indicated that the roommate was scurrying to answer it. Seattle continued to weave her tales. She stopped weaving when we heard a chirp from outside. She stood straight up and looked at her door. From the expression on her face I expected it to burst open.  

Quiet voices were heard on the other side. One voice was sternly quiet and the other was insistently quiet. Then came the footsteps. They were heavier than the roommates. They were also slower and cautious. I could feel the hairs on my neck standing on end.

               “I know you’re in there.” Came a gruff and insistent voice.

Something small and frozen inside of me burst and filled me with a chill. “The old boyfriend?” I asked, a shiver running down my vertebrae at the look on Seattle’s face.

“Don’t say a word.” She commanded.

Photos and Chairmen

She led me by the hand into her abode. Her apartment was not unlike mine. It sported a Spartan appearance with a small adjustment to the curtains and one well placed photograph centered and above the couch. No animal greeted me at the door or called with a whimper from another room. I felt reassured in viewing this display of nothing.

“My roommate is a bit of a Nazi so forgive me if the place looks a little blah.” She apologized.

So this was the roommate’s doing. What horror would this woman spring on me? A room full of birds and bird like things? God forbid its cats. Though Bowie did leave an impression in my sour disposition towards cats and their pompous nature, he did it with a bit of flair.

“No problem.” I muttered looking about and trying to imagine what the walls would be lined with. Would she spray it pink and adorn unicorns across the walls? Maybe she would design it so that it would look as though a cherub had regurgitated while spinning on a desk chair. Maybe she was a devil worshipper and the room would be black as night lit with glowing embers from extinguished candles that wafted smells of apple pie.

Still holding my hand and dragging me through the hall we darted into her room. I tried to catch a glimpse of the roommate through a crack in the door but with the speed we moved into the room and the scant viewing port I could only make out a mess of black hair, possibly curly or recently washed.

Seattle’s room was not something I would have imagined. Along a strip of one wall in a scattered mosaic were a few dozen black and white photos from movies. On the smaller wall there were other photos framing a window. These were not just black and white, and they portrayed Seattle with friends and family in a variety of poses and situations. Some were tasteful angles and artful, others were goofy, with winks and playful seriousness. Girls stuck their pink tongues out, a few bore metallic accessories, or threw their arms round each other with their faces frozen mid excited scream.

“Fancy yourself a photographer?” I asked while my eyes wandered over each picture. The images of people taken in a moment of thought or great emotion caught my attention more than the ones filled with merriment and camaraderie.

Her room was painted a deep indigo. I imagine this is what it must be like to live within an eggplant, I didn’t voice this observation. The bed was large and the sheets were dark blue. Maybe it’s not an eggplant, maybe it’s the inside of a bruise.

“I like taking pictures.” She watched me study her hidden pleasure.

“Thank god.” I remarked as I recognized the man who bowed in the theater in a picture. He was leaning up against a wall looking off camera at something while flicking a cigarette away. It seemed to catch him in one of his non-pretentious moments, which I assume fill his waking hours. “I couldn’t imagine someone duller than a woman into economics.”She pouted for a moment and I added, “I half expected a poster of Greenspan tacked up somewhere.”

The lady blushed.

Hook and line

“I have a girlfriend.” I let the words hang there and waited for a reaction.

“Okay.” She said, her head shaking at my hesitation.

I took a deep breath before continuing. “Had a girlfriend,” I watched her for any change in mood but nothing happened. This girl was either very good or absolutely not interested. Was I losing my eye for observation or was this vixen merely toying with my fragile state. “We decided to take a break after some recent goings on.”

The girl didn’t wait a moment before asking, “You cheated on her?”

“What? No.” Did I come across this way to her, as an adulterer? Though my intentions for meeting Seattle weren’t clear to myself, I did know that I was in search for meaningful conversation and perhaps a friend who didn’t drop me off at clubs with a twenty pinned to my shirt.

The thought did begin to creep into my mind that perhaps this was her way of testing me. I thought to pry back, “How about you?” Not my best interrogation moment.

“I had one too.” My ears perked at the word, had. “So what did happen that she wanted a break?”

“Her family is a little crazy and mine isn’t wild about her.”

“Just families?” Her eyebrow arched and there was a tugging at the corner of her lips. She was playfully trying to work the truth out of me.

I couldn’t help but grinning like a fool. “No, I admit that I didn’t handle some situations the right way.” I leveled a finger at her and spoke through my dumb grin, “Don’t ask for specifics.” I imagined what it would be like to tell her about Bowie and the refrigerator or the roach and restaurant. My hand returned to the edge of the table and I settled back into my seat. “What about your boy situation?”

She giggled, “Boy indeed.” She composed herself. “He was a tad possessive and I let him go. Don’t inquire.” We sat silently for a moment reflecting on our damaged love lives. “Why can’t people just be normal, love each other and screw on a regular basis without extra strings.”

I choked on the soda that I had been drinking. Trying to alternate laughing and coughing while Seattle watched me was difficult. Eventually I managed to wheeze a gasp for air and did my best to expel the fluid from my lungs.

“Why does that always solicit the same reaction?” She asked with a laugh.

“Because,” I gasped, “You want it.”

She spoke slowly, deliberately. “I want it?”

“You know what I mean.” I coughed one last time, digging in and trying to release the last of the drink from my wind pipe.

“I do, but I’ve met all quality and variety of creep.”

I began moving the utensils around the table, positioning them in a variety of patterns. “There are a lot of crazy girls out there too.” I thought to myself that Rebecca was one of the few exceptions. “I’ve met women who could devour a man and others who were bound by no canvas jacket.”

“And I’ve met men who could set your hair on end with their vile excuse for hygienic habits. I’ve trod on the fetid lands of bathrooms unkempt and spied across the hills of cloths that time forgot.” We both crumbled into laughter. After a good bout of cheer we settled into a comfortable silence. There was warmth to the room that was probably more a lack of conditioned air but it made me feel good.

 Finding a moment of naked honesty and forgetting myself, I blurted, “It’s like being with an old friend.”

She blushed and with a sinister smile and wickedly coy hush to her voice asked, “An old friend?”

The force of my blood rushing from my body to fill the erection threatening to burst from my evening pants was dizzying. Suddenly my intentions were muddled and I forgot that this evening was not a date.

Cinema and abstract

The week went by with little fuss. I received a voicemail from my father that stated simply, “Templar Time.” I didn’t find out nor was I curious to what he meant by it and what he did. Rebecca never called me. I was sad and disappointed but not surprised. Her mom might still be in town. At least that’s what I told myself.

               The lack of drama or suspense in my week was much appreciated. It’s strange to thing that everything that happened occurred on the same day but sometimes when the world wants to throw you a curveball, it just keeps them coming.

               I did come to some strange form of understanding with my father’s situation. I can’t say I agree with the harder drug use but people drink for similar reasons and society accepts that. The confrontation did leave me a little shaken through the week. My personal issues with him aside that was an unpredictable and chaotic moment and those tend to unsettle me.

               As for Rebecca, I still wished I had heard her reasoning for our separation but the way I figure it, I would not like it or be better with it if I did know. I have my suspicions but they will go unverified until the next time we speak. As a last mention, I do miss her.

               With all these things in the back of my mind I found myself excited about the conscious meeting that I would be having with Seattle. Everything about her so far, which I admit is just short of nothing, whispers familiar and comfortable. That she contains within her the same wicked humor that allows me to get through a day serving people who purchase laxatives and anti-itch powders while not meeting my nonjudgmental eyes. That’s a lie. I play a game where I create the story in my head explaining the genesis of their ailment. Call it my gallows humor but on a consumer level.

               Apparently the movie I’m to see on Friday with Seattle is some little indie flick that will be premiered in a quiet little dark place with no more than a dozen or so in attendance. The name is ambiguous, Block. It doesn’t even give me anything to work with. The only flier I see for it displays a white background with a shadow cast by a white cube. So essentially it’s just a picture of a shadow.

               Aside from the vague cinema rendering we would witness, I felt excited. I also admit I felt a little self satisfaction that I was seeing a girl no more than a week after “taking a break”. Who knows, the evening might go very well.

The evening started horribly. Describing the plot or even what was occurring on screen as we sat in the dank, quiet, long forgotten corner of the world that just happened to have a projector and a large screen would have been impossible. There was a small cast of characters but I didn’t know if they were related, friends or actually all the same person. At one point two of them had sex but please don’t ask me which I just knew that I would need to take a cold shower and reaffirm my sexuality later with liberal amounts of computer time.

Towards the end of the movie, which occurred no less than one-hundred and forty minutes after we were seated, I witnessed a live birth. A slimy ball of hair poured forth from what had once been one of my favorite places. Poured is too lenient, it tore, like a mascot through a team banner at a football game, it tore. My feelings toward the female anatomy were altered there and then. There was nothing but respect and a bit of sympathy for the moment I witnessed. All in all though, I was greatly confused, scared and feeling a strange sensation in my feet, a need to run.

The few people who were in the cinema clapped. Someone turned around in front of me and bowed. Seattle clapped and smiled, turning to me, then back to the man basking in adulation. I wondered who this girl was and why I had thought that she could be more normal than it had turned out to be.

We stood outside and talked to the other movie goers for a while. I stood back with my hands stuffed into my pockets fingering my phone and wondering if I could call 911 without having to pull it out. The people were pleasant enough. They smiled and praised the movie for its cinematography and risqué themes. All I could remember about themes were color schemes and they were mostly red especially the sex scene and birth. I shook myself to unhinge those images.

Seattle bade them farewell and turned to me, the smile on her face gone. “Thank you for sitting through that.”

“What? That delightful piece of work? I haven’t been that entertained since A Clockwork Orange.” I said with a mock surprise. To myself I added that I understood Clockwork Orange better.

“They like to make art like that.” She watched me carefully, looking for something in my posture.

“If you didn’t enjoy it why did you come?”

She tilted her head, which allowed the mane of rust colored hair to fall to one side and looked up thoughtfully. “They’re friends. Who happen to be art majors and wildly inappropriate.”

I pushed a loose stone around on the floor. “So you’re an art major?”

She smiled. It seemed that she did that a lot. “Economics.”

I blanched and she laughed.

We went to dinner at an Applebee’s nearby. The hostess greeted us and bared her teeth at us in a mock display of happiness. She had some fish and I had a burger. For the first half of dinner she tried to explain the film to me. I couldn’t understand her explanation any better. Not that it was her fault. I found my thoughts floating back to Rebecca. She would never have taken me to see such a film. She knew my tastes and had a remarkable set of her own. Plus if something was crap, she’d say it, I’d mock it and we’d laugh. Deriving the worth of the film from its comedic failure to entertain.

Finally I told Seattle to stop trying to explain the film. An uncultured specimen as I was would gain nothing from a video of open weirdness.

“So then what do you do?”

“Me?” shoving a french fry into my mouth, “I work at a drug store catering to those who’s pelvic regions itch, sport infections and diseases that I gracefully get by without catching.”

“So you don’t go to college.” Her eyebrow was raised.

“Already did.”

“And?”

“And I got a degree.” Feeling strangely defensive, “What are you going to do with your economics?”

She sat back, and watched me eat. “Look I’m sorry you came to see that movie but you didn’t have to come. I just thought you were nice.”

I sighed and wiped the ketchup from the edges of my mouth. “I apologize. It has just been hard since graduating.”

She leaned forward again, “Personal problem hard?”

I nodded, “Among other things.”

“Tell me about them.”

I stared at her for a moment, studying the expressions in her face.

“Who am I going to tell?” She asked, “Plus if you feel that strongly afterwards, you can just disappear.”

 I thought for a moment. That feeling of something familiar demanded to be recognized. “Fine, but at the end you’ve got to fess up about yourself too.”

“We’ll see.” Was all she said.

Caffeine and serendipity

Everything felt so out of order. Within a few hours things had taken on new meaning. My dad had turned from a reserved aggressive and overly judgmental, domineering male figure into a doddering, drug fueled, sociopath intent on some unknown crusade. My longtime girlfriend, warped from her most recent maternal visit and the prior weeks of social and financial hardships decides that it is too much for her and that the way to alleviate it is through our parting of the ways.

“What the fuck!” I yell, slamming my palm into the wheel sparking protest from the car horn. Several nearby drivers look around expecting some wisp of an accident or car chase. Clenching my teeth doesn’t help alleviate the tension inside me, slamming the wheel didn’t either. I had thought at least that the steady growl and shouted explicative would make me feel better but they only filled the car with silence. The cauldron of emotions bubbling inside of me couldn’t be sorted or disturbed. It boiled and simmered rapidly leaving me angry one moment, forlorn the next and finally scared. It all left me vulnerable.

I pulled into the next hub of shops and parked. The sun was perched on the horizon watching me stroll across the asphalt. So much had happened and it was just the beginning of the weekend. The tiny voice that had guided me through most of the day chirped up a warning that troubles travel in threes. My attentions immediately shifted from the events of the day to the current situation.

I walked into a coffee shop and stood in line. I’ve never truly been to coffee shops, they seem to have a decent enough atmosphere and the people I know who attend are socially manageable if a little snooty. The patrons and ambiance become threatening under the foreboding of my third and final trial. Each customer could play a role in my cognitive and emotional undoing.

My gaze sets on a girl. “No.” I tell myself hoping for it to be an optical trick. The flash of her hair is like sooty copper under a burning sun, it flares as she becomes aware of someone’s notice and flicks her head this way and that.

“Sir your order.” The cashier commands.

I stride up the space I had not notice had opened and begin looking over the menu. All the while keeping the girl in my peripheral, I am assured that she will be the executor of the final transgression against me.

The vastness and quirky nomenclature of the menu overwhelms me. Scribbled on a chalk board in an array of colors and styles that beam friendliness and a welcoming embrace, it serves only to make me feel out of place.

Impatiently the cashier began tapping the counter with her index finger. I asked her for a small black coffee. She rolled her eyes and punched out a series of keys. I’m sure that there must’ve been some hip name to the coffee but I was in no clue to decipher the codex on the board behind her.

“Five thirty-five.” She read off to me.

I dug around my wallet for cash but was running empty. Grumbling about the price and mentioning that the coffee should provide me full service I handed the lady my credit card.  She swiped it and punched into a keypad.

A chill passed over me as I felt eyes lingering on my profile. The auburn hair had been replaced with a face that studied me. I kept myself facing the register even as I waited for the moment that she would click two and two together.

“Sir, it was declined.” The cashier didn’t look surprised.  She flipped the card back into my hand and waited with her fists lumped on hips.

“I don’t really have…” I began.

“Hey, I was wondering when you’d show up.” Seattle Blue sashayed up to me and planted a kiss on my cheek before dropping $5.50 on the counter and telling the girl to keep the change.

Seattle looped her arm around mine and guided me back to her table. I was speechless and probably had my mouth hanging open again. She planted me opposite her and then smiled from across the small table. “I remember you but not your name. All I know is that it’s also a city.” Her voice was softer than I remembered.

“Sidney.”

She nodded and closed her eyes. The images of that night replaying behind her eyelids. As she opened her eyes I noticed that they were a pretty brown. I had expected some exotic green but the brown was charming.

“You probably remember me.” She said her eyes meeting mine.

“You’re wicked.” I was grinning like a school boy. “Am I still supposed to call you Seattle?”

“You do remember.” Her cheeks went rosy.

“That was great up there by the way.”I said, indicating the counter.

               “Irksome people bother me. She gave me the same attitude.” She drummed her hands on the table and watched me. “So,” her eyebrows went up. I was missing the social cue.

               “Sorry, I’m not going to be as pleasant company.” I cleared my throat trying to prevent my voice from hiking as I said, “It hasn’t been a good day.”

               “Personal bad or things where you work?”

               I had barely spoken to this girl for more than fifteen minutes but something about her felt familiar and flowed. That being known I still said, “I’m sorry but I don’t know you well enough to say.” I didn’t want to ruin what was starting to feel like the only sane moment today. Something made me want to tell her but that feeling made me reel myself all the harder into a taught ball of introversion.

               She just smiled at me, “Personal then. I get it. You don’t even know my name.”

               “Seattle Blue has a nice flow to it.”

               Her eyes widened, “So you remember my whole fake name. I must have made an impression then.”

               This time I blushed, “Raucous orgies and pretty girls are not my usual so yes.” The hotness in my face subsided, “But you remembered me too, or else I would be trying to back out of paying for my coffee right now.”

               “You made me laugh a little. I went out to support a friend. Orgies are not my scene as well.”

               Was I flirting? Was it wrong for me to be flirting? Something inside me felt a tinge the traitor but most of this felt like a reprieve. My stomach was still in a knot with the echo of my father’s bellow and my heart was still barely beating with Rebecca’s decision.

               “Sorry that I’m not my comedic self. I’m just out of alignment.”

               “Things are that bad? No need to answer. Anyways it was nice to meet you once more.” She began putting her book back into her bag. I wanted to continue talking but couldn’t think of what. I truly knew nothing about this girl. The most I knew was that she liked coffee shops, reading and had distaste for public gatherings of indecency.

               Feeling like I was experiencing the third strike of the day I opened my mouth to protest. She stopped me with a look and put a card on the table.

               “Friday I’m going to see a movie. Should you find yourself available and curious to check it out this is my number.” She slipped me a small square of paper.

               I looked at the card. It had her phone number typed neatly in the center. I wondered if she gave these out regularly enough to print them. Who was I meeting and what was I looking to get into. Nothing else was printed on it. Perhaps it was a fake, but this was a strange way to give someone a fake number.

               She continued, “Consider this your mulligan. Now we’re even.” She smiled then, “Next time we meet it’ll be on purpose and make sure you bring you’re A game. Before you ask too, this is not me asking you out. You seem nice and I’m talking too much.”

               She slid from the chair and stood. With a flick of her hand, her hair was tossed back over her shoulder and she scooped up her trash.

               “What’s your name?” I asked.

               She watched me for a moment and I caught a glimmer of her conflicting thoughts of telling me. She settled on, “I don’t know you well enough.” With that she began walking away. As a final thought she said over her shoulder, “Be there Friday and we’ll start.”

               When the bell hanging above the door signaled her departure I began breathing again. This was wrong, something told me, Rebecca’s still around. The gloom that had vanished returned. Time to get back to my life.

               I almost left before realizing that the woman at the register had placed my coffee on the counter. If she called my name or tried to get my attention I had failed to notice. Grabbing the cool cup I grimaced and left the coffee shop sipping its cool contents.

Exodus and breaks

We sat for some undefined time while he told me about his experience. How glorious it had been and the mission he had received to pass on to me.  It was all about how evil women were and why men were dominant. I knew my dad had some tendencies toward chauvinism but whatever he was on amplified and defined the edges to his ideology.

The center of his argument was around his girlfriend Catherine. From what I could gather and what common sense told me, she put some distance between herself and him. This was no doubt due to his drug use but then again I didn’t know how long it had been going on. When he did try to speak to her, she denied him. Apparently this sent him into some paranoid delusion about her turning on him. Betrayal was a big theme for my father.

After telling me what I could only imagine was his version of the gospel, he swore me to secrecy. “This is God’s plan for us. It is not to be shared with the uninitiated.” I didn’t and couldn’t understand the need for swearing me to silence. I was petrified at this point, like a child I sat and listened, nodding fearfully to each phrase that fell from his tongue. All the fear I had once held for my father gripped me and threatened to suffocate.

We sat in silence for some time after. He watched the ceiling, thinking. I tried to figure out how to take control of the situation, how to escape it. This segment stretched as long as the one where he had preached. Only this one was scarier because I couldn’t see the wheels turning or where they would go.

If God had truly given my father a plan, I begged him now to give me safe passage from this place. I’m not religious in any sense, nor am I spiritual. In this instance though I needed some form of omnipotent power to guide me the fuck out of this house.

My father laughed, the corners of his mouth climbing his face and squeezing his glazed almond eyes. A tremor ran through me. “You know what we’re going to do.” I kept silent in case it wasn’t a question, “Whenever Cathy is around I’m going to say it’s templar time.” The squinted eyes climbed down from the roof to look at me, “And we’re going to have fun.” The final words were said with a wicked vagueness.

A shrill sound cut through the silent words he had left unsaid with that grin he now wore. My phone had answered my dire prayer. “Hello?” The phone had practically materialized at my ear. That psychotic smile reappeared across my father’s face as he let his head fall back and his eyes turn skyward. I wondered if he was speaking to God.

“What? Hi.” Rebecca was on the phone. Whatever dread I would have felt at this was vastly and immeasurably outweighed by my current condition.

“Hey hon.”

My father’s eyebrow arched while he continued his communion with whatever was in his blood or beyond the roof.

“Can we talk?”

“You need to talk? Yeah I’m just at my dad’s house.” My nerves were revving my voice into an unflattering pitch. I quickly worked to control it.

“Are you alright?”

“I’ll be over in a second, let me just say goodbye.”

“Sid?”

I hung up the phone. Apologies and explanations would come far easier than terrified fleeing.

“You got to go.” He almost sounded disappointed in me. His eyes still turned skyward.

“Yeah.”

I rose from my seat. A hand clutched the back of the chair to steady my weak legs. With full concentration I strode slowly to the door.

“What are we?” The whisper came from behind me, I dared not turn around.

“Knights.” I took a step forward.

“What are we?” More urgently this time.

“Knights.” My knees shook, threatening to plunge me to the floor.

The bellow came once more, it threatened to drop me to my knees and rend my mind leaving me weeping on the cloudy grey tile. “What are we?”

“Knights.” I barely made my body obey.

As I shut the door I took one last look back and saw him staring at me. His mouth curled, “Good.”

* * * * *

I didn’t stop to collect myself until I was in the parking lot for Rebecca’s complex. When I cut the engine’s power my hand lost its composure and shook relentlessly. My stomach drew into itself and tried to regurgitate what little I had eaten that day. There was water in my eyes and it stung. I wanted to lie on my side and cry softly into my knees. Everything felt wrong and dirty. The world was suddenly a lot more oppressive and intimidating than it had been in the last few months.

I opened the door and stepped out of the car. My footsteps were uncertain and my body felt like it had forgotten how to act. It moved in ways that looked like a caricature of me. I tried to put my father’s degenerating state out of my head but it kept making its way back in. What drugs was he doing, how long and why now? Mostly I wanted to forget how he made me feel. I’d learned to be firm around him and it all went to hell the moment I caught sight of those eyes.

As I grew closer to Rebecca’s apartment I began to understand that I was losing my father to something sinister. His past, his faults and all the years of abuse from his father had taken root and were beginning to bloom, a violet germanium of despair.

I knocked on the door and pushed the event with my father from my mind. Rebecca had sounded serious over the phone. That and she had given me the signal for troublesome talks. Like a puppet suddenly yanked up by his strings my body lifted. I didn’t want to be here right now and especially for this. There was no way I’d do it like a beaten pup.

When Rebecca answered the door she was solemn. Upon seeing me something in her flickered for a moment: sympathy, concern and affection. Each disappeared the moment after they had appeared, behind the blink of her eyes. “What happened?” was my consolation prize. My heart and face hardened into stone.

“Nothing.” I stepped into the apartment looked around expecting the witch to come soaring in on her broom. Agatha didn’t show.

She closed the door behind me and sat down on the couch. “Sit.” Though I heard it as a command, she was trying to hold herself together from something too. The soft contours to her body beckoned me to sit near her. I wanted to stubbornly pull up a chair and set the mood properly. I chose the lesser of the two and seated myself beside her.

No jokes sprung to my mind, nothing to ease what was going to be a tense situation. I’d already dealt with a great shock. Whatever relationship turmoil we were about to trudge through would be a cake walk by comparison.. “All on the same day too.” I said aloud.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

Her lips moved and twitched as though the words fought from behind her luscious lips to be freed. Another day and I would have imagined the hundreds of combinations she would utter. My pessimistic imagination would draft thousands of replies to each of her statements. Today I sat and waited while she worked up her nerve. “We need to take a break.” Her body quivered with the completion of the sentence.

Some part of me laughed. The rest of me shook its head like a disappointed parent discovering a household treasure smashed. Their child blathering excuses as the adult is beyond belief that their day of labor and toil would end with on this note.

 “That’s all?” I asked.

Her eyebrows furrowed out of confusion. “What?” I supposed she had expected a different reaction. I just wasn’t feeling like myself today.

I got up and began walking to the door.

“What is wrong with you?” The words were accusatory and a bit fearful. “What happened to you today?” Her words were losing the formality she had built up. She was coming down from her pedestal.

“Nothing.”

As I grabbed the knob she was at my side and grabbed my shoulder. “Talk to me.”

I wanted to scream hateful things. To yell, threaten and pour my frustration and anger out into a smoldering pile of putrid waste. Leave her sobbing to herself and affirm her need to be away from me. Assure her that I was a monster and villain.

I wanted to fall to the floor and lose control. Cry large sobbing tears into my arms. Have her wrap her arms around me and hold me until the trembling stopped and I found my voice once more. Tell her about what happened, try to explain and understand it all.

I wanted to fight to keep her. Tell her that we were stronger than all of this. We were worth so much more than anything I had and anything I would ever own. Tell her that I loved her.

“No.”

I opened the door and walked away.

Hopes and weakness

The house was messier than I remembered it being. The lights were dimmer than I remembered and the tile floor was clouded. Small streams of light beamed through slits in the blinds like cracks in a wall. It was as though he were reworking the place to resemble a modern cave.

On the living room table were scraps of metal spread around and containing some form of order, like a beast dissected and observed. Paper had been laid beneath each pile and tools sat nearby prepared to work. My father moved around touching this and that as though he were tidying up but only coming across as though he suffered from a compulsive disorder.

The shirt he wore hung baggy on him. I’d always pictured him being more fit. It dawned on me that perhaps I’d taken his age for granted. Something about it all didn’t feel like dementia and something began to scratch at the back of my mind.

“Sorry I’ve had nothing to do lately so I’ve worked on,” He continued to touch and move things. He was striving for some optimal global orientation, “projects.”

I looked around and folded my arms, “So what’s the problem.”

“Catherine…” The word was a hiss. It took me a few moments to recall that this was the name for his girlfriend, the mediator and polite socialite. His eyes turned back on me and the hairs on my neck began to rise. “You didn’t bring the girl with you.”

“Didn’t figure she needed to be here.” While mostly true, I hadn’t wanted to ask Rebecca along fearing that I might worsen our already tenuous relationship.

“Good.” He mumbled, “I’ve had a realization. One of those epiphanies.” This was the most talkative he’d been with me in years. Something inside me smiled at the thought of us conversing while the itching in my brain continued to nag at me. My arms unfolded and I sat on one of the chairs while he organized his thoughts. “Nothing matters.” He finally said.

While the idea was a little broad I began to think that perhaps he’d had a change of heart. Maybe something happened to change his mind about the whole thing.

“No one matters.”

This could be the beginning to repairing our relationship. I was skipping ahead of the whole process a bit quickly but a moment required seizing while ripe.

“It’s down to you and me.”

He was doing it. Realizing the true value he held in his son.

“Really you’re all that I have left.”

My heart swelled and the infernal grating in my brain screamed alarm.

His eyes turned up to me and everything I’d built up in the last few moments came crashing down.

The eyes were filled with madness. They glared wide, encased in a glassy layer, straight through me. All of my bravado and courage that I had collected in the car turned to ash. I felt the same as I had in the bird woman’s house. I was ten again and in terrible fear of the man before me.

“Catherine is wicked Sidney. She tricks and manipulates me into being someone I’m not.” I couldn’t understand that statement. He’d been the same person the whole relationship. “We are knights, Sidney. In service to God. For our works we will be rewarded with all that we please.” He paused to watch me. I was frozen and helpless. “What are we son?” he whispered.

My throat was dry but I managed a squeaking voice, “Knights.”

“What are we?” He asked again.

I had to swallow before speaking again, “Knights.”

“What are we?” He yelled.

A tremble worked its way into my body, “Knights.”

He began to bellow again but the voice that came out made my blood go cold. “What are we?”

“Knights.” I wanted to cry as I had when I was young but afraid that he would grow angry.

“That’s right.” An insane smile taking his face, “You can have anything you want as long as we are together working against it all.” He stopped for a moment to think of a way to convince me. “You like that girl you’re with?”

I made a tiny sound.

He clapped his hands and sent my heart racing. “You can have all the black, brown or blue girls you want.”

What small scrap of me that was left screamed from within my skull, “What the fuck is going on?” That small piece started working on an escape plan while trying to understand what drove him to this.

“Son, you know that Moses spoke to a burning bush to speak to God.”

I made a tiny sound.

“Cannabis.”

My inner self perked up at this and thought to remember everyone who’d gotten high near me. None had acted this delusional or fanatical.

“Science has given us many new ways to speak to him.”

Instead of a sound, I gathered a little strength to ask him a question, “How long?”

He looked at me sideways like an animal would when studying something strange and intriguing. “Only recently.”

I wondered if he meant since I’d last seen him or in relation to how long he’d been on this planet. All I knew was that I had to get out.

“I’ve spent the last few days toying with Catherine, trying to get her to break. She’s crafty and wicked.” He laughed loudly and suddenly. “You should see how she reacts, as though I’m the crazy one.” His face went dark as quickly and violently as the laugh had come, “Just like my father.” He snapped from it and looked dead at me, “But we will fight it because we are…”

“Knights.” I squeaked.

“What are we?”

“Knights.” My voice wavered.

He bellowed once more, “What are we?”

“Knights.” I’d never felt so weak and alone.

“That’s right.”