“I’m sorry,” he said in his patented whipped dog tone.
Father stared for a moment. His implacable gaze burned into Jon’s body. Once again, the boy was a failure. Once again, he needed to be punished. Father sighed.
“You’re sorry. Here’s what sorry gets you.”
He pulled a large monkey wrench from the trunk and walked over to the bicycle. He paused, waiting for an objection from Jon, then shoved his son aside and began pounding away. He smashed through the handlebars, bent the axle, broke the tire rims, ripped out the spokes, and snapped the chain.
Father backed away still perfectly dressed, not a hair out of place. “Bring this junk heap back home,” he ordered and drove off in his car, leaving Jon to eat his dust.
Jon hefted the bike and stumbled over the uneven cement blocks of the sidewalk. It was a long, savage haul at that time of night, with the temperature rapidly falling. The cold numbed his legs, while the weight of the bike bit into his hand and strained his muscles to their limit. Little weeds and sticky plants grew up between them. Jon cursed each one, then cursed his family, their house, and kept cursing until he had reached back to his great-great-grandfather. With every curse, he forgot some of his burden. Each spark of hate warmed him a little.
By the time he made it back home, the birds were chirping. He dumped the bike at the end of the driveway, right behind Father’s car. Hopefully the old man wouldn’t notice, would back over it and ruin some of that car’s perfection. Probably not, though. Father just didn’t make those kinds of mistakes. The best revenge Jon could hope for was to make the old man move the wreckage himself. He’d take whatever he could get. He went inside.
The jokes he and Michael had made earlier about the whorishness of the average Black Rock teenage girl had a germ of truth embedded at its heart. The most average example of that type lay sprawled before him on the living room divan. His older sister, Michelle, snored away. Blobs of puke were smeared down her pinhole-burn-ridden shirt and collected into a grimy pool on the antique oriental carpet. A half-empty Beefeaters bottle lay curled under her arm like an adored child.
She was the greatest whore Jon had ever heard of, except she never got paid. She sucked a new cock every other day. Alcohol was her mother’s milk. There wasn’t a drug that she hadn’t smoked or snorted. Track marks ran up and down her arms. Every one of her teeth had rotted out of her head and had been replaced with dentures.
All this decadence was abetted by their parents. They had let Michelle effectively drop out of school at twelve. Technically, she was enrolled under the Home-School Act in New York State, but no actual educating, except how to apply makeup, went on. All assignments and tests that the state required be submitted had been forged. Jon knew this because he had been forced to write a few papers for her. On her sixteenth birthday, they officially let her withdraw from her education requirements. Father had a party to celebrate the event where Michelle was presented with her first bong, a blue glass affair with her name emblazoned along the stem in rhinestones.
She was rail thin from the substance abuse and her parents had invested in a portable IV rack, so they could inject her with nutrients whenever she passed out. At nineteen, she still looked good. The amount of slavering hormonal boys tramping through the house was testament enough to this, but that would soon pass. No one could abuse their body so much without it eventually collapsing into a wreck, or at least Jon hoped that was the case.
He felt a twinge of guilt at the schadenfreude of the idea of his sister turning into a bar hag. In a very real sense, she was as much a victim of her parents, as he was. This dead-end street her life was on had been foisted onto her by the pair. She may never really have had a choice. When a world of pleasure is tossed at you, it’s difficult to say no. Especially when you’re too young to know better. Still it was pleasure and not a similar pain that was constantly pounded onto him, and for that he was jealous. For that, he would have a little nasty fun at her expense. He needed a pick-me-up after witnessing his bike’s destruction.
Jon pulled a frozen hotdog from the freezer and thawed it a little by swirling it around in the toilet after he’d pissed in the bowl. He picked up an iron poker from the fireplace—the thing had been bricked up years ago, but they kept the paraphernalia lying around for some reason—and jabbed her with the poker. She stirred and blurted an incomprehensible phrase in a dreamy accent. He poked her again.
“All right, Ian,” she burbled, still three quarters unconscious. “Just gimme the shit, man. I’ll get you the money later. My daddy will give it to me.”
“No,” Jon said, barely suppressing an evil laugh. “You pay me now.”
“I’ll suck your dick. I’ll suck your dick. Just gimme!”
He shoved the soiled hot dog into her mouth and laughed as her filthy gums worked around it expertly. Eyes crusted over, she grunted in appreciation as she fellated the dead meat. Every time she shifted, a new foul smell wafted towards Jon. One way, vomit and stale beer. Another, a yeasty fish. Third, diseased semen. Fourth, spoiled mayonnaise.
“You’ve gotten bigger, baby,” she burped onto the hot dog.
Suddenly thirsty, he went back to the kitchen and poured himself some green apple Kool Aid from a glass pitcher.
“I forgot you weren’t cut. Sexy,” she burbled in a bad seductress voice.
It was disgusting and fascinating at the same time, like a horrific accident, impossible to tear your eyes away from. He slurped heavily from the glass as her tongue expertly worked along the meat stick’s edges. It was rhythmic, hypnotic in a way. The weird taste of the off-brand Kool Aid hung thick on his tongue.
“Are you gonna cum soon baby? I need. Need . . . ”
Reality became shiny along the edges. Some underpaid editor had over-saturated the colors. Things behind him? A door creek? Cold air? The world began to . . . No, not the world. His mind! His mind began drip-drip-dripping
plop
drip
drip
collecting
into a puddle of
nonsense at his feet
lights and boxers and monsters
in a pool of liquid rock, shaking sticks
waved and played and talked the stock market
then drank a bubbling milky scum from a big skull
Aya. They yelled. Hua. They barked. Ska. Ska
monoamine oxidase inhibitor their god
there was a man from Nantucket
who showed a left hand
until until
Plop!
Where the hell was he? His room? Yes, his room. It had to be . . . but. Oh Christ, he was tired. If he had slept, it couldn’t have been for long. He was naked in his bed on top of the covers . . . and his mother stood over him, frowning as usual. He covered up with his hands quickly.
“Oh, please, there’s nothing worth looking at on you.”
She threw a piece of paper on his skinny chest. A note written in Father’s hand.
“It’s for yesterday,” she said. “An excuse for school.”
“Yesterday?” he said weakly. “I went there yesterday.”
She stuck her face close to his, snarling contempt. “You got home late two nights ago and literally slept all of yesterday. Lazy asshole. I would’ve woken you up, but Father said to let you lie around. Not today, though. Get up and get out.”
A day? A whole day gone? He flipped his feet over the bed and tried to stand, but his legs were spaghetti. Jon’s face hit the hardwood floor. His arms barely had the strength to push himself into a sitting position.