FicWad

He had come late that night, making enough noise to wake the house.
Of course, my mother was out of town, visiting her dying sister, so it was just me and my old man.

But this night, it was one that has burned itself into my very being from the moment he stepped into the house, drunk and unstable.
There was no thunderstorm, no rain and flashes of lightning in those cheesy horror flicks. There was nothing to accentuate this night of torture.

As I sat up in bed, looking around madly in the dark, I could hear him throwing things around violently and madly. He was shouting loudly, but it wasn't audible enough to decypher.
The commotion got closer and closer with each passing moment.

Finally, it stopped. It stopped because I chould see his shadow in front of my door, the outline of his feet bleeding in from under the crack of the door. He seemed to stand there for a long time before moving away.

I sighed in relief too hasitly, as his shadow returned. He slowly let himself into my room, his dark outline looking monstrous in the doorway. I could smell the alcohol from where I was laying.

I tried to pretend to be asleep, but his heavy breathing and stumbling forced me to open my eyes. Regardless, if I was awake or not, he grabbed me by my hair and started to drag me out of bed. I protested and swung at him, hitting him square in the mouth.

He didn't like that, and he retaliated by backhanding me across the face, followed by two hard kicks to my stomach, causing me to vomit.

"Why the fuck can't you just cooperate boy? I tried to make things work, I tried to make all of us happy in this house. But you had to go and ruin everything!" He shouted at me as I layed there trying to catch my breath.

He grabbed me by my hair again, making me look him in the eye.
Blood was dribbling out of his mouth and down his scruffy chin as he spoke, "I had something good and great going on here! I had a plan all set and worked out! Why the fuck did you ruin it Tyler?! You are no son of mine!"

My breathing came back to normal, my gut hurt, and my lip stung. But nothing ached or put me in as much as agony as the hatred that burned in me.

As I tried to get to my feet, but he kicked my legs out from beneath me, I landed on my back with a heavy thud. He laughed and began to circle me, like I was his prey.

He continued to laugh as he withdrew a knife he had been hiding somewhere on his person. He played with it, twirling it like a baton in fingers, smiling down at me.

I may not have known much about the bastard who was my father, but I knew one thing for sure about him, he was no knife fighter.

He advanced on me, grabbing me by my shirt collar and lifting me up so we were face to face again.

"Because of you, you little shit! Because of you, I've lost one of the best woman in my life! And very very soon, I am going to lose my wife, my bride, the mother of you, you ungrateful bastard! You're the load that should have been swallowed!" He screamed, waving the knife around madly.

"But I will fix you, I will make things better. I will have a life free of a nosy, smart-mouthed, undisciplined, and disobediant son! A son like you!"

He started to move in on me, I began to back up, crawling away from him. But he only closed in the gap with his long strides.

"You should be happy boy, I'm gonna divorce your mother! It's what you wanted all along right?!"

He knelt down and knife flashed coldly in the hallway light, his shadow looking even more omnious to me.

He stabbed at me suddenly, and at first, I didn't feel anything. I thought he had missed, until I felt the burning stinging, almost numbing effect of a deep thrusted stab wound to the shoulder. He had impaled my left shoulder area deeply, I could see the flash of the blades metal, now being smeared with my red blood. He smiled as he twisted the blade, then with a hard upward motion, withdrew the blade, breaking my collar bone.

I didn't have time to cry out, as much as I wanted to. I fell back from his withdrawal of the knife, my warm blood pouring from my wound, spilling onto the floor and making it sticky.

When I looked back up at him, That damned look on his face.

That look of pure, unabashed, unhindered look, of satisfaction and self gratification..

He moved in quicker this time, no time for me to react.....



"Tyler wait!" Gwen screamed after me.

I think I subconsciously slowed my pace so she could catch up to me, pity I suppose.

She ran in front of me, turned around and stopped me, her hands on both of my shoulders.

"Listen, I know that things are fucked up right now, things are wrong, messy, and one-sided. But that doesn't mean you can't have one last final good-bye to your best friend!" she said, trying to reason with me.

I gently pushed her hands away, "He's not my best friend! Not Hunter, not Ethan, not even Echo at this point! They were just people who I've known, who happened to know me! We used each other, all of us did! I used Ethan and Hunter to try to land a connect in editing, and they used me to stroke their egos!"

She had that sad look on her face again, "You, you don't mean that. Any of that."

I had to smirk and stifle a laugh, "Like you know me like you say you do?! They used me to pal around with them, to make themselves look good, to be the high up editors, and me their lapdog project! It's the same as having a fool in a kings court, he is only liked because he makes everyone else liked! Bullshit was the soup of the day every day!"

Gwen backed off a little.
It began to rain again..of course, how fitting.


"The truth and point is, I never liked them, I honestly never liked them! Oh yeah sure, I admired them when we first started to hang out, and Echo was even easy to get along with, but it wasn't until I found some of my most personal and emotional essays and works in Hunter's trashcan did I know the truth about him! He went through my messenger bag, without my permission, took what he saw fit, and "Edited" it for me! What he was really doing, was trying to find poetry that was worthwhile, and promote it off as his own orignal work! He was stealing from me! Two of his most acclaimed and celebrated poems, they are mine! He fucking stole my poems! He raped me of my emotion and individuality!"

By now I was screaming it, and I started to cry.

All of this, remembering that night with my father, Ethan and I sharing knuckle sandwiches, to me having to resubmit my anguish over Hunter's sheisty habits..I was sick and tired.

"I'm going home."

I turned and walked away, leaving Gwen in the rain.

Leaving Hunter to slowly rot in his shiny wood coffin.

Leaving Ethan to lick his wounds, with Echo to console him.

Leaving all that I thought was right and who I was, in that holy chapel that wreaked of death.

Death of a "Friend", death of personality, identity, and self worth.

Death of the illusion, that I was really a poet and a writer.