Mocking good everywhere I saw it. Because I thought it was weakness. Cowardice.
Fucking stupid, like I said.
But who the fuck cares now?
It’s late afternoon. The sun has dipped behind the buildings on main street, and my day’s work is done. I work at a new construction site now, out of town, and I come back in the evenings to find a place to sleep. Sometimes I stay at the site, hide until they lock it up and curl up in a nook, but the supervisor found out the other day and wasn’t too happy about it.
Can’t afford to lose this job, so... back to Destiny it is.
Back to avoiding the house and hanging around the empty garage and this fucking sad town like a curse you can’t shake off, washing my clothes in the stinking sink at the back, in this shanty town of a place, drinking and smoking and putting off the decision of where to spend the night this time.
In a bar? In a store entrance? Under a tree somewhere?
The latter appeals. I mean, it’s not cold outside anymore as Summer settles in, the nights warm as shit, smelling like that, too. I’ll buy a bottle of booze and drink myself to sleep.
Same old, same old. How fucking exciting.
Stacy scowls at me from behind the counter when I enter the town’s grocery store. Scowls even worse when I ask for a cheap bottle of Vodka and count out the money, bills and pennies and all.
Her gray hair is coiled in a tight bun, her features drawn, skin brown and wrinkled from the sun. This woman has worked here for as long as I can remember. Dad often sent me to buy him cigarettes and booze since I could walk and talk.
The same items I come to buy now for myself.
With another baleful look in my direction, she turns, grabs a bottle from the shelf, slams it on the counter, takes my money. Nods and stares unblinking, as if waiting for me to look away first. To break first.
“Thanks.” I hold up the bottle and turn to go.
She doesn’t tell me I shouldn’t drink. Doesn’t ask if I need anything else.
Serves me right. And it’s nothing new. I made an enemy of the people of this town long ago and nothing has changed—a fact I’m made even more aware of now, as I step back onto the street and into the waiting arms of my old victims.
***
It wasn’t all that bad this time. Just a shove and a curse, a kick at my bruised legs, and I’m left to continue on my way, as if nothing happened.
Nothing out of the ordinary, the new routine.
A stray dog is following me, a small mutt with stiff ears and short legs. He often does. His name’s Buddy. I gave him the name and he seems to like it, wagging his tail and barking at me when I call him.
He dances around my feet, and I throw him a piece of bread I had in my pocket. He goes after it, all excited-like, and swallows it in one bite.
“I’ll getcha some dog chow,” I promise him. I often carry a bag of it around, in case I see him, but I forgot. “Next time.”
He comes back to me and whines, winding between my legs, almost throwing me down. I lean down to pat his head, and he follows me.
“Can’t take you home, Buddy,” I explain like every time, as if he’d understand. “I don’t have a home. Better find someone else.”
I leave him behind at the main street, a glance confirming he has stopped to sniff a trash container. I hurry on, the booze in my blood making me feel liquid. It makes me feel fucking warm and slow, though something’s pricking at me, like thorns under my skin, inside my chest.
Stopping outside Mike’s diner, I lean against the wall by the entrance, one boot propped up, the half-empty bottle hanging loosely from my hand, and try to focus.
My thoughts are hanging loose, strung together with anger and bitterness and a gut-wrenching sadness that I never talk about to anyone. Who would I talk to? My half-sister, Octavia who insists I can be saved? Merc, my half-brother who insists on checking on me?
Bullshit.
I’m not even sure what it is. The fact that Mom is dead? That dad killed her? That her body was left to rot in a shallow grave not far from where I lived all my life? That a second skeleton was found nearby, probably also done in by Dad’s mighty hand? The same hand that slapped me, punched me, wielded the belt that lashed me as I grew up?
That he later tried to kill me, too?