pens and paper- chapter 1

Damn it was cold. I never understood English weather, the day summer was announced over by some weather reporter on TV, Jack frost would have a field day ruining people’s lives by giving them pneumonia, ignoring the five layers of thick clothing coating their bodies. I paced quickly down the dimly lit streets as the sun disappeared behind the townhouses that infested the city, turning the corner I found what I was looking for. “Hello dad.” I said with as much coldness as l could muster into two words. The slouched mound of clothes leaning against a dumpster shuffled at the sound of my voice.

A pale, sagging face peered out from under the collar of a dirty brown over coat up at me, blood shocked eyes scanning me up and down. “What do you want?” he croaked out, lifting a shaking hand up to his chapped lips and taking a swig of whatever cheap alcohol he had managed to scrape up the money for. “mum wants you to come home.” I said through gritted teeth, cursing her for making me do this. He glared up at me with a smug grin, showing off his crooked sickly yellow teeth. “Does she now? And how do you feel about that?” I felt my nails cutting into the palms of my hands as I clenched them into fists, “I feel like you should never show your fucking face in the house again, I feel like you were never part of this family and you never will be. I feel like you made this family what it is and that you should be the one with cancer, not mom! You should be the one that is dying and in pain! That’s what I feel.” 

His red-rimmed eyes bulged out of his head and the vein in his forehead pulsed violently. “How fucking dare you!” he sneered, standing up slowly, bones creaking. “You should feel grateful, I have done so much for this family and you! I pay the bills, I am the reason there is food on your plate, I am the reason you have clothes on that ungrateful little back of yours! That is all me!” his slouched figure towered over me, his face centimetres from mine the strong smell of alcohol making my eyes water. Warm liquid was starting to trickle down my palms as my hands clenched tighter, I laughed at his words, a genuine laugh that exploded out of me after years of holding in. “You provide for us? Ha ha. No, I am the one who works until 3 am at bars, I am the one who has to miss school to make extra pounds when you decide that you need a little extra to drink that day. Or when you feel like you need more smokes, I am the one who takes care of Charlie, you remember Charlie right? Your four-year-old son, yeah him, I am the one who keeps him out of the foster system. Oh, and who takes care of mum? Me. All me. Don’t try to be a fucking hero.”

Once my sudden surge of confidence was over I knew that when we got home later I was going to have more bruises to add to my collection but I didn’t care right now, later seemed so far away. And so, I turned and walked away, hoping he wouldn’t follow, but knowing he would.

I opened the front door and immediately sprinted down the corridor, up the stairs and into my room, locking the door. Thank god for locks I thought as I leaned against my door, panting. My room was small but cosy, on the far side I had my single bed unmade and coated with school books and clothes. Like I said, I am well practised at not sleeping for days, I was up to 3 days and didn’t need to use it, so it had become some sort of makeshift storage facility. On the right side of my room there was a desk which was playing reverse rolls to the bed and was pretty much empty apart from a few pens. On the left side was a small crammed wardrobe, the reason for the storage facility. The only other object in my room, which I had decided to put directly in the middle was my book case, it held the only thing that let me escape in the brief moments I had to myself, books. Hundreds and hundreds of them, stacked upon one another.

 I recalled a moment from a year ago, staring at my bookcase, when mum and dad had been arguing straight for a week and dad had been taking it out on me and Charlie, bruises had blotched our skin from head to toe. Darrel, my older brother had stormed out and no one knew where he was or what he was doing, and mums cancer had taken a toll on her. I had locked me and Charlie in my room with a few day’s worth of food and two litres of water. My insomnia was the worst it had ever been, the thought of sleep had me shaking. It was one in the morning and Charlie was curled up in my bed, asleep, breathing slow and calm. I had been sitting at my desk reading a book called Nod by Adrian Barnes, ironically it was about a world without sleep. I had started to see a lot of similarities between the characters and my family and that scared and intrigued me.

My father was Charles, after the insomnia started, of course: crazy and delusional, convinced he was in the right, convinced he was helping and angry when people told him otherwise. My mother was Tanya, in the beginning when everything was normal was her own person, stubborn and resilient; but after the insomnia started, in her case cancer, she became lost, willing to believe the craziest things just to have a leader, some form of order. In this case Charles or my father. Darrel was a sleeper, willing to leave this world and go his own way into the golden dream, basically just doesn’t give a shit about anyone or what he does illegal or not, he has completely given up. Charlie was Zoë, silent and strangely calm throughout the havoc. And I? Well I was Paul. Standing on the side lines watching society tearing apart the world one shred at a time, trying my best to help but knowing fully well I can’t save anyone, not even myself. But too full of hope to let go.

 It was at this point that the tears had started rolling down my pale cheeks as I looked up from my book and stared at Charlie’s calm, innocent sleeping figure, knowing I wouldn’t be able to save him. My memory was interrupted by the sound of the front door slamming and the gruff voice of my dad shouting up the stairs, “you are going to pay for this you little shit! How dare you think you can speak to me like I am below you, like I am below this family!” All the adrenaline had now left my body and I was quaking in my boots, I wanted to slap myself for actually thinking I could prove him wrong or change him by screaming at him in the middle of the street in his half drunken state. I could not hide from this. So, I slide to the ground my back still pressed against the door and waited for him to get the screwdriver to let himself in.