RAGE (8 page)

“Well, what is it?” Travis asked, spitting on the back of my neck as he spoke. “Shouldn’t be any trouble at all for a smartass like you to figure out what it is.”

I couldn’t be sure. It was cold. It felt rather small and left me with only one guess.

“A gun?”

He laughed.

“See? He isn’t a lost cause,” Dale said. He then lifted his leg and farted loudly.

Mike laughed and said, “Some asshole’s talking shit.”

Through laughter of his own, Dale said, “Yeah and his breath stinks.”

The two of them laughed until tears came to their eyes. Their heads were thrown back and their eyes squeezed shut, tears rolling down their cheeks. There was knee slapping and foot stomping.

Mike could barely breathe now, he was laughing so hard. But he managed to say, “That sounded like shit, Dale.”

Dale was laughing so hard he was close to sliding out of the chair and onto the floor. I was only thirteen and even I had never seen anyone laugh this hard at a fart joke. And they called me stupid.

Travis, feeling like he was losing his audience, thought of a way to regain their attention.

To me, he said, “Well, you know so damn much. You know what size bullet this gun takes?”

I had no idea. I knew nothing about guns.

“No.”

“See, boys? He don’t know much.”

Still facing Dale and Mike, I watched them try to regain their composure. Being drunk and stupid, it wasn’t easy for them.

Travis saw he once again had their attention. He was on.

“This here is a bullet big enough to splatter what little brains you have in that head of yours all over this room, ruining your Momma’s stuff.”

Mike chuckled.

“Is that what you want me to do? Splatter your brains across the room?”

When I didn’t immediately answer, he took his left hand off my shoulder and slapped me in the face. It wasn’t nearly as hard as he’d hit me before, but it stung. And it was embarrassing.

“No,” I said firmly.

Mike and Dale both issued ‘oohs’ at my tone. Their eyes were wide and they looked quickly at each other and back to us.

Travis, unsure of what to do now, stumbled for words for a second. I knew he didn’t want to look bad in front of his ignorant friends.

“Is that so? You think you can talk to me like that? I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but let me tell you, you ain’t shit.” He leaned down closer to my ear and talked louder. “You’re just a wad of your daddy’s cum that your momma should’ve spit out. You’re good for nothing and you never will be. You won’t amount to shit. You won’t be shit. You’ve been nothing but a thorn in my side since the day I met your mother.”

He didn’t leave me, but he turned his attention to his audience, who sat staring at us.

“Did you boys know that numb nuts here is the reason his momma has to work all the time?”

“That’s not true,” I said. This wasn’t the first time he’d said it. It was as untrue now as it was all the other times he’d said it. I was tired of hearing it.

I watched as Dale’s and Mike’s eyes got even wider. Dale, whose face had turned a bright red, had a beer bottle brought up to his mouth, but was too shocked to take it the next couple inches and drink. Guess this was better than television for him. I watched the color leave his face as he watched the scene unfold before him.

“What’d you say, shit lips?” Travis asked, thumping the side of my head with the pistol, causing me to tremble.

“I said it’s not true. I’m not the reason she has to work all the time.” I’d put extra emphasis on ‘I’m’. I wasn’t sure he was smart enough to get it. But when he tackled me from behind and threw me to the floor, I was certain that he had.

“You little son of a bitch,” he said through clenched teeth.

He knocked me forward and fell on top of me as I fell onto the coffee table. I watched as all the circles that scarred its top from years of wet beer bottles sitting on it came toward me. I tried to brace myself but had little time.

I saw Dale jerk his feet back to get out of our way.

In my peripheral vision, I saw Mike lean forward on the couch, perching now on the edge to get a better view.

The coffee table broke. It was old and shabby anyway, and even in its prime wasn’t built to hold both Travis and me. So I now lay sandwiched between the broken table and Travis.

I felt Travis push himself up to a kneeling position. He grabbed me and flipped me over. I now lay there, staring up at him, trying to catch the breath that had been knocked out of me in the fall. Well, the fall hadn’t done it but the sudden stop at the end of the fall had. When I finally managed to suck in some air, my left side hurt terribly.

“You think you’re so fucking smart, don’t you?” Travis asked, sitting on me now.

I didn’t answer.

“Little prick. I told your momma we should send you somewhere, but she wouldn’t listen. When she gets home and sees this mess, she’ll listen. When I tell her how you talked back to me and tried to make a fool of me in front of my friends, she’ll listen. Then, your ass will be gone.”

He smiled.

Ignoring the pain in my side, I said, “No, I won’t.”

He slapped me. It very well may have been the hardest slap he’d ever given me. His right hand connected solidly with my left cheek and slung my head to the right, where I could see Mike sitting forward on the couch with his jaw hanging open, eyes wide. I watched him for a second, waiting for him to jump in and stop this madness. But he didn’t.

Then, Travis used his left hand to grab my jaw, squeezing it tightly enough to cause me pain, and turned my head back so I was facing straight up, toward him. Still squeezing my jaw, he leaned over and picked up the pistol off the floor. In an effort to relieve the pain in my jaw, I grabbed his hand with both of mine and tried to pull it away. It was no use. If anything, he squeezed harder.

He held the pistol firmly in his right hand. He aimed it between my eyes, placing the end of the barrel against my forehead, between my eyebrows, and he smiled.

I tried to tell him to get off me, but with him squeezing my jaw, it came out as garbled noise.

“I’m sick of you. I think it’s time you went to be with your daddy.” He chuckled.

I put my hands on his chest and tried to push him off me. The pain in my side intensified when I moved, but I had to try. It was like pushing against a stone wall. I’d never thought Travis was a big man. I mean, he was probably a couple inches over six feet tall, but I’d never saw him as muscular. But he was stronger than I’d thought. I couldn’t budge him at all.

Then I saw the muscles in his right arm tense. I brought my focus from his face with the scraggly beard, to his arm with the bulging veins, and down to his finger with the nails bitten too far back and the crooked letter tattoo, which was tight on the trigger.

In the background, I saw him smile. In the foreground, I watched as he squeezed the trigger.

I held my breath for the second it took me to realize I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t even shot.

Then I heard Dale say, “Holy shit, Travis. What the hell are you doing?”

Mike said, “I can’t be around this shit, man. I just got out of the joint.”

There was a level of fear in both of their voices, but I bet it wasn’t the same level of fear I was experiencing.

Travis laughed and said, “Calm down, you pussies.It’s not loaded.” He pulled out the clip, loaded it with bullets from his pocket, and then slid the clip back into the handle of the pistol.

While he did that, I tried to figure out if I’d wet my pants or just had a close call, but the adrenaline coursing through my veins made it impossible to focus.

Travis looked at me. “It’s loaded now. All I have to do is pull this trigger and you’ll be nothing more than a stain on the carpet. You want to smart mouth me again?”

I shook my head no.

“That’s what I thought. You’re not as tough as you want to be, hero. Remember that,” he said as he got off me. “Now get the fuck out of here. I’m tired of looking at you.”

I struggled to get up. The pain in my side was a sharp, stabbing pain. It didn’t hurt to breathe so much, but if I tried to take a deep breath, I couldn’t. At least not without wanting to scream.

Just as I stood, Travis put his foot on my ass and shoved, sending me tumbling back to the floor. The pain in my side intensified and I shrieked.

Travis said, “Oh hell. That didn’t hurt. Quit being a pussy and get your ass to your room before I give you something to whine about.”

Slowly and painfully, I managed to get myself up from the floor and the pile of broken wood. I heard their laughter behind me as I made my way to my room. Leaning against the wall in the hallway, I walked slower than I would’ve liked and held my side. I went into the bedroom, closed the door, and managed to get into bed, not even caring that the spring was poking me. I wanted to sleep more than anything. I wanted to wake in the morning and find that this was all a nightmare. But I knew that in the morning, things would still be as horrible as they were every other day of my life. It was a nightmare, but it was one that I lived constantly. There would be no waking up from it.

I lay there crying for a long time, wondering what would’ve happened if he’d killed me. Dave and Mike would’ve surely covered up for him. No telling what he would’ve told my mother, and she would’ve probably believed him. She always did. And the worst part was that no one would’ve missed me. Except maybe Carly. And she would’ve forgotten about me in a short time. After all, I wasn’t memorable in any way. Plus, we weren’t even going out.

Then, I remembered that I was going to ask her to the dance. I stopped crying and thought about that for a few minutes. If I was going to be any good whatsoever at the dance, I couldn’t have this pain in my side.

I got up and crept down the hallway toward the living room, which was now quiet. I peeked around the corner and saw Travis passed out on the couch alone. Dale and Mike were gone, though the evidence of them having been there was everywhere.

I continued on into the kitchen where my mother kept her Tylenol. I didn’t want to flip the bottle over and let the pills rattle around, so I stuck my finger inside and pulled out two pills. I quietly ran a glass of water to wash them down. As I crept back to my room, I passed the couch and heard Travis move.

Heart racing, I froze. I waited for him to settle down, eyes squeezed shut, praying that he couldn’t hear the beating of my heart. When I heard nothing else, I looked over at him and saw his mouth fall open as he began to snore.

As I looked away, I saw the pistol lying on the floor beside him. I looked back at Travis, and then at the pistol again. Before I even realized I was doing it, I was inching my way toward the pistol.

I asked myself what I was doing. I knew nothing about guns, and had no idea what I was going to do with this one once I had it in my hands, but I knew I had to get it. I’d worry about the rest later. And even as I inched my way toward the gun, careful to not wake Travis, I knew that part of worrying about it later would be dealing with Travis when he realized his gun was missing.

But that was later. This was now.

My heart was racing wildly as I slowly bent over and reached for the pistol. A sharp, stabbing pain shot through my side, making me draw in a gasp of air.

I froze, bent at the waist, and looked quickly to Travis, who didn’t seem to have heard me.

Using my left hand to clutch at my side, I squeezed a little to relieve the pain. It didn’t make sense that it would work that way, but it did.

It felt like he’d cracked a rib earlier when he’d crushed me between himself and the coffee table. I would probably have to go to the doctor. I didn’t know how they took care of things like this. I’d never had a broken bone, amazingly. But there had been many times when I was sure I had one. Maybe this would be one of those times. Maybe I’d wake up tomorrow or Monday morning and just be sore.

I clutched my side and bent over farther, stretching out my arm until I could feel the cold steel of the pistol, the same cold steel that had been pressed against my temple earlier.

I glanced at Travis, and then back to the gun.

Curling my fingers around the handle, I picked it up. It was heavier than I thought it’d be. I slowly lifted it off the floor, glancing at Travis to make sure he was still passed out. I shuddered to think of what would happen if he were to wake up right now and catch me with the gun.

Satisfied that he was out cold, I clutched the pistol to my chest, careful to avoid the trigger. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d said. It was ready. All you had to do now was pull the trigger.

I tiptoed backward away from the couch and quietly made my way down the hall, still holding my side. Once in my room, I looked around for a place to hide the gun. I still wasn’t sure why I had even taken it, but now that I had it, I had to hide it.

The safest place I could see to hide the gun was between my mattresses. So I went to the far side of my bed and lifted the mattress enough to slide in the pistol. If I had needed to lift it any higher, I wouldn’t have been able to. It hurt my side just to lift it what little I had.

Satisfied that the gun would be safe, I got back in bed and curled up on my good side. I hoped the pain would be gone by morning, but I doubted it would be. It was too sharp a pain to disappear so quickly.

I fell asleep wondering what I was going to do with the pistol, and I woke to the sound of Travis yelling in the living room.