LJ Idol, Week 19
“So what about me?”
“What about you?”
“Don’t I get to see any of that?”
“Why? You didn’t do anything for it.”
“But neither did you.”
*****
It had been about five years since we last spoke. For that matter, it had been five years since we had even looked in each other’s direction. After that day, it was as if he was dead. I wondered, from time to time, if he saw me as being dead as well. I mention this only because I had been wondering for the past few days of how I would feel when I saw him again.
“Where are you going?” asked Ricky.
“Out,” I said. I zipped up the duffle bag, a recent purchase that still had that new-plastic smell to it.
Ricky didn’t so much as bat an eye at this response. Most likely he didn’t care, or if he did care he was maintaining his stereotypical emotionless teen force-field.
“When you come back home, do you think you can get some soda?” he asked. “We’re all out.”
“Sure,” I said, smiling. Okay, I thought, maybe he doesn’t suspect anything. “What kind do you want?”
“Whatever.” He then thought about that answer for a moment. “No, wait, nevermind. I want Sprite.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”
“See ya,” he said. The “ya” was barely audible, as if he cared so little about talking that his voice just dissipated into thin air by the end of the short monosyllabic word.
*****
So, I thought, this was it. It was quite a step up from the trailer home that we used to share for years. In fact, I tried to imagine how many trailers it would take to meet the approximate volume of the monstrous house that stood before me. I gave up after 10.
My father had always been a very modest man. This house was anything but modest. It was gaudy, if anything. Of course things were very different now than they used to be. Time was, my father probably could only afford to be modest.
He lived alone. I knew this because I had been coming out to watch over the house whenever I could. There were no visitors ever. He didn’t work. He lounged about in the house, assumedly, and occasionally stepped out - only returning with groceries or liquor bottles.
What now? Knocking on the door and being invited in was, always had been, out of the question. I reached into my black duffel bag and pulled out the ski mask. Sliding it onto my face, I wondered if the color of my eyes could give me away. The trick there, I figured, would be to not let him see his face up close.
Next, I pulled a gun from the bag. Was it loaded? I couldn’t remember what Danny said when he gave it to me. Either it was loaded or it wasn’t. It wasn’t exactly part of the plan to shoot anybody. It was for keeping up appearances; all part of the act.
I left the empty bag on the hill near the house and trudged towards the door, the gun in hand. I tried to concentrate on what I would say and do, but instead I was thinking about what I had succumbed to. The memories of poverty and pain still rung true, but not as bad as the stress of now having a son myself and despite working to death, not being able to make ends meet.
Meanwhile, there was my own father, sitting in a big house and probably watching one of those giant TVs. I imagined that he was sipping on scotch like it was water.
I raised my fist to knock on the door. No, no good. I wondered if there was any sort of security system on the house. Probably should have thought of that before, I considered. I hoped, with the faintest of prayers, that my father at least retained his stubborn distrust of authority figures.
“The police? They can’t protect us,” I could recall him saying time and time again. “We gotta protect ourselves.”
I took a step back and then put all his energy into one single kick. It landed just below the door knob with a series of cracks and snaps. The door was slightly ajar now, though parts of the locking mechanism were still preventing the door from being opened completely. One more kick completed the job, sending the door careening inwards, bouncing off a wall to the left.
“Surely you can afford a better door, old man,” I said out loud, though without the intent of having anyone else hear me.
Based on initial observations, there was no stirring from inside the house. I stepped through the open door cautiously and listened. There was some faint noise coming from another room. It sounded much like a television.
“H-hello?” A voice called out from another room. The voice, unmistakably my father’s, seemed to lack any of the confidence and gruffness that it carried years ago.
I said nothing, walking quickly towards the voice’s origin. There was a short hallway, lined with miscellaneous framed posters and tacky décor. This lead to a large living room where there was, in fact, a rather large television. There, in the middle of the room, was a rather plush recliner. Finally, off to the opposite side of the room near a bookshelf, was my father, fumbling with a handgun of his own.
We raised their guns simultaneously, pointing them at each other.
“What the hell do you want?” cried my father. His arm was shaking a little.
“Money,” I said, simply. I couldn’t help but notice how much he had aged in just five years.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, practically rolling his eyes. “What makes you think I have it?”
“Your TV, for one,” I said, nodding towards his large television, currently broadcasting a show in which a well-dressed man was smoking a cigarette while talking to a rather attractive woman wearing only lingerie. Part of me wondered if this was a porn film of some sort.
“You think I’m stupid, don’t you?” He coughed into the hand that wasn’t holding a gun. “I’ve seen someone lurking around my house. Leaving footprints on the hill out there. You trampled over my herb garden. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
“Money,” I said again, ignoring the fact that apparently I was an incompetent stalker.
“Yeah, well you’re a few years too late, asshole.”
“I want 50,000 dollars before I leave here. I know you have it.” So much for keeping my words short.
“Are you listening to me? I don’t have it. I’m running on empty, you stupid punk. A few years ago, maybe you could’ve scared me into giving you some money. I had it. Spent it. Wasted it, mostly. Shitty investments and what-not. Go home.”
“You’re lying,” I said, furiously. Surely, there was no chance that what he was saying was the truth. I took a step forward, an action that I came to regret as I took it. He had a gun pointed at me too, and it looked like he was more willing to use it than I was to use my own.
His finger pulled tight and there was a clip. There was no bang. There was no shot fired. There was nothing but the internal sound of my heart about to explode from the tension.
He tried to shoot me, I thought. My own father tried to shoot me. After everything I had endured and after everything I had been denied, he had still taken a shot at me.
I pulled the trigger on my gun. I wasn’t thinking about what would happen. I wasn’t thinking about whether or not it was loaded. I was only thinking about the seething anger that was coursing through my body.
There was a bang. There was a shot fired. There was a brief shout and then he was on the ground. There was blood.
“Y-you,” he said, gasping for breath. “You shot me! I-I told you…I don’t have…money.” He coughed again, this time it had a very ominous tone to it.
I took off my mask, realizing that it had been on this whole time. My father hadn’t tried to shoot me, he had tried to shoot the intruder in his house. This didn’t change my anger or hatred towards him, though I knew that some very small portion of my brain was trying to compute the odds of whether or not he would’ve shot me if he knew who I was.
“You…son of a bitch,” he said to me.
“Why couldn’t you just share?” I demanded. “You knew I was struggling. You were given some ridiculous sum of money for what was essentially a bullshit insurance case and then you bailed on me.”
“It was mine,” he sneered. “Hope you’re happy now, though.” He coughed again. It sounded worse. I could see that he was trying to move but couldn’t get his body to cooperate. “Looks like…I’ll be seeing….you…in Hell…someday.”
He started coughing again and I turned my back on him. I couldn’t face him anymore, both for who he was and what I had just done to him. The coughing had grown worse before, finally, stopping altogether. Then, just silence.
I thought about tearing the house apart. Would I find any money? Would I find much worth selling? There was the large television, but it was a half mile walk back to my car. Surely that would attract some attention.
“Well done,” a voice from behind me said. It was an eerily familiar voice, and when I turned around, there was Ricky.
“Son,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh please, like I didn’t know what you had been planning?”
“Now, hold on,” I started. “This…” I pointed to the lifeless body of my father - his grandfather, “…this wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Save it, Dad. You shot him dead so you could take his money. Then what? You were going to leave town and leave me behind? Just like he did to you?”
“Absolutely not,” I said. “I did this for you.”
He walked to the body and knelt down near it. I turned my back again, starting to walk through the room. Now I was thinking about what I needed to do to clean up this mess.
There was a clicking sound coming from behind me. I turned around, observing that Ricky had my father’s gun in his hand.
“Your father betrayed you, right?” he asked. “And so you will betray me. Except that that isn’t how this is going to work. I’m walking out of here alone with the money, Dad.”
“I don’t think there is any money here,” I said. I didn’t like how he had specifically said “alone.” “Not anymore.”
“Sorry,” he said. He pulled the trigger. This time, the gun fired. There was a bang, and suddenly I was on the ground. Suddenly, there was immense pain in my side. Everything else around me was a jumble of blurs now.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, echoing words I had heard not long before.
I decided that it might be best to close my eyes. Before I did, I thought about how nice it would be to be watching a large TV, sipping on some overpriced liquor. With Ricky at my side, looking as content as I was.