Our Father (standard:drama, 2907 words)
Author: Calis	Added: Sep 13 2000	Views/Reads: 4533/2478	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
This is a story about two brothers and their abusive father and their lives after the father dies.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


Aimlessly I wander through the bleak and overcast daylight on the
streets that used to be so kind to me, when I was a boy of fifteen. 
Back then I used to walk a lot. I would go to the library and read 
books about distant lands. It was warm and safe there, and they let me 
stay in peace, as long as I kept reading. I used to spend hours there, 
reading, getting away from my problems. They would slowly carry me 
away, drunk with pleasure. 

I would also walk around rummaging through garbage of businesses such
Wells Fargo, Chevron and so many others, hoping to find something, 
anything I could sell for food and clothes. Books were good, but in 
order to read, ones eyes must function properly, and they tend not to 
do so when they have not been fed. 

Back then, I could walk well. That was before the nightly beatings, his
fists making pulp of my neck and back as I hugged the ground in a fetal 
position, the belt thrashing my back, the buckle every so often 
connecting with my spine, trying desperately to hold on, so as not to 
let him open me up and rip my beating heart from my chest. Back then, I 
could still walk well. Now I painfully wander, thinking how my life 
could be different if only that man had never entered into my 
existence. 

The government had taken everything away from me, after that hated man
had died, when they took Sam. They told us that we would be able to 
write, that we could see each other sometimes, like on holidays or 
other special occasions and that our new parents would be kind and 
loving, not like the man that had chained me to a fence in our backyard 
for twenty-seven straight hours without food or water. But they were 
wrong, they were all wrong. After the funeral I never saw Sam again. 
His "parents" had moved him away, to Omaha I think. They wouldn't give 
me his address. 

I used to love the Marina. Its shops used to welcome me and now all the
owners scowl as I limp by. Now, as I walk down its dirty alleys and 
streets I feel its rejection of me. People throwing water out of their 
shops, brooms sweeping dust onto my cloths, feces of pets or dead 
animals cling to my coat as I walk down Stockton St. Every day it is 
worse, the chill from the water comes close to killing me every night. 
My life has never been grand, but now it is a constant struggle to stay 
alive, not even to stay well, but alive. 

Slowly I wait, watching, watching, and waiting for the Atman Security
guard to leave. He stands there, like Saint Peter, guarding the gates 
of heaven. I wait for the hated man, who keeps me from my precious 
goal, to move. The food that I need to stay alive is so close, and yet, 
they keep it from me. They guard the only thing that can keep me alive. 
They keep it from me, the only person who truly needs it. I may not 
survive the night if I cannot get some food. I can already feel my 
muscles and bones locking up, cannibalizing themselves so that the 
heart may continue to beat. Yet, in order for my heart to continue on 
with its innumerable struggles, my legs must move, must go forwards, 
for if they do not consume the energy that they do not have, then I 
will surely die tonight, right here, where I stand now. 

Finally he moves on and I move in for the kill. The food, however rotten
or decayed, is the only way that I can survive. I am too disgusting to 
give money to. I am only a nuisance for women who park their new 
Mercedes near me and then lift their noses as they walk by. I am not as 
young or as nimble as I used to be. I cannot steal from stores anymore, 
so here I am and every agonizing day I wake up on that bench is one day 
closer to death. 

I can smell the food now. The stench of flesh in its final demise,
ground beef that has not been beef for years. I smell some cheese, its 
odor ripe and pungent. All of this lies in wait for me. It is the best 
feeling that I have felt in years. I am overcome with ecstasy. My body 
shakes in anticipation of the sustenance it has been deprived of for 
many days and is about to receive. The air is filled with the aroma of 
the meats and produce that have been discarded by the Safeway. 

"Hey you! Down there, what are you doing?" 

I look up in surprise as I see a large, heavyset man with a bright
Mag-light looking down upon me. I had seen him leave, and now he is 
here again. He repeats his question, but with more force this time. I 
can see the hate that seems to gather in the bags that have formed 
under his eyes. I know he thinks that if I was not here, maybe he could 
get some sleep, that he wouldn't have to work the night shift, but he 
does not seem to understand that the hate he feels, I suddenly feel as 
well. I snap. The tension is too great for me to bear. I feel the blood 
rush to my head, the adrenaline pumping through my veins. My rage has 
consumed my heart and soul and yet I can only stand in place, 
dumbfounded. My legs refuse to move a centimeter from their place. 

The large man, in a motion of sudden fluidity, jumps down from his perch
and says to me, "So you're the guy that has been stealing from us all 
these years?" I can only stare at him, as I am still wondering where my 
plan to get my food went awry. 

"Well, I'll teach you to steal from me!" I barely hear his threat when
his first of many baton strikes crushes my left knee and as I look up 
at his face before my eyes go black, I see the face of that hated man 
who had died years before. 

Slowly, painfully, Sam removes the chain from my wrists and feet. The
blood has coagulated to form its own bond with the chain that has kept 
me up here for a countless period of time. Each centimeter of blood 
detached means one more ripping sensation and one less to go through 
until I can finally feel the ground again. Just as the right hand is 
freed, the darkness comes to gather me. 

"SAM. Where the fuck are you?" 

I awaken to the tremors of Sam's shivering body as it presses close to
mine. Surprised, I realized I am no longer chained to the fence. 

"SAM. You'd better not be out there with your brother! You know why he
is being punished." 

I can almost smell the Vodka on his breath, even though I know he was
still in the house. 

Sam says nothing. He just lies there, beside me shaking uncontrollably.
He loves our father, but even he knows what Satan is capable of. 

"SAM. If I have to come out there you're going to be up on that fence
too!" 

Then I saw the face of the demon himself. His eyes glowed with an
internal blaze through the window. They widened as he saw the scene 
before him. Sam, on the ground, lying on my arm, waiting for something, 
we didn't know quite what. Then, the door came off its hinges as our 
father launched himself into the backyard. Again, the darkness comes to 
me. 

I can see Sam's face, bowed next to mine. He is so young, he should not
be here. This could surely kill him. This fence was made for only me. 

Last night is all a blurry haze to me. The pain still lingers throughout
my body. I vaguely remember pulling myself back those agonizing three 
blocks to my bench in the park with only my hands, leaving the river 
Ganges in blood behind me. It all seems so distant now as if it had 
happened while I was in Tibet studying Buddhism with the Dahli Lama. It 
was all just a horrible nightmare. I would believe this except I still 
have Arabian horses that run races up and down my spine and throughout 
my limbs. I can no longer feel my legs, since they have been crushed to 
uselessness. I can feel each pulse of my heart as it circulates through 
my body. Each nerve ending is standing on its end. Each cell screams 
out for release, and now it begins to rain. 

Through my eyes that had clouded over like a Florida sky during
hurricane season, I see a man just standing there, in the rain. The 
cold rain still hits my frozen body, and yet, now it does not matter. I 
see him, just standing there in the rain. 

"Sam?" 

The man turned around swiftly as if someone had hit him from behind, his
raincoat flinging water in a one hundred and eighty-degree arc. 

"Sam, don't you recognize me?" He just stared blankly at my face. Then I
saw. I saw him remember me from a far, long dead past. The playground, 
Town School for Boys, the home we both endured, and then, finally the 
death of our father. I saw in his face, all the pain that he had been 
neglecting for so many years come rushing back to his heart. He knelt 
down and looked straight into my eyes. I see waves of emotion wash over 
him, and finally, after so many years, Sam puts his face in his hands, 
and cried. "I'm so sorry. He put me up there alongside you. He did it, 
not you. After I took you down, he put me up. It wasn't your fault. God 
no, please no. Please. Please. You can't leave, not after I've found 
you. I spent my whole life blaming you. Please God don't go." 

I feel something stir deep inside my cavernous chest. I begin to feel a
tingling sensation all over my body. Little fairies dancing on what is 
left of my legs, then, they move higher, continuing on their course. 
They envelop my arms, my chest, and then my head. I can imagine that it 
feels like I have just returned home from a long walk around Central 
Park in the middle of a New York City winter, and upon returning home, 
my body begins to thaw as the hot chocolate melts its way to my 
stomach. But something peculiar is happening. I am starting to rise, 
hovering just above my body like Harrier launching from the USS 
Missouri. 

I can see Sam. His head is buried deep inside his hands, mourning my
passing and the passing of our father. I feel like a billowing white 
cloud, drifting in the sky, regarding the scene below. And yet when I 
see Sam lying on the ground immersed in his world of hurt, again, like 
I had at our father's funeral, I feel a longing to help him. But again, 
I can do nothing. The physical world divides us. Now I have to deal 
with my own pain, the pain I, like Sam, have been holding in throughout 
my tormented life. Maybe if I had been able to let go, to forgive my 
father, to let him know in some way, that I knew it was the bottle and 
not he who didn't love me. I finally knew. After all these years of 
denial and self-doubt I knew. It was the extra dry martinis, the Jack 
Daniels, the vodka, the rum, the beer, the wine, and the Jose Cuervo 
tequila that hurt me. It was the bottle that left me bruised day after 
day, that tried to break my neck into several tiny pieces when I was in 
second grade. He had his own demons to bear, and maybe, if I had let my 
pain rush out of my soul like the blood from my wounded legs, I would 
have been able to live a life of peace instead of the angered marred 
existence that is now gone and past. 


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