My short story "Kal's Very Bad Day". It's not permanent or anything like that. I mean, it's probably not edited as well as it should be but I just need to put it out here. In fact, I KNOW it's not edited as well as it should be (shame on the aspiring fictional author) but it has to leave my desktop and go out into internet land. Seriously, I needed to post this or I would have thrown up (though that's probably all the barbequed chicken I had for dinner...)
So here it is. Really.
Kal's Very Bad Day
Mom and Dad and your little brother. Family, but you don't have that anymore. Maybe you never really did. What you've got is a proficiency with weapons and machines, a whole bunch of tattoos that hurt like hell, and a screwed up childhood that sometimes even you can't believe you really went through. You're one of those kids.
But yeah. Here you are. Sitting on this stupid little bench in this stupid little park watching all these stupid little Earth kids and their parents having fun and shit. Laughing, playing, having picnics and enjoying each other's company. All you really wanted was to just have your lunch--stir fried Tamarian gillywens with croute sauce and tomatoes--in peace while you waited for your next job to start, but now you've got an eyeful of familial happiness and a lot of bad memories that you thought you'd gotten real good at pretending didn't exist.
Like that time when you ran away from your uncle's house. When you got tired of it all one night and decided that you weren't going to wake up and face the same hell you'd been going through for the last five years. You weren't going to be hit across the face with a leather thong, or have your step-aunt throwing hot grease on you when you slept in too late for her liking. You weren't going to keep picking scabs you got from the throny weeds you tore out the ground day in and day out on your uncle’s fennel farm until your palms got bloody. You weren't going to keep smelling the liquor on your uncle's breath as he held you in front of his face and warned you not mess up any of your chores. Then there was your cousins...your cousins and the horrible shit they did to you when the lights were out and the house was quiet. Yeah, you really got tired of that crap.
That's why you left. That's why you stole all your asshole uncle's earnings out his safe, picked the cooler of all its food, and ran through the grass and trees and sand until you finally managed to bribe your way onto a cargo ship that was headed straight for the Twelfth Planet. That's when shit started getting real hard, really real, but you knew that no matter what happened you would never, EVER, go back to that house again; to those people who were supposed to be your family but lacked that ability in every sense of the word.
Then there was that tenure with that crater face smuggler who was supposed to be a mentor to you, maybe a father-figure, but turned you into a servant instead. Him, that douche. The one who made you live with him in the hallowed out ship that he called a home, the one who made you hustle old power batteries in the worst parts of downtown, the one who ate the last scraps of food, then made you sit near his ass while he slept and farted in your face. Not to mention, there was the time he took you along with him to shake down that Azurian for cash. Remember that? That job where you had to hold down that man who owed him money while he gutted a hole in his stomach. How that poor bastard's blood splattered in your face, how you watched it pour out a fist sized hole along with his intestine, how you held your mouth shut until you were finally out of that Azurian’s pissy ass apartment, out of that bastard smuggler’s sight, where you then vomited your insides out and cried and cried as rain poured over your back and washed the puke away. Wanna know what was really fucked up about all that too? When you finally came back to that bastard he laughed and pointed to your shirt and asked, what's that? And before you could answer he knocked you to the floor and kicked and kicked you until you felt a rib crack, and then he just laughed as you laid there crying, and he said, Gotta learn to take the good with the bad, kid. Then he threw the credits you earned from the job on top of you, but took a few extra because you still had "expenses" you needed to pay off. Good with the bad your ass.
But you left him, right? Yeah, you left. You ran away from him like you ran away from your uncle’s place and then you got mixed up with some more shit that earned you some ugly scars that you could see on your body and feel inside your heart. That's when you got harder too, but then maybe you've always been hard. Maybe you've never really been a nice guy, maybe there's never been anything innocent about you--Mom, Dad, and Kaelo's deaths aside. Cause in truth you really can't remember what it was like to have them close to you, to have that family, so for all you know you've always been fucked up.
So you're back to the park now. Out your head and watching these fucking Earthling families having fun and shit. You watch as the fathers throw footballs to the sons, as the mothers brush the daughters’ hair and rub their faces into the curls. The fathers and sons go back to the blanket they've laid out in the grass when the game is done and the mother opens the basket she brought along and hands everybody sandwiches. They're smiling even through peanut butter and jelly, even when one of the littler kids spills some on their newly pressed shirts--and here’s where it gets really, REALLY fucked up-- the mother just smiles at the mess and laughs as she cleans them up. See that? They don't get beaten, they don't get humiliated, they don't get raped, they're still a family and not just when it suits them. You wonder where is the justice in the world.
But you can't eat anymore, no. No. You close your container of food and feel the dressing and sauces gurgle in your stomach. You feel that impulse to run away and throw up, to cry, to scream, but you fight it this time. You fight it because you're not some little kid anymore, scared, alone, and vulnerable. You know how to take care of yourself, how to get money, how to get food, and how to make sure nobody ever, EVER, treats you like you're less than human ever again. You can fight back, you can endure, and you can certainly sit in a crowded park on a summer’s day and watch the family that you know you’ll never have.
But yeah. Here you are. Sitting on this stupid little bench in this stupid little park watching all these stupid little Earth kids and their parents having fun and shit. Laughing, playing, having picnics and enjoying each other's company. All you really wanted was to just have your lunch--stir fried Tamarian gillywens with croute sauce and tomatoes--in peace while you waited for your next job to start, but now you've got an eyeful of familial happiness and a lot of bad memories that you thought you'd gotten real good at pretending didn't exist.
Like that time when you ran away from your uncle's house. When you got tired of it all one night and decided that you weren't going to wake up and face the same hell you'd been going through for the last five years. You weren't going to be hit across the face with a leather thong, or have your step-aunt throwing hot grease on you when you slept in too late for her liking. You weren't going to keep picking scabs you got from the throny weeds you tore out the ground day in and day out on your uncle’s fennel farm until your palms got bloody. You weren't going to keep smelling the liquor on your uncle's breath as he held you in front of his face and warned you not mess up any of your chores. Then there was your cousins...your cousins and the horrible shit they did to you when the lights were out and the house was quiet. Yeah, you really got tired of that crap.
That's why you left. That's why you stole all your asshole uncle's earnings out his safe, picked the cooler of all its food, and ran through the grass and trees and sand until you finally managed to bribe your way onto a cargo ship that was headed straight for the Twelfth Planet. That's when shit started getting real hard, really real, but you knew that no matter what happened you would never, EVER, go back to that house again; to those people who were supposed to be your family but lacked that ability in every sense of the word.
Then there was that tenure with that crater face smuggler who was supposed to be a mentor to you, maybe a father-figure, but turned you into a servant instead. Him, that douche. The one who made you live with him in the hallowed out ship that he called a home, the one who made you hustle old power batteries in the worst parts of downtown, the one who ate the last scraps of food, then made you sit near his ass while he slept and farted in your face. Not to mention, there was the time he took you along with him to shake down that Azurian for cash. Remember that? That job where you had to hold down that man who owed him money while he gutted a hole in his stomach. How that poor bastard's blood splattered in your face, how you watched it pour out a fist sized hole along with his intestine, how you held your mouth shut until you were finally out of that Azurian’s pissy ass apartment, out of that bastard smuggler’s sight, where you then vomited your insides out and cried and cried as rain poured over your back and washed the puke away. Wanna know what was really fucked up about all that too? When you finally came back to that bastard he laughed and pointed to your shirt and asked, what's that? And before you could answer he knocked you to the floor and kicked and kicked you until you felt a rib crack, and then he just laughed as you laid there crying, and he said, Gotta learn to take the good with the bad, kid. Then he threw the credits you earned from the job on top of you, but took a few extra because you still had "expenses" you needed to pay off. Good with the bad your ass.
But you left him, right? Yeah, you left. You ran away from him like you ran away from your uncle’s place and then you got mixed up with some more shit that earned you some ugly scars that you could see on your body and feel inside your heart. That's when you got harder too, but then maybe you've always been hard. Maybe you've never really been a nice guy, maybe there's never been anything innocent about you--Mom, Dad, and Kaelo's deaths aside. Cause in truth you really can't remember what it was like to have them close to you, to have that family, so for all you know you've always been fucked up.
So you're back to the park now. Out your head and watching these fucking Earthling families having fun and shit. You watch as the fathers throw footballs to the sons, as the mothers brush the daughters’ hair and rub their faces into the curls. The fathers and sons go back to the blanket they've laid out in the grass when the game is done and the mother opens the basket she brought along and hands everybody sandwiches. They're smiling even through peanut butter and jelly, even when one of the littler kids spills some on their newly pressed shirts--and here’s where it gets really, REALLY fucked up-- the mother just smiles at the mess and laughs as she cleans them up. See that? They don't get beaten, they don't get humiliated, they don't get raped, they're still a family and not just when it suits them. You wonder where is the justice in the world.
But you can't eat anymore, no. No. You close your container of food and feel the dressing and sauces gurgle in your stomach. You feel that impulse to run away and throw up, to cry, to scream, but you fight it this time. You fight it because you're not some little kid anymore, scared, alone, and vulnerable. You know how to take care of yourself, how to get money, how to get food, and how to make sure nobody ever, EVER, treats you like you're less than human ever again. You can fight back, you can endure, and you can certainly sit in a crowded park on a summer’s day and watch the family that you know you’ll never have.
Mmmhmm. There it is. Well, on a more positive note I'm actually kind of happy with this one if only for the fact that it's my first attempt at a full movement completely in second person. I think I did pretty good, but most likely I'll keep this here awhile and then post a more properly edited version. We'll see what happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment