An afternoon of peace had fallen away, and now all that had been left was the unrelenting dark with a barely visible moon. Ava and I had spent the rest of the day doing whatever interested her, whatever would make her smile. It had almost seemed as though I wanted to keep her out as late as possible. It had been so obvious, yet my own mind had wanted to delay the inevitable - acting as though this had been the end of our road. Had I thought the same? Probably.
What Ava hadn't known, was that I had come from a long line of fuck-ups. Mothers raising kids without fathers, deadbeat after deadbeat, and I think a serial killer had been involved somewhere along the line. I mean, it said it all when I heard that my mother had gotten pregnant at fourteen. Surprisingly, my father had stayed. Long enough for him to instill some form of morals, at least. Yet, he had still left when he had gotten himself in trouble. Saving himself, and only himself.
"If you really don't want me to meet them, I wont." Ava said, as we stopped at the faintly lit walkway of my parents house. "After thinking about it, forcing this seems kind of unfair."
"...Your choice." my hair curtained my eyes from the sight of a nightmarish home. "You aren't going to stop until you see for yourself. Probably."
Ava began to take small steps forward.
Why had this feeling returned? Why had it felt as though someone ripped out my intestines, flipped them inside out, and then put them back in? Why had I wanted to pull Ava away from my home, and why had she been so insistent on meeting them? Honestly, blaming her would have been impossible. I had understood that she wanted to see what I had come from, and who I had been on a deeper level - yet this had been a hell that I wanted to keep her away from.
It had been the place that began my destruction, and I didn't want the same for her. I had told her that they were toxic, and that she had been better not knowing them. Had she not believed me, had she thought I was making excuses? Instead of being behind my feelings, Ava had jumped over me. Deciding that she had been ready to move forward with or without me, yet slow enough to follow if I had changed my mind.
Walking through the door, the both of us had been greeted to the eloquent beauty that could only be called a beer gut. My step-father, Rob, had sat on the couch in nothing more than boxers and a shirt two sizes too small. Momentarily, Rob took his eyes off of the television to look at Ava and then me before they went back to the screen which had appeared to be broadcasting some baseball game.
"You brought some tail home, eh? That's a rare sight." he spoke. "What's your name, Barbie?"
"Ava." she sat down near the middle of the couch, her eyes catching the screen of the TV. "Are you a Dodgers fan? They sucked last season, and I haven't really been able to watch much this season."
As though to mock me, he turned his head and smiled, nodding his head. However, his eyes darted up to mine. I had seen that look from him before, back when my mom had given a shit about herself and he hadn't leeched her dry. It had been an evil look, like a predator preparing to eat the feast it had created. My blood had begun to heat, verging on a slight boil. Had he really intended to show me that face, or had he just let it slip? Rather, had it meant anything at all? Was I looking too far into nothing?
No. I had known the type of man he was, yet Ava wouldn't have forgiven me if I had done something uncalled for. Instead, I stood there looking at her - feeling something of a distance grow at that moment. She was being tugged away from me, pulled into the mist that was my hell. What should I have done? What could I have done to stop all of this? I did nothing. I could do nothing but watch. Ava looked at me and smiled, oblivious to who she had been sitting next to.
"Hey, boy. Instead of standing there like a fuckin' oaf, why don't you fetch us some beers and watch the game with us?" Rob ordered. "Grab the Vodka, too."
Heading to the kitchen, I opened the first cupboard to my left and pulled out three shot glasses and the Vodka from the shelf underneath them. Then it was the freezer, where I pulled out the nearly-full Vodka bottle. As I continued to gather the other stuff, I began to feel like I was suffocating, like there was weight building on top of my shoulders. What had this feeling been? Rob hadn't been shitfaced, and was acting somewhat normal - comparatively speaking, at least.
****
A few hours and a good bit of alcohol later, the game had went in to extra innings and had taken the clock to near midnight before it had finished. Rob still hadn't been completely obliterated, and there had still been no sign of my mother. However, the most important thing had been that Ava was laughing and had seemed to avoided what I hadn't wanted her to see. It had been a good time. Sports, beer, and some leftover food that I had heated up during the game had rested on the table.
"That reminds me!" Rob laughed. "This boy probably hasn't told you, has he? I ain't his real father."
Ava smiled, turning her head to look at me. This had been just a small piece of what I had feared she would hear. My past, my father, and even my mother. The people I had known, the people I had loved, and the people who had disappeared from my life. While my mother had known them all, Rob had known only a few and had only known part of my own story. Yet, he had seemed so ready to spit it out for anyone who would listen. He had known nothing of me, nothing of my father. He knew only what he had seen of me and of my dried up, used mother.
This is what Ava shouldn't have heard, this is what Ava should have avoided.
This is what Ava had caused.
"Yeah, yeah! His dad was a criminal, he worked with some crime group named Goliath." Rob spouted like rotted hose. "I was good friends with him back in high school, but we just kinda' stopped talking in college, like he was better than me or somethin'."
"...No way." Ava looked away from Rob, and down to the ground. "I don't thi-"
"Aiden is jus' like his father in that way." Rob interrupted. "He is a total fuckup. He can't be helped. Ya' shouldn't be with a loser like him."
Why had I been surrounded by this? Why hadn't I stayed away from this hellish home in the first place? The only things this home had done were kill my first love and then followed that up with the destruction of any decency I had in me. This had been the home that taught me of survival of the fittest, that the weak only had things taken from them while the strong continued to grow richer - and happier.
It had finally come. Everything I had wanted to avoid had just been said in two single sentences. "Tell me, Rob...If I'm a fuckup, then what does that make inbred trash like yourself?"
If Ava had heard all of that, then what had been the harm in going all the way? Had I been willing to look worse in her eyes, worse than I had already looked? Hadn't I already been the gum that was stuck to the bottom of her shoe, that problem she would eventually forget about? It had been at this moment that I made a final decision, a decision that would benefit everyone without hurting anyone at all. Except myself.
"Speak up, boy." Rob sat straight. "Ya' got somethin' to say, say it to my face. We ain't got time for no games 'round here."
Standing up, I approached Rob and ripped him up by the collar of his shirt. With what had seemed to take all of my strength, I threw Rob into the wall, causing him to hit and topple the flat-screen television onto its face. As though a cannon had been launched, my right fist had flown towards Rob, until it had smashed through the wall - just to the right of his head.
As my hair curtained my eyes, my left hand caught his throat and clenched it. "Loud enough, you fucking hick?"
With my clenched hand still around his throat, I pulled his head away from the wall and smashed it into the wall again, creating another dent next to the hole my fist had created. Black and red had been the only colors I saw at that moment, colors that had made my intent all too obvious. I had been ready that night, ready for anything - ready to do anything. Even if it had meant losing everything all over again...
"I swear, I'm not afraid to fucking gut you." I hissed into his ear, loosening my grip on his throat. "Then I'll send them to the kids you left behind for child support, yeah? You call me a fucking loser, yet you ditched the woman you got pregnant for some dried up hag? Eat shit, hypocrite."
Instead of throwing him into the wall again, I tossed him into and through the coffee table - shattering and spitting out glass in every direction. Why hadn't he fought back? Had it been the shock of a teenager with killing intent, or had it been that he just had no fight left in him? Had this been what he had wanted, for someone to kill him? Had he wanted to be put out of his everyday misery?
"You aren't afraid to talk shit about me, and how I'm so damn similar to my piece of shit dad, are you? Let's see how you feel when I tell the hag you are a fucking pedophile, yeah?!" I threw a foot into his gut, only to hear a thud hit the ground.
Turning to see what the thud had been, I had seen Ava directly behind me on the ground. My guess had been that she had tried to stop me from doing what I had been planning to do, yet she had lost the battle of strength. My rational thought had slowly been deteriorating, and had now left me in a haze of bloodlust and anger. Aimed at the piece of lard that had lied on the floor.
"Stop looking at me like a sad fucking puppy." I glared at Ava through my hair, hissing out the purest of venom with every word. "You do realize this is your fault, right?"
Stepping back over to Rob, I lifted my shoe and slammed it back down onto his face. As the pleasurable sound of cracking ran through my ears, I had also caught another sound - the cocking of a shotgun. Immediately, I had known who it was. It hadn't been Ava, nor had it been some overprotective neighbor. It had been my mother who was aiming a shotgun at my back. My very own hag of a mother.
"You're going to choose that pedo over your own son?" I slowly turned to see my mother aiming a barrel at me. "You really have nothing left in you, do you?"
"I have plenty left, plenty." she replied, looking at the injured lard on the floor. "Please, Aiden. I don't want to shoot my own son, especially in front of this girl, and I sure as hell don't want to shoot somebody if I don't have to. Please don't make me do this."
I brushed my hair over my head, proving I had at least somewhat calmed myself. "Answer the question."
Hesitantly, she lowered the gun and looked at me. As though her eyes said a million words, I had known the answer before she had opened her mouth. Anyone who had known her could have read that expression from a mile away. It had been disappointment, an expression I had been familiar with - even as a child. Ever since my father had left, I had brought nothing but trouble to her. That had always been her default look towards me, disappointment. I knew that all too well, I had been a constant failure. I had always underachieved, I had always made the wrong choice.
"You haven't been my son since she died." my mother answered brutally. "She stole you away from me, permanently. She stole you away from everyone, permanently. Your girlfriend here, she'll never know what you were like before she died. She'll never know the Aiden that always smiled for no reason at all, she'll never know the Aiden that had ambition and knew his future.
She'll never know an Aiden that isn't dead inside."
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