Behind Drawn Curtains

Chapter 14

Every step that brought me closer to home felt difficult to take. It was like my feet was made of lead and a ball was iron was in my stomach. I knew I had to get home, the sun was already setting, but I didn’t want to face what was happening with my life. I could not bear the idea of everything falling apart and me being left alone in a house with James.

People always say that sharing a secret and all your troubles with someone would miraculously make you feel lighter. But you don’t. Those people do not know what they are talking about. It makes you feel heavier, because you await a police car outside your home. You are waiting for everything to unravel before you. You are waiting for your world to fall apart and you think you might end up in the foster system, because it is very obvious that your mother doesn’t really want you, and your stepfather wants you too much. Then you get home and you see from three houses away that there is not superman waiting, no police car in the driveway, nobody to make your life fall apart, but also nobody that even wants to attempt to fix the broken pieces of your life laying on the floor.

It’s because nobody cares. Chris says he cares. Andrew said sorry. My mom says she cares. But in the end there is nobody to save me. Each of them has their own problems. Each one of them has something to occupy them with, while one boy just slowly dies. One has a new boyfriend and a crumbling marriage. The other has an alcoholic mother. Everyone has something. The only reason why they listen is so that they don’t feel that they are alone in the world and alone in their problems. That’s the only reason why.

As I walk through the front door the shouting bounces of my temples. The words fly around me. I see two people screaming at each other. Somewhere in the house a baby is crying, although he isn’t a baby anymore, but this screaming and shouting is an unknown presence to him. Still, as loud as it is I don’t hear it. I prefer not to see it. I make the decision to stay out of this and out of the world that they have created for themselves.

“E.J…”

My mom’s voice makes me stop on the steps and turn around. I have never seen her this way. Without the makeup and the tears streaming down her face she is beautiful. There is something real about her. Something that looks a little bit like me in a way.

“I’m leaving tonight. I can’t stay in this house a second longer.”

The apology in her eyes gives her away. I know what she is going to say next.

“You can come with me. I know it’s soon,” she said the one thing I wasn’t expecting.

A smile broke over my face. I could feel it almost cracking by how big it was.

“Yeah. That would be great,” I said as I turned my back to her and walked up the stairs.

I knew she didn’t really mean what she was saying. She didn’t really want to take me with her. I was just another loose string that she then would not have to come back for and tie up. I am the clean break that she wanted. But would it matter at all if I got away from James? Would it matter is it gave me a way away from Chris and Andrew and the rest of the school that probably knew by now?

“Mom?”

I had caught her attention just as she was about to disappear from the view of the stairs.

“Yes honey?”

“I’m staying. My friends are here and what about school?”

“Is that really what you want?” she asked, her eyes playing a soft tune, humming, a relief spilling through them.

“Yeah, that’s what I want,” I said as I claimed my fate, knowing that my next move was not with her, but it wasn’t with James either.

“You sure honey?”

“I’m sure.”

***

I think that everything was broken now. Everything that wasn’t downstairs was broken. I had been listening to him for the last three hours, throwing every piece of glassware in the house against every available wall. I could hear him cursing and crying in the distance but he hasn’t come looking for me. He has not been anywhere near my room, or the upstairs at all. Maybe he had forgotten that I was here in the house. Maybe somehow he thought I had left with them. That I was somewhere on a road in the back of the car, leaving him behind. But I can’t. If I left now there would never be justice. There would never be a time where I would be able to pay him back for the things that he had done to me. I needed that. I needed to break him down just as much as he did to me. I wanted him to hurt. Badly. So I stayed. And I waited.

I must have fallen asleep, because the hard knock on the door brought me to my senses. I had to muffle my own scream.

“E.J? Are you still awake?”

His voice sounded calm and relaxed. Almost like the James I met when I was a little boy. The James on the day of the wedding to my mom.

“Yeah,” I said, wondering why he wasn’t on top of me. Why he had not just come in and pushed something up inside of me.

The door opened and I expected to see him as I always say him; d**k in the hand, standing on full attention, ready to take what did not belong to him, but I was wrong. There he was, in boxers and a shirt that I had bought him for his last birthday. A shirt he had never once worn wince I got it for him.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

Was this a ploy? Another new game that he wanted to try out? Act all innocent and fatherly before he f****d my brains out?

“Yeah,” I answered, knowing full well that there was nothing that could keep him from coming inside in any case.

“Why didn’t you go with your mom?” James asked as he took a seat at the bottom end of the bed.

“I don’t know,” I answered, although I could see in my mind how I would grab the knife that I hid under my bed and stab him until there was nothing left of him.

“Is it because you care for me? Because you love me?” he asked as tears started to well up in his eyes.

“Hmm,” I answered, pretending that I was still half asleep. Not wanting to really answer him, but also wanting to see where this was heading. This was a new James sitting in front of me. One that I have never encountered before this day. He looked vulnerable. He looked like a child, sad and scared.

“Can I sleep here tonight?” he said with a child that truly did sound like that of a little boy.

“So you can f**k me?” I asked, now knowing where this was going. He was finally free to share a bed with me and use me the whole night long if he wanted.

“No. I just want to be with you,” he said, a semi smile starting to form around his mouth. “I’ve lost a wife and a son today. I don’t want to feel like I am losing the person I loved the most as well.”

“You’re f*****g crazy,” I said, knowing that it would probably get me beaten up and raped, but not being able not to say it at all.

“Maybe. A little. For you,” he said and without asking me again he climbed in underneath the duvet and got comfortable right beside me.

I could feel his hand reaching for my thigh, but instead of it going higher to the prize he normally wanted, he kept it rested right there on my leg as he closed his eyes.

“I love you,” he muttered and almost instantly I could hear his breathing getting deeper and deeper as he started to fall asleep.

For two hours I sat there and stared at him. Knowing that it was my perfect chance. If I wanted to kill his the moment was now. While he would not fight. While he was in a world of his own. But I could not do it. Not like this. Not here in my bed. It had to be when he was busy with me. While he was tearing me apart I would tear him apart. So that he could know why I was doing what I was doing. I needed to look me in the eye while I killed him. I wanted to see the life leave his eyes the moment that the knife made contact with his heart.

I fell asleep sitting up, planning the death of the man that was asleep next to me, holding on to my leg for dear life, promising that he loved me in every crazy way that he felt was right.

***

I had never seen our house looking the way it did the next morning. I skipped school and started cleaning up while James was still asleep in my bed. There was glass everywhere. He seemed to have taken out most of his frustration on family photos that was everywhere in the living room. Luckily the kitchen survived his attack. Nothing was touched and nothing seemed broken. The only landmine was the living room. Even the television had taken a beating in his rage.

Good, I thought to myself. Now he can’t watch any more porn and get more of his disgusting ideas.

I had woken up early when my mom had called, asking me if I was okay and if James had calmed down. I was honest to her up to the point where he slept in my bed all night. That part I decided not to include. I didn’t want her to feel sorry for him and come back. I wanted her far away, where Keith was safe for now. I did not want them to be a part of my mission that I was planning. Chris also phoned at least ten times. I ignored every call that was from him. I had nothing to say to him anymore. Maybe he thought that I was raped to death since I didn’t show up at school. It didn’t really matter. If he was so worried he would have been standing on my doorstep.

By the time that James finally woke up, I had hidden knives in special places around the living room after cleaning it up, taken of my clothing and waited for him as he walked into the room, finding me stroking myself and waiting for him, ready to take the final step in my plan. Ready for him to once again push himself into me and for me to finally return the favor by pushing a sharp blade into him. My plan could not fail. He would never be able to resist me. He was mine now, and he was going to pay.