Deafening Silence

Deafening Silence- Chapter 2- The Pool Table

Hunter’s pov

After breakfast everyone headed either gone upstairs to their rooms or into the living room, to watch TV. Billy, Chris, and I decided to go down to the basement to play some pool- since our jobs were more of a night time scene- we usually either stayed home or went out on the town during the day. Unless it was during the school year- then we would sometimes go to school. We reached the bottom of the stairs in silence- not bothering to start a conversation until he broke the balls.

 “Don’t you think it’s weird how Sara just let her go back upstairs after breakfast?” Billy questioned after he braked.

“Yea”, Chris agreed as he lined up his shot. Squinting he said, “She always makes them meet us first; remember –“crack! The ball sounded loudly as it hit against the others- sending them in frenzy as they scattered across the table.

There was a pause when I stepped up to the table and leaned against it- watching the balls roll around in a mix of colors.

I continued to watch as Chris added, “She doesn’t like them to feel left out. She wants them to feel ‘at home’ here.” He put air quotes around the words ‘at home’.

I smirked, “maybe she gave up on all that crap- like she should of after the incident with Dalton.” They both chuckled darkly at the memory. See a few years back when we were around the age of 7 this kid Dalton came here after being sent away from a nearby foster family. Sara introduced Dalton to everyone and everything was fine and dandy till he met Damien. Damien was one of our old friends here that left only 2 or 3 years back- him being older than us and being thrown out earlier than the rest of us- Lucky prick. Anyway, when Dalton saw Damien; he started cursing and yelling that Chris was a vile mistake of god – you see Damien is black and apparently Dalton was a tight-belted catholic kid. After about 30 seconds of him yelling in Damien’s face- let’s just say nobody talked about that morning ever again.

I snorted, “but that’s probably the least likely scenario- you know can you imagine a kid just going up to Sara and saying’ yea I don’t really even want to be here so if you could just stop cramming this ‘family’ and ‘respect’ shit down my throat it would be great!’”

This sent all of us into fits of laugher. Don’t get us wrong –the woman is as sweet as candy and we love her but- insult her family and it’s WWIII.

After our laugher died down we continued the game. And another. And another.  When the clock reach noon we decide to emerge from the basement, onto the ground floor and into the kitchen- to tell Sara we were leaving. After that we head outside in the rain where it was to loud to continue a conversation and into the jeep. When in the jeep we headed out of town to go to work. Unlike most kids our age we didn’t flip burgers- we flipped people. I was a fighter and Chris and Billy are my manager and trainer. Every night I put my life on the line fighting people twice my size for a few minutes of the thrill and a few hundred to even a thousand. 

"Hey dreamy!” Chris called from outside the car banging his fist on the window, “come on we got a training to do."

Another day in hell, I thought grimly walking out of the car and towards the bar. luckily my days are numbered.