Pause (Published)

Chapter 11: Open your Eyes

I gulp. Uh oh!

I shake my head, stubbornly keeping my eyes closed, "Nah, I'm good with my eyes closed. Tends to soften the blow."

"Open your eyes, child," she demands, irritable.

"No," I hypnotize myself, "I am dreaming and you both are nothing but figments of my imagination," I say aloud, trying to convince myself that I'm asleep in bed. "Or you're both dead and I'm now being haunted by your ghosts for having a party on your graves."

I'm no longer convinced that I'm dreaming when a pinching pain sears through my left ear. I am quick to open my eyes and swat Gram's hand off of my ear. 

"Bless my own soul, we're not dead for goodness sake!" she hisses at me with a pointed finger.

"Unfortunately," I mutter, and thankfully, she doesn't hear because her hearing aid is worthless. 

I played with her hearing aid once, when I was bored...long story short, that hearing aid has been broken for the past two years and she has yet to notice.

I pick up on Gramps trying to escape the situation. The traitor! 

I purposely cast the attention onto him, "Hey Gran, don't you think Gramp's haircut makes him look younger and sort of handsome?"

Grams immediately glances at Gramps to carefully inspect his hair. The sight is anything but admirable. 

Gramps ruins it by opening his big mouth, clueless, "But I never got my hair cu-"

"Oh, my-my," Grams cuts him off with a flirtatious smile. "It does make him look younger and a tad bit more dashing. How had I not noticed it before? I hated his old haircut. It made a cleaning mop seem more attractive."

I stifle my laughter as she insults Gramp's current hairstyle seeing as he actually never had anything done nothing to his hair in the slightest.

Gramps narrows his eyes at his wife for her comment and then at me for snickering.

"I agree, Grams," I say and then give my Gramps a look, a look that means 'flirt, or else'.

He doesn't budge and so I elbow him discreetly in the back. He grunts and opens his mouth to say something, but it turns out that my force is too powerful. Instead of words coming out of his mouth, his dentures do.

My gran's eyes widen in repulsion. "Howard! You sickening mutant spawned of an abomination!" she yells before storming off.

I glance at my gramps with a sheepish grin intact, "So that didn't exactly go as planned?"

"You think?" he asks, sarcastic, before changing the subject at hand. "I just have one question, did you get her good?" he asks with a mischievous smirk, referring to the knockout I gave Melinda on her glass jaw.

I laugh and hold up my bruised hand, "You know me..." I shake out my hand, "when I do something, I go all out. I learn from the best." I wink at my gramps teasingly.

"Attagirl. You make me proud," he nods.

Unfortunately, he doesn't see that Grams has returned and is currently standing behind him with a horrified look on her face upon overhearing him congratulating me for punching a girl in the face.

Whack! 

Thud!

I burst out laughing when I realize that Grams just hit Gramps upside the head. I hate my family, but I love my family.

"No wonder this child is so rebellious, Howard!" Grams lectures, shooting me a glare for laughing. 

I quickly fall silent under her unwavering gaze.