Deamons

Chapter 16 Home of the lost Boys part 2

Starke walks down the steps to the squad car. Officer Barney tells him to put his hands behind his back and cuffs him. He shoves him in the back and tosses his bag in his trunk. Then it dawns on Starke. If he bothered to bring his bag along he is not coming back. The deamons are loud now. He can feel it. His heart sinks. He lets his forehead fall to rest on the cold glass at his side.

Hope pushes in bringing his own choir of gifts although they are more action oriented then vocal. They try though. "You can go back there. They want you. It will be like the lost boys living in the tree with Peter Pan." The rest of the ride is uneventful, his spirits lifted a bit.

The child services office in Annapolis is not what he thought it would be. It was a small little house with a tight alley way to each side in between the houses. Very homey, not antiseptic like most government buildings. Officer Barney takes him in the front room and uncuffs him. Then he walks out with not so much as a goodbye or telling anyone he is there. Starke is in a small waiting room. He looks outside the front window and sees the squad car pull away. What should he do, look around for someone? He decides not to. Someone might think he is looking to steal something. Seeing a stand of pamphlets, he thumbs through them. Drug addictions, battered women, and venereal diseases and birth control. Nothing for him so he just sits there. A lady opens the door poking her head out at him. She is on the phone. She looks him up and down then makes a sour face and closes the door again. No sign to wait a minute or anything like that which Starke expected to see.

Starke wants to cry but cannot. His parents are not around to hit him if he does, so it is not that. Crying can be a way to let someone see your pain. Like releasing your emotions to someone for help with the hurts one is carrying. There is no one here to cry too. Not even God. He read his Bible several times. Looking for the perfect pray that would bring him divine aid. He tried several He read a little on other religions too. All in all, he figured at best God did not care about him on the bright side. On the dark side God did not like him. Saw him as someone that did not possess the merits for his divine protection. He cannot cry to God. Crying can be a release to but he cannot let his guard down. Especially not with a lady that looked at him like he is rancid meat. He sits there with his deamons screaming and Hope telling him he can back to the group home. Hope's voice lost strength when the squad car left. Starke interpreting that to mean it was a one-way ticket.

"Come in," Starke hears a muffled voice from the other side of the door. He cannot tell if it is meant for him or someone else so he stays in the chair he is sitting. A minute later the door opens with much displeasure on her face the lady states, "You made me get up". Starke follows her in with his laundry bag. "Leave that dirty thing outside," she says and sits down behind her cluttered desk. Starke leaves his bag and sits down in the chair opposite her on the other side of her desk. "Well shut the door like I told you to!" She never told him to but he shuts the door without complaint. "Geez, I can see who the problem is here right away," she says, talking at him.

It is a minute that passes, a long pregnant minute before she talks. It is awkward for Starke. She looks up at him through her antique styled horned rimmed glasses. He feels like she wants him to speak, but he does not know what to say.

"What finds you here today," Ms. Mundy asks. He reads her name off her desk. Starke is confused, but feels he needs to say something to get her to stop looking at him the way she is. Like he is a hemorrhoid. "Officer Barney brought me here," he says with a little stutter as he tries to think of something better to say while the words are coming out.

"Smart aleck, huh? The boys back at the home tell you I have a son that stutters?" Ms. Mundy asks. The deamons are high-fiving rejection. "That was brilliant," Mistrust praises Rejection. The other deamons start to chant, "Give us more! Give us more!" the noise is so loud in Starke's head it is affecting his thinking. "Well smart aleck what do you want me to do with you?" she asks.

"I want go back to the group home in Crownsville." "You do?" she asks her voice raising a notch. Hope inside lights up, doing his rainbow color spectrum thing. He looks over to intuition who is not budging, still sitting there poker faced. Hope mouths, "Nothing?" Intuition shakes his head, no.

"Well that is not going to happen," Ms. Mundy says. "No. Why?" Starke asks. "That is a home for kids with problems waiting for court dates and things like that. You have parents that love you. Your mother cried to me for a half hour this morning on the phone. You have put her through hell. Do you ever think about anybody but yourself? You need to go home." The silence comes back in the room. Ms. Mundy is looking at him like he is diarrhea on her driver's side car handle. Feels like five minutes has gone by to Starke.