A Lesson in Vengeance

666 Ayres Ln.

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Its a meandering, numbly floating feeling when I walk home from school.

Looking right down at the ground, the ambient noise of a city and snatches of passing conversers adding wordlessly to the dazed feeling. It's like listening to untuned static, dull and uninteresting.

School is fine. People are fine. Home's fine.

I try to make it a habit to stop and pet strays, dogs and cats, normal ones who can go wherever they like. They are happy, it makes me calm and happy to visit them.

The last few steps thud troughs my heels and up my spine; baseline ( stream Hopeworld cowards) to a familiar song.

" What took you so long this time," an auditory voice from the porch says. I wanted to keep looking down, but it makes him mad when I don't meet his eyes.

He sits in that lawn chair with his drinking buddies like some foul tyrant. With the number of bottles on the floor, it would be more convenient for the liquor store to sell 24-packs instead of six.

" Answer, you ungrateful faggot."

My head snapped up a little too fast, and he raises an eyebrow. He'll take the tiniest strand of body language for sass.

" I-I ..." I remember, wincing, the last time he found out I visit the strays.

"Those damn filthy animals isn't it," he glares down at me from the porch.
Even at least an hour in of drinking and over 10 feet away, its unnerving how clear his eyes still are.

I bowed my head to the ground and walked inside, furious on the inside about the things they were saying.

" Makes sense you know," said one with a huge stain down his front.

" Wot makes cho' think dat' ?" said the other.

The first looked at my dad, " Birds of the feather," he glanced at me," you think they ought to lock unholy things like him in pshyc- wards."

I slammed the door before I could get through it.

" What's that mean," I said coolly.

His lips, chapped and thin, projected the awful smell of drink even from here.

" We did the right kind of thing with your kind in our day," he snarled

Another thug-like man cut me off before I could yell.

" The Daisies?" he said like it was confirming a solemn death sentence

I wanted to yell, smash their stupid bottles on their heads, pull their hair."Yuri. Room. We'll talk soon."

his voice was dangerous and made a small little thing in my chest curl up in fright. His buddies just laughed drunkenly.

I scurried inside the house, that flare of a rebellion dead and gone. I try not to let my mom see how scared I was.

My mother is an angel. She wanted to go to art school and travel the world to learn about other places. But she was too scared to break up with her high school "sweetheart".

Now she's stuck in a dead town where the only beautiful things are stupid weeds that grow through the sidewalk. she wants nice things, and when someone asks her why she doesn't treat herself, she says the same thing "Oh, it's pretty, but I don't need it."

I stop in the hallway, before doubling back and giving her a kiss on the cheek. I feel her cheek twitch up in a smile. They shoot down though when the door slams and dad yells for me to my room like supposed to.

" Actually," he calls from the kitchen," come back."

I drop my stuff quickly when I hear it. there is never enough light in the hall to see properly so I feel rather than see into my bag.

My fingers felt a soft material, the kind of fabric used for infants and small innocent things. Its a baby blanket no bigger than a dish towel, baby blue fabric pitching upward to form a bear's head, it's sewed eyes shut in calm u's. For some strange reason, one of the stray dogs had it in its mouth and gave it to me.

I stuff it down my undershirt and come back down.

My mother is standing in front of the counter behind my dad, holding herself and trying not to be seen. My dad had his arms crossed tapping his heel impatiently," follow me."

He led me to the end of the hallway, to the door that led to the basement. He opened it and gestured inside, only the first few steps were visible by the feeble light of the kitchen; he had broken the light down there a while ago.

I braced myself and headed down-

" what's that," he pointed to the lump over my chest where the blanket was hidden

" don't tell me you've slept with so many boys you've become a woman."

" well first, I'm underage; Second I'm pretty sure women have two-"

I flinch hard and he reached down my shirt, pulling out the soft bit of hope and comfort.

Ne held it above my head when I jumped to grab it.

" What the hell is this!!" he yelled in my ear.

I didn't care. Threw a temper tantrum as he took like the last scrap of the world, the last thing that was mine, from me.

" get out of my sight you freak."

and shoved me down the flight of hardwood stairs and a sickening thud and a breaking feeling in my ribs told me I the concrete.

Fresh blood mingled with the fungus and damp of the den-like room.

I was uncontentious before the instinctive fear flooded my senses.