Dinner was weird again. I began to fear that it was the only way dinner was going to be (at least with Ryuuk haunting us).
I realized, sitting across from my father as Mom placed a fresh cup of scalding, sugared, Colombian darkness in front of him, exactly what sex could mean for them. He wasn't an overly pleasure consumed or masculine person by any stretch, but he did in fact do it. I don't think Mom would have done it for her own benefit- he doesn't strike me as a specifically good lover. Then again, I chose not to dwell on it for my own sake.
I would say that it was a favor given by her to make him feel like a man... but that would be stupid. It wouldn't fit.
He had begun to act even more similar to before the coma. More typing, faster typing, and how he's resumed being awake at all hours of the night. When I used to haunt the house on my own (or with Mum, a night owl herself), I now spend confined to my bedroom to avoid a confrontation. That confuses me in itself, why would I be afraid?
The hostility I felt as an undertone to the actions I played out with Dad was gone. Spite is nothing more than a word, it is not exchanged. Never was exchanged at all.
Suddenly, I noticed how he had begun to fade away. The skin on his face was no longer luminescent white, but dying and frail like old lace or blanched coral. His joints had suffered obviously, the skin clinging to the very surface of them, but not too profoundly to produce alarm. Where the IV was stuck, there was still a faint and fading collection of blood from his delicate vein. Five years of abuse with a tube nearly fully recovered in four months or so. His eyelids were tired and unfeeling, taking the hits from feeling too heavy but unable to close. Igneous mica eyes sat in the midst of it, untouched by the disease and shining their brilliant inclusion of every color of light but the one reflected on the glassy surface. The disease in question? Aging.
I stood staring at him that evening even after I had finished dinner, and was amazed how nothing but “Chacarron Macarron” seemed to be playing in his head as he sat outwardly oblivious to the fact that I was staring at him. Taking a final sip of the coffee, he lifted his eyes to pierce directly into my own, and I found myself recoiling back from the imaginary shock of the “contact”.
“Do you have something you wish to discuss?”
"No, I don't.”
I turned to leave, but tripped up over one of the legs of a chair without falling over. A testament to my life constantly marked by my inadequacies under the slightest give of pressure in the wrong timing.
He rose from his seat, also, and proceeded to approach me from behind.
“Are you feeling alright?”
“Yes.”
I had to turn my head to look at him, fingers deftly reaching out to touch my shoulder- or my face, I couldn't be certain.
“George, there's something I want to show you-”
The phone rang, slicing off the end of that sentence. It was Jared.
“Hey, man. Where have you been?”
“I don't know, I've been practicing with the team, playing, you know.”
“Yeah. Anyway, there's a party at one of Gabby's friend's houses Friday. We wanted to know if you'd come.”
“Uh, yeah, I'll be there. Where?”
“6773 Compton's Turnpike Road. Beside Audrey's house, you know the one. It's Katelyn Wicker's house.”
“When should I get there?”
“Uh, she said her parents would be out at six, but I'm coming with Gabby around seven. Maybe show up a little after that- you'll probably find us.”
“Driving separate?”
“Yeah, is that alright?”
“Sure. See you then.”
After I hung up, Dad was still behind me, staring a hole through my forehead. His head was turned a generous ten degrees to the right.
“Shouldn't you ask your mother for permission to go to the party?”
Sometimes I forget how loud the phone is, even on the lowest volume. Grandma is a phone screecher.
“No, she'll be fine with it. Whatever-”
“I think you should ask her.”
“...”
He was looking at me quizzically, challenging me.
“Don't you have anything better to do?
Somehow, I forgot how weak he was, I knocked him flat over when I passed a little too closely. I continued to walk away.
“Is that how you show respect for your p-parental authorities?”
I whipped around to watch him struggle to pull himself up with a dining chair before walking right up into my face. He was actually shorter than me- I was 6”.5 tall compared to him at 5”10. Roughly 60-80 pounds of advantage also rested on my side.
“You're not allowed to go to that party.”
He was so direct with it that I just wanted to spit in his face. How he held what scant authority he had revolted me. The mouse had tempted the cat. But, dumbly we stood, having a stare down. Erica walked in, and collected a bag of goldfish before breaking us apart.
“What are you doing?”
We turned apart at the same time, fortunately, or another conflict might have risen quickly.
“Nothing.”
Dad collected himself and sat pounding away at the laptop again. I took up my phone and left him to work undisturbed.
I was still going to that party.
It was the classic thing you'd expect. A house with all of it's lights on, girls in tight pants, and stoners rolling blunts on car hoods. The house itself smelled like air freshener and cat, but harbored ample space for a good 35+ people on it's dirty-chinchilla carpets. Not a huge party, but enough to brag about. Yeah, I found Jared, lip locked with Gabby on a plaid loveseat. The rest of the people in the room were sipping from someone's flask and recalling Middle School crushes. I didn't choose to linger in there.
Somewhere in the halls, I felt someone's warm body bump completely against my back, and a feminine voice give a singsong apology. Turning around, it was none other than Audrey herself.
“Oh, hey! I didn't know you were coming.”
“Yeah, me neither, really. Uh, so how have you been?”
“Really good, actually. Do you know Chris Elliot?”
“Yeah?”
“We've been going out.”
“Oh, ah, cool.”
Awkward silence was my date.
“Listen, George-”
“What?”
“I said, listen. Uh, I'm sorry the way things happened.”
“It's really okay. I don't care. It couldn't really last anyway.”
“No, George. It could have, I swear. I was just being stupid. I used to miss you a lot- until I met Chris. Okay?”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. I just wanted you to know. You're a great guy- just not my guy.”
Hearing all of this was equivalent to telling someone you've had a really great day and being reminded of that embarrassing time you wet your pants in public. I didn't need to hear it, and I still missed her. Really, if what she said was true, I assumed she'd do something about it rather than tell me. Generally, I could decipher mixed messages from girls, but I didn't have time for it. I didn't have the energy to do anything about it myself.
Drowning was easier, and I'd done that before. In short, I got trapped under my friend's mother's floating inner tube in a pool and blacked out. I woke up wrestling at the surface with my friend before I ran off to throw up. For once, I actually wished that I'd kinda listened to my dad.
“Uh, yeah... I have to go-”
In the escapades of being a little bitch and essentially running away, some guy handed me a drink. I think he handed me a drink, but I might have just intercepted someone else's. A lovely mix of wine coolers and sprite, which is what I expected someone as leggings-bound as Katelyn would drink. Amateur mixmaster logic. Once I found the lipstick stain and “TrIniTYY!” scrawled on the side, I handed it over to a freshman chick I had Art with. Her name was... another Katelyn/Kaitlyn/Caitlin/etc.?
I left the party, and drove myself home free of incident until I rolled back into my driveway around nine. After the front door clicked behind me, I heard a chair move from the corner of the living room Mom had set up a miniature office for her and Dad.
“Oh, you're back early.”
Walking away from the voice again, until I was stopped by someone's chilled hand taking my wrist. He wouldn't let go.
“I told you not to go to that party.”
Spindly little arm sticking out from where it connected to me, who would the bystander think was in control?
“You're not the boss of me.”
Ghastly collarbones branching from square boughs of shoulders, a defined jawline ending with pale and unremarkable lips, and a rough mane inked onto his head adorned by absorbing eyes that followed the days of nature and man. Who would the bystander think was a person?
“Oh, I'm certain I am, George. Run off to bed now, your mother and I will talk in the morning about this.”
I looked back at his unwavering stare and noticed Yves sitting right beside the computer. Looking briefly down the hall, Ryuuk was watching from the shadows with that grin plastered across his face.
“Sure you will.”
Ripping my arm away, I did the classically teenage thing to do and sulked off.
“Hey, George?”
After I had showered and dressed for bed, Ryuuk struck up a conversation with me.
“Yeah, what?”
“Ever wonder how we Shinigami kill people?”
“... You write their names in the death note.”
“Yes, of course we do. But how do we know their names?”
“Shouldn't I be asking you?”
“Our eyes allow us to see the name and remaining lifespan of anyone- I see yours right now.”
“Why would you want the lifespan? Ryuuk, can't you be a little more straightforward with this?”
“The reason why we cannot die is because we take our 'victim's' remaining lifespan. Let's say you're ten years old, and set to live until you're eighty. If I kill you, it adds seventy more human years to my lifespan- seventy more years I will not die. You humans don't get these benefits.”
“Okay, why did I need to know?”
“You didn't.”
“That's what I thought, goodnight, Ryuuk.”
Turning out the lights, I threw the covers over myself and had a nasty thought- was Ryuuk still in the room? In the darkness? Finding the remote and flicking the TV on, the blue glow couldn't find him. Sitting up, my stomach lurched out of nerve, and I couldn't lie back down without finding him first. I turned on the ceiling light on my way out of my bedroom again, and walked through to get something from the kitchen for my stomach. The computer desk, and Yves, was unattended.
I whispered out to the dim-lit house.
“Ryuuk, where are you?”
A ghastly chuckle rang through my ears.
“Paranoid, are we?”
He was behind me, still staring as was the norm.
“So vain... I have better things to do than watch you sleep.”
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn't so sure, and turned to Yves again only to lose sight of the Shinigami. On a whim, I picked her up and hugged her to my chest, her brown plush exterior coating my heart and numbing the palpitations. I can't tell you how long I stood there with her, but when I turned, I was being watched again.
It was Dad this time, peeking from the kitchen like some dear woodland critter pausing it's scurrying to look up at me rather than a wintry tree reaching naked into the gray. Rather with a gentle inquisition than quizzically, he turned his face and came out from behind the wall towards me. I lowered Yves to rest on my palms as he stood away from me.
“He watches all of us.”
I nodded, and he took another two steps towards me.
“I'm... sorry. I didn't in-intend to shoo you off.”
I thought about returning Yves to her spot, and he kept talking.
“I thought... Eh, I...worry about- Uhm...”
The information didn't come, but he spoke.
“I try, I think... I try to... Oh, b-bloody-”
“You try to be an 'appropriate' father?”
“Yes, George.”
Finally walking all the way towards me, he looked at Yves.
“I thought your mother's little trick with those was stupid- that it was for the mentally invalid to turn to something like that. Until, of course, I found myself benefiting from Yves. I never understood the consequences of death and disability either- it feels truly helpless. I regard the day I came home from the hospital as the worst of my life.”
“...”
I relinquished Yves back into his hands, and he traced the seam along the prime meridian of her stomach with his index finger.
“I never wanted anyone to see me like that, not Ramona, not you, and not Erica. Until I could use my hands well enough, I couldn't even move myself initially. The most I could seem to move on an average day was to writhe my torso about to knock the covers off of my body in bed. It took even longer to dress, push, and attend to personal matters on my own... This is all coming out at once to you, I do hope it doesn't overwhelm you."
He looked back at me for a moment, and continued on.
“And so, you could imagine my panic when I needed the surgery for the second aneurysm. I didn't want to be landed right at square one again. All I did in the hospital was work on those cases... I got a remarkable stack of them done...”
“What are you getting at?”
I put it softly, as to not breach full social etiuquitte.
“I suppose it's that nothing is wrong with need- or that we can't do things ourselves. I'm not sure where I was going, really... It's expected of us to have night mares- yours seem to be real. Your mother was much better at comforting people than I ever was. He frightens her too- she's jumpy sometimes.”