Entropy - Chapter 1, Part 1
CHAPTER 1, PART 1
"When's Mom getting here, Dad?"
I massaged my forehead with my index finger and thumb, squeezing the skin between the pads of my two fingers. Anticipating meeting my soon-to-be ex-wife, Joan, at Bingo's for dinner. Dreading it. Waiting in my truck with my son Chris. It's his 9th birthday today. He wanted one of those fancy video game consoles with the pixel graphics on the TV. He wasn't spoiled, he just didn't want to deal with his bullies from school at the arcade. He's a good kid. Patient. More patience than his parents could ever show towards one another. Kind of kid that'd give good lessons in humility to his own parents, if they weren't so goddamn stubborn.
Fucking hell. Great fucking going as a dad, Wayne.
I grimaced at that whole fact. Arguing and arguing and arguing. I promised him I'd never beat my son, like my own dad did. But was it really any better for the kid to come home from school to see his parents fighting over the dumbest shit? Trash doesn't get taken out for a day, she flips out. I try to cool her down, she flips out. Then I flip out. Only took a week to go from sleeping on the couch to sleeping in my truck. Just a year back out of military service and my wife went from missing me being away to missing me because I wasn't away. Because she was busy fucking every other man in town and needed me out of the house, have her intimate time with the neighbor. Wouldn't be surprised if the kid ended up having issues of his own, just by seeing and hearing it all.
I am a fucking cuckold.
My eyelids were drooping like grey bags, sunk from weeks of insomnia and frustration. It's like I knew how they looked merely by how they felt. Having a few shots of whiskey each night wasn't helping either. Just made me angrier at my family, which in turn made them scared of me, and thus a vicious cycle was born. Yeah... no wonder why things fell apart. It was the damn drink. That's why dad was a raging maniac. Fuck... I knew I was already turning into my dad. Like father, like son, as the old saying goes. Stupefyingly painful in hindsight.
I adjusted the rearview mirror to look at myself. Hard to believe I was only 27. Those frown marks were already turning into wrinkles. Or maybe the lack of sleep was just making me see things. Maybe I should go to the pharmacy, get a refill of my Thorazine. Either way, reflections are reflections. They make you see what you look like, for better or for worse. But sometimes you question if what you're seeing is what you're really seeing.
I sighed as I rested my arm and forehead on the steering wheel Looking down at the tip of my tail below me. Watch that fucker dance from one side to the other, back and forth. Hard to notice... I always did that with my tail when I wasn't happy. When I was losing my patience. Sick of waiting. I noticed he was still wearing my work boots. The leather was getting worn out and it was still slathered in mud from working in the construction site in the middle of a rainshower. The entire bottom area in front of the driver's seat, the pedals, the mat. All covered in mud. More shit for Joan to go on another fit of hysteria about.
I could hear her already. "Clean your goddamn shoes, Wayne! I wish my man wasn't such a slob and looked after himself!" Likely after she left a bunch of trash on the table. Or her tampons when she's on the rag. "You're the man of the house, Wayne! Clean it up!"
I cringed at how she sounded just like my mom. Screaming at me with her fits of hysteria while sitting around doing nothing. Expecting me to do everything for her like she was some sort of goddamn queen. And this was someone who was so bubbly, fun to be around with as a teenage girl when we first met in high school. Wanting to be with her "bad boy" she saw in me. What the hell was with certain women and their attraction to teenage delinquents? What the hell's so attractive about stealing shit, getting into fights, smoking meth and drinking in the back alleys once school was over? She was just setting herself up for disappointment, and that's what she got with her romanticization of the so-called bad boys in the movies. She got me, and she got her big fantasy crushed.
She failed to realize just how her "bad boy" needed to serve some time in the military instead of behind bars.
Now she's been fucking every man in town because of her abandonment complex around me. Won't forgive me for being in the military. For being away. What was she expecting, the two of us to ride off into the sunset, escape society and leave happily ever after? The naive bitch.
It's amazing how someone who came off as truly caring for me ended up becoming such a crazy bitch.
She was a crazy, naive bitch. But I was a crazy, naive asshole. Should have just gone my own way. Be a bachelor. Live the single life. But then I knocked her up and she had Chris. Right as Mom died and Dad killed himself. Right as my sister Diane moved out with her own boyfriend. Just as I let my brother Kenny starve to death because I was just so fucking sick of everything and couldn't even take care of myself, I just fucking hated it all. Then again, maybe it was the better option. There was no way Kenny would have been able to handle adult life. He was mentally handicapped. He would have just been put in an institution to live like a caged animal until he died. Was probably better he died when he did, but did he really have to starve to death? The way I let him go out... could still see how skinny he got, his ribs showing from under his skin. How I let him starve. That shit will be haunting me till the day I die.
Should I really blame myself for seeing an escape in Joan? Maybe I believed the same as her, only to get disappointed myself. Maybe I'm just projecting my own insecurities onto her. We both are.
"Dad?"
Chris... he's only 9. He just turned 9. Why did he have to be born into this? Why isn't he fucked up like his parents? Why's he still going about things like it's usual business? Why's he still such a cheery kid? Why's he so resilient?
Why wasn't I so resilient as him when I was a kid? Fuck, I'm projecting again.
"DAD!" shouted Chris.
I jumped in my seat, startled by my son's shouting.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Yeah yeah yeah... perfectly fine," I responded, stammering with my answer.
"When's mom getting here, Dad?" asked Chris.
"When she's..."
I paused. Makes me so angry thinking about her.
"When she's here," I responded.
Okay, good enough answer.
"No, Dad. I mean, as in minutes? Hours?"
"I DON'T FUCKING KNOW, CHRIS!!!" I swore at him, shouting.
Chris recoiled in terror. I could see it in his face. I never did this before. I never shouted at him like this. Oh my fucking god. Why did I do that?
"I-I-I'm... I'm really..."
Stammering in my apologizing cost me my apology to Chris, as someone then started knocking on the window of my truck. It was Joan. Jesus fucking Christ, her makeup. She looked even worse than when I last saw her. Her growing gut was starting to droop down from her waistless neon-green tank top. She wore those ugly hula-hoop earrings. The way she drew her eyebrows like arches and the neon colors she used for her eye shadow and lipstick made her look like some sort of postmodern circus clown. Her blonde hair was wild and unkempt like some sort of mad scientist, but instead was a 20-something year old mother having a crisis in life. She looked like she could barely walk on those platform heels.
She looked like one of those teen pop idols that started doing smack and banging every producer in the music industry as soon as they hit their 20s.
She looked like a walking petri dish, as if I could get an STD just by looking at her.
Just a week ago when I last saw her, I thought she couldn't dip any lower, and she did. She's obviously started smoking some bad shit. Amazing what difference a week can make. Just a single fucking week is all it took for my wife to jump lightspeed into looking like some sort of cave-dwelling ogre like she acted.
This fucking creature is not my wife. This is not the happy teenage girl that I fell in love with in high school, that helped me through the worst part of my life thus far. I will never sleep with that trashy fucking cow ever again.
Just gotta stay calm... have a burger and fries at Bingo's with Chris. It's his birthday. He's 9 now. This is for his own sake.
What did he do to deserve this?
What the fuck did I do to deserve this?