Mad World

Mad World

         It might have been funny if it wasn't so terrifying.

         She was screaming again. Her face was a deep shade of pink and her gaze was like a teetering, fragile object that had just crashed and shattered. It scared him so badly that the teeth chewing his dinner chattered helplessly. His stomach churned. He felt like he was going to be sick, but there was no way, no way he could do that, because she would get even angrier.

         If he was quiet... if they were all quiet, she would calm down. She might throw something on her way out, but she would leave. She'd lock herself in her room, and they'd be safe.

         "All of you should be in bed! But I come home from work and I find you lazing around like brats! The house! It's filthy! Do you know how that makes me feel? I've been working my ass off! Put your plates up and get to bed!" Her fist connected with the table, sending the nearest glass of water rolling onto its side before it crashed to the floor.

         "But I'm hungry," said Toby, the fourteen-year-old.

         The boy winced inwardly.

         Toby shouldn't have said anything. As long as they were quiet... as long as they were quiet...

         "And we know you were out whoring yourself anyway," hissed Amy, who was eighteen.

         "How dare you!" Their foster parent's face turned from red to a seething, angry purple. Her hand grabbed the nearest available object to threaten them with—the steak knife that Amy had used. "Plates up!" she said. "Now!"

         "Someone forgot to take their medication," Amy said. Amy was confident that she could rebel without getting hit for it. She was taller than their foster mom, and was also worth half of their income. Their mom clenched her teeth together with such force that the boy was sure he heard a crack. Her eyes were wild and wide, twitching quickly back and forth with the high from some drug or other. Amy had been wrong. Their mom had certainly not forgotten medication today.

         The boy stood to his feet, trying to stay invisible, trying to stay standing, trying to keep from throwing up. His legs wobbled with waves of incapacitating terror. His hands shook so badly that it was a chore to keep holding onto the dishes in his hands. Not too much longer. Not too much longer.

         Toby nudged the boy sharply with his elbow, sending a traitorous gasp through the smaller child's lips and a shudder through his body. His plate, half-full of uneaten food, tipped and fell. It didn't shatter, but the contents spilled onto the ground. Peas rolled into the mess of shattered glass from the cup their foster mom had upset. A sticky mess of rice joined the glass shards, as well.

         "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry," he said, leaning to pick up the plate. His wildly trembling fingers couldn't get a proper grip on the end, though. Being perfect was too hard. He grabbed the plate and tried to move to the sink, but Amy stood in front of it, taking an inordinately long time to rinse her own empty plate. Please, he wanted to say. Please. But if he said anything, she'd take longer.

         It was always a matter of luck. If it had been the third child, Thomas, things would have gone smoother. Thomas, who was sixteen, was quiet, and didn't actively dislike the youngest child in the way that Amy and Toby did. But Thomas had finished eating early, and was reading in his room right now. Thomas was good at avoiding their foster mother.

         "This mess!" their foster mother had started again. "You useless shit! Are you going to clean this?"

         The shaking, which had abated a little, turned into convulsive shudders. "Y-yes..."

         "Didn't I tell you to go to your room? Does anyone listen to me? You don't listen to a word I say!"

         Stupid. So stupid of him. Saying nothing was always best. But if he'd said nothing, she would have demanded an answer. He tried, he tried, but he never knew what would make her mad. He never knew if it would be smiling or not smiling, speaking or staying silent, hiding away or staying in the open.

         He was shuddering. Shuddering and breathing so fast that blackness was jolting in and out of his vision. Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm. But her voice was speaking again, screaming again, even though his ears and spinning mind couldn't make out the words. All he heard was useless child, useless, useless. He coughed and clapped his hand to his mouth as his stomach betrayed him. He looked around desperately—can't make her mad, can't make her mad—but there wasn't any place except the sink. He staggered forward to the sink and leaned his tiny, shaking shoulders over it, choking and vomiting clearish-yellow watery liquid with rice pieces into the swirling water from the running faucet. Amy shrieked and jolted backward, and he was sure that he heard someone saying, "...disgusting...!" but he couldn't understand any more than that. He retched again, but the pathetic amount of food left in his stomach was quickly borne away by the water. He wiped his mouth.

         Muttering disgustedly, Amy shoved her way back in, stealing the running water again.

         His hearing faded in and his vision returned to something resembling normal, and he could hear the screaming again, inevitably directed at him. "You're filthy! You're such a filthy, useless child. Go to bed. I don't want to have to see you."

         But he couldn't tell Amy to hurry. It looked to his foster mom like he hadn't listened, and the old anger came back full force. "All of you! Damn it, hurry your asses into bed! Don't think I'm just going to let this slide. Amy!"

         "I'm nearly done," Amy said calmly. She slowly put her plate and cup into the pile beside the sink. As soon as she stepped away, though, Toby slipped in front of the boy, rinsing his dishes with messy splashes of water and dropping them on top of Amy's with a clatter of porcelain. He hurried out.

         All her anger turned on him. Strangely, he felt relieved, in a sick sort of way. He had sort of known that he'd be the one she took it out on. The scary part was waiting for it. Turning the water on, he held his cup under it. It would do no good to lengthen the time it took to rinse it. He finished, feeling oddly calm about the whole thing. After all, the very worst that could happen was that by some accident, she would actually kill him this time. Sometimes he would lock himself in the darkest corner of his closet amidst everybody's mothball-scented castaways and hand-me-downs, and close his eyes until there was nothing but blackness and silence and utter nothingness in his mind. He imagined that death was like that. Dark nothing. If it was, then he didn't think it sounded nearly so scary as most people thought it was.

         The first punch hurt the most. After that, he stumbled and ducked just right, and she hit him in the head. Then things were fuzzy and blurry, and the pain came too late or not at all. Her eyes were wild and wide, wide, wide—twitching and bright with drugs as she mumbled incoherent complaints about work and pain and that man, that man. The little boy didn't know which man; she'd had so many, and none of them had been nice. She shoved him too hard, and he collided with the edge of the table, gasping out a choked scream as he heard and felt a sickening crack resound through his chest. A rib had broken. That wasn't too bad. He knew just the way to carry his backpack so that the pain wouldn't show too much on his face. He fell backward, and she caught him with strong hands, yelling again. She said something about all of them being useless, how she worked so hard and came home to find the house full of shit, and she hated it, she hated them.

         One, two, three punches in his chest that made the broken rib scrape against raw nerves, starting his chest on fire with pain. His insides felt like she was tearing him apart.

         Whatever she had taken tonight, it had been strong. He coughed. It sounded bubbly and tasted like copper.

         He didn't keep track of what happened after that. Her fury was more poisonous, her actions sharper, harder, more vicious, than he had ever seen. He felt a sting of fear that sent tears rolling through the blood, but she didn't notice. He asked her to stop a couple times, hoping maybe she would hear him, but she didn't hear. It was strange that his mind went back to three weeks ago when she had been home from work. A cold had kept him away from school that day, and she'd called him into the living room. He'd calmed himself, thinking this is it. This is it. She's going to hurt me again. But she'd set him on her lap and smoothed his hair away from his fevered forehead. She'd asked him which book was his favorite, and she'd read it to him. She pronounced some words wrong, but he didn't say a thing. When the book was over, she had fallen asleep on the couch, and he made it halfway down the dark hall before he'd started crying. He didn't know why he was crying when he had felt so happy.

         "Say something, damn it!" Her scream brought him back to the present. He tried to speak, but his breaths got lost between his throat and his lungs, and only blood came out. He was crying. He didn't know why it hurt him so much to see her angry. He didn't know if he loved her, and—if he did, why.

         There was no pain anywhere. Everything felt eerily distant, and the tears wouldn't stop, even though he wanted them to. He wanted to be strong. He wanted to, but he was so small, and he was not strong. Someone was supposed to be strong for him, but there was no one to do that, either.

         "Damn it! Damn you, why?" If he had known what she was asking, he would have tried to tell her. Her tears matched his, even though they fell from maddened eyes.

         He loved this woman who worked three jobs and screamed sometimes when the men left her, crying with heaving, desperate sobs into her pillows.

         He was so very, acutely, wretchedly afraid of dying, now.

         There was blackness around his eyes. It hadn't been there before, and it scared him. It closed in fast, taking his strength with it. His legs shook and shuddered and buckled, sending him to his knees.

         He hadn't known it was raining outside tonight until he fell to the floor and saw the rainstreaks on the window. He wondered if even the sky cried the same tears that he and his mother did. Maybe they were all the same.

         "Get up!"

         He couldn't even try. He had not realized how cold and dark it was in here. Truth be told, he hated the dark.

         He was a bad boy. He was a bad son. That time three weeks ago, she had read him his favorite book and he had not thanked her for it. The thought made him sad, so he said it there and then into the suddenly fragile silence.

         "Th...thank you..."

         From where he was laying, he could see her eyes. Some of the drug-induced madness had begun to fade. He wasn't sure if it was because she'd had her fill of hurting him, or if she was just solemn from all of the blood. There was a big mess. There was blood all over. Oh... she would get mad, wouldn't she? Filthy. All of his filthy, filthy blood all over the place. It made him cry again.

         "Oh God..." she said. Her voice was the same one that read stories to him.

         She picked him up, and the pain was there again. It rushed back in amidst the stillness and silence, and he choked when she moved him. Blood spilled over his lips.

         She didn't say anything. She looked down at him, and he tricked himself into believing that the terrified tears falling from her eyes were all for him. He wished he could make his lips tell her that his tears were for her.

         "Mommy," was all he could say, and her tears fell in his hair and onto his ears and face and nose and forehead. They were so warm. He felt cold. The shivers and shudders gripped his body.

         She screamed, and it was a terrified, broken sound. She screamed again; this time it was his name. Then, "Help! Oh, God, Amy! Help me!"

         Her hands were warm on his face, shaking and cupping his chin. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry."

         It's all right. The words were only in his mind.

         She had never touched him like this before. No one had ever touched him, and he thought it was the best feeling in the world, even though it made his aching body cry out.

         Her breaths sawed out of her chest in trembling sobs. "Help!" she screamed again.

         He heard Amy coming down the stairs. She stepped into the kitchen, halfway through saying, "I hope you know I have work tomorrow..."

         She stopped, and though he couldn't see her, he imagined that she stopped quite suddenly when she saw the mess he'd made. "Mom," Amy said. It was stunned and slow—and mean, too; mean in the way people got when they were very afraid. "You killed him."

         His mommy was sobbing now, harder and louder. "Call someone for help..."

         Amy walked forward, and if his eyes could see anything, he might have seen her pick up the telephone.

         All he felt was his mother's hands on his face, so warm they kept him crying happy tears. It was getting harder to see and hear and breathe.

         It hurt to move, it hurt to move, it hurt so much, but he had to. His mommy was crying like her heart had been ripped out. He turned on his side and used the hand he could move to reach up, straining until he felt her warm hand. He curled up into a ball to be closer to her.

         I love you mommy I never told you but I do I really do I'm not afraid. His thoughts were folding together like wet laundry.

         Toby and Thomas were downstairs, now. He could hear them just a little. Toby was screaming. He couldn't hear Thomas much.

         He concentrated on the woman kneeling over him, and how her fingers pet his hair and her tears wet his face as desperate kisses were laced over his forehead and hair as she sobbed. He loved her. He loved her. It hurt very much, but the hurt was fading. Everything was fading. He strained to reach the surface so that he could feel her warm hands again. He missed them already. "Mommy."

         He wasn't sure if he spoke or simply thought it, but he hoped she heard him somehow.

         "Darling, darling... Oh God...! Open your eyes."

         He wished he could. He wanted so badly to be good for his mother.

         He was afraid of the dark. Everything was so dark.

         He did not hear the ambulance arrive ten minutes later. The last thing he heard was his mother.

         "Hold on. Hold on, someone's coming to help."

         But he couldn't do even that.

         They were right. Death was so very dark and lonely.