Banished To Earth Book One 5

  20 

“Then what?”

“Tom!” Chase yelled.

   A low groan, then a loud crack. Suddenly, a wad of bright red snot stretched long and slimy from a branch. Then Tom dropped feet first right in front of them. His head bent down. Broken?

  They stood and stared until Tom slowly lifted his head.

  “You morons, this was worth giving myself a nosebleed, worth every drop of blood.” He walked away laughing like the fool he was.

  “Satisfied?”

“No Trudy, scared.”

“Monsters? Oh, your Mom.”

  His body sagged, “maybe I can clean and patch my pants, if I get home soon enough.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  Neither believed that, but neither said anything else.

  Trudy laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, just before he turned and limped back to the quarter mile gravel path that led to the shack Mable Gillette called home. Further up the path, Tom Masters big white house sat atop a perfectly manicured grassy hill.

  Chase had maybe two hours to wash his pants and patch them, before his mothers’ return.

  Priathamel, at least Chase’s childhood version of her could do nothing but follow him. For some reason she could not enter his home. Not that it was warm or welcoming. A weatherboard shack of warped gray wood, squatting on a patch of dirt and scrub encircled by briers and forest was where little Chase laid his head and waited for the long shadows to creep into his room. The darkness always brought the eye lights. Chase hated the night. Dreaded it from the core of his being. At least he had his small table lamp. He could always count on its’ little apron of light to keep the monsters away.

  He was happy it wasn’t dark yet. His mother was still at work. Maybe, just maybe he could wash his pants and sew its’ tear and dodge her wrath one more time.

 

21

  That hope pumping in his mind he ran through the house unbuckling his pants as he raced to the rusty old washing machine sitting by the back door. He slid up to it pants in hand.

   Being at the back of the house, he could not hear his mother’s car pull off the dirt road that led to the old sharecropper shack.

  In  his rush he forgot to shut the creaky sagging door, so when Mable Gillette eased into the house he had no idea he was not alone.

   Wearing nothing but his shirt and under pants Chase was bent over the machine wrestling with a wet bed sheet Mable had forgotten to put in the dryer that morning. His bloody torn jeans lay crumpled on the floor.

 She saw them, saw the tear, the blood. Her bent coat hanger of a body loosely clad in an ugly pea green pant suit crouched, silently closing the gap between them as her right hand stiffened. It slashed through the air, slammed like a concrete block against his nearly naked butt, with such force and rage, he flew up and hit his head on the storage cabinet just above the machine.

  “Do you know how many hours I worked to buy these pants.

  A trickle of blood rolled from his forehead, as he slid down to the floor, dazed and stinging at both ends.

“Get up, you little snot! Go to your room. Now!”

“Mama I….”

“Don’t Mama me, don’t ever Mama me!”

“You’re going to stay in your room tonight, but your little friend, he’s mine.”

“My friend?”

“Nighty lite.”

“Mama please.”

“Don’t call me that. Only cowards and weaklings beg. Git! now!”

“What are you going to do?”

She glared down at him, as she grabbed his right arm and snatched him to his feet. Not noticing much less caring he was woozy from his head wound.

22

“Throwing out the trash.”

“You mean me?”

“No stupid, your table lamp, you know the one with the little boat and light house for a base.”

“Mama,”

“She slapped him and snatched him up before he could hit the floor. “Come on.”

“Let me put some pants on.” He pleaded, tears streaming down his face.

“Pants, I seen your stinky little tale a million times more than I ever wanted to, that the least of your worries.”

With that, she marched him to his room and headed straight for his bed and the little lamp standing guard there.

“Take It.”

“What?”

“Grab it, now!”

His hands quivered as they reached out and tenderly lifted it.

“Not fast enough,” she jerked it from his hands ripping the cord from the wall. It slung around and slapped her on the fanny as if defending itself.

He bit blood from his lip to keep from laughing.

“You think it’s funny. Nuthin funny about losing my husband, cause his cowardly brat of a son, sees monsters every night.

You scared him right out of the house. He was a weakling just like you! The only monster in this house is me. You got that?”

He started to speak but licked blood instead.

A moment later they were standing in front of the kitchen sink. She raised the lamp and threw it into the sink. It exploded into a million tiny razor -edged shards.

“Now clean up the mess.”

He turned toward the broom closet.

 23

 “No, no! Fingers only. When you finish you go to bed in the dark. You grow up tonight! No more babies in this house!

  The word Mama, reared up in his head. He didn’t slap it down. He simply let it sink into forgetfulness that day, along with much of his childhood…

  It took him almost three hours to find and carefully remove every speck of glass and metal. Some had embedded in his face. Only dumb luck kept the lamp shrapnel from piercing his eyes. His fingertips were another story. They were bloody messes when the sun sank, and the kitchen grew dark and gloomy, but they didn’t hurt. Dread had displaced the pain. 

  Having raked and picked the last slivers of his lost friend from his bloody fingertips, into the trash he trudged down the hallway that led to his room, went to bed and waited…

   Priathamel could not see inside his house. However, his torment tore through her like a bullet. Not being able to follow him in, she circled the house, sensing his presence by his pain, until the sunset when he slid under the covers and waited for the eye lights to blink open.

   It would have been so much easier for her to go exploring, especially when she realized the further away from him, the better she felt. But she was not about to leave him alone. It didn’t matter that the house exuded some sort of nasty force field like energy that shocked her like an electrified barbed wire fence, every time she ventured too near.

  When she found his bedroom window, she squatted directly in front of it and reached out with her heart to comfort him. Sadly, he could not sense her love and concern. His mothers’ hateful presence permeated every square inch of the dark dwelling turning it into a dungeon of bitterness and despair, that simply would not tolerate even the slightest bit of empathy or comfort. Which was all Priathamel had for him…

   The suns’ last golden ray blinked out, as it slid behind the woods ragged black horizon. Stars peeked out but so did the eye lights. Chase rocked in the darkness, closed his eyes only to block out whatever slight grayness the sun had left behind.

   The eye lights swarmed his mind. The lamp was gone. There was nothing to keep them at bay. Nothing to keep them out of his head. He screamed and stumbled through the darkness, desperately groping the walls of his bedroom, until his fingers finally tripped over the doorknob. He grabbed it. It would not turn. “You locked it.” He cried.

  “Shut that racket, boy” Mable screeched, “before I go in there in give you something real to cry about!”

24

   Tears burned down his cheeks, …’why do you hate me ma…’ he slapped himself. ‘Stupid question,” he muttered, “doesn’t matter, she just does.”