I’m sick of my throat feeling sore. It stinks in here. My eyes are burning and my feet are really hot. I try not to cry, but the tears leak out anyway. David says Dad’s just recharging his batteries before doing something, he says the reason he hasn’t done anything yet is because “it’s not easy steering a Corvette one-handed along the edge of the Grand Canyon with your foot on the gas while looking behind you at an erupting volcano as Cameron Diaz arrives swinging from a helicopter wire and John Malkovich screams into a megaphone ‘cause there’s only ten seconds left before the A-bomb on the seabed explodes creating a tidal wave that will submerge New York where his kids are being held hostage by the president’s doppelgänger in a bunker guarded by bloodthirsty dinosaurs reared in a top-secret thermonuclear dump by secret government agents.” In other words, Dave’s convinced Dad’s some guy called Ultra-Dude who’s gonna get reactivated.
I’m just shit-scared and I’d really like to get outta here. Dad says we gotta listen to Anthony and Anthony says we’re hafta stay here and not panic and that the rescue guys will come get us. What really scares me is that Dad’s even more shit-scared than me. Fuck, it really freaks me out when I get a nosebleed, I’ve always gotta keep pressing on it, that’s one hand, and Dad’s holding the other one and we’re just, like, staring at this door, it’s really creepy. Jeffrey’s praying in Hebrew and Tony’s praying in Arabic, I swear, it’s pretty weird. But the craziest thing about it (apart from David thinking he’s in a some Marvel comic), is Dad’s prayer.
“Oh Lord, I know I’ve kind of abandoned You lately but there’s the parable about the prodigal son, right? That’s a really useful parable. If I’ve understand it right it means that even heathens and deserters will be welcomed with open arms if they come back to You, so, anyway, I’m feeling pretty prodigal this morning.”
“See? Toldya he was gonna turn into supersome-thing,” shouts David.
“Shut up, Jeez, Dad’s trying to pray, it’s holy.”
All three of us hold hands and Dad keeps on praying.
“Lord, I’m weak and I’ve sinned and I ask forgiveness. Yes, I got divorced, it was my fault, my grievous fault. I left my family, my two sons who are here with me…”
“Stop, Dad, don’t say that…Dad, stop, please…”
He’s really freaking me out, oh shit, it’s no use, I’m gonna cry. I try concentrating really hard on this blotch on the floor, but I just start sniveling. Fuck, this is hard. I just wanna be somewhere else. I want to be a fly flying round on the other side of this door. If someone told me that someday I’d be jealous of a fly. But no shit, it’d be really cool to be some random fly, you get to fly round and you don’t get nosebleeds, a fly is free and it can fuck off and it doesn’t think about stuff. I’d go BZZZ round the towers with my compound eyes and I’d look at all those assholes on the other side of the windows, BZZZ and whaddya know, I flick my wings and I’m outta here without a second thought. That’d be dope.
“Oh God, I’m a selfish pig, but on my knees I beg you to forgive me…”
A deaf fly would be best.