The past.
Young Alister was in his backyard engaged in play. He ran a toy car through mapped-out streets carved inside his mother’s rock garden.
He imagined he was a police officer in a high-speed car chase. Two violent bank robbers shot at him as he swerved and dodged their bullets. A variety of sounds added to the drama.
“Alister,” his mother said. She was in the kitchen and shouted through an open window. “Come inside for dinner.”
Alister groaned in protest. “Just when I was about to get ‘em.” He hopped to his feet and got a whiff of the homemade meal.
“Meatloaf,” he said. It was a guess. “And mashed potatoes.” He moved with haste. The growl in his stomach was sudden and painful. “Corn and some gravy.”
He brushed the dirt off his pants and ran to the back door. With eager energy, he pulled open the screen door, and the hinges whined.
“Wash up,” his mother said. She was still in the kitchen.
“OK.” He headed toward the bathroom.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Alister froze and cringed. He looked at his mother. Her eyes were bright with rage and her hands were on her hips. She held a dishtowel, and an apron was wrapped around her body.
“Is it too difficult for you to wipe your feet before you come inside?”
Dirt footprints trailed behind him.
“You don’t think, do you?”
The dishtowel whipped him and he flinched. The fabric end snapped like a giant rubber band. He yelled and jumped back. The sting instantly throbbed.
“Don’t you dare move away from me, you disrespectful little bastard!” She whipped him again. “Do you think I clean all day long just so you can screw it up?”
“I’m sorry,” Alister said, raising his hands in defense.
His mother moved nose to nose with him and pointed in his face. “Lower your hands.”
Alister complied.
“Why can’t you be courteous and wipe your damn feet on the mat outside instead of on my floors? Does my hard work mean that little to you?”
“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“You’re sorry?”
She cocked her fist back, and Alister took a step away.
“What are you so afraid of?” she said. “You’re a wimp. Now get a towel and clean up your mess.”
Alister went to step past his mother and she shoved him. He fell to the floor and hit his elbow on the way down.
“What in the hell is going on in here?” his father said. His speech was slurred and his legs wobbled. A half empty beer bottle occupied his left hand and a lit cigarette sat loosely between his pointer and middle finger in his right hand.
Alister rubbed his elbow.
“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” his mother said. “Your son has been in the house for two seconds, and he’s already gone and screwed things up. Everything I’ve worked on today has already gone to shit.”
Alister stood. His elbow pounded with pain.
“Damn kid,” his father said as he took a drink.
“Well, he’s the bastard you wanted, so you deal with him,” she said, and she threw her towel down. “I can’t keep going through this day after day. That boy is going to be the death of me. I swear it.”
“Alister,” his father said. He teetered and finished his beer.
Alister backed away.
“And now look,” his mother said. She removed burnt food from the oven, dropped it on the stovetop and slammed the oven door shut. “Dinner is burnt.” She stomped off.
His father lunged forward and slapped Alister on the back of his head.
“Ow!”
He pinched the skin on the back of his arm and twisted it.
“Now I have to listen to her all night long. Now clean up after yourself and go to your room.”
Alister rubbed his arm. The pain in his elbow was gone.
Alister watched his father go to the refrigerator and grab another beer. He collided off walls as he retreated to a room in the back of the house.
“I’m leaving,” Alister said, but he dared not say it too loud. His mother might be around, and the last thing he wanted to do was get her angrier than he already had. “And I’m never coming back.”
He got on his hands and knees and cleaned the floor. The thought of his departure was squashed by the painful memory of his mother standing over him. Spit flew from her mouth as she screamed how useless he was and how he would never amount to anything.
“She’s right.”
Where would he go?
“Nowhere,” he said, and he wanted to cry but didn’t dare.
He wasn’t allowed to have any friends, and he barely knew his way around the neighborhood.
“I’m stuck here forever.”
He returned the cleaning supplies to their proper places.
“Alister?”
The hair on the back of his neck stood up. That was his mother, and it sounded like she was upstairs. He walked to the bottom of the steps and looked up at her.
“Yes, mother?”
“You do understand there will be no dinner for you tonight?”
“Yes,” he said. “Father already told me.”
“Good.”
Her voice was calm, and her hands were behind her back.
“I cleaned up my mess,” he said. “I was going to my room.”
“Come upstairs for a minute. I would like to have a word with you.”
Alister hesitated but knew he had to go. He kept a watchful eye on her as he climbed each step. She remained still and revealed nothing in a blank stare.
He arrived at the top step and kept his hands by his side.
“Yes, Mother?”
“You know once I decide on a punishment, I can’t go back on it.”
Alister nodded.
“Because if I do, that makes me weak and a liar, and I am neither.”
“I know that, Mother.”
“And you understand what you did was wrong?”
Alister swallowed hard. “I disrespected the hard work you did for me and Dad.”
“You meant to say Dad and I?”
“Yes, Dad and I.”
“Very good, Alister. I’m sorry.”
He wavered. “Thank you, Mother.”
She sighed. “You really don’t understand, do you?”
Something inside told Alister to move away from his mother, but he resisted it. He knew if he were to move without being dismissed, it would only provoke her.
“I can’t keep going through this; I feel like I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”
She swung something shiny and heavy out from behind her back, raised it over her head and pulled it downward, aiming it at Alister’s head.
Alister raised his hands to deflect the blow. The tip of a clothes iron crashed into his hands. Skin, cartilage and bone were damaged, and he screamed. He lost his footing and tumbled down the stairs. The wall, ceiling and stairs whipped past him as he painfully pounded each step.
His momentum halted when he hit the landing. His hands hurt and flaps of bloody torn skin hung open like a gutted fish. Something that rumbled down the steps caught his attention and forced his eyes wide. He saw his mother skip steps two at a time, bounding down after him.
“Get up,” she said. “You’re bleeding on my floor.”
Alister jumped to his feet. A sharp pain that stemmed from his hip nearly toppled him over. But he fought the pain and ran out the back door.
“Get back here, you little bastard!”
He heard her shouts but ignored her. The instinct to survive didn’t allow him to look back.
More than three hours had passed since young Alister ran away from home. The darkness of night had placed a blanket over the day. The tree he sat beneath was hard and the ground lumpy. His hip throbbed, but nowhere near as bad as his hands did. The bleeding had stopped, but a constant sting he wanted to scratch was within the patch of mangled flesh. It was difficult to look at, and when he did, it hurt worse.
“I’m hungry,” he said in response to the growl of his stomach. He shivered at the chill that crept through his clothes, and every sound around spooked him.
“I have to go back home.”
Maybe, he hoped, his mother had gone to bed and his father had drunk himself to sleep. He would be able to sneak into the house and wash his hands beneath the faucet that had a slow drip. He would crawl into bed and try his luck tomorrow. Maybe things would be better with his mom and dad if he didn’t screw up all the time.
But no matter what he believed, he would always be a victim of his parents’ evil, and that would only breed his malice—malice he would struggle to contain as he tried to have a family of his own.