34

IT WAS STARTLING HOW little things had changed, how little things ever change. He’d run away so many years ago, but he’d returned, like he knew he would one day. After all, it was home. You only get one.

The hallways still had that same pineapple-colored wallpaper Morgan had told Stanley he hated when they purchased the rotting edifice three decades earlier.

“I don’t know why you’re putting this crappy wallpaper up. It’s just gonna look ridiculous the second it dries.”

“Shut your filthy mouth, boy! That’ll be the day a little rat like you tells his old man what looks good and what doesn’t.”

Morgan could so vividly remember that day. He recalled the conversation word for word. That moment, and moments just like it. How much it hurt when Stanley struck him. How he’d memorized the patterns of each knuckle as it dragged across his body. The reasons multiplied like the bruises. Morgan eventually realized that Stanley just wanted a punching bag.

“Stanley, be kinder to him, won’t you? He didn’t mean nothin’ by it. Just doesn’t know when to keep his opinions to himself, God help us all.” His mom’s attempt at a noble defense was short lived, but it spared him a beating, at least for now. The bruises on his arms and ankles would have some time to heal.

It wasn’t until later that night that he felt guilty for not taking it like a man. The beating. The pleasure Stanley took from it. The flood of curses that always followed. The touching he never got used to. All of it. But tonight Mom was the victim.

Her cries, more like whimpers, seemed to jump off the hallway walls. Every time the bed creaked it was obvious. Stanley’s harsh form of love spilling into her, her resistance slow and soon overtaken. The sounds didn’t lie, even if Mom was efficient at hiding the marks on her skin or the shame scribbled across her eyes. A part of him was okay with Stanley’s sick indulgences now and again, happy it wasn’t him.

Stanley argued that her butting into conversations meant solely for a father and son were what got her all the nice extras; what the menace enjoyed. But Morgan could see her scratching at her backside some days; he didn’t have to be an adult to know that whatever was done to her the night before had left its scars. He could also see the wrinkles getting comfortable inside her bloodless cheeks; how her neck seemed to sag; the terrible omens that age and atonement were coming for her.

During the mornings and afternoons, he was allowed out. There were some days that the light still didn’t feel quite right. Afternoons that seemed to carry a weight his young body wasn’t prepared to wear. Night was always too close.

During those moments when permission was granted to roam certain rooms of the house, Morgan often enjoyed having a bowl of cereal or a few slices of French toast. Mom usually removed the mold on the bread before making it. She tolerated him a bit more than Stanley.

“Like your breakfast?” Stanley asked.

Morgan barely nodded, his focus completely on his meal. He was hungry.

“I asked you a simple question, rat.” A tormented chuckle escaped the dragon’s mouth.

“She makes it good…Dad,” Morgan forced out. He loathed the idea of using such an esteemed title in reference to worthless scum like his old man. He shrank in his seat, shaking as he cut another square and dipped the flowery piece into syrup. He sometimes wondered what it’d be like to trade a piece of French toast for his old man’s head. To dip Stanley’s bulbous cranium into a filthy pool of blood syrup with a skewer attached to the sloppy pink meat beneath his scalp.

“Finish up, Morgan. Your daddy’s in a mood,” came Mom’s request.

Morgan shoveled the remaining sugary toast into his mouth. “I hate it when you call him Daddy,” he said with food in his mouth. He hoped Stanley was too drunk to pick up on it.

He was wrong.

“What’s that you’re saying, rat?” He put down his bottle, his cigarette, and lowered his unclean suspenders. “I can’t hear you.” Stanley shoved the plate aside and grabbed Morgan by the mouth. His crusty nails carved into the young boy’s cheeks, drawing some blood. Chunks of undigested material splattered onto the table.

“I said I love you, Dad.”

“That’s what I thought you said. Guess my ears don’t need to be checked after all, Theresa.”

Mom wiped her hands on her apron and used up a smile.

“Looks like the boy’s finished. Not hungry anymore, are you?”

Morgan detested the black linings in Stanley’s teeth, the parts that suffocated the dull rust blanketing a grimy surface. He didn’t mean to count the filthy lines or to name them, but gradually he had.

“Go play with your toys, rat.”

Morgan exited the room, leaving some of the food and syrup stuck to the table. He always waited until he was around the corner to sob, even farther away before he gave up tears. But he listened to Stanley carry on in a drunken rant, spilling curse after curse with the word rat in between. No, it wasn’t a word at all. It was a name. It was his name. Morgan. Rat. Made no difference. Names could be changed or altered, their meanings given new life or stripped naked and abandoned. Names were like children. Children needed to be loved. But Morgan didn’t feel loved. He wondered if he could feel anything other than hate.

Morgan noticed new sets of goose bumps running down his arms. He was shivering, but he wasn’t cold. After Stanley finished his vile sermon, Morgan heard his heavy footsteps draw closer to Mom. She was doing the dishes. The way she saw it, it was safest just to keep busy, regardless of the task. Avoid her husband, or the human being buried alive beneath the creature he had turned into.

The old, wooden floors betrayed nearly every location in the house, especially the kitchen. Noise echoed in there. That’s how Morgan could hear it from almost twenty feet away, hiding in the hallway, holding his breath and hoping to pass out. As he swallowed, he shook his head, listening to Stanley burp then move in slyly for a kiss.

He wanted to scream bastard! To pledge a thousand oaths against the dragon. But he was just a kid. What could he do? And she was just a mother. What could she do?

She could’ve protected me. She could’ve taken me away from all of this.

Yeah, that was it. The scathing thoughts multiplied. She was to blame, same as Stanley. That foul, inebriated monster. It never mattered how much Morgan shivered in the dark. He wouldn’t run to her side; he wouldn’t help her. Perhaps she had it coming the same as he had it coming. Perhaps God hated her too and got a thrill from watching them squirm.

The shuffle of Stanley’s pants sliding to the floor made Morgan’s flesh crawl. He could hear the moans lifting into the air from the other room. Stanley was enjoying himself. There was a sound of loose change clicking against the floorboards when Stanley’s pants fell that left Morgan anxious. He figured it was far too much change to carry around. Far too much.

He watched the terrible film roll. He watched his mother grip the plastic countertop while she bit down hard, masking her discomfort with a grunt and closed eyes. Stanley’s hairy paws nearly choked her as he whispered something Morgan couldn’t hear into her non-pierced, sterile ear.

They’re like animals.

Then it was like Stanley could hear his thoughts. Mom’s eyes found him first. A look of shock, embarrassment even, blistered her stare, followed eventually by fright. Shame didn’t exist for the moment. In the panic, she’d knocked her head into Stanley’s snarling mouth. His teeth had cut into her scalp, staining some of her hair. He took the Lord’s name and awkwardly reached down in a rage for his pants.

“We got ourselves a curious little rat, don’t we?” he gasped, fastening his belt while his mother adjusted her summer dress.

With the same vigor that Stanley had groped his wife, he clutched Morgan by the shirt. His greedy, sweaty palms could steal a human soul, Morgan swore. The dragon grabbed him with his talons and wouldn’t let go. “Rats sleep in the basement. They like the cold and the filth. Hope you took a mental picture! ’Cause it’s all you’re gettin’ for the rest of the night!”

The basement door flung open. Was that the stench from the cellar cutting through his hair or Stanley’s rotten breath? With a fury, Stanley released his son to the darkness. Morgan sprained his wrist during his descent into the shadows.

It felt so real again, like he was living it over, only this time he could rewind it, fast-forward it, freeze it. Each time it grew more painful, purer. Stanley Baker, the miserable soul whom the rest of the outside world knew as Morgan’s father, was still whispering that name—Rat—to him now, so many years later.

Morgan walked into the bathroom and shut the door. It was dark, the way things usually were in the Baker house. He shuddered. Morgan kept waiting for Stanley to barge in and start with the threats and the screaming; kept waiting to be told he was weak.

Incensed and haunted once more, Morgan pulled out a razor and pressed it into his palm, feeling the blood trickle within the frail cracks he dared to tempt with existence. No matter how hard he squeezed the metal tip, no matter how deep the wound, it kept closing up. He hated not being able to kill the memories for good. He had good reason to do what he did. To do what he did and run.

The razor lay trapped inside his palm for minutes. Irate tears swelled in his eyes. Real tears. Morgan hadn’t cried in what felt like forever, but tonight—for a few minutes—he remembered what it was like to be human.