Nick
The house was dark.
Politely peeling paint had drifted away in small flakes and left the
sills nakedly textured. No lights
distracted the eye from the stratified trim, their only obstruction being the
shadowy skeletons of rose bushes and magnolias littering the front of the house.
A far reach from Nick’s childhood home, this house held nothing of the
comfort it had once offered.
Nick stood, silhouetted by the raking pale rays of the shallow sun,
casting a shadow twice his size.
Pulling his eyes from the house they settled on his darker replica.
All he saw were his hands, giant and bulbous, and he stuffed the shadowy
monsters deep into his jacket pockets.
Turning back towards the house, the toes of his shoes shuffled hesitantly
onto the damp grass. He stayed that
way for almost a minute. Could have
been mistaken for a statue if he’d been all one color, or if a blind man had
walked past, and probably would have stayed there except that the dew-soaked
grass was starting to saturate his tattered tennis shoes with moisture; if he
could’ve afforded shoes without holes he would’ve bought them.
He was about to retreat, maybe abandon this venture altogether, when the
door opened. Caught halfway between
decision and indecision, Nick froze, rooted to the spot.
Before he could stop them, his eyes had found those of the man standing
in the doorway. Nick had to look
away before he even reached the step, his brother’s glare was so filled with
disgust.
Ralph led Nick through the hallway, silent, meticulously careful not to
acknowledge Nick’s existence. Nick
wanted to say something, to explain or apologize, but all he could muster was a
shallow sigh, met with a visciously punctuated laugh on Ralph’s part.
Ralph didn’t even stop at their mother’s door, just nodded slightly to
the side as he passed it and went straight on through to the kitchen.
He didn’t have to tell Nick that he wasn’t welcome to follow.
Nick walked slowly into the room, settling in the far corner after a
moment. His painfully thudding
heart did little more than the woman’s breathy snores to mask the silence in the
room. Her breathing was sharp and
raspy, her chest heaving gently under a large pile of duvets.
This woman could not possibly be his mother.
The only movement besides her chest was a fluttering curtain in the
corner which seemed to expand and contract with her lungs.
He stood, watching her sleep, in a fleeting shadow created by the
inhalations of the curtain. He was
about to go closer, to examine this fragile creature, when the door opened and
Ralph entered the room. The light
from the hall cast a ghastly pall on their mother’s face, illuminating the
dangerously pulsating blue veins under her temple’s paper thin covering.
The men’s eyes met, and then Ralph busied himself next to their mother’s
bed, preparing a glass of water and carefully selecting a few pills out of a sea
of medication to place next to the glass.
Nick, impulse deadened, remained in the corner, hands in his pockets.
Their mother had begun to stir and the curtains slowly calmed.
He pulled his eyes away from the bed and instead focused on the side
table in the artificially illuminated hall.
He didn’t have to see his mother to know that she had fully woken up; he
could feel her eyes on the side of his face as Ralph began propping her up on
pile of pillows. Nick heard the
glass as it was picked up from the table, the soft clicks of pills in her hand,
and then the hollow clunk of the empty glass set back down.
Her voice was so weak it took him a moment to realize she was speaking.
“Nick... Nick.” He turned
slowly, and was confronted with a pair of soft, milky eyes.
Ralph was also looking at him, but Nick made sure to ignore his gaze,
giving all of his attention to the woman, now just a mere shadow of his mother.
“Nick. You’re back.”
He shrugged noncommittally, shifting his eyes towards the floor.
He shoved his hands further into his pockets, examining his shadowy shoes
in silence.
A breathy whisper broke the silence.
“Why?”
Well, fuck, Mom, you’re dying!
Nick wanted to yell.
Instead he traced the criss-cross pattern of his shoelaces with his eyes.
* * *
A couple years ago, when Nick had started stealing money from his mom, it
hadn’t felt like stealing. It’d
sort of been a game, because he knew eventually he’d pay it all back, and it was
just a matter of how much he could take at a time without her noticing.
It was fun at first because he’d had this whole secret life.
Sneaking off with the guys at night, rolls of bills in his pocket, he’d
felt like he could do anything. And
he did do almost everything; cocaine, meth, ecstasy.
In the end, his drug of choice was heroin.
A year went by, and all of a sudden, there didn’t ever seem to be any
extra money lying around. All the
other guys went off to college and Nick was left behind.
He had to start stealing from his mom’s bank account, mounting phony
search after phony search for an atm card that just never seemed to stay in her
wallet.
Then he met Leah Raleigh.
She was beautiful and smart and funny and she seemed to actually like him.
She wasn’t so into his drug habit, but she was patient.
She said she trusted him and they could work it out together.
The problem was, Nick never saw any reason he couldn’t have his cake and
eat it too. As long as he didn’t
shoot up around Leah, she didn’t really have any idea that their agreed upon
program had been bent out of shape a long time ago.
Ralph was the first to find out, walking in on Nick as he was carefully
replacing their mother’s atm card and pocketing a fistful of cash.
And of course as soon as he knew, he just had to tell their mother right
away. He was still in highschool
and so was daily inundated with morals and shit.
The day she found out, Nick knew right away.
He could feel it as he walked into the house.
By the time he entered the kitchen, finding her collapsed in a gently
sobbing heap on the table, he had already planned his escape route. Through her
sobs, she let out a choked, “It’s not true.”
That was it. Nick turned
around and left in the vain hope that his own guilt wouldn’t follow.
Without a word, turning on his heels, only to find himself alone, broke,
at two in the morning in desperate need of a fix.
Barely capable of admitting to himself what he had done, he was far to
ashamed to even show his face to Leah, and he saw only one solution.
* * *
It was dark and Nick’s palms were starting to sweat.
Cheeks burning, hands like ice.
It was like he was going through goddamn withdrawal and it had only been
a day. Twenty-two hours, thirteen
minutes. Pathetic.
His pulse picked up, almost tearing a hole right through the side of his
neck. His hands trembled to the
beat of his furiously rushing blood.
Finally, the lock clicked.
He was inside within a second, only realizing after sliding the glass
door shut that it would have been faster just to break the pane.
He wished he’d finished up high school.
He picked his way through the shadowy rooms, nearly deafened by the
torrent of his blood rushing through his ears.
Once, he almost tripped over some ridiculously lavish foot rest-- sorry,
ottoman (yes, they said “ottoman”)--
but he regained his footing, sliding just past the door frame into the dining
room. The table was set, like
always, and the silverware gleamed in the tendrils of moonlight streaming in
through the windows on the far side of the room.
Nick had made it to the potted palm when his conscience caught up with
him.
Fuckmefuckmefuckmefuckme
His hands slipped on the pot; he had to dry them on his jeans before he
could get a firm grip.
Fuckingdruggiepatheticfuckingdruggie
Lifting up the palm, he gagged, turning away to avoid barfing on the
cash.
Enjoying this are you? Fuckmefuckme
Reaching for the cash
fuckmefuckfuckdruggiefuck Cash in hand
fuckfuckfuck Cash in pocket, tears
running down his cheeks
fuckingpatheticdruggie Lights on.
What?
Nick spun around just in time to catch a hefty blow to the jaw.
Cash and saline flying, he staggered to the floor.
He infected the lush cream carpet.
Marring a sea of luxury, a blooming blood rose grew just below where his
head lay.
Mr. John L. Raleigh’s right foot connected with Nick’s stomach, hard,
forcing up a lake of bile. Then
came the moment of recognition, and Nick knew that Leah’s father had figured out
who the bloody figure lying on his floor at
The lights went dark and Mr. Raleigh began his retreat towards the door.
“Just leave my daughter alone.
You ever try to speak to her again, I will kill you.”
From the floor, Nick could only just make out the heavy shadows under Mr.
Raleigh’s brow. And then he was
gone.
On his hands and knees, Nick began the long trek out.
* * *
It had been three months now.
The problem was, his shame had quickly turned to anger.
He loved her.
And they always talk about how drugs impair judgement.
It seems they lie about everything else, but apparently truth comes on an
individual basis. A couple hours
later, he’d been high, and angry.
Mad as hell. He’d already broken in
once that night, it wasn’t hard to do it again.
* * *
Silence.
A viscious snort from Ralph, and then he was yelling “Sorry?
You’re sorry? Oh what a
relief! The fucking lying goddamn
pathetic druggie is sorry!” His
hand had reached the glass off their mother’s bedside table and he flung it
across the room at Nick’s head.
Nick ducked just in time to receive millions of burning shards in the back of
his neck. But was intercepted in
his attempt to flee by Ralph who had now leapt towards him, fists flying.
“You’re sorry?” Ralph screamed. “SORRY?Sorry?sorry?sorry?” His voice
descended into hoarse sobs as he pummeled Nick to the ground.
Nick made no attempt to protest.
It was only as Ralph’s punches devolved to fatigued blows and his yells
to grainy whispers could they hear their mother’s desperate protests.
“Ralph! Stop! Please, Ralph,
please, please, please.”
The doorbell rang.
Everything stopped. The doorbell
rang again. Their mom was looking
at Ralph. Ralph was looking at the
dusty floorboards. They all
listened as the front door swung open, then swung shut.
Footsteps sounded up the hallway, stopping for a moment before a large
man entered the room. And then it
was over. The man reached into his
jacket, pulled out a badge.
“Nicholas Coxin, you are under arrest for the murder of Mr. John L. Raleigh.”
Nick didn’t even bother to protest as his wrists were cuffed, and he was
slowly led out of the house. He
didn’t even look back at his mother.
If he hadn’t known his brother so well, he would have wondered how the
cops had found him.
Ducking to get into the back of the cop car, Nick caught one last look of
his childhood home, black against the neon sunset.
Nick could just make out Ralph’s figure in the doorway.
If he had looked any heavier, he might have melted straight to the
ground.