Lineage(19)

Anthony snapped a short punch at his son’s face and blood began to flow from Lance’s lower lip. Another punch opened a slight cut over his right eye, and after that, Lance lost the will to keep track of the injuries. Before his vision became too red to see through, he noticed the glint of light that kept flashing off his father’s wedding ring and wondered where his mother really was.

Finally, the blows began to taper off, like a heavy rain receding with a passing storm. The hand released its iron-like hold on his upper arm and allowed him to collapse. As he fell gracelessly to the floor, Lance noted that he hadn’t made a sound throughout the assault, and somewhere amidst the swelling sea of agony, he believed his mother would be proud. The pain was all-encompassing, a writhing mask that crawled across his ruined face and crept down into his neck. Blood pooled in a dark corona around his small head, and when he tried to open his mouth, his jaw moved barely an inch, then stopped.

Without thinking, Lance began to try to stand in an attempt to make it to his room, where he could at least lie on his bed. He had barely gathered his hands beneath him when a hard-soled boot skipped off of his temple, and for the second time in twenty-four hours, Lance dropped into the unfathomable depths of unconsciousness.





Chapter 2



“There is always room for coincidence.”



—Alva Noto



The next week was a surreal passing of time that Lance faded in and out of. At times he would awake to the pitch blackness of his room in the middle of the night, his desk and chair strange shapes beside him that seemed to move and undulate in the darkness. At other times he would open his blood-encrusted eyes to a blindingly white day that made him turn to the shelter of the wall and wonder if the world was made entirely of razor-shafted light. His dreams became reality, as one trailed into another like a looping reel of movies played constantly on the backdrop of his mind. Creatures reached out to touch and prod him as he crossed burnt landscapes of piled corpses. Hands grasped at his pant legs as he stepped on the rotting dead, and he knew he shouldn’t look down, couldn’t look down. And at last, when he could resist no more, he gazed at the body gripping tightly to the cuff of his jeans, and his mother’s bloated face stared up at him with pleading in her filmy eyes. He had come hurtling out of the dream as if flung by the hand of God himself, and nearly ruptured a vocal cord as the hoarse scream tore out of his throat with talons of glass. No one had come to see if he was all right, not that he truly expected a visitor. In reflection, he was glad that no one had checked on him, considering his father was the only human being close enough to hear him cry out.

Sometimes there were bits of food and glasses of water on the chair near his bed, most times not. Time ceased to have meaning as the days passed for him in his pain-induced coma, and it was only when his father finally shook him awake one afternoon that Lance realized how long he had actually spent in his room, alone with his wounds and deep dreams.

“You’ve been shittin’ the bed for a week, get yer ass up and get on the pot from now on if you have to go.” Anthony stood staring down at him from his bedside, his thin arms planted on narrow hips.

Lance slowly sat up and tried to focus his eyes, which didn’t want to center on anything in particular. His muscles felt new and weak as he levered himself out of the bed and began to stand. His jaw hurt immensely. He tried to work it down and up, down and up. He imagined a rusty bucket on a backhoe articulating after a winter of being stored in muddy water. After gingerly moving it up and down a few more times, he rose from his bed and wobbled across his room, his father following a few steps behind. Lance could feel his pants sticking to him uncomfortably, both on the back and front, and realized the smell that had been assaulting his nose was emanating from himself.

When he made it to the bathroom, Anthony walked past the doorway, leaving him in relative solitude. Lance leaned against the sink and looked at his gaunt reflection in the mirror. His face was drawn and stark white. His hair looked that much darker because of his paleness. A bluish-purple half-moon had formed around the right side of his jaw just below his ear. He touched it and winced when the slight pressure set off aftershocks of pain that radiated out into the rest of his face.

When Lance stripped off his soiled clothes, he was appalled by what he saw. His bowels seemed to have been working on their own accord over the last week, as his father had so eloquently put it, and he realized now that yes, he had been shittin’ himself. The smell was so overwhelming that he wondered if he might pass out from it, and he put one hand on the back of the toilet to steady himself. When the bout of dizziness had passed, he started a bath and waited until the water had filled to nearly halfway before stepping into the hot water.