The Little Brat (Part II)

Continued from Part I

I heard the tumbling of feet down the stairs and a few seconds later Darren appeared in the room beside me followed by a strong whiff of urine. The boy was still wearing his snotty army top minus the trousers and their cargo of faeces; instead, he was wearing a pair of bright green swimming trunks.

I stood stunned. I must have looked stupid because the boy began to laugh, pointing at my face as he did so. I realized that the foul stench of urine that had infiltrated the confines of this claustrophobic nightmare space was emanating like lethal radiation from the boy's swim-wear. 'Darren,' I shouted, calling the boy's attention, "what in the name of the alien overlords are you doing wearing your swimming shorts for?" I sounded like my fourth year primary school teacher, Mrs. Pikes, who used to beat me on the head with a wooden ruler whenever I farted in class.

The boy stopped laughing, the jovialness evaporating from his face like some volatile gas. The creature known as Darren lowered his head, as his mouth split into a evil and menacing sneer, "Yes Mister Vermeer," spoke the boy firmly but slowly, pronouncing each word as if each one was a sharp dagger that he was slowly inserting into my abdomen, "I will do that..."

I looked hard into the eyes of insolence; they were feral, untrained, insubordinate and dangerously unpredictable. Although I was slightly taken aback by the boy's response, given the fact that it made no sense at all in relation to my question, but I wasn't going to surrender my authority to this little evil incarnate. "DAMN YOU KID!" I shouted as I reversed a tightly clenched fist towards the ceiling, "DAMN YOU! WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME!", for a moment, as if the armor of evil had been cracked, I saw for the first time, real fear in Darren's eyes, a vulnerability that softened my anger, and I brought my fist down upon the coffee table, splintering a corner of it, and causing the pile of pornography magazines to slide across it and catapulting the filled ashtray with cat droppings into the air.

I lowered my eyes in shame as the glass ashtray clattered to the ground. The remnants of my rage bubbled themselves out through the ends of my shaking nerves. I felt the strength of my legs leave me, as I helplessly watched my body avalanche to the floor, tumbling onto the fugitive cigarette butts, my head landing on the feline excrement. I began to sob in a way I hadn't done for years. After ten minutes, I fell into a deep restful sleep; that was what I had needed all along: sleep; heavenly sleep, the sleep that only the gods have, the kind of sleep that unleashes the soul from the body and flies it to eternity.

To be continued...