Another dark little SOC that smacked me upside the head and -demanded- that I write it immediately. The song is the utterly amazing “Father’s Son” by Three Doors Down. I actually borrowed the narrator, but probably only his authoress would even know any of what’s going on here anyway. If it gets a little too confusing, remember that nameccian men can be mothers as well. Enjoy.

If mom hadn’t died, you think to yourself before the world goes black, none of this would have happened.

He should have been there for him. Protected him. How? Gods, who knows. When you were a kid it seemed like dad could do anything. Never thought he could be helpless. But that was before mom died.

Dad fell apart. He fell fast and hard and he took a lot of people with him before it was finally over. You kinda wish you’d been one of them. You’d have mom at least. Everyone else seems to do pretty fucking good without you. They’d have gotten over it- your brother would have run off to Texas with his girlfriend about the same fucking way, your ex would have run off with your best friends exactly the same fucking way, and... you’re a miserable father to Karrie anyway. She would have been born as somebody else’s kid. It’d be better for everyone.

The stale smell in the apartment’s probably you. You can’t pick it up too well, with the whiskey haze swallowing it down to woozy pinpricks. It hurts to look at it with clarity. The room, the windows, your life.

Any time that it occurs to you to get the hell out of here you try. Gods it aches to think. Don’t think. It’s easier to rot here.

Karrie’s sleeping. You made sure before slinking into your hole. You hate when she sees you like this, even if it is what’s best for everyone. You see, dad didn’t drink. Dad didn’t forget. He just got angrier and angrier, focusing in on everything that’d gone wrong more and more until he exploded. You can feel that monster in your own skin and the whiskey drains it out. It does its job. You’ve never hit Karrie like you were in those last few years when you and dad would beat on each other at times that had nothing to do with sparring. Never even fucking hit Kit, though she could never understand anything. Such a fucking stupid kid, you should never have even started to-

Gods man. You can’t go there. You were both stupid fucking kids who thought having your own kid would make you a family instead of strangers living in the same house. Stay in that place in your head too long and you’ll eat yourself alive. Keep any violence out of the family. Keep it to people no one cares about, like that girl working in the street who looked like her. Mom would have understood. You’ve got to believe he would, to keep yourself in one piece. Mom would have understood what you’re doing to yourself.

Whole life, you try to be something. It’s your story isn’t it. You’re your father. You say you’re not, that you’re streetwise and social and smarter but the same monster lives inside you and you’re just containing it a little better than he did. Its going to go off and it’s going to kill you, but not like the craters dad left behind. You’re going to leave a corpse in a gutter somewhere alone or on a bed in a cancer ward. Nobody’s going to remember you but Karrie and the poor saps that have to clean up after you.

There’s more, to it all. But that’s where the blackout fades in.

If mom had been here, he would have understood what happened to us.

4/16/2008 04:07 PM