Sven opened his eyes to stare at the drab ceiling, eyeing the suspicious dull stains and many bubbles that threatened to peel away the terrible paint job if something less than a brisk breeze should find it way this far into the apartment. He was lying in his own bed, the large one he shared with his girlfriend on the nights he hadn’t drank himself oblivious. The shadows draping about him told him it was still night, and he hoped it was still the night he had just drifted off in, but as the lack of light appeared much the same as he had ever seen it, it was hard to really tell. He heard a creaking groan somewhere off to the side and down, sounding much like thin wooden planks complaining of a weight shifting atop them, and turned his head.
On the floor, which he knew was not composed of thin wooden planks, lay Janoos. A thick quilt was draped up the his friend’s neck, and a rather large and dripping dark stain about the area of his chest already marred the purple square with the white roses, and threatened to engulf the whiteish and pink neighbors. Sven let out a breath, and sighed as he pushed himself upright to lean against his elbow. He wondered how he could even see such details in the darkened space of his bedroom, but rolled off the cushioned mass before he could think all that hard about it. He was mighty thirsty at the moment, and obviously, since the man couldn’t go anywhere on his own with such a wound on his chest, Janoos could wait.
He reached for the knob and squinted his eyes against the sudden onslaught of a cool bright light. He tilted his head and leaned down to better puruse the the gleaming glass shelves that neatly displayed the refrigerator’s contents. He grabbed a glass that seemed to be labeled with his name, and when he rose to his full height and turned with it in his free hand, he raised a brow.
His son sat in his highchair, looking up at him with wide, glad eyes. As Sven lifted the glass to take a great swig of the surely refreshing liquid, Jake graced him with an open, gap toothed smile that Sven knew would make his mother take an ungodly amount of photos. Sven eyed the sloppy piles of discarded bottles which reached nearly to Jake’s tiny shoulders, and gazed over the oddment of colors that could only be a dribbling mixture sick, spit up, and a mess which he suspected to be either old formula, or rotten baby food. When something smacked against the odd arrangement of splotches caked over his son’s cheeks, he choked down the liquid he was attempting to drink. The something smacked again, creating a new spattering mess upon his son’s giggling face. Sven leaned closer to his son and narrowed his eyes at the small projectile that cling precariously to his son’s very stick skin.
It was round and flat in shape, and held a regular series of holes about a central axis, and reminded Sven of a breakfast cereal his son would not be able to eat for at least a year or more. He couldn’t recall actually buying a box of the stuff for many years. Sven looked to his side, about where he supposed the source of the flying wheel shaped breakfast item had to have been.
There, nestled in the corner of his bedroom, was the round kitchen his mother owned. It wasn’t the one he owned, but it felt right that it was there. The worn wood along the middle had long ago been hauled off to the junk heap, and replace with a shiny glass thing that Sven hated to this day. Along the walls of that tiny were the all various images he had grown up with. That is not what captured his attention.
Sitting behind a folded paper contraption was Mark. His chubby fingers twirled back a wicked looking wheel thing that seemed to wind up a meer piece of twine so taunt that Sven thought it should have snapped by now. Four posts of paper struts held aloft a spork was strapped to a square paper beam, perhaps to reinforce the wavering paper strength of it, and both were leaning back much like a lever. Beneath the lever, swinging freely, was a folded bucket . Sven had no idea what it held, but it was heavier that most of what was supporting it, for when it swayed, the rest of the contraption swayed with it. The other end of the lever touched the table’s top, and Sven watched at Mark happily threaded another piece of twine back into place.
Mark leaned down and closed one eye. He carefully shifted the contraption, and with a sharp nod, lifted his head and looked over at the small pile of cereal that Sven hadn’t noticed by his fat enhanced elbow. As Mark plucked out a piece and carefully placed it within a pouch that seemed to be at the end of another piece of twine, Sven realized what the contraption was.
It was some sort of catapult, and he realized what Mark was using the thing for. He jumped with alarm, as Mark tapped what had to be the trigger. Jake happily clapped his hands together in a greatly uncoordinated way and hissed his happy hissing noise as the piece of cereal bounced off of his forehead. Oddly, Sven wasn’t entirely sure if he hated the idea of his son being the target of Mark’s rather violent creation.
“Tell me you didn’t build that here.” Sven said.
“Where would I build it, my room?” Mark said matter of factly as he glanced blandly in his direction. A heartbeat later he bent over with one eye open, and again wiggled the contraption into place.
“Your room..? I.” Sven shook his head in dismay. Mark didn’t live here, did he? Part of him believed he did, and so he added. “Can’t believe..you’re using a.. a captapult..?
“Trebuchet.”
“Whatever. To entertain my son?!?”
“No. Trying it out. Have to bury him” Sven gritted his teeth against the snapping of a trigger, the sound of a cereal piece smacking against young flesh. “Have to make sure the real one’ll work right, yeah?”
“Not my son.”
“Course not.” Mark said as he fiddled with the strings. He jerked his nose at the empty chair across from him. Mark rolled his eyes as he looked back at Sven as if the gesture explained everything. Sven darted his eyes to the area, and swallowed.
The fourth shot glass sat before it.
And it was empty.
He felt a hand grasp his elbow, and the cold touch was much like ice.
Sven gasped and jolted free of the entangling blankets, nearly leaping away from the edge as he remembered that the body of Janoos was supposed to be lying there, bleeding onto the shag carpet. Janoos’ cold body that should by all rights be in the morge.
No comments:
Post a Comment