Oh come running down to it
How do I refuse the gift?
It doesn't matter that I exist
I thought a lot about it

“You are putting us in a corner, mister Summers.”

Sitting behind his desk, the chairman opened a folder, with my name on it, and carefully displayed its content on the table, pretending to read it. But he was just putting on a show, like telling me this was all I was: papers on his desk. His face was stoic and a cold.

“I won’t lie to you. We have been rather… disappointed by your recent behavior. And you were such a promising element...” 

Funny, isn’t it? How life turns on you in a fraction of time. I listened to him and recalled how, not so long ago, the same very man was stuffing me with cupcakes and praises, simpering like a courtesan. How quick he was to show his teeth when I happened to not deliver any return on investment. How quick his sugar coated mask fell when I refused to play my part.

“What happen? Did your buddy Miller stop returning your call?” I asked, sitting back in my chair. If he could have shoot ice spikes with his eyes, I would have been impaled.

“I don’t think we are going to keep you” he finally declared, his faces darker than a charcoal burnt cookie. “With the board, we agree that it is no longer safe.”

“For whom? Me or you?” I stared at him passively. He didn’t replied.

“We are thinking of a transfer, to another establishment more suited for your… needs.” He paused looking at my file then returned to me with a disgusted smirk. “But… I don’t think anyone will want someone like you,” he whispered, staring at me from head to toes. “However I am willing to give you a recommendation letter, and I will try my best to cover some of your deviations.” I wasn’t sure to what he was referring here, but I decided to not take it the way my mind wanted to interpret it. “Here is the list of centers that could possibly take you in…”

He handed over a paper he hold with his fingers tips, like a dirty thing, and let go of it when I approached my hand, making it fall on the floor.

Reluctantly, I leaned forward to grab the paper, while he continued to speak with a viperous voice. “This is actually a good thing, since we are reaching your annual renewal subscription. It will be easier in term of paper work. However there is a little detail we still need to discuss: The fee.”

I looked at him waiting for the follow up. “You see, we haven’t be able to get in contact with your tutor those passed few months. And we got concerned when the withdrawal for next year fee got rejected, two months ago. We were willing to close our eyes on it, since you were such a good element. But everyone can sometimes have poor judgement.” He smiled, crossing his hands in front of his face. “Any idea why we couldn’t reach…” He looked at his paper. “…her?”

“My grandmother put me here so she wouldn’t have to give a damn about me. Why do you think she would speak to me?” I retorted, clacking my tong.

“That is unfortunate,” replied the chairman looking more and more down on me. “Well, I suggest you get in touch with her soon, so she can have time to take a decision regarding your whereabouts… And the better, the sooner.” He pushed the plate he had next to him, to offer me a final cupcake, his voice filled with all the bile he could secrete just by looking at me.

I took his offering of sedition and carefully crushed it on his desk, crossing off my bucket list one of the thing I have been dreaming of since this whole mess started. I had my hand on the door knob when I heard him muttered. “You had so much potential. What a waste.”

Without looking back, I left the room saying. “It is not my fault if you are bad at business.” I walked away and went on hiding in the fire staircase. I knew if I returned to the nurse’s office, I had chance to meet Beef Boy and his minions. I didn’t want to see their bloody faces, I didn’t want to see any humans. I just wanted silence and emptiness, my eyes riveted on the slum rooftops, the floating police station and the starless sky of Magdad City.

The next day, I borrowed a bike and crossed the town to my childhood apartment. In six years, the neighborhood changed so badly, I hardly recognized the area. More buildings, more people, more graffiti’s, more trashes. The streets became so small and cramped, that each corner was telling me to watch my back. The hairdresser’s salon had closed up shop. Many of the small businesses were gone or evicted. I didn’t know what happened while I was away but it felt like I entered a lepers quarter.

The air had turned into something nauseous and sticky, due to the unsanitary state of the streets and the living habits. “Let’s get it over with”, I thought observing the sky getting cloudy and dark. I left my bike on the entrance hall and climbed to the first floor.

It’s funny how each thing has its own odor and how you remember it clearly when you smell it again. For the staircase, it was the old urine lingering odor. And for the floor, a mix between spicy fried food and another reek that I couldn’t identify… Or didn’t want to.

I walked to the end of the corridor and tried to open the door with my keys. But it was useless; the keys didn’t want to turn, in a way or another.

So she changed the door lock, after all. I sighed with a painful pinch on my heart. I rang but the door bell was broken. Seriously, woman! Thinking this was taking too long for my own patience, I banged on the door, several times. No answer. Maybe she is just out.

I was about to leave and asked around for her, when I heard noises behind the door. It was coming from the floor. Muffling and scratching. I don’t know why, but hearing it, I immediately remembered when my grandmother had collapsed in her kitchen and panicked. 

Thankfully, I didn’t forget anything about picking a lock. My street classes at least weren’t for nothing.

I went on my knees and pulled out of my inner pocket, two picks I always carried, just in case. Glaring above my shoulder to be sure that no one caught me, I broke into her apartment. However, right at the entrance, I noticed that something was different. It smelled like cigarette and dogs; two things that my grandmother abhorred; beside me, of course. However it was only when I met this seven feet tall guy that could bear five times my body, that I clearly got the situation: my grandmother wasn’t living there anymore.

I ran out as fast as I could, avoiding his foot on my face and his dogs bites. The guy right on my tail, I hid in the staircase basement behind the trash bins until the storms passed. Thankfully the stench was so strong his dogs just gave up on looking for me. When I was sure everything was clear, I prudently got out of my hideout and paid a visit to the janitor.

A sixty-something Indian woman that wasn’t there by the time I was living in the neighborhood, was in the office, in front her TV spot, busy barfing giggles at the show she was watching. I didn’t want to but I gave a brutal punch on the window to be sure that she heard me. The lady jolted of fear and opened to me, visibly confused by my sudden interruption.

“You want?” she asked me, fidgety.

“My grandmother, did she move out?” I immediately replied a bit abruptly

“Your grandmother?” she repeated.

“Yes, sorry, Miss Summers. I went to her apartment and found a wrestler instead. And I am kind of sure that she didn’t want to switch gender so do you know her new address?” The old woman kept staring at me, like a chicken in front of a fork. “Hello there!” I waved my hand at her, trying my best to contain my irritation.

“Sorry, I… Your grandmother, you said?” she blabbered. “So…means you’re her…”

“Grandson, yes.” Her eyes opened even wider, surprised. “I know. She doesn’t really talk much about me… Anyway… Her new address, please?”

She sat better on her chair, clearly uncomfortable about something. “I am sorry”, she started shyly, “but she didn’t move out. She died.”

My body glitched for a second.

“Excuse me?”

A smile lifted my lips but not from joy or anything. It was just a mechanical reflex. And according to the face she gave me, it wasn’t nice to watch. The janitor looked more deeply at me, with her sad eyes and pursued while my smile was slowly frosting on my jaw: “She died… Four months ago”.

She got to be kidding me.

“I am surprised as her only relative, you didn’t know about that. Didn’t you even take news from her?” she kept going with sudden lecturing tone. That was enough for me to break my mask.

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” I finally yelled outraged. “I AM THE ONE WHO SHOULD SAY THAT!!!! WHY DIDN’T ANYBODY CALL ME?!!”

“I-I-I don’t know,” she shivered, scared by my scream. “S-she d-d-didn’t mention your name a-anywhere, not even in her will. I assure you that we would have…”

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted her, stunned by something else than another proof of my grandmother’s shrug. “How do you know about her testament?” I asked her, trying really hard to down my voice.

She jolted and fixed me again speechless. Then she gave a quick glance to her left and I finally took time to watch the room furniture. It was like observing a family album. Most of the pieces came from my grandmother’s living room. I also recognized the blanket I used. Even the porcelain dogs were all lining up on a nice little shelf, looking at me with their arrogant smiles. I grew up with them and now they were remaining in the office of a total stranger.

Somehow, all my strength and warmth left my body at an instant, leaving me empty. A voice inside me whispered: “You were never part of her world, anyway”. I was aware of it but… Why this person? Why this stranger and not me? A feel of guilt suddenly stroke me. I believed she was nice. But I couldn’t help feeling… Jealous, envious… of that woman I knew nothing about.

I looked again at the furniture then turned my back on the janitor. “Never mind”. 

I jumped on my bike and hastily pedaled far away from this place where I swore to never come back; where I wasn’t even wanted to begin with. Heading back to the center never crossed my mind. I just wanted to bike for hours, until my body broke down; to bike wherever I could, without caring, without any goal beside the urge to burn the scream roaring within me. I hated myself, I hated my life and, for the very first time, I hated my grandmother, from every part of my flesh. I cursed her, and my parents, and that fucking town that was entrapping me.

If only I could just disappear.

Unfortunately, my escape attempt drove me into a bunch of Seagulls men. Blinded by a corner, I didn’t see them as I barged in their alley. I hit the fattest one, just like my parents crashed their ride, and flew away from my bike while my victim collapsed under it. His friend ran to check on him while the second one put me back on my legs, all teeth and claws out. Anyone in my situation would have bolted away with immediate excuses. But somehow, I always go against the flow. My day sucked and I was in real bad mood. So instead of avoiding the conflict, I fueled it. Tactfully, I brought the guy to ask me if I wanted to be killed right on the spot or after my ass being wiped.

“The hell if I care, dickhead!” wasn’t my best comeback. Next thing I knew, I was on my knees, stroke by a stomach punch. Obviously, we were heading for the second option.

My glasses flew somewhere in the street from the first hit but, when you are beaten up, it doesn’t really matter if you can see. I was thinking of retaliating when I heard a voice coming from behind. “Hey! What are you doing? Let him go, dude”.

Tottering from my previous punch, holding up my bile, I tried to identify the new comer through my hazy eyesight. It was the first time I heard that voice, but the guy owning it, I knew him. And Hell curses me, it had to be Dorothy’s fucking boyfriend!

“Eh, I said: Let him go, man” asked again the eighteen Latino boy with a sweet laid-back voice. He looked in my direction and added, in a very unconvincing manner: “He is with me.”

“He hit Pedro, man, looked at him,” protested the one stretching my shirt.

“So what?” Yawned my former schoolmate. “He won’t be able to eat for one or two days? I don’t think that’s gonna hurt him,” he laughed it off with a measured modulation that I felt tainted of contempt.

“But…” He never finished his phrase. Dorothy’s boyfriend approached him and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I said, he is with me, Chester.” It was too blurry to really see what was going on, but I think I saw him smiling with all his teeth. The mood had suddenly become heavier as the storm was darkening the street.

The group stuttered about having something to do elsewhere and lit out like rabbits in hunting season. I was still breathing my defeat out when the Latino turned finally his face to me and asked with a whining voice: “What happen to your hair, bro?!!”

I looked at him, speechless, while the wind arose. “Nothing… Bro!” I replied with discourtesy, picking up my fallen bike.

He walked behind me and picked up something on the floor. “Did you get head louse?” I ignored him, searching for my glasses, until I realized he was playing with them.

“C’mon! You almost started a fight with three gangsters in their turf and I should content myself with just a “Nothing” explanation?” He giggled, rolling the arm of my glasses in his hand. “That is not very nice toward the guy who keeps on saving your little ass.” He grabbed my shoulder.

“Mind your own fucking business!!!” I pushed him back, my eyes on fire.

He stared at me slightly surprised then snorted: “So people like you do have emotions!”

I didn’t really know why but, at that very precise moment, I despised him the most in the world. So much that my mind blanked completely out.

I took all the strength left in me and punched him on the nose so hard that he let go of my glasses and hit the wall behind him. His bleeding lips ripped in half, he froze a second on the red liquid dropping on his shirt, while I was cursing like a pig, holding my sore hand. The motherfucker had an iron jaw. 

“OK then…”

I heard him breath and got knocked in the face, like with a hammer. I threw another punch, missed and the moment after, we jumped at each other throats, fighting like wild animals. Letting out all of our frustration and hatred; because I needed it and because he wanted to. I punched him again like if my life depended on it, puking a scream that I would never had imagined coming from me.

Then I saw his foot coming from nowhere and everything went pitch black.