Red as Blood, Black as Death

Chapter 3: Mothers really do hate their children

“Shut up!” hissed seventeen year old Luka Scarlatti as he pinned the throat of a red-faced boy against the wall.  “Don’t you dare make a noise.”  He increased the pressure on the boy’s throat.  The boy’s eyes were bulging out of its sockets, his eyelids unable to blink over the tears forming at the corner of his eyes.  He clawed desperately at the strong hands that held his trachea captive.  No one was there behind the building this late at night.  No one to save him.

Yet he still tried to reason with Luka.  “S-sorr-” he managed to sputter out before Luka applied more force.  Coughing ensued from the victim, and his eyes rolled back into his head.

“I told you what would happen if you didn’t do it!”  Luka was angry at him for not doing what he told him to.  He was perilously close to doing it.  Killing another person.

To kill a man.  What did that actually entail?  A shattering of the morals that bound the human conscience?  A sudden rage that enflamed the soul?  A fear driven boost of adrenaline?  There was certainly no absence of ways to end another’s life.  And there were more ways everyday.

Was this a surprise to Luka?  This day had been bad from the beginning.

Luka woke up to the half lucid feeling of grogginess.  He rubbed his eyes while yawning.  Morning, already?  The sun filtered in through the slats of the blinds and followed him as he stumbled into the hallway of the apartment. 

His mother was on the couch by the kitchen again, staring at the wall.  Judging from the dark skin hanging beneath her eyes, once again she had spent the night in a dark daze.  He made sure to walk quietly, as to not disturb her.  Not even some form of a greeting was exchanged between the two of them.

He opened the door of the fridge to find nothing worth eating, sighed, and then returned to his bedroom.  Sloppily, he got dressed and ran a hand through his hair.  Unfortunately, there was no more toothpaste in the bathroom.  He brushed his teeth with plain water, and just let the faucet run for a moment.  It was almost soothing the way it rushed down in a white stream.  It almost lulled him back to sleep, but he remembered about the water bills and quickly closed it.

He grabbed his backpack filled with the homework he hadn’t done and carefully stepped back through the hallway.  He didn’t want his mother to notice he was there.  Too late.  She did.

“Luka,” she growled, as if it pained her to even think about him.  “Trying to sneak away from me?”  It was a terrible expression on her face; her eyes were filled with a combination of hatred and deadness.

Luka thought it was best to say nothing, since when she was like this, anything could start off her screaming.  They might get evicted again for being a public nuisance.  He surreptitiously glanced towards the apartment door, less than three meters away. 

“Greet your mother.”  He didn’t move.  “I said greet your mother!” she snapped at him.  “Be a good child and listen to your mother!”  He wondered if he should risk saying anything, but his mother started speaking before him.

“Ungrateful brat.”  She glared at him.  “Everything’s your fault anyways.”  He had heard this a thousand times, yet he always felt the unfairness of it all every time she said it to him.  Is it his fault she turned out this way?  A depressed, slob who could barely go to work once a week?  He couldn’t not react to this insult, and she knew it.

“Who’s the ungrateful one?” he spat back.  “You’re lucky I’m still around.  I wish I could’ve left like my father.”  Mention of his father always riled her up.

“It’s your fault he left!  If only you had been a good child.”

“It’s your own fault.  Just look at yourself.”  Maybe she had been pretty in the past, but now she looked like she had swallowed a thousand ghouls.  Her cheekbones popped out of her face over her sunken, sallow cheeks.  Her eyes roved around wildly, brushing against the stringy hairs that hung over her face and to the dry paper skin of her hands that were too weak to pick up anything heavier than a notebook.