Life After Dinosaurs

15 - Home

Alicia hadarranged for a chauffeur to take me home. I insisted that stayingover wouldn't be a good idea, and even though she protested, shedidn't argue. As much as I didn't like my home, it was mine. Therewas something to be said about family after all.

When I got to themoldy front door it felt like it was a different place.In the fifteen hours away from my home I had somehow grown accustomedto opulent decorations and lavish accommodations. The small two bedroom condo seemed foreign and strange to me. The door unlockedwhen I put the key in and I had to give the warped wood a sharp tugup just to get it open. None of it felt right. Inside was apile of paper plates and dishes piled up on the living room table infront of the plasma screen. The television played a late nightmovie from the nineties to a room for no one.

Down the carpetedfloor, the kitchen and dining room opened up to my right. There was apile of dirty dishes and the trash bin was overflowing with pizzaboxes and microwave dinners. The small wall decorations covered indirt and grime were barely visible in the pale blue light. I knew they were otters and dolphinsand sculptures of vegetables from some deep corner of my mind, but I couldn't shake the feeling something had changed. I turned the light on and it was all there just asmy brain said it would be.

When I left thekitchen and the small three person table, I turned the light off andbrought it back to the darkness. I followed the house's one carpetedpath down the hallway. On my right was our bathroom full of mildewstains and dust, on the left was my bedroom with its posters. I had aTournament of Castles poster, and a Star Wars the Clone Wars animatedposter, and there was a little sign that said "There Be Monsters Lurking Inside." It didn't really seem like mine.

This couldn't be my home.

It was like thewhole place belonged to someone else.

Inside thescattered clothes, comics, and books made me feel anxious. The roomwas a cluttered mess of someone who didn't care about himself. Hedidn't care so much that he couldn't even be bothered to clean upwhere he lived. I saw a stack of homework assignments tossed in apile at my feet. It read '84 B' at the top in bright red ink. Next toit my handwriting read, "You're a fucking idiot!"

Absently, I tossedthe papers to the side of the room and went to my closet. There was ahealthy layer of dust covering the too small jackets and books. Atthe top of the small coat rack were  boxes from my childhood. Istarted pulling them all down until I got to the box from middle school.My heart pounded with fear and anticipation as I rummaged through theprecious belongings of a child that I felt I knew nothing about.

After siftingthrough some toys and scattered things, I came across the pictures ofMindy. She was smiling with her arm aroundme. She looked happy in these pictures with me, but in a way that wasfake. I knew the smile well. I had seen it on Mary Martins when sheposed in her photo shoots, and I had seen it when Alicia was forcedto expose herself before the cameras, and I had seen it in everypicture of myself.

I had been ahollow boy that was scared of life and terrified of myself, but sowas Mindy. She had wanted to find some kind of control in her life.She wanted to make sense of the world that had no kindness for her. Ihad tried so hard to give that happiness to her, but I wasn'tsomething that she loved. I was something for her to control. I was atool for her to make sense of the world with.

I thought back onMary. I thought her on the cover of Cosmo and becomingobsessed with her cleavage and the curves of her body. I rememberedtracking down her sex videos online. I remembered her begging formore and more. Her voice, full of ecstasy and desire resonatedsomewhere within me. I had thought that it was because I was just ahorny creature. That I was nothing more than a lustful boy who wasdesperately trying to get off again after his cousin had rejectedhim, but there was more to it than that. She wanted what I wanted.She wanted what I saw in Mindy, and I had wanted so desperately togive her.