BE ON CLOUD UNIVERSE [END]

A SON'S LOVE - BIBLE

(Bible as BIANTARA WIRATAMA)

⚠️Trigger warning for mentions of physical abuse, substance abuse, and mental health.⚠️

[BIAN POV]

The evening sun shone down red over the mountainside. In the glowing light the forest below almost appeared to be on fire, autumn leaves burning brilliant scarlet and orange, interlaced with gold. October’s sharp, crisp breeze stirred the leaves to dance like the flames of summertime’s wildfires had done only a few months earlier. A sea of colour stretched as far as the eye could see, seeming to disappear off the horizon. Bian imagined some great fire creeping Jakarta to swallow up the rest of the world, leaving only him alone on this high peak. 

It wouldn’t be so bad to have a reason to stay up here forever. He didn’t want to go home, now or ever. The thought of sitting alone in that dark, too-quiet apartment was almost too much to bear. If he went back to it now, he might just light it up and start the next great fire of Jakarta. Or he might simply crawl into his bed with a bottle of jack and never come back out. 

He wished he had thought to stop at the liquor store on the long drive here. But his mind had been in another place, another time. 

Back when his father had been a part of the world of the living. It felt so long ago though he knew it hadn’t truly been so long, he supposed dad had been alive the last decade and a half to the world, but not to him. Bian’s dad had died years ago. 

His father had been a provider, “last of a dying breed” as he had liked to say. He had been a simple man. The classic blue collar worker who labored hard every day, building beautiful two or three-story homes for families more fortunate than his. Every night he came home aching with muddy boots and blistered hands, and ruled his house with an iron fist. 

When Bian was a small boy, his father would let him sit by his knee after dinner while he watched TV in his Laz-Y Boy armchair. Dad would watch the hockey game, beer in hand, and when their team did well sometimes Bib would get a sip. When dad was working Bian would get to sit in that big, comfortable black seat. He would curl up in the dent made by years of his father sitting in the same spot and listen to mama singing from the kitchen. It always smelled like the cigarette smoke that clung to dad. When dad was home no one ever touched his chair. The one time he had tried, dad had made him run 60 laps around their trailer home, dad didn’t want any LAZY BOY for a son. 

Bian had looked up to his father greatly. He had tried for many years to make the man satisfied. Happy, proud? Well that was never in the books. Just to keep the man’s mood from turning black as rich, fertile soil took everything in Bian and his mama. It hadn’t always been like that though. 

Bian remembered a time when his father would come home and his face would brighten to see mama after work. But the years wore hard on a man who felt he must carry the world on his shoulder, and by the time Bian hit double digits his father’s only joy was escaping into a bottle at the end of the night. Mama stopped singing when he was home. 

Some days she would get up in the morning and draw herself a bath. Bian would wait hours for her to get out. When his bladder began to scream he would crouch on the floor, grasping himself in a desperate attempt to hold it in. He found himself urinating in the sink, praying mama wouldn’t choose that particular moment to climb out of the cold bathwater and rejoin the real world. The thought of going into that bathroom and facing her terrified him. Deep down he thought he knew what she was doing in there for hours, and he couldn’t stand to see his mother cry. He knew this made him a coward, and so he would sit on the other side of the door and pray for forgiveness, hoping his presence meant something.