Athazagoraphobia

Chapter Two

My head popped off my pillow when a wave of light streamed in through my open door. I was groggier than ever.

"Sorry to wake you so suddenly, I just wanted to let you know we're heading out. Y'all's gifts are on the counter, if you want to take them to Jack." Cara clicked her tongue and brushed off the peak of her dress, leaving the door open as she adjusted her handbag and left my sight.

I groaned, checking the timepiece on the bedside table. Six in the morning -- an hour of sleep after that drive was worth jack shit. As I tossed off my comforter and pulled on my leg, Vee reached in and turned the light knob.

"Have a nice nap?" he asked with a plastered-on smile that, rather than telling me his excitement for the event, shouted at me how exhausted he was. For the service, he had clothed himself with a black vest and white dress shirt under a dark blue long coat. A beige plaid newscap was fitted over his undercut pulled back into braids, save for two straight strands that framed his face. At that moment, I wished I had not slept at all in order to go to the ceremony, even if I would've napped during it – albeit, my jokes about being set aflame the second I stepped foot on the border of a parish likely didn't make him too thrilled.

I held my hand up to block the light to get dressed as I was only half awake. At least I got some sleep. Somehow, I managed to make it downstairs in yesterday's cleaned-up dress, wave Cara and Vee goodbye, and get out of the driveway a mere minute before them. Despite being maybe an hour and a half away, I wanted to get there early and not spin out in the snow. My father was my world, and lateness would've tainted my conscience.

My father lived in northern Durham County, smack in the middle of nowhere. He had stuck around where he had raised me, in an abandoned cottage that he'd worked with the nearby community to demolish the base of and reconstruct on a chassis. It was a quaint little place, although I was surprised it still maintained its structure through the winter with the snow piling up on the roof.

Jackson Lindroos, to those who didn't know him, was an inbred hick and a middle-aged man who lived in the North Carolina woods to avoid tax collectors and census men -- I mean, they were right, but it didn't make him a bad person. The older I got, the more I understood why he didn't share his life with many people. If I was fifteen and got saddled with a child by my own cousin because our grandparents demanded it, be sure as hell that I'd seclude myself. I didn't blame him for my birth defects, but then again, it was difficult for me to see him as anyone except a bushy-bearded man with love and kindness in his heart. He was the guy who looked at his only little boy with mild worry, but followed it up with "You want a dress and ribbons? Then I'll buy you the prettiest dress and ribbons I can find." I loved my inbred hick dad, because at least he was an empathetic old shit. That ran through my mind as the steps up to his front door creaked and the snow crunched under my heels. I picked gravel and chunks of dirt out of my sole before I went inside, and the unlocked door stuck when I pushed it.

"It's open!" a familiar voice called in Suomi. I was thankful my father's tone still had some youthfulness in it, and the first thing I did was set my bag of gifts for the two of us on the wobbly-legged dining table. It was generally freezing that deep into December, but he was working in the kitchen over a black speckled skillet, making the house wonderfully warm. Despite his positive activity, I looked at his worn knuckles with dread, knuckles not meant for a thirty-four year old. He had been in many jobs, a milkman being what he considered his retirement due to its comparative ease versus a factory, which had robbed him of his right ring and small fingers; they had been replaced with a non-functional wooden prosthetic, which had dragged us both into a ridiculous amount of missing limb jokes after the traumatic event passed over. His face was wrinkled, and his eyes dead -- though I didn't think they were ever alive. I feared I would grow old as fast as he did if I worked my fingers to the bone on a sewing machine for twenty hours a day and then continued to wake up before dawn to go out on a bike that hadn't had any repairs since before the war.