Failure To Thrive

Sun

April 14, 1997

Blood. Veins leaked blood, but his heart kept pumping.

Bones. Skin stretched over bones, but he still smiled.

Bare. The wall was bare, but they were both still there.

Two feral animals bearing the souls of children scampered down an uncaring sidewalk that'd been cracked for their whole lives. They'd slept in and skipped school that sunny Monday, the wall that'd once been bare now plastered with a few posters and a handful of new drawings; they'd just sucked it up and moved on, loss being far from new for them. Suck it up, that's what they had always done, and that's what they would always do; it was the only thing they knew how to do, really. So many things in their lives had been empty for a very long time and they had always just sucked it up. That garage where a car should have been was empty. That kitchen corner where Ms. Beavis had once taken weird pills and stuck needles into herself was empty. That dresser drawer that had once held two plastic piggy banks was empty. That cabinet where Ms. Head had once kept the beer and liquor was empty. That shelf in the closet that had once hidden a stuffed frog was empty. A lot of things in their lives were empty, so the teens were used to it. They just sucked it up and moved on, because as long as they had each other, there was no point in being stuck in the past. No point at all. That's what Butt-Head had learned the hard way on that frigid day in January, when he'd come back home from work only to find the inevitable inferno in the backyard that had ruthlessly devoured every single piece of Beavis that he had ever tried to preserve on the bedroom wall; it was impossible to try keeping select pieces of a living, breathing person on a piece of paper. Within a matter of hours, he'd already sucked it up and still laid in bed beside the person who had started the fire, because although the wall that had always stared back at them had been stripped bare that day, the person farting under the sheets beside him would always be the same Beavis that had always been there. Butt-Head hadn't lost anything tangible, only inaccurate memories and long-forgotten dreams that would've never happened anyway. Here they were together, stuck in reality.

"You drive me crazy." Pushing open the slightly loose door after being told he could play outside, having spent the weekend at a trailer park where his mother's latest boyfriend lived, Beavis had begun to run down the steps when his reckless little footsteps had managed to irritate a hive full of wasps hidden beneath one of the steps. He hadn't noticed the buzzing, his mind set on exploring the trailer park and finding something to climb or break before the weekend ended and he would be sent back to school to sit in a stupid plastic chair and listen to his first grade teacher lecture about boring math he didn't understand. School sucked so much that he hadn't even been allowed to go to recess last Friday because his teacher had gotten mad at him when he had asked why she was talking about "syphilis" during one of those lectures about words and the alphabet; he'd heard overheard stuff about "syphilis" when his mother was around, and she had never talked about books or anything nerdy like that, so he had been confused and kind of disappointed since he never got his question answered. Anyway, it was a warm Sunday morning and he didn't want to waste any more time before he would have to be sent back to stupid old school, so he had just hopped off of the last step and began to run right before everything went black. He didn't remember much after that, not even how he had screamed or how much it had hurt, only that he'd woken up sprawled out on the gravel after his mother had slapped him awake with the reek of alcohol seeping out of her pores. Man, was she mad. Apparently, he'd been stung by nearly an entire hive of wasps, his screams having interrupted whatever she had been doing inside the trailer. Once again, he'd caused nothing but trouble. Looking back, it wasn't that much of a mystery why she drank when she wasn't already high or sleeping in different towns. He drove her crazy.

"Cut it out, buttmunch!" Butt-Head lightly smacked Beavis upside the head with his free hand for, like, the fiftieth time that day. Naturally, Beavis had been eyeing a banged up motorcycle on the side of the road with that telltale grin on his face warning he had a half-baked idea somewhere in that empty head as if he was even remotely capable of driving something simple like a golf cart, which he definitely wasn't. Maybe Butt-Head could figure out how to drive it, he had always been kind of good at stuff like that and both teens took advantage of his skill when they could, but he just wasn't in the mood to try to hijack some dented chunk of metal today. He had a different vision for how he and Beavis would spend their day. One arm cradling a box chock full of dead light bulbs that Mr. Anderson had told them to re-bicycle or whatever, Butt-Head had dragged Beavis along as they headed toward that big hill that overlooked the town, planning to throw the lightbulbs down the steep slope. Usually, he would make Beavis carry the box, but the idiot had already broken, like, 10 of them within seconds of holding the box; Butt-Head didn't want to climb up a whole hill and not have anything fragile to shatter by the time they got up there, so he'd quickly taken the box before Beavis could break anything else too soon; besides, Beavis was still weaker than he should've been since regaining weight apparently took way longer than either of them had ever imagined though the stuff in the blond's head probably didn't help their plight, so Butt-Head didn't trust him to not drop the box and spoil their plans before they were even halfway to their destination. Watching stuff break was cool, but it was way more fun when they broke stuff from somewhere up high. They could've climbed onto Mr. Anderson's roof like the time when they had gotten stuck on Stewart's roof with a coat hanger they had deemed to be a suitable choice for a lightning rod, but that hadn't gone very well; they'd ended up getting stuck on the roof for a whole rainy weekend without even getting struck by lightning, so it'd be a while before they tried something like that again. Besides, the hill was cooler because they got to see the whole town from up there, meaning they could throw lightbulbs at any house or building they wanted. They could aim at Stewart's house, where Stewart would probably be planting flowers or something prissy like that in his yard, and then he'd get hit in the head by a lightbulb out of nowhere and cry like a wussy little baby. Man, they couldn't wait!