Normal With You

Chapter 2

"I got a call from your teacher today." Zaheer entered his son's room, interrupting his homework.

"What did he say?" Riaz asked, his voice still hoarse. He cleared his throat, knowing full well it wouldn't ease the irritation.

"He said you just walked out of the class in the middle of the lesson. Why?" He asked carefully, softly.

"I don't know." How could Riaz explain the reason knowing his father would scoff at it.

"You don't know? What do you mean you don't know?" Riaz could feel the sweat pooling at the base of his back. He didn't even realise that he still had his pen poised over his book, his shaking hands leaving dots all over the page.

"I'm sorry, dad. I don't know why." He looked down at the spotless cream carpet, waiting for his father's reaction.

"I didn't raise you to behave like a rubbish off the street. I raised you to behave like a man. Was your behaviour befitting that of a man?" He stepped forward, knowing he was intimidating his son.

"No dad." Riaz's voice had dropped to barely a whisper.

"Speak up." He tilted Riaz's chin up with his finger so that he could look at him.

"No dad. It was not." Riaz tried to speak appropriately.

"No, it was not. Every action has consequences Riaz. You know that, right?" He spoke as if discussing business over the supper table but Riaz knew that his father was at his angriest when he behaved this way.

"Yes."

"Yes, what?" Zaheer asked.

"Yes dad." Riaz wasn't sure how it was that he hadn't stuttered.

"Do your actions deserve consequences?"

"Yes dad." Riaz could feel his knee bouncing up and down, knowing what was to come.

"I think I'll take these for a week." Zaheer easily lifted Riaz's glasses from the bridge of his nose and stowed it away in his front pocket before turning around.

"No don't..." Riaz blurted out before he could stop himself. He gasped quietly, noticing his father's leg jerk.

Zaheer turned around slowly, observing Riaz. "What did you just say?"

Riaz could feel his breath begin to deepen. His chest swelled almost painfully with each laboured breath and his hands had curled into tightened fists around his pants leg. "I'm sorry, dad." He tried to pacify his father.

"I don't think you really understand the fact that you aren't entitled to use that word in my house." Zaheer bent down so that he could look Riaz in his eyes as he tightened his hand around the back of Riaz's neck. "You need to learn this and learn it fast, my boy." He jerked Riaz's head forward before walking out the door.

Riaz knew what was coming and bounded to the pedestal besides his bed. He scrambled and shuffled through its contents almost frantically while he still had the time. Zaheer had closed the door and Riaz could hear him trying to fit the key into the lock. Finally, Riaz wrapped his hand around the little box of matches that was always kept in his draw before laying his head on his knees to wait...

Zaheer switched Riaz's light off from the outside and walked away.

"Please switch on the light," he whispered into the darkness. "Please." But he knew his dad would not come back. Zaheer knew what Riaz was afraid off and he would use it against him at every opportunity.

Riaz lit the first match and watched it, uselessly hoping that it would take longer than a few seconds to burn out.

Then he lit a second match, then a third, then a fourth...