Skin against skin

# 6

Walsall, home of the Bakers, now

"Steven, what are you doing now?" Simona shouts at her son.
He just ignores her, sitting in his room on the first floor. He's busy with his model plane. A PT-17 Stearman double decker scale model he's been working on for months.
The body is finished, but he still needs to fit the engine in. And all the electricity must be perfect. This hobby is just a little too expensive to see your plane tumbling from the sky on its first test flight.

"Steeeeeveeeeenn??"
The shreeky voice of mam soars through the house. As a bolt of poisonous gass it shatters the air, wraps itself around the bannister, slides through Steven's bedroom door and pushes itself into his unwilling ears.
Steven can't handle that pressure. His mam's voice has been poisoning his head for years now. Every new attack on him makes him go crazier and crazier.

First he presses his eyes together, as if he wants to crush them. Then he pushes them wide open just before he bangs the right side of his head into the wall. Thud! And again! Thud!
The place where his head hits the wall is of a darker colour than the rest of the wallpaper. His head knows the way to that spot.

He blinks his eyes really hard, holds his head in his arms, drops to the floor and huddles up into a little ball, slightly rocking from left to right, as if he's soothing himself.

"Moron!" he hears being shouted from downstairs. The voice is hard and reproachfully.

Mother is sitting at the kitchen table. Her long grey hair wipes the crumbs from the table onto the ground as she waves her head about in an animal-like way. The knuckles from her hand are running white.
"Goddamned, goddamned, that fucking child is going to ruin everything!"