Victor, Victorious

Chapter Two

"Hey! I said, get up! Now!"

Victor's eyes fluttered open to the sound of his father shouting. A black and silver Los Angeles Raiders blanket covered the better part of the boy's head.

"Now, Victor!" his dad, Arturo, demanded, walking up to the bed. "I ain't playing around here!"

Victor cursed softly. His dad had turned yet another awesome dream into a living nightmare.

"Come on!" Arturo screeched. "Move it already!"

God, he was an awful alarm clock.

The man lifted a couple of comic books from the floor. He put down his bottle of beer and rolled up the papers into a baton.

"Don't ignore me!" He smacked Victor upside the head with the comics.

His son parted the blanket and bolted up straight. "Okay, okay! I'm up, alright? Leave me alone!"

Victor knew he shouldn't have shouted at his father, but sometimes stupid emotions won over his brain.

Arturo was furious. "Don't talk to me like that." He stunk of booze. The beer must've been a chaser.

"Talk to you like what?"

"Don't you talk to me like that. I'm your father, damn it." He smacked Victor again, this time stinging his son across the ear. "Show me some respect."

Victor screamed, "Get outta here!"

Arturo yanked the blanket away from the boy. It sailed across the room, knocking a couple of dusty, old trophies off a shelf. Victor immediately shivered, wearing only tattered boxer shorts.

"Ah, pobrecito," said the ugly man. His grin was yellow, rotten. "Musta been some dream, eh?"

"GET OUT!"

Arturo yelled, "YOU, SHUT UP!" and smacked his son again, this time across the mouth with an open palm. With unwashed sausage fingers. "You really speaking to your father like that?"

"Dad!" Victor did his best to hold back tears. "Stop!"

His father hit him again with the comic book baton. Again. Again. "Don't you disrespect me!"

"Stop!" Victor couldn't hold back the tears any longer. "I paid money for those!"

"Yeah? You got money? How'd you get money?"

"Leave me alone. Please."

"You taking my money?"

"No."

"You taking my money, is that it?"

"No! You don't have money!"

Arturo let out a short laugh, but there was no humor in it. "Is that right?"

"You spend it all on beer! On cigarettes! On stupid stuff like that!"

Arturo sneered. "Well, you got a bed, don't you? You got clothes, right? I give you some food, don't I?"

"Yeah."

"Then what're you talking about, 'no money'?"

"Dad."

"You learn how to talk to me." Arturo ripped pages from the comic books, threw them at his son.

"Dad! No!"

"Shut up! You talk to me better, and maybe you get to keep nice things." The man dropped the remaining pages to the floor. "You're late for school. Hurry up, or you're gonna miss the bus."

Arturo picked up his beer bottle, took a long swig. Victor stepped off the bed, grabbed the blanket, and repositioned the fallen soccer trophies, one of them now bent.

"And I ain't driving you," growled the drunk.

Victor wouldn't get in a car with him, anyhow. Soon, Victor and his friends would be old enough for their own driver's licenses. But none of their families could afford extra cars for their kids. And none of the kids were exactly motivated enough to work a job and save up for a vehicle.

"You hear me?" Arturo needled. "Get dressed, or you're walking. Again." He left the room much quieter than how he'd entered it.

After smoothing his blanket out on his bed, the boy dried his wet cheeks with a corner of the black-and-silver cloth. The comforter had been his mother's when she was a kid.

Why'd she have to die and leave him to live with such a piece of crap?

There was no good answer to that question. There never had been, never would be.

Victor slipped on an oversized white T and baggy jeans. He wriggled his feet into a pair of busted-up, black Converse All-Stars. He took some time to piece his comics back together.

And, like usual, he walked to school.