Terrifying Nightmares

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

“Just for a few months.”

“I’m not going.”

“You need to. It’s not safe here. Please, Aaron. Just go.”

“I will not leave you and father.”

“The cab’s here. You need to go now. I love you, Aaron.”

***

I was walking home from school. No, I was walking to the house I live in. It’s not my home. My home’s in Portugal. But when my parents moved me to the states to live with my Aunt Thedie and Uncle Sam, their house became my new “home”. I miss Portugal. I miss the Atlantic Ocean. All the cliffs along the shore. And my home. A nice big house, sitting at the top off a magnificent cliff, overlooking the ocean. I would wander through the gardens, run along the creek in the woods with my father’s dogs. . . I hate it when I think of my home. So anyway. I was walking “home”. I was at the corner of some busy intersection, watching the cars drive by, thinking about all the different colors of the cars. (Art class is my strongest subject.) I was just thinking about how cool it would be if two cars crashed, and their colors mixed, when right in front of me, a navy blue Honda and a silver Escalade smash into each other. My imagination goes overboard. My first thought is more of a vision, where the navy blue and the silver morph into a swirling mixture of the two, and the pattern splatters onto the crumpled cars. My next thought is of the people. Their faces, twisted and stretched, just like the paint on the cars. Their blood, gushing from open wounds from broken glass, staining the blue and silver. In my mind it’s the ugliest, most gruesome thing I have ever seen. But it’s art. It has a strange beauty to it. I snap back to my senses when I realize a middle-aged woman is asking me if I’m alright. I guess I had a weird look on my face.

“I’m fine.” I mumble. I don’t like talking much. I look around me. All the traffic’s stopped. I don’t have to wait for the light. I run the rest of the way to my uncle’s house. I slam through the front door, throw my backpack on the floor, and take the stairs two at a time. I race to my attic bedroom, the only place big enough for all my “crap”. At least that’s what my uncle calls it. Aunt Thedie calls it stuff. Their daughter, Cameron, can’t seem to find a name for it. I call it art. Sculptures of gruesome faces and paintings of destruction. I find it helps with my anger. My therapist said that if that’s what helps me, then I should keep painting. My uncle was skeptical, but it’s the art or me throwing a fit every other night.

I pull out my sketchbook, a ratty, torn up old thing, and fish around in my pencil case for a sharpened pencil. I lay on my bed, which groans under my weight, and draw the image I had seen. I mix reality with the make-believe. I mix truth with imagination. I create the cars, and add the people; their messed up faces. Adding touches of red and blue and silver in random swirls. I rip the page from the book and tape it to the wall above my nightstand. Perfect. I can look at this when I want to see people in pain. Uncle Sam probably won’t approve, but screw him. He’s not my real father. He can sign a million papers, but I still won’t listen to him. Still won’t call him my guardian. He never will be.

“Aaron! Come here for a minute?” That’s Aunt Thedie calling. I like Aunt Thedie. She’s kind, and quiet. She doesn’t yell. But she sides with my uncle too much. Probably a side effect of getting married. I’m never getting married.

“Coming Thedie!” I holler back to my aunt. I call all my aunts and uncles by their first names. Most don’t care, or are too afraid to tell me to stop. Only Uncle Sam tells me to call him uncle. I’m just waiting for him to give up. He’s stubborn though, like me. Like all the males in our family. The males are stubborn, the females are quite.

I take one last look at the car crash, ingrain the picture in my mind, and trudge down the steep staircase. Thedie is by the front door.

“Aaron. Please. Backpacks go in the mudroom.” Her words were non threatening, like usual. She couldn’t scare a mouse. But her pleading voice makes me give in. I drag the old, ugly, blue backpack to the mudroom. It’s more of a closet. It has a washer and dryer, and four small shelves. One for me, one for my cousin, one for Thedie, and one for my uncle. I tried taping pictures I had drawn on the sides of the shelf, but my uncle ripped them down.