Catharsis [Novel]

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER TWELVE

            The light is still on when my stomach manages to rouse me from my narcoleptic plunge into slumber.  The piercing light still hurts.  Squenching my eyes together as tightly as I can, I turn my face towards the coolness of the kitchen floor.

            "Light," I manage to get out through muffled lips smashed against my bare arm.

            " I turned it on," replies my father.  "Why?"

            "Off," I continue.  "Light off."  I pause before continuing with, "please."  I wait several seconds and hear no movement from my father.

            "It hurts my eyes.  A lot."

            My father steps back towards the doorway, and there is a sharp click as the refreshing drape of blackness covers everything around me.  Relief floods my nerve endings.

            He doesn’t move away from the light switch, nor does he return to where I'm lying on the floor.  I can smell confusion on him now.  It doesn't smell as strong as the anger or worry, but I can tell it's there.

            "Are you drunk?  Have you been drinking?"  His voice is soft, the sternness of it lies just beneath the surface.

            "No."  (I’ve never touched alcohol.  Addiction runs in the family, and it’s kept me paranoid.) 

            "Are you hung-over?  Is that why the light hurts your eyes?"  My dad asks.

            "No.  No alcohol at all,” I tell him, and then because I can sense the next question before he even has to say it. "And no drugs either.  Of any kind.  I'm completely sober." (As far as I know, that is.)

            In a few steps, he closes the short distance between us and bends down so he is closer to where I’m lying on the ground.  Air quietly whistles through his nose, and I’m surprised to realize he is gently smelling me.  Well, the air around me to be accurate.   Does he also have the super senses I have?  Has he been hiding them from me all these years?  Is he where I got all this from?  Is it inherited?

            And then I get a flash - a premonition if you will - of what he's doing.  He's trying to see if he can smell marijuana or tobacco on me.  I smile.  He doesn't have super senses.  He just has parent senses.

            "You won't smell any smoke on me, dad.  There's nothing there to find."

            His body tenses next to me for a moment.  I must have startled him by calling him out on it when he thought he was being sneaky. 

            "Can we get up, please?" I ask.  "Maybe sit at the table and talk?  I think that'd be good."

            He nods and we both stand and move towards our heavy wooden kitchen table.  Pulling out chairs, we sit down facing each other.  Both of us are silent and just look at each other in the dark kitchen.  Actually, I can see him just fine, but judging from how far his pupils are dilated I'm guessing my body isn’t much more than a shadow-filled outline.  I continue to stare at him and try to figure out where to start my story when my stomach throws in its grumbly vote again.  I'd almost forgotten my whole reason for coming in here.

            "Hey dad," I begin.

            "Yes," he answers cautiously.  He’s guarding his response.  Anger and curiosity are battling in him, but there's still some worry in there.  It's just taken a back seat on our current trip down how-to-best-punish-my-daughter lane.

            "Could you, uhm, I mean, would you mind," I stop for a moment.  This is going to sound dumb.  "Can you get me something to eat from the fridge?"  I add meekly, "Preferably something from the restaurant last night?"

            My father continues to stare at my dark shape in the oaken chair before replying, “Sure, I can do that, but is there a reason why you can't do that yourself?"

            “The...uhm...fridge light hurts my eyes right now (Yup.  It sounds dumb.)."  My shoulders sag after saying the words out loud.  "But I can tell you what happened tonight if you’ll get me some food.  My stomach hurts.  A lot."

            He doesn't move.  He just stares at me.  I know he heard me. I watched his face twitch as he listened to my words, and I can still sense the anger on him.

            "Damn right you will," he finally says and stands up to walk the few feet to our flower-magnet and school report card covered fridge.  Those four words tell me a lot.  My father never curses.  For him to say that one word says everything.

            I follow his movements to the fridge door in anticipation of something to calm my belly, then I remember the door light just as his fingers wrap around the vertical handle of the fridge.  Turning my head, I clench my eyes shut to protect them, but the light doesn't seem as bad this time.  Slowly opening them, I look at the far wall and the light is just fine.  My father's silhouette moves in the lit rectangle of the opening.  Looking directly at the light now is only mildly irritating; it’s nowhere near the blast of pain it was earlier.  Am I getting better?  Is it because I'm farther away?  Was it because it surprised me?  These are questions I have no idea how to answer yet.

            The smells the door has unleashed are powerful and intoxicating.  I smell honey ham in the deli drawer.  The artificial sugars of an opened can of Diet Pepsi my mom has put back on the top shelf hints the air.  The smell of the Moo Goo Gai Pan in the enclosed foil container manages to reach me before my father even pulls it out.  Smelling all of these things at once is wonderful, but it still doesn't strike me as normal.

            "Do you want a Mountain Dew?  You might as well have the caffeine.  You have school in a few hours."

            I nod my head as I sort through all the aromas hitting me at once.  He turns away from my fridge-door-lit features and grunts before grabbing a green can from the middle shelf.

            He sets the foil and plastic container down in front of me along with the can.  The intoxicating smell of nourishment this close to me is more than I can bear, and I tear off the plastic top and scoop some into my mouth using just my fingers.  It's cold, and I don't care.  I chew and swallow, and start on a second bite before the realization catches up with me.

            I can't taste the food.  I can smell it, but there's no taste.  At all.  I might as well be eating boiled cardboard for all the stimulation it's giving my palate.