the human condition ❁ paul lahote

chapter twenty five: death is a riptide

[ THE HUMAN CONDITION ]
Chapter XXV: Death is a Riptide

❝Nobody wanted your dance,
Nobody wanted your strange glitter – your floundering
Drowning life and your effort to save yourself,
Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil,
Looking for something to give –
Whatever you found
They bombarded with splinters,
Derision, mud – the mystery of that hatred.❞
—Ted Hughes, God Help the Wolf After Whom the Dogs Do Not Bark

❀

I PASSED OUT FROM THE PAIN at some point after Franken-Dad started the car and left. It took hours for me to wake, and by then the sun was rising. My head pounded, my chest cavity and abdomen ached, my dignity was smushed—but I said to Hell with it and made myself sit up. It was a stretch of my limits. I managed to rise up but quickly fell into an acute angle, like a wrench was driven into my back. I couldn't fend off the groan of pain that left because of the sharp stabs that followed.

Never thought I'd be able to say a pack of wolves beat the shit out of me, but here I am, I thought bitterly, and the pack wasn't even the mongrels I know as pack.

I fished my phone out of my right back pocket. My fingers were trembling like I just snorted three ounces of morphine. Every thought was frantic, none comprehensible, all fleeting and panicky like I was still in the middle of a fight. Franken-Dad had fled the scene, but I still tasted blood—and I still ached everywhere that had neurons to transmit sensations of pain.

Sighing in and out, I shakily went to my contacts and scrolled until I saw Sam's name. He was the first person who came to mind that would know what to do in regards to tracking Franken-Dad down and containing him. He was the oldest, so he knew more. He was the calmest, so he would talk me down without talking down to me.

The dial tone began, and the phone rang and rang and rang. My heart accelerated a pace with every ring, bracing for the signature sound of a pick-up, but it didn't come. It went an entire minute. Late in the waiting game I realized he wasn't going to answer. I swore loudly and hung up.

My next call was to Embry, who was actually the last person that tried texting me. Around three hours after school when I was knees-deep in a biology assignment about mitosis and meiosis he messaged asking if he could call me. I'd claimed I was too busy, and our conversation ended there. Now I desperately needed him to answer. But he also didn't pick up.

I didn't have Jacob's number and I had him blocked on Myspace so I went straight to Jared's contact. I called him, biting my index finger's nail like I was in middle school again, but he did the same as the rest. He went straight to an automatic computed voice apologizing and saying the caller I was trying to reach was unavailable right now. I kept at him longer than the rest. I hoped maybe he would answer, being my brother and all. We had a history no one in the pack could compare to. A history that had become tainted.