Atlas, Broken

by Jeremy Tyrrell

so there was no need. Sure, he babbled away like any toddler would, but Henry, for whatever reason, would race home every day, anxious that he might have missed out on Timothy's first real words.

  Now, as a lanky teenager, cloistered inside his room, staring at a screen every night, it was just as hard to get anything out of him that didn't involve the latest X-Box or Play Station.

  It was all too much, this parenting thing. Why didn't it come with a manual? Bah! He wouldn't have read it anyway. Real men don't need manuals.

  He eased himself slowly into his chair.

  “I could use a coffee,” Loretta called out from the bathroom, “I've had a busy day today. And do we have any Tim Tams? Open up a packet.”

  “I'm going to have a beer,” he replied firmly, determined to enjoy his cold beverage.

  “At this hour? No, we're having a coffee.”

  Henry groaned, rolled his one good eye and pushed the rag firmly into his skull in frustration. His comfy chair was no longer comfy. It squashed his misshapen leg, pushed too hard on his back. He appeared like a pile of bloody bits, strangled with octopus straps and gaffer tape, a lump that had wobbled and squirmed its way to plop itself untidily onto a chair.

  “I just want a stupid beer,” he whispered to the roof, “Just one beer and a sit-down!”

  The roof remained obstinately blank.

  Loretta, coming back from the bathroom, stood in the doorway, arms akimbo.

  “Oh, Henry! Henry, look at yourself! Just take a good hard look! You're a mess!”

  He fiddled fruitlessly with the tab of the beer can.

  “I know, I know.”

  Stupid beer can. It remained stubbornly closed, and his nails flaked off as he sought purchase.

  “No, really. I've never seen such a muddle of a man before. And you can at least look at me when I'm talking to you.”

  “I would if I could get my sodding eye to turn around!” he growled, giving up on the beer and rolling his bulk to face to her.

  “Oh, great. So that's broken, too, I suppose. Eh? Is this just a ruse to get out of seeing the Thompsons?” she snarled back, sitting herself on the couch, “Because it's not going to work. You're going there, whether you like it or not, and you'll be polite and listen to Gary and you'll bloody well laugh when he tells his joke about the freighter.”

  “Tanker. It's a joke about a tanker. It doesn't make sense if it's not a tanker.”

  “Whatever.”

  “He's told it enough times.”

  Bloody Gary. Always rubbing Henry's face in it. Whether it was his house, or his new cars, or his fancy camera equipment, or the bloody stocks he owned, Gary was always there with his smug little grin and slicked down hair, ready to drop a comment or two to let everyone know.

  And then he would tell that stupid tanker joke. It wasn't funny the first time, and it wasn't funny the hundredth time. Yet, each time, Henry would feel a sharp jab in his ribs as Loretta forced him to drag out a laugh to placate Gary's ego, even if he had been saving it up for later, for something more worthwhile.

  Henry burrowed his head into his hand. He came up, dragging his fingers down his face, leaving deep impressions. He could not see what he had done, but it felt like his face was melting. His eyes burnt. His nose itched.

  He sneezed violently.

  His nose gave way, somersaulting off his face. It hit the floor, rolled across the tiles and hid somewhere underneath the sofa.

  “Shit,” he said, looking after it longingly, “Son of a bitch!”

  His voice sounded queer without his nose.

  “Be quiet!” Loretta scolded, “Timothy will hear you.”

  “Let him. It's about time he learnt what the world was about.”

  “Some father you are.”

  His eye threatened to pop out again. He balanced himself on his seat and worked the orb securely back into the socket.

  “Can you do me a favour, Loretta?”

  “Geez, Henry. I just sat down!”

  “Can you help me fetch my nose?” he pleaded, “It's under the sofa somewhere.”

  “Aw, come on! Do you want me to blow it for you, too?”

  The pin inside him, deep within his chest, close to his heart, the pin that held him all together, began to sheer. He could feel it pulling, twisting, grinding away. With little ticks it yielded, feeling for all the world like a little time bomb about to explode.

  The ticks got more and more rapid as the strain became greater. They coalesced into one long squeak.

  His shoulders gave a spasm, then slumped forward. He breathed in a shuddering breath, cracking two of his ribs. The pin ruptured with a mighty twang!

  He gasped in pain, “Ga! I can't do it any more, Loretta.”

  “Can't do what?”

  Exhaling was just as painful. He wheezed as his lungs began to collapse.

  “You're just sitting there, you useless lump. Just sitting there. Well? What can't you do?”

  “I can't... I can't do this,” he said, gasping and gesticulating with his functioning hand, “All of this crap! All of this crap that keeps piling up on top of me! I can't.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about. But you'd better not try and weasel your way out of seeing the Thompsons, because it's not going to happen. You're coming along and –”

  “I couldn't care less about the Thompsons,” he snapped, “Why won't you listen to me? Look at me, Loretta! Can't you understand?”

  Loretta looked over, a slight show on concern rippled across her face, “What's up, Henry? What are you saying? Is it the merger?”

  He stood up, slowly, wobbly, and balanced on his supportive leg. The pain of it all crushed down unbearably upon him. His body simply refused to support him any longer. Another rib snapped and an octopus strap unhinged from his belt, whipped around and flew across the room.

  “Careful! You almost hit the lamp!” she cried, but Henry wasn't listening.

  Unrestrained, his stomach fell through the remaining straps, clattering to the tiles in chunks. His intestines followed now that there was nothing left to hold them in. He looked down, dismayed, at the mess on the floor. Joining the rest of his lower torso, his bladder weakened, burst and he urinated down his leg.

  Embarrassed and in great pain, he apologised.

  “I'm sorry, Loretta.”

  “You can at least clean it up,” she scolded, taking her phone out and flipping through her Twitter feed.

  As he stooped to pick up the pieces, his leg, which had supported him for so long, failed catastrophically.

  His knees buckled. His ankles turned to powder. His jeans bulged in various places, holding in the disintegrating contents as best they could. The gaffer tape could no longer hold the hand onto the wrist and it tore off, flapping uselessly backward.

  His stump of an arm struggled to hold his torso from the floor.

  “I'm sorry, Loretta,” he said sadly, looking up at her from the floor with watery eyes, “I did the best I could.”

  “Don't be so melodramatic! Come on, get up! Go to bed if you want.”

  “I can't,” he whimpered, flopping about pathetically, flailing whatever limb was still functioning, “I just – I just can't!”

  She frowned down upon him, “So this is it, huh? This is how you decide to be? A useless wretch, lying on the floor?”

  “I never meant for it to be like this. Why would I ever have chosen... this?” he said, pointing to the pile of rubbish that used to be him, “If I could do it all again...”

  “But you can't, Henry. You can't. So stop it. Stop acting like a child and grow up.”

  “But...”

  “Just grow up, Henry! Gosh, Mum was right about you! What sort of man did I marry? You useless, pathetic idiot!”

  “Loretta! Please!”

  “Piss off, Henry. If that's the way it's going to be, then fine, you can spend the rest of you life on the floor. But you can do it somewhere else. I don't want the kids to grow up knowing that their father was a pitiful,
worthless lump of shit.”

  Bones ground against one another. His vertebrate popped and sagged, grinding his spinal cord in their spasms. The audible sound of crepitus overpowered the faint shooting noises emanating from Timothy's room.

  The roar within him, the primal urge to shake the walls with his noise, sputtered and coughed. Only a low, sorrowful wheeze came out.

  With a splintering crack, Henry's arm gave out, sending the rest of him tumbling to the floor. The cords and tape and glue surrendered to the overwhelming force of gravity, releasing their load upon the tiles, so that Henry was left as little more than a heap of crushed skin and hair strewn about.

  “Damn it, Henry!” Loretta moaned, getting off the sofa and brushing Henry from her feet, “Could you be any more of a screw-up?”

  A finger twitched in the pile, wiggling a little and dislodging an ear. It tumbled off the pile to go rolling underneath the coffee table. The torso trembled, giving out one last, mournful sigh, releasing the last of Henry's melancholy over the floor.

  “Henry?”

  The pile remained still.

  “Henry?” Loretta asked, poking a piece of chest.

  It yielded underneath her finger's pressure. She gave it a bit of a hard jab, to no effect.

  “Damn you, Henry,” she groaned, assessing the mess, “As if I didn't have anything better to do than clean you up!”

  Gingerly she stepped over the bits, deftly avoiding the puddles of bodily fluids that had spilled out. It would take a bit to get that out of her moccasins.

  The larger pieces she carried to the bin outside, cursing all the while. She moved some bags about to fit him in without the lid staying open, then went back inside. The cat was sniffing about, looking at the remains with interest.

  She swished it