Ethan Walker's Road To Wonderland (Road To Wonderland #3)

by L. J. Stock

  "Dean?”

  He stopped mid-step, his body freezing for almost a full minute before he turned his head to look at me.

  I hated myself. I knew why he hesitated, just like I knew why he'd looked around my room with those weary eyes. He'd been looking for the ghosts I'd seen in the form of hallucinations, and no matter how haunting the night had been for him, I could see that small twinge of envy at my having seen Mum again.

  I will never forget that as long as I live.

  "I really am sorry."

  He didn't respond verbally, just threw me a nod and slipped out the door, pulling it closed behind him, leaving me to wallow in my own self pity and loathing.

  Even after Dean left my room, I didn’t bother moving a muscle. I couldn’t. So I stayed where I was and listened as the shower turned on and Dean moved around, right up to the point he departed from the house and pulled the door closed behind him. Even then I stayed put, putting off the inevitable as long as I possibly could. I couldn’t face Dad after what I’d done to him and Dean the night before. I may have disliked him, but it didn’t mean I wanted to stoop to his level and hurt him the way he so easily hurt Dean and me.

  As I lay staring at the small slither of light coming through the curtains, I was thinking about Mum’s reaction to this new development. What would she think? How would she have approached me? How would she have dealt with the situation and me? The honest to God’s truth was, I couldn’t even envision it, because I never would have gone down this path. She was the north star for me, my conscience, my moral compass. Weeks without her and I was a completely different person, lost to myself and everyone around me.

  I was trying to build up the courage to face Dad. I didn't know how to explain any of it to him. He wouldn't understand, and that was even if he listened to anything I had to say. I'd hurt him, I'd inconvenienced him, and I'd disrespected him. It wouldn't matter that I was hurting, too.

  It was an hour before he got tired of waiting. I heard the kettle boil and the traipse of his steps as he moved around and headed to the bottom of the stairs, just before the sonic boom of his voice came.

  "I can wait all day, Ethan.”

  If there’d been any doubt of my fate before, there wasn’t any now. I could hear the agitation, the loathing, and the hate that boiled under the surface as he spat out my name. The fact that he was calculated only meant he was beyond pissed. Calm with Dad meant run for your life, but I had nowhere to run. I had to face the music and pay the price.

  Crawling from my bed, my limbs trembled, the small spasms running a trail through my muscles even as I tried to convince my body that standing upright was a perfectly good idea. I was on borrowed time now he’d made the first move, and if I kept him waiting, it would only be worse for me.

  Changing into jeans and a hoodie, I made my way downstairs, wishing there was some way to turn back time so I could be smart and not take the acid to begin with. But it was a little late for all that, and if wishes were pounds, I'd be a rich man, and if I continued to go over the same issues again and again, I was going to drive myself insane.

  I found Dad sat in the kitchen, drumming his fingers on the tabletop, his other hand supporting his head as he scowled at nothing in particular.

  "Dad?"

  He pushed the teapot toward me with the fingers that had been drumming, but he never said a word. This was worse than I'd thought. Dad only ever went silent when he was trying to contain his rage. I could deal with yelling and screaming; those were emotions I understood and could process. It was this nefarious silence that always made me nervous. I never knew what was going to come next.

  "Sit."

  The command came without any room for argument, so I did as I was told, sliding into the chair he'd kicked out at me without so much as looking up from whatever he was staring at with such intensity. I stayed where I was, hands under the table, head bowed, struggling to find my voice.

  "Dad, I-"

  "I don't want to hear your empty apologies, Ethan. I just want you out. Pack what you need to and leave.”

  "Excuse me?"

  "She was always so quick to defend the two of you."

  "She has a name, Dad."

  "Had," he corrected me, still not meeting my eyes.

  "Has," I growled, my hands landing on the table. "She may have died, Dad, but she's not gone. Jesus, it’s always about you, isn’t it?"

  "Get your head out of your arse, Ethan, and grow up.”

  "Grow up? Really? I'm now immature because I don't want to think of Mum in a hole in the ground?”

  The chair scraping across the floor was so hard and loud, it hit the counter behind it with a crash. Dad's hands landed palms flat on the table, his eyes narrowed and his face a puce color that looked like he was about to burst. I started to shrink away, but I stopped, puffing my chest out and narrowing my eyes to meet his. I wasn’t going to back down this time. I couldn’t. I had to stand my ground and make sure he realised I wasn’t his punching bag anymore. Respect only got him so far, and it was a word that no longer had a place in my vocabulary when it came to him.

  "Don't you dare! Don't you dare talk about your mother like that."

  "Like what?" I shouted, standing and matching his pose. "At all? Because let’s face it, Dad, you haven't said her name since the day she died. You haven't spoken about her to Dean or me since the funeral, and not once did you pull us together as a family and let us lean on you."

  "You're both adults."

  "Bullshit!" I slammed my palms on the table and leaned further forward. "That's bullshit and you know it, Dad. You just didn't care. You didn't care what Dean or I were feeling because you don't care about us."

  The anger between us twisted and formed into something palpable. It was its own living, breathing being as it danced around us, heating up our anger and raising our voices.

  "It was always about the two of you."

  "We are your children, Dad. We don't ask for much."

  "No? Then why wasn't it you or Dean? She was all I had and now I'm left with the two failures we brought into the world. At least Dean's got some common sense, but you... You're a waste of oxygen, Ethan. I’d have seen you flushed if it had been up to me."

  My whole body froze as my mind tried to process the words that were filtering through. Who said that to their child?

  There was a large part of me that suspected he'd rather it had been Dean or me that had died, but hearing it made my blood boil. He hated us, and for the first time in my life, I realised that he'd never wanted us. He would have done anything to make Mum happy, and that included having children he didn't want, just to satisfy her needs. It was all very valiant, except, where did that leave Dean and me?

  "You bastard." The words slipped out before I had time to stop them. “If anyone, it should have been you. We would have survived without you. We would have been a family. There's nothing wrong with Dean and me. You're just a bitter, twisted old man who was jealous of his own children.”

  "Get the fuck outta my house."

  "My pleasure, you condescending, belligerent dick. There's a dictionary in the living room if your simple mind can't twist those words into making sense.”

  I left the kitchen, pushing past him so hard he stumbled, and went to my room. Finding as many bags as I could, I stuffed everything that meant something to me inside and pulled on my boots and coat.

  I didn’t have much time to think about the situation. My anger fueled every push of my muscles. It wiped my mind completely, leaving only adrenaline and revulsion. I hated him, and after that day, that feeling would never go away. I’d made excuses for him to myself for as long as I could remember, convincing myself that he really did care, he just wasn’t sure how to show it.

  That was complete bollocks.

  The only regret I had was leaving Dean, but I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn’t fight for something that hadn’t ever been there.

  I also wouldn't apologize to that sperm donor, not after what
he'd said to me. I could never forgive him for being callous enough to hate my brother and me for breathing. I couldn't tell Dean any of this. I wouldn't let him feel what I was feeling in that moment. I would always be there for my brother, but for me, my father was dead.

  Then again, maybe he'd never existed at all.

  Although I'd known moving out of my childhood home would happen eventually, I don't think anything could have prepared me for the reality of being kicked out. The adrenaline from my anger wore off, but everything between packing a bag and walking out the door just receded into a haze of loathing.

  I found myself wandering the streets for hours on end, the jarring sobriety making the seething hatred grow and twist into something dark that I clung to. It wasn't that God-awful emptiness, yet I wasn't sure it was much better. This was darker, more malevolent, and the longer it festered, the more I could feel my fingers slip from the grasp I had on the last thread of the real me. If I'd been confused before, it was nothing in comparison to what I was feeling in that moment.

  Pushing my hands into my pockets and pulling my hood over my head, I just let myself wander. I didn’t want to think, and I sure as hell didn’t want to feel. Of course, it was one of those occasions that said fuck you, and the hole in my chest that was charred around the edges decided to close and let me feel every ounce of pain that I’d been hiding from, right when I didn’t want it. The last thing I needed in that moment was to feel the pain that I was trying to convince myself wasn’t there. That my father had hurt me. Especially as I’d convinced myself long before that moment that his opinion meant nothing and I’d taken that ability away from him.

  I was an arrogant teenager though, once again cast free and directionless as his words continued to bang around in my skull. ‘I’d have flushed you.’ Who the fuck said that to their kid?

  My dad, apparently.

  As bad as it was, that wasn’t the problem at hand I needed to deal with.

  I was homeless.

  I knew Scott's parents wouldn't hesitate to extend an invitation for me to stay with them, and had it not been for the itching need to get high, which more than highlighted my addiction, I'd like to think I would have gone there. They’d always been a safe place for me - a second home where I knew I was welcomed and loved. My self-inflicted problems weren’t something I wanted to burden them with. I wasn't going to repay their love by disrespecting them.

  This left me with option number two: my new friends, or rather, acquaintances. I wasn't sure you could call a drug addict a friend. Drugs made you selfish. I'd just learned that the hard way, and I'd still been craving the shit.

  Beyond my living status, my main concern was for Dean. I knew he was capable of looking after himself. It was more that I was feeling hopelessly guilty about leaving him in that house with a man that despised us both for being born. There was nothing like having your existence thrown in your face to make you feel ruminative. My father had been absolutely clear about how he felt about my conception and need to draw breaths. It wasn’t as though I could misread the conversation we'd had.

  He’d have preferred it to be us. If we had to be born, we should have at least had the decency to die in her place.

  Not that I'd ever tell Dean about the conversation I'd had with our sad excuse for a parent. He didn’t deserve to know how much of a twat our father was. In this case, for Deano, ignorance was bliss. He may not have had much of a relationship with Dad, but I knew he loved working at the garage. If he was settled and happy, I wasn't going to be the one to pull the rug out from under him only to have him resent me for it later.

  These were the things that circled in my head like vultures. So I wandered around for another couple of hours on my own, my mind full of thoughts and feelings I wasn't sure how to process. I knew I would have to eventually swallow my pride and find somewhere to lay my head, but for those hours, I just let myself believe I would be alright.

  It was dark when I finally dragged my feet to Paul and Derek's door, feeling like a complete arsehole. My pride had to be left firmly behind as I stood in the blinking light of their front step and convinced myself to press the fucking bell.

  How the fuck had I got here?

  Some part of me wanted to believe that if I'd had more warning, maybe I could have sorted a place of my own. A little flat I could call my bachelor pad and make it the home my childhood house wasn’t anymore. The fact was, though, I only had myself to blame for that particular shitstorm. You don’t shit where you eat. It was that simple.

  I’m not sure if it was luck or divine intervention of some sort, but Paul and Derek were enthused at the thought of a third party income in the house. I really hadn't put much lucid thought into the why behind it at the time; I was just happy I had somewhere to stay.

  Though the same couldn’t be said of Scott.

  "You're living with those stoners?" Scott asked, appalled. It was a week since I’d been kicked out of my house and I'd been completely content in the digs I was now sharing with the lads. They were a bit fucking weird and loved their narcotics, but they left me alone for the most part. It was a win-win and better than I’d expected.

  "What other options did I have, mate?” I asked before draining the pint I was enjoying. “Anyway, no more having to sneak birds in and out of the house, right?"

  "You could have stayed with me, E. You know my mum cooks enough for a small bloody army anyway."

  It was at that point I realised that Scott actually had more faith in me than I ever did. He hadn't so much as considered the problems I would create with my inability to stay sober for more than four hours at a time. It was the very reason I'd made the decision not to go there in the first place. For him, I was his best mate, no matter how much I fucked up. No matter how many times I fucked up, or showed up high, he gave me more chances than I deserved.

  "I appreciate it, Scott. I really do, mate, but I respect your parents and I can't have them putting up with my shit. You know how it is at the minute. Anyway, it's only temporary."

  "I hope so, mate, because you'll never clean your shit up living in a place like that,” he said, shifting out of the seat to get another round in.

  He was right, of course, but my selfishness obviously knew no bounds. Mainly because I didn't have the heart to remind him that I fit in perfectly with the "stoners" as he'd so aptly christened them.

  By the time he was sat down again, my head had moved from beer to cocaine. I tried to never do that shit around Scott. He hated it and I respected that, but the moment he looked at me, he could see the itching look in my eyes.

  “Seriously, E?”

  “I’m fine, mate.”

  He knew I wasn’t. He knew I was trembling further from the line of fine with every stroke of the clock’s hand. He watched every tick of need and jolt of paranoia as the craving settled in for the long haul. I was ridiculous, and I hated he was seeing that side of me. As merciful as he was, he cut me loose with a shake of his head and worry in his eyes. He knew I was in too deep, but who could he go to? My father had made it more than clear he couldn’t care less what happened to me.

  Regrettably, I was nowhere near getting clean. You'd have thought after the experience with acid, I would have cut back, or at the very least had some kind of ambition to stop. Yet I just pumped more of that shit into my system. I was looking for an escape in a bottomless pit, deaf and blind to every sensible part of me that tried, on rare occasions, to remind me I had a life I should be living, not this frozen stasis bullshit that I just willingly accepted.

  Those thoughts were generally what led to me getting stupidly high and fucking some random chick just to validate my lifestyle to myself. The only sensible thing I seemed to do was wear protection. I always had condoms on me, and if she wasn’t willing to go that route, she got kicked out of the bed and replaced. That ridiculous, false sense of confidence made me cocky enough to think I could get any woman I wanted. That they were willing was purely coincidental.

  I was floating
by and the moment I felt the effects wearing off, I took another hit and kept going. Some nights I don’t think I slept at all. Days began to bleed together into one ball of high after the other. Laughter and getting my dick wet were the only things that truly mattered.

  Eventually, time ceased to exist altogether. In the back of my mind, the nagging feeling that I was forgetting something crept around like an itch I couldn't fucking scratch. It took me almost a month to realize exactly what I'd forgotten, and that was only because I realized my bank account was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

  In three short months, I'd fucked myself out of a job, too. It also left me in a bit of a bind. I had a week to get rent together or I was out on my arse. Paul and Derek were laid back as shit, but they hated freeloaders, and even as a junkie arsehole, that wasn't who I was. I still had my pride and I was determined to keep hold of it. This was the reason I had to find the answer myself. No matter how deep in the shit I was, I'd promised myself I would never go to Dean or Scott for help. I still had some semblance of a relationship with them, and I wasn't going to fuck that up.

  Having spent my last money on gym membership, I decided to spend my evenings there rather than at the house that was filled with drugs I couldn't partake of because I was flat broke. As messed up as these people were, sharing still wasn’t in their vocabulary, unless I had a nice pair of tits and an arse they could snort a line from. I had neither, so I left to curb the craving.

  The gym was a solace of sorts. I went there to bleed my frustration and aggression. I would lose myself in the burn of my muscles on the treadmill, or the ache in my body as I lifted weights, determined to build up how much I could bench press. I'd been going since I left home. It was my one extravagance. It also stopped the drugs from making me a chubby fucker or rail thin. Let’s face it, neither of those was appealing to me. I knew that if I didn't do something about my money situation soon, I would lose that, too.

  Pissed off at myself for being such an idiot, I took my frustrations out on the bag, ignoring the memories that tapped on my brain. They weren’t discriminatory. I had the bad ones of Mum’s death and the good ones of growing up in that house with her. Sadly, even those happier recollections were tainted after my fight with Dad. They'd lost their sentimentality, and I was starting to see the things I’d chosen to ignore. My father was a selfish twat. He might as well have been a stranger. Even our boxing had been all about him.