Alex and The Gruff (A Tale of Horror)

by C. Sean McGee

CHAPTER SIX

  Alex met his brother out the front before his mother had even left the apartment to collect him. She usually left the apartment at around a quarter past three and his brother always left at three fifteen on the dot. It was a safe bet then, if he escaped around ten past, that he could run into his brother and none would be any the wiser.

  “I thought mum was supposed to pick you up,” he said.

  “Can I go with you?” Alex asked, hoping for dear life that he would say yes.

  His brother looked around. There were no other older kids to see him having to walk with his little brother so he shook his head silently and started walking. Alex grabbed his bag and skipped along after him.

  His mind raced with all the questions he wanted to ask. He felt like he had to ask something. It’s what his brother would want. And this urge he couldn’t stop, not for the life of him.

  He got the same feeling once when they stayed at a hotel on the beach and when he was on the balcony, he had this unspeakable urge to jump off. He knew it would kill him if he did and he knew the idea was stupid. He didn’t have to be grown-up to know that. But for some reason, he felt like he had to climb onto the railing and balance awkwardly and then accidentally fall backwards over the railings and kick and grasp desperately at thin air as he smashed through the roof of the party bus that was waiting below.

  The feeling he had now was like that.

  “Rambo is cool,” he said.

  His brother didn’t respond.

  “Stupid,” he thought. “Stupid thing to say.”

  “I guess he is.”

  Alex smiled. He didn’t expect that.

  “Listen, just don’t ever do that again ok? You’re alright and all, it’s just I don’t want people knowing you’re my kid brother ok?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Alex.

  He started to cry.

  “You don’t have to cry, god. Look, outside of school its fine. Just at school you can’t come to my class, you can’t talk to my teacher, you can’t talk to my friends and don’t ask me question either. Just act like we don’t know each other.”

  Alex wished he could undo the day.

  They walked back to the apartment and went their separate ways. Alex was stopped by his mother as he drank straight from the milk carton and his brother went straight into his room and listened to heavy metal on his ear phones.

  Alex wished he would use the speakers.

  His mum was making tea in the kitchen. She looked angry; like someone had just shouted at her and now she wanted to shout at someone else.

  “Did you run out again?”

  “No, I promise, I didn’t”

  “Don’t lie to me. I spoke to Mother Superior today. She called me concerned about your behavior. She said you’ve been skipping your classes, wandering around the halls. That and running out of the school. What the hell is going on? Why are you acting like this? You never did this before so why start now?”

  It’s funny that he felt the way he felt and nobody had taught him the words to say what it was. Nobody had talked about this kind of felling before so he didn’t know if it was right or wrong. Maybe this was what it felt like when you started becoming a bad kid. Maybe he was becoming a bad kid and there was nothing he could do.

  He felt sick.

  But it wasn’t from something that he ate.

  “Can I play in the rec room after dinner? Some of the kids, they were, we were gonna meet there and play chasey, but we wouldn’t play around any of the grown-ups. We won’t get into trouble, I promise.”

  He was never allowed to play in the rec room. It was only for the older kids because there were a lot of grown-ups who hanged out there playing pool, throwing darts and sometimes drinking beer and smoking cigars and playing cards. Alex wasn’t allowed to play there. He wanted to, but he wasn’t allowed.

  “Go to your room. You’re grounded” his mother said.

  Alex did as she said. He went to his room and sat on the edge of his bed. The springs squeaked every time that he moved to scratch his leg and it felt like there was something sharp poking through from underneath. It was probably a broken spring.

  Alex could hear the muffled sound of music blasting out of his brother’s earphones as he read his comic and banged his head lightly to the beat of the music.

  Alex did the same.

  His brother looked at him and shook his head. Alex didn’t mind, though. He couldn’t tell what the music was, but he nodded his head in the same way as his brother as if he knew every note.

  Looking out of the window, the tree outside hardly seemed as scary as it did at night. It was funny how things sometimes seemed bigger than they really were.

  His father must have come home because Alex could hear low yelling coming from the kitchen. He blocked his hands over his ears, but he tried not to be so obvious. His father didn’t shout all the time but when he did, it made Alex think about those little bugs that curled up into little black balls whenever they were scared. He wanted to curl up too, but his brother would think he was stupid, so instead he sat there pretending his parents weren’t shouting and that his mother wasn’t crying and he wished his brother would just take off those damn earphones and play it through the speakers.

  The door opened and his mother popped her face in. She was looking for something. She pretended not to notice Alex who was turned in her direction. He tried to read her expression, to see if everything was ok again. She looked stressed, though like she was holding back a sneeze. Her face was all scrunched up and she looked like she might scream or she might cry at any second.

  This made Alex want to cry.

  “Get ready for dinner,” she said.

  She was still looking for something, but she didn’t find it because she closed the door again without taking anything. Alex got out of his uniform and he nudged his brother to do the same, but he gave him an angry look so he let him keep on listening to his music while he tied his laces.

  Alex tried to think about when it was that he actually learned to tie his laces. He couldn’t remember. His mother said that his father had taught him. They did big and simple knots at first. His father did most of the work while Alex’s fingers rode his big hands like a Ferris wheel. She said he learned quickly though and that his father was really proud of him every time he tied the big loops and finished every knot by himself.

  Nobody ever watched him tie his laces anymore. And a whole bunch of other stuff too. That’s kind of the way life was. Something was really special the first time you did it and then after that, people got bored and went back to acting like it didn’t matter.

  Every time his brother did something new it was always really special. Everyone made a big deal out of it. And he was going to be going off to high school soon and that was huge. He acted like it didn’t matter all that much, but it did.

  Alex was really excited and he was scared too. It was like the land of the giants. And everyone kind of kept secret about the things that happened there but every kid knew about the stories, about the older boys and how they got the new kids when they were alone and they lifted them up by their feet and they dunked their heads into the toilets and then they flushed it.

  Some kids even said that one boy had his face cut with a knife. They said that the older boys cut the sides of his mouth and then they punched him in the belly and it made his mouth stretch and rip open like a packet of potato chips.

  Everyone swore that their brother knew someone that knew the kid it happened to, but they never caught the older boys who did it. None of the grown-ups ever talked about it either, it was just a story that kids knew.

  As Alex tied one loop of his shoe, he thought about that. And then he thought about his father and how he never said happy birthday. And his birthday was coming up, in a week or two. He never really knew. He didn’t count days, not like his mother.

  “Here, this way is better.”

  His brother knelt in front of him and took the laces out of his hand. He didn’t m
ake two loops like his father showed him. Instead, he tucked one lace through the other and then looped it with his finger and then pulled the other lace tight and then wrapped that lace around the loop to make another. And he tied two knots on the lace. His father only ever did one.

  “It won’t come undone this way. Neat yeah?”

  Alex was shivering with delight. He didn’t know what to say, but he felt like he should have a thousand things to say. If he had a tail, it would be wiggling and wriggling right now.

  His mother and father were silent. They never really argued out loud. His father would shout once or twice and his mother would shout back, but it was never any more than that. Then they would be really quiet and they wouldn’t look at one another and if they did have to speak to one other or ask each other a question, they would speak really quick and everything would be ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘I don’t know’ or ‘thank you’ and they never sounded thankful when they said it.

  They sounded more obliged than anything.

  It’s like when two kids have been told off, but they still have to share their toys. They don’t want to but the teachers or the mum and dads, they force them to, to teach them a lesson or something. And they act all kind and considerate and they say things like ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘you’re welcome’ but they don’t actually mean it.

  They’re just being polite.

  His mother and father were like that now. They were like two big kids who had had a fight but still had to work together and they had to pretend that everything was ok, because that was the polite and mannerly thing to do.

  It got really dark here in this city. After five, the sun disappeared and it wasn’t gradual. It was like it had somewhere more important to be and it just ran away to China or something. And even though the days were really hot, after five it was always really cold.

  But it wasn’t like that where he used to live. It used to take ages for the sun to go down. Sometimes he would be in bed and trying to get to sleep but the sky would still be bright and inviting him to play.

  It was like his old neighbor. She would come over for a cup of tea or just a quick chin wag with his mum and his mum didn’t really like her all that much, in fact, she didn’t like any of her neighbors but you had to be nice to your neighbors, even when you didn’t like them.

  This neighbor, though, her name was Eunice and she was really old and she always looked like she was in the middle of getting ready to go somewhere special because she always looked like she had just gotten out of the shower and was just popping in to say hello before she nipped off to the shops or to bingo or to church or something.

  Eunice was like the sun in his old house. It took her a really long time to go away. His mum would tire of her quickly, but she would offer more tea and nod and smile as if she were really interested in what Eunice had to say. Anyone could see though that she wasn’t.

  She was just being polite.

  Eunice never really had a story to tell, though. Not a complete one anyway. She would tell a bit of one thing that would lead to a bit of another and then she would say what she thought about it and she would ask his mum what she thought, but before she could answer, Eunice would be talking about someone else and she knew so many little things about everyone on the street, but she didn’t seem to know a whole lot so she made a lot of stuff up. Alex’s father said that she was lonely in her big house, that’s why she acted the way she did. He used this big word to describe her and said that she was crazy, but she was harmless and that his mother should put up with her because it would cause more problems if she didn’t.

  Like the sun, though, Eunice would never go away. When his mum had had enough, she would make subtle hints that it was time for her to go home. She would yawn a little, but not too much because it was rude to yawn in front of a guest, even when you didn’t like them.

  When that didn’t work, she would stand up and lean against her seat and Eunice would just tilt her head, but she wouldn’t budge. I guess she thought his mother had hemorrhoids or something and found it uncomfortable for her to sit for a long time so she tried not to make a fuss and pretended she didn’t notice and wasn’t put off.

  Eventually, though, his mother would casually backstep towards the front door, leaning against the frame to the living room until Eunice finally put down her cup and followed her out. But even then it was never easy because his mother always found herself on the wrong side of the door.

  Eunice just kept talking. And she probably knew she had overstayed her visit and she probably picked up on the fact that his mum was tired or bored or getting annoyed, or even worse, but she couldn’t stop. And she just kept talking about stupid stuff that didn’t matter because she didn’t want to go back to her big empty house and be all alone.

  And maybe the sun was like that. Maybe it didn’t want to go to China. Maybe it was the stars and the moon’s turn and they made the sun go away so they could get some sleep or so they could watch the evening news. And maybe the sun didn’t want to be alone either, so it just hanged there, just below the horizon and it didn’t go to bed, it just peeked behind the couch and it didn’t really care about the television or the conversation or even the tea. It just wanted to sit with everyone else.

  Here, though, the sun had somewhere better to be. It left in a hurry. And at night, the wind blew so strong and it whistled so loud and eerily and it made everything move so sneakily and creepily that it just seemed like all of the dark shadows were planning and plotting and waiting and baiting, to snatch and eat, scared little children.

  The cafeteria was full again. It always was. They had to wait for their father to get home before they could go and get their dinner. He got home late, though, after six and they started serving dinner at five. Then his father would always be in a mood because of something that happened at work or on his way home and there would always be a small fight and then his father would always read the international section of the newspaper before he told anyone to get ready for dinner. He liked to know all about stuff like that. Dads had to know about stuff like that.

  It was important.

  But by the time they got to the cafeteria, everyone had already been served and there were only the last bits of everything. There was always the last steak that had more fat and bone than anything else. It was probably on the top of the pile, but every person before them kept pushing it back and back and back until finally when it was Alex’s plate, it was the one that his father chose for him.

  Then there were the potatoes. They made a mash that used a lot of water. Normally people used milk, his mother used to anyway. It made the mash really creamy and delicious. Here, though, they used water and by the time Alex’s tray was ready to be served, it looked like the mean lady behind the counter had scooped a spoonful of dirty melted snow onto his orphaned steak. And the last of the peas were all squished and squashed and the glass of juice had all the crushed up black bits from all the seeds that were in the fruit that they didn’t pull out first or even bother to strain.

  Everyone watched them though as they got their food, mainly because of yesterday. They were all probably expecting and hoping that Alex would fall again. They acted shocked when he did and it looked like they cared and all but you could tell that they were happy that it happened because it gave them something to talk about and most of the time, that’s all that people had.

  Alex reached for his tray, but his father nudged him away with his hip. He felt like a stray dog. He could have explained what he was doing but he was obviously still mad, either with work or something that happened on the way home or maybe because he had to stand in front of all these people again and it made him feel angry, on account of being made to look like a fool the day before.

  It was Alex though who felt the fool. His father took two trays in his hands and nudged Alex back out of his way. Alex didn’t want to look. He knew everyone was staring at him. He didn’t have a tray. And everyone knew.

  He wanted to shou
t and to throw something. He wanted to take his tray, the one his father had set down for him at the table they always sat at. He wanted to take the food from that tray and he wanted to throw it in the faces of every man, woman and child. He wanted to shout and to spit at them and he wanted to take all the black bits of his juice and mash it into their hair. He wanted to shout at them like that gorilla shouted at him, that time that he teased it when he offered it his ice-cream and it came forward all happy and then he stuck his tongue out and licked the ice-cream and didn’t give the poor gorilla any.

  When he looked up, though, there was no-one looking at him. They were all focused on the food that they were shoveling into their mouths. And what he thought was laughter and sniggering was actually the sound of knives and forks scratching on dinner plates and teeth chewing and people swallowing tough pieces of steak.

  Nobody spoke at the table. They all just ate. His mother and father were still angry. The angrier they were, the less they said. His father though would show it by chewing his food like a tempered bull with his mouth open.

  Alex looked at his mum. She was chewing with her mouth closed, but she was scratching her knife against the plate whenever she tried to cut through the steak. That’s how she showed she was annoyed or angry. His father hated the sound of knives scratching on plates. It made him shout. So he chewed his meat louder and Alex’s mum hated that just as much because she couldn’t just look away. It sounded gross and it made her feel sick. So she scratched the plate louder.

  And that was how his parents fought.

  “Can I play chasey with my friends in the rec room after dinner?” asked Alex.

  His mother looked at him sternly and then at his father. Her mouth was full with a big chunk of steak and she couldn’t speak. Alex’s father didn’t even lift his head from his plate. He didn’t even wait to swallow the steak in his mouth.

  “Whatever. Don’t get into trouble” he said.

  His mum scraped her knife across the plate, over and over.

  His father chewed louder.

  His sisters bickered, and then made up.

  His brother pretended not to look at a girl who was looking at him.

  Alex smiled.

  He got what he wanted.

  But nobody noticed.

  Nobody seemed to care.