Richard unlocked the door. Taking off his shoes by the front, holding them in his hands as he closed the door, barely making any noise as he did. He began walking to the end of the hall. Walking past the television, momentarily looking over the head of a fat man who had been drinking a beer and watching pornography exposed on the screen of the living room television. He did his best to walk past, only to hear a loud burp that boomed with a prolonged belch.

“Richard!” The fat man spoke, and Richard turned to acknowledge him, the man hadn’t even been looking Richard’s way–still eyeing the porn on his television. “Make yourself useful and get me another beer. Your mother didn’t tell me when she was leaving. Do something for your old man.” He asked, but it wasn’t a request, it was an order. If Richard were to deny… he didn’t want that. He took a few steps back, making his way into the kitchen that was parallel between the living room to walk to the fridge and grab a glass of beer before settling it down on the coffee table by his feet.

His father looked at him, narrowing his brows in a confused and irritated look.

“Now, how am I supposed to reach that from here?” He huffed, leering in visible but tempered frustration at his son. He didn’t need to ask twice, the boy picked up the glass of beer and handed it to his father. He held his hand in the air for about a minute before his father took it from the boy’s hands.

As Richard walked off, he could hear his father call to him again.

“Go finish your work! Your school called, you’re falling behind in that math class. Better stop getting them to call! No reason why some fifteen-year old brat can’t do his own work.” He shouted, and when Richard didn’t answer the first time he grumbled a bit. “You heard me!?” He shouted.

“Yes!” Richard responded, closing the door to his room behind him. There wasn’t a lock, so he couldn’t lock it off. He instead began grabbing things from around his room, a picture frame, some drawings, and a couple dollars. He tossed out whatever he had in his bag to make space to pack them away, only making sure to toss his homework back into the bag. He turned to his window, it was bolted and barred. He had left from there a couple of times that they had it installed into his room.

He grabbed his bag and walked from his room. He turned his head down the hall, his father couldn’t see him from where he sat. That was good. He continued to walk across the hall, pushing open the door to his father’s room slowly to avoid suspicion or notice. Once inside, he walked over to the windows, non-barred or with the same protective measures. He opened and climbed out the window and into the backyard of the home, closing the window behind him he snuck around to the front yard–hopping onto his bike and pedaling away.

∎∎∎

“Jack Krueger. September 28th, 1988 to January 13th, 2012.”

The headstone read. Richard had stared at the headstone for a couple minutes, taking a seat on the grass and unpacking his stuff from his backpack. He pulled out two wrapped burgers from his bag, laying one onto the stone slab and placing one onto his lap. One for him, one for Jack.

Richard tore his burger apart with his hands, placing one of the messily ripped halves into his mouth before digging back into his backpack once more. He pulled out a piece of paper as he began to chew half of the burger. He placed the paper onto the binder for a hard surface to both write and draw on. He had been here, every three months, but only once annually would be so extravagant with this little reunion. A burger, some writing, and...

“I’ve been doing alright.” A conversation. “It hasn’t been good, but it's been something. I don’t get hit as often, I think the old man has gotten too lazy for that, he just sits around and does nothing, maybe he’ll say something that gets on my nerves but… that’s all he does now. I figured out how not to piss him off.” Richard shrugged, turning an eye back to the paper he had been writing on to focus himself as he continued to speak.

“Mom has been out a bit more, working. I think she’s just trying to get out of the house. I don’t think she cares much either, but that’s fine. One less person to worry about, right?” He thought about chuckling, but just stopped. An impulse that had gone immediately sour, the taste of the burger in his mouth being replaced with a putrid distastefulness before he continued to draw. “I got another job. Kinda. Earning money cleaning around the school for the janitors. It isn’t what you’d call an honest job I guess. I’m just doing what they’re supposed to be doing and they get the credit and give me a few bucks.” He hummed, placing the pencil down to reach for another colored pencil, continuing to draw.

“I hope you’re doing well. You deserve that. Raised me good…” He paused for a moment between speaking and working away at his paper to just stop. His thoughts, all foggy as he tried to think. Something to say, something to write or draw. He had just stopped. Putting down the paper and pencil to grab at the second half of the burger he had torn in half and ate it with more dignity than he ate the first. A moment to gather himself. A moment to think. A moment to relive.

Coming back here, year after year after year after year. Eating the same cheap burger, with a piece of paper and his bike laid out on the dirt, then when he got choked up on words–he’d start eating again and wiping grease from his lips like clockwork. The taste of the charcoal from the burger had been disgusting to him. The taste of the smoke in the meat always reignited the sense of the smoke in his throat. The feeling of his skin burning. The memory of his uncle burning up. And every time.

Richard immediately grabbed for the plastic bag and heaved out all the contents of his stomach. He’d vomit it all out. All like clockwork. His annual routine.

He didn’t even know when he began to sweat, but now as he began to hyperventilate he was glad he at least had that to help him cool down. He knew this was always going to be the outcome, but he couldn’t stop himself from repeating this cycle of his. All that mattered was that he could share that burger with his uncle, as his uncle requested of him.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“A memory always lives. That’s what you told me. Raised me well.” He finished his thought, going back to draw. It had taken nearly an hour before he finished. He had retrieved a picture frame from his bag and slid the drawing into it, lastly setting it onto the gravestone and picking up his bike. With all that, he rode back home.

∎∎∎

The sun was setting as Richard arrived home to see his father’s car had no longer been in the driveway, an odd sight. His father was a simple man, he followed a routine. He worked at his job in the morning, got home in the afternoon, and then slouched away on the couch for about a few hours before he crawled himself off the couch to sleep in his room. Only getting up to occasionally grab a beer from the fridge. It was usually his mother who picked up groceries or whatever the house had needed on her way back.

Before Richard had known, he had already started to sweat. He had been staring down at his bike with a single thought going rampant through his mind.

Had his father noticed his bike wasn’t there?

His father was a lousy drunk, but there were points that he was perceptive. Whenever he bothered to care. Richard’s thoughts transitioned swiftly to action, each breath of air he would’ve taken now stuck in the back of his throat. He hopped off from his bike and carried it to the side of the house, hoping to get it back into its original spot. All until he froze the moment his father’s headlights had shined down at him.

He stood there, wordless and lifeless, incapable of feeling anything other than dread paralyze him. He stood there as the lights were no longer shining on him and his father walked out from his car. He stood there as his father walked up to him, with the portrait he left on his uncle’s headstone clenched in his hand. Then, everything began to resume, the second that Richard’s father had smacked him across the face with the front of his palm. It snapped him out of that daze. It reminded him to think. It reminded him to breathe.

“Wait!” He exclaimed, trying to speak or cough out another sentence. However, the tip of his father’s boot had lodged into the boy’s chest. Immediately ejecting all the air in his lungs and causing him to writhe in pain.

“I ask you two things. Stay in your room and do your work. What don’t you do?” His father questioned, before kicking him again. He watched as the boy spat out trying to grasp air, for a moment he had felt pity, bringing himself to unravel his belt from his waist. A more fitting and merciful punishment for his son.

“You don’t.” He hit him.

“Your school called again. You failed a test. Your teacher needs to talk to you on the phone.” Another hit.

“I call you from the living room. You’re not there.” Another hit.

“I go to your room, you’re not there." Another.

“I go outside, you and your bike aren’t there.” Another.

“I go to the phone, they begin to criticize me because I don’t know where the fuck you are.” Another.

“I tell them you’re out with a friend. Tell them it slipped my mind. Now, tomorrow I have to go to the school for a conference. Now I need to miss out on work because you couldn’t do what you were told.” And two more.

“I look at the date. Get pissed, remember it's that piece of shit’s death day. Drive to the cemetery and see you. I watch you bike off and go check his headstone to find a waste of food and a crappy drawing.” He didn’t hit Richard with the belt this time, instead he just tossed the portrait onto him, cracking the glass as it hit him.

Richard took each hit from his father’s beating, almost unreactive besides the grunts and coughs of pain. He hadn’t looked up to him, instead he had been now looking at the stencil portrait of his uncle he drew. He managed to get all the details just about right this time. A picture that he had worked on, year after year. It was now shattered against the driveway with shattered glass spread across the floor. He had written the same phrase on a ribbon under the portrait. A memory always lives. He reached out for it, and his father stomped on it, cracking more pieces of glass and crinkling the portrait.

Clenching his fist he looked up, then around.

All he saw were the faces of his neighbors watching. No, no they were looking away.

Every one of the neighbors standing outside acted ignorant. Not looking into the situation, as if the violence was in its own bubble. Whatever will of retaliation he had faded, instead being replaced with those faces. The faces of the people in the security room that hid as his uncle fended off a regressor. People aware of suffering, and looked away. All faces.

His father smacked him again, knocking him out of his reminiscence to focus his attention.

“Get up. We’re going inside.” He demanded, looking at his son lay there. Whatever fight that had been festering within Richard had been diluted, turning docile as he lifted the teen to his feet. When Richard didn’t move his father pushed him forward to get him moving inside.

Richard dragged his body into the home, he had already gone numb to the pain, not that he wasn’t in pain any longer but instead that he was too lost. He never lifted his head, just staring at the carpeted floor that lined the hallway. He slowed down, and his father pushed him again. This had gone on until he ended up at his room. His father left, only to walk in moments later, tossing Richard’s bag into the room.

“Work.” He demanded, pointing at the backpack before walking out and into the living room.

Richard had been left there, having collapsed onto his bed as his chest had writhed in pain, and the thought of his portrait to his uncle had just been left on the driveway. Every lesson that his uncle had taught him had gotten more distant. Broken down by constant beatings.

He pulled himself up from his dresser, even if it hurt to try. Every muscle in his body was screaming at him. It could’ve been out of pain, frustration, stress, or a number of the many sensations currently going through his body. However, they all wanted one thing. They didn’t want to feel whatever… this was anymore. He limped out of his room, leaning across the wall as he turned his head to the hallway, looking at his father lazily watching TV in the living room.

He pushed open the door to his parents’ room and stumbled until he got to his fathers’ closet. He had seen it before, they had beaten him for finding it, but because it was his parents–he knew they likely did nothing to hide it. And well, he was right. He knelt down, checking beneath the clothes hanging in the closet to find a small black plastic box. He took moments just staring at it before he had gotten the courage to break it open, staring down his father’s revolver.

This was power.