Confusion

Heyas,

It's been awhile since I've written another section to Confusion. Part 7 was the end of the first half of the story which was getting Mike and Erik truly together. Now, I'm starting on the second part which details their relationship. Relationships take work, and these next few parts about what the two of them go through in their quest for happiness.

I've received many questions wondering why the characters act the way they do. Some of you have guessed right, while others have suggested things I do with the story based on personal fantasies. Well, I finally figured out both characters and want haunts them, what makes them think the way they do, and why they handle things differently.

Part 8 is about Erik and his background. Throughout are a few flashbacks on his life. Part 9 will deal with Mike. That should be finished fairly soon. I hope you enjoy and learn something from the next few parts of the story.

Bob

Part 8

There's something to be said about working for eighteen years to earn your freedom only to have it snatched away with the onset of summer. Accompanied by the unbearable heat, personal frustration, and the humility of once again coming under my parents' dominion, I moved all my possessions from the trunk of the car to my house.

Of course I could have gotten a job to maybe live in a cheap apartment for the summer, but the idea of buying my own food, paying my own phone bill, and dealing with a landlord wasn't exactly appealing. Besides, I could always turn the air conditioner in my house down to fifty-five degrees. It wasn't everyday I got the opportunity to bug the shit out of my parents.

So, there I was, once again cramped into my old room, the familiar smells of home quickly invading my senses. I unloaded box after box, placing all the books in their proper places on the shelves, making room for a few new ones. My computer went back on the dust covered desk where it had always been. The television, none the worse for wear, went back to its revered place on top of my laundry hamper.

Even though I had left for college, my parents always maintained that my room was to be solely mine. They never turned it into a den or a guest bedroom. However, my mother did do the one thing that she knew would have me crawling up the walls; she redecorated.

The dark blue paint on the walls had been replaced with an ugly beige which made the room appear stuffy. Some of the furniture had been rearranged, though I knew exactly what I was doing when I put them in the room in the first place. I needed space. A lot of space. I had ripped off the closet doors and put the bookshelf, dresser, and TV in there, leaving me with a lot of walking room. Through most of junior high and all of high school, I went without a bed. The floor was more comfortable, and a bed would just take up too much space. Not two weeks after I had moved out, a new bed was brought into my private domain. My parents never listened.

An hour later, and significantly sweatier, I had everything the way it was before I left. While looking through a few drawers, I noticed papers and things had been moved. They had been going through my stuff again. Letters, most of them private, and pictures of my friends were scattered, though I had stacked them neatly before going to school. Legally an adult, yet treated like a child. I began the countdown: three months to go.

After everything was properly moved in, I decided to go down to the kitchen to get something to drink. Little did I know my parents were already in the kitchen, lying in wait like spiders in the middle of their webs, ready to pounce upon me.

"Erik, are you going to find a job for the summer?" My mother was older than most other mothers I knew. I was only eighteen, yet she had celebrated her sixty-first birthday this past year. Needless to say, her values were just a tad foreign to me. She was also the nervous type. Me not finding a job was her worst nightmare. Somehow, I think she equated my unemployment with the Great Depression.

"Yes mother," I groaned, digging through the fridge for something to drink.

"Did you take that bottle of Jack out of the fridge?"

"Nope," I said calmly and nonchalantly, selecting a Pepsi as my drink of choice. I was going to go straight back to my room, but it was humid up there. But, if I didn't go up there, I'd be tortured by hours of interrogation. I chose the latter evil.

"Erik, you're gonna have to pay for your part of the phone bill now. We can't keep paying for everything." My dad was quite different from my mom. For one thing, he was ten years younger. He also had this perpetual vacant look on his face, sort of an eternal expression of being dumbfounded. This really didn't surprise me. Something happened to him in Vietnam, though I had never really learned what. According to rumor (and my half-witted older brother was my main source of rumor), he was sent to some mental ward after he was discharged. So, I could never count on my father to be, well, a father. I don't think he and I ever spoke once about what was going on in my life.

"Yeah yeah yeah. Get a job. Pay the bills. I know. I know." The heat of my room was looking very attractive already, and I hadn't been in the kitchen for more than two minutes. I sat down opposite of my mom and started sipping the Pepsi slowly. "Did you go through my stuff?"

My mom looked at me with that silly, almost nonsensical expression, the kind that made me want to scream. "Well, it's a mother's job to worry. How do I know you're not doing drugs?"

"You didn't find my crack pipe, did you?" I asked, trying to show genuine concern.

"Stop it." I swear, if my mom was a guy, with that tone of voice, she'd be gay. Hands down. "Cinderella called you yesterday."

"You mean Katie?"

"Yeah, you know. What's her name."

"Katie." An ex girlfriend of mine was in a play with me once. I played a baker, and she played Cinderella. Ever since my mom saw that play, she always called her Cinderella. It was my personal opinion that Alzheimer's was setting in early.

My nerves were already standing on edge for some reason. I guess almost a year away wasn't nearly enough to wash away a lifetime of irritation. "I'm going out. I'm taking the jeep."

Any mention of a possession that we were still making payments on always aroused my father from whatever fog he happened to be in at the time. With a "I'll kick your ass if you fuck up that car" from him, and a curt reply by me, I was out the door.

I don't know why I left, though I knew I couldn't stay in that house for another minute. Though me and my parents had said very little, there was a lifetime of expression, meaning, and nuance behind every word. My friends thought I was too cold to my parents, too indifferent. I thought of it as a survival instinct. Though I managed to block my parents from my mind when they really bothered me, the memories were always there, waiting to come back when I wasn't prepared to push them away...

There it was again. The thunder. It boomed steadily, inching its way around me. First it was behind me, underneath me, as I sat huddled between my bed and the dresser. Slowly, slowly it made its way around, curling to my right and rising higher into the air. Drumbeats. A death march. My death march.

I imagined the giant walking across the clouds, his great boots trembling the ground beneath him. And I was Jack, dreading that ominous approach, knowing that I couldn't escape every time. A Jack without an axe.

My heart beat swiftly like a frightened rabbit's. My mouth was dry, and my tongue stuck. My eyes were clenched shut, hoping that if I couldn't see what was to come, it would never come. I wrapped my arms around my knees, pulling the pajama bottoms higher around my calves, pants that were already two sizes too small for my eight year old frame.

There was silence all around me. Quiet, except for the throbbing rhythm of the steps, those steps that threatened to smother me with their sound alone.

The tears were already falling down my cheeks, though I knew it would do me no good. Tears were something that the Big People didn't care about. Actually, they seemed to like the tears. Maybe if I cried hard enough, the Big People would stop. Maybe I could make them really happy if they saw how many tears I made this time.

With that small hope, I swallowed, wincing in pain. My throat hurt me, bruised from the wracking sobs that had already gone away. Screams would follow. Terrible screams. My screams.

The thunder made its way to my door. The light from the crack under it was gone. I closed my eyes tighter, rocking back and forth, burying my head between my knees. The doorknob was turning. I knew it was. It was such a small sound, barely a squeak. But that tiny mechanical noise was a banshee to me.

A flash of red was in front of me. The light from the hallway was on my face, making my eyelids glow. It was gone as quickly as it had come, blotted out by the giant. I heard my name being called. Maybe if I didn't say anything, I wouldn't be found. Maybe I could make myself so small that no one would see me. I squeezed my legs tighter against me.

"Erik!" There it was, the voice that made my hair stand up and tickle my neck. I was gonna be sick. "Erik, you little fucker, answer me when I fuckin talk to you!"

"Yes, Daddy?" I whimpered. The grip, that iron grip on my arm. It hurt. It closed around me like a vice, bruising me. Like a rag doll, I was yanked forward, dragged across the floor, and thrown against the closet doors. "Daddy, what'd I do?" I pleaded. "I didn't do anything!" My voice was small, much smaller than the Big Peoples'.

"Don't give me that bullshit, you little son of bitch." The iron snake with the two tongues was in his hand, the same snake he used to poke the logs in the fireplace. It was going to bite me again. I rolled up into a ball.

It bit me, hard. I don't think I felt it so much as knew it was biting me. My air was knocked from my lungs in a choking gasp. I was gonna be sick. Again and again it struck me, the burning pain riding up and down my back, across my ribs, my legs, my arms.

I had already left. Someone had taken me away. The darkness was coming. It always came, especially when the snake bit me too much. I was talking, I was pretty sure. "Please" kept repeating itself over and over in my ears. Why was that little boy crying? He should just sleep like I was.

And when I woke up, I crawled to bed. My legs didn't work right. They hurt. I couldn't lift myself up. My arms shook. I was sore, but I couldn't feel anything. I winced when I put my head on the pillow. It wasn't nearly soft enough to let me sleep.

I didn't notice I had reached Katie's house until I got out of the car. I always wondered about that. Sometimes I would drive and drive, so deeply involved with a thought or memory that I no longer realized I was driving. I could have been sleeping for all I knew. It mattered so little.

I walked up the steps and rang the doorbell. I could see little faces poking out of the blinds in the window, wondering who was at the door. When they disappeared, I heard Katie's name being shrieked throughout the house.

Several minutes later, the door opened. A girl, shorter than myself with blonde hair cascading to her shoulders, walked out, her blue eyes squinting in the harsh sunlight. Her skin was pale and unblemished, never really exposed to the summer rays. She smiled, her cheeks gathering beneath her ocean-colored eyes only hiding them more.

"Erik, where have you been?" Katie hugged me, her rather large breasts digging into my chest. She kissed me on the cheek just like she always did, then waited for the reaction that never came. "I called you earlier, but your mom said you weren't home."

"Yeah" I muttered. "I just got back from school. Had to move all my stuff back in." I dug my hands into the pockets of my jeans. I never knew what to say to her really. Every encounter with her seemed to be a practice in politeness. "You're home for the summer?"

"M-hm, I got out last week." She was bouncy. A little too bouncy. She was almost the type of person you wanted to kill for being too chipper. It wasn't always like that though. Things were different before college, back in the days of high school when we really didn't think about the future much. We were happy with where we were at. And, one day, that all ended. With a tassel and a cheap, plastic encased diploma, everything was erased. Well, not totally.

"Well, I just wanted to stop by because you called to say hello. I kind of have things to do today. I gotta get to the bank and make sure my account's straightened out." I was expecting long moments of reminiscing when I went there. Once I stood at the door however, all I wanted to do was leave as quickly as possible.

Katie frowned and grabbed my arm. "You're leaving already?"

How could she be so upbeat after all she's done? After everything we did?

"Well, I've got stuff to do. We could do something tonight maybe. Maybe go see a movie." Yep, I was too polite. I knew I didn't really want to go see a movie, and I knew that she would take up my offer. Being polite is exactly the kind of thing that gets me into miserable situations.

"Great!" she exclaimed, giving me a hug. My entire body stiffened at her touch. Ok, hug her and get it over with.

"I'll call you when I get back home. I'll see what's playing."

"I'll see you then, stud."

I turned on my heel and got back into the Jeep. I banged my head against the headrest, chiding myself for the encounter. "Erik, you idiot, why do you do that?" I pulled out of her driveway, conscious that she was on her porch watching me. I wondered what was going through her mind. Was there something serious beneath that cheerful countenance? I could never be happy when I was miserable. Some people could do that. I never was. It was like lying to myself.

I remember those summer nights all too well. The nights were long then, and I preferred to spend most of my time in that star studded darkness. As I drove my Neon through those back roads, I never thought of much. The large oak trees loomed over the pavement, creating a natural tunnel through the wilderness. My brights illuminated the forest around me in the event that a stray deer might cross my path.

The music that grabs me so fiercely now was still new then. Live played through the stereo with Sophie B. Hawkins, Lisa Loeb, and Better Than Ezra accompanying. I'll never forget those songs. They defined that all important summer in high school. They also reminded me of the shattering of who I used to be.

I was an optimist. Nothing could go wrong. My sexuality was creeping up on me, slowly but surely. At that time, I had it held at bay. I was convinced that I was just as normal as everyone else. With Katie in the passenger seat beside me, I knew that my life would be without those problems that I so often read about.

We pulled over into a forest preserve parking lot. Katie had to sneak the car in as I held the security rope high into the air. There was something magical about the forbidden. The headlights of the car turned off, we quietly crept into the lot.

There was this place that I always went to in the middle of the night. A large lake spread out from the forest. I usually found a picnic table and sat on it, smoking countless cigarettes and thinking. There's a certain quality to nature, knowing your miles from electricity and noise and people. Many times I had fallen asleep there, waking up with plenty of mosquito bites, but still feeling more rested than I ever did.

Katie and I walked over to a table near the shore of the lake and sat, kissing each other deeply. We didn't have to say anything to each other. We were in love. We knew what the other person was thinking. We were comfortable enough in the cocoon of silence.

Still, her lips were tenser than usual. She pulled back more often than I was accustomed to. Something was wrong. "What is it?" I asked.

"I have to tell you something." Why was her voice so strained? Her face was settling into the perfect expression of misery. My heart started accelerating. Were we breaking up? No, it couldn't be. There was no sign of trouble between us lately. We had fought heavily weeks earlier, but that was gone now. Everything seemed to be ok. I didn't understand.

"What's wrong?" I said as gently as possible, trying to be sensitive. Maybe there was something wrong in her life. Maybe it was something I could fix.

Tears started wetting her eyes. As they began running down her cheeks, they sparkled in the moonlight. I brushed them as best I could, hoping the gesture would let her know I was there for her. "Erik, I've done something really bad."

Really bad? Was she seeing someone else? Did she sleep with someone else while we were fighting? "What'd you do? Maybe I can help you fix it."

"You can't," she groaned. "You can't fix it. No one can fix it. I really screwed up."

"Well, I can usually fix things. Seriously, tell me what's wrong."

"You know how we were fighting a lot last month?" There was fear in her voice. I sensed it. She was terrified of me for some reason. It was like she was about to admit some grave sin.

"Yeah, but we're through with that, aren't we? I mean, we worked everything out ok."

She nodded, swallowing hard. "Erik." She paused, gathering strength. "Something happened then that I never told you about."

"What is it?" I asked, knowing I was heading towards a huge disaster. Only a strange, surreal desire to know, to realize the full enormity of what she did, urged me on. My gut was twisting. I knew something horrible was coming. Something in the back of my mind was screaming at me.

"I got pregnant."

She said it, but I don't think I believed it. What some people pray to hear screeched through my mind with numbing speed. This was someone else. I was someone else. I wasn't in my body anymore. It was like watching a movie. I saw two people sitting there in roaring silence.

Ok, Erik, think. I had to think. The enormity of her words had sent me reeling. Gather yourself. Snap out of it. "You're pregnant?" Not exactly the greatest thing to say at the time, but it was a start.

"I was pregnant."

Was? Was? What the hell did that mean? No, she didn't. She couldn't. It was impossible. Even as what she was implying spread itself out into my consciousness, I didn't consider it for a moment. No, it's impossible. Not her. Not me. I was gonna be sick.

Katie was a wreck. She was bawling. Every inch of her was shivering and not from the cold. "Erik, we were fighting so much. I didn't know what to do!"

Was pregnant? "What--what did you do?" I forced the words out. I almost vomited the second I opened my mouth. This just couldn't be happening. Not to me.

"My sister-in-law took me to see a doctor. He-he fixed things."

"What the hell do you mean he fixed things?" I knew what was coming. I already knew. Why was I doing this to myself? Why was I doing this to her? I didn't need an explanation. Even though what she had done, what we did, was clear in my mind, I never let it in. Not for one second. If I did, I would break beyond all repair.

"I got an abortion."

She said it. I clamped my hands over my ears and shut my eyes, burying my head between my knees. Shut her out. Shut it all out. If I didn't see it, if I didn't hear it, it didn't exist.

"Erik?" Someone was shaking my arm. "Erik, what are we going to do?" Someone was pleading with me. Check yourself. Stop that burning feeling. It was creeping up in my stomach, threatening to fill the emptiness that was in my chest. Don't move.

"Erik? Please say something!" Don't say a word. Sit there. Unclench your hands. Let go. No, don't hit her. Don't lash out. Don't.

I wasn't crying when I finally did raise my head. I wasn't sad. I wasn't angry. I was dead. There was nothing. No feeling. No remorse. Just nothing. "You killed our baby." My voice was hollow. There was nothing behind it, no substance. How could there be? My heart had be ripped from me before I knew it was there.

"I didn't kill our baby! I didn't!" She was panicking, but I felt nothing. I had nothing for her. Absolutely nothing.

"You killed our baby," I repeated quietly.

I was gone.

The trees whipped past me in a blur. I barely took notice of them. I didn't know where I was going, nor did I really care. I had to get away, as far away from my life as possible. Perhaps, if I could run far enough, I'd be safe from reality. My reality, the hell I knew I'd have to face.

I stopped. I was in the middle of the forest. Moonlight spilled through the treetops onto the leaf-ridden earth. There was an eerie silence. Even the crickets and toads seemed to pause at my approach. Everything was out of place. It was a dream. It had to be. In dreams you didn't feel pain. In dreams you couldn't see past what was in front of you. I couldn't do either one.

I stood there, my lungs burning from the exertion of running. I took in great gulps of air while trying to regain some semblance of composure. The muscles in my legs and arms spasmed. They threatened to fail me. I had to hold onto a low hanging branch to keep myself from falling.

It was coming. I felt it. The thunder was coming. It was rooted deep inside. It rolled towards me unrelentingly. I was listening for it, waiting for it. I knew it would come as it always did. This time, though, I wouldn't stop it. I wouldn't hold it back like I always had to.

"Fucking god damn mother fucking bitch! You fucking bitch!" Tears erupted from my eyes as I thrashed about, kicking and screaming. My knuckles dug into the rough bark of the trees, cutting and slashing the skin. I struck the trunks over and over again. I ignored the pain in my hands, so intent was I on the pain in my heart.

With a great heave, I threw myself to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. "Why did you do this to me?" I managed to choke out. "Why?" I dug my fingers into the dirt and mud, trying to hold onto something solid, something real. If I was going to fall off the earth, I wasn't going without a fight.

My tears mingled with the dirt, soaking into the ground almost immediately. Long moments passed before I fell silent, before I could cry no more. And when I finally did, I was more empty than I had ever felt. Something was missing inside of me. Something had died.

That was two years prior, but the memory still haunted me. It was always floating somewhere in the back of my mind. Sometimes, I would wake up in the middle of the night because I thought I heard a baby cry. Of course, all I'd see was darkness, or moonlight falling across my bed if I was lucky. I'd hold onto my pillows until the sky lightened outside and the birds filled the air with noise.

During the months after I learned of my child's all too premature death, I couldn't quite grasp what it was I was feeling. Looking back, I guess it was grief, a profound sense of loss. Still, the image always stayed with me. In everything I did, that void in my heart was always present, reminding me of what could have been.

There I was, preparing to see a movie with the girl I hated more than anything in the world. The attachment I felt to her was bittersweet at best. I couldn't completely sever all ties to someone that had affected my life to such an extreme degree. The result was restrained tolerance. I was going through the motions. I was polite because I thought that was what I should be. I'm so stupid sometimes.

The day began wearing thin. I had finished all my errands and returned home, only to find my parents still griping about my unwillingness to leap up and find a job the very second I arrived home. My little brother, Kyle, had immediately alerted me that someone had called while I was gone. To him, this was vitally important information. Right after informing that I had a message, he smirked and told me he had forgotten who it was. It was typical of him.

I ran up to my room and flopped down onto my bed, but not before flicking the radio on. There was a new song playing, something I had heard here and there but never really paid attention to. The words were perfectly reflective of the mood I was in. "Wanna put my tender heart in a blender, watch it spin around to a beautiful oblivion." How many times had I felt that way?

I really shouldn't have gone over to see Katie. She just depressed the hell out of me. Every time I saw that cheerful face, I wanted to take a baseball bat and smash it in. We're going to the movies. Christ.

Jumping off my bed, I ran down to the kitchen again where Kyle began babbling about the Bulls. "Do you think they'll win the championship again?"

"They always win," I said, looking for something to eat in the fridge.

"Yeah, I guess so." Kyle was a year and a half younger than me. I thought he looked a little too much like me. We had the same dark eyes and hair. He was skinnier than me, but in the past year had grown to my height. He also had the same capacity to look incredibly sad when he wanted to. He had that look on his face now.

"What's up, spud?" I said, sitting down opposite of him with a bowl of cold rice. "Something bothering you?"

He looked up at me, giving me the strange feeling that I was looking into the mirror. "Why do you drink so much?"

"Christ, you too?" I groaned. I could tell that he really wanted to know though. He was a nervous kid. I think he watched too many talk shows as a child. If there was anything dysfunctional going on, he'd be the first person to tell me how he saw the exact same thing on Jenny Jones.

"Well, I found the bottle of Jack under your bed, but I didn't say anything to mom and dad. When dad found out it was gone from the fridge, he got pissed and started throwing things around. You know how he is."

"What did you do with it?" I asked more anxiously than I would have liked.

"I was going to put it under your bookshelf where you usually hide stuff, but I figured it'd be better to put it under my mattress. Mom and dad wouldn't look there."

I almost choked on my quasi-dinner. "Where I usually put things? You gotta stop going through my stuff, dude. I don't go through your stuff."

"I know," he replied guiltily. "I just get bored. It's something to do."

"Well, you need new hobbies." I munched on the chewy rice a little longer before deciding it wasn't really something worth eating for dinner. I figured I'd just grab something on the way to pick Katie up.

"Why do you drink?" Damn, this kid was persistent.

"Because it's fun. I wouldn't do it if it wasn't."

He sighed deeply. "You still shouldn't do it so much. Mom thinks you're a drunk."

That comment made me suddenly angry. Who the hell was she to judge? And if I was a drunk, which I knew I probably was, it wasn't her place to point it out to my little brother. Hell, it was probably her fault. She was the one who stood by silently all those years. My little brother was the baby. He was spared the wrath of my father. He didn't understand. "Let her think what she thinks."

"Are you going out with Katie tonight?"

"I just happen to be."

"Why?" Kyle always did ask too many questions.

I shrugged. "I dunno. I don't have anything better to do."

"Are you guys gonna start dating again?"

"No." I said forcefully. I looked at the clock on the microwave. 7:14. "I gotta get ready, dude. Don't worry about things so much. You're going to end up with an ulcer before you're thirty."

I trekked back to my room, but not before retrieving the bottle of Jack Daniels from Kyle's bed. I couldn't have my parents finding it there. He'd have hell to pay. Still, it was nice that he was willing to cover for me.

I was going to change into different clothes but decided that I really didn't give a damn what I looked like. I wasn't exactly trying to impress Katie. Hell, I still didn't know why I was going to see a movie with her. I didn't know if I could sit next to her for two hours straight. I couldn't even stand being near her for ten minutes earlier in the day. I needed something to get me through the night.

My gaze fell upon the bottle of liquor, it's translucent brown contents glowing from the lamplight behind it. Well, maybe just a little bit, just enough to take the edge off my thoughts. If my senses were dulled just enough, I would probably forget that she was even there with me.

Thirty minutes later I sat on the floor, my stomach on fire and my head just beginning to glaze over, an empty bottle at my side. My lips were starting to get numb. That was the first sign that I had done a good job. The rest would follow shortly. I had to get Katie though before the effects fully embraced me. I had to at least make it to the theater.

I stumbled down the stairs. Did they add a step while I was away at school? My feet weren't landing exactly where I thought they should be.

"Erik, you ok?" Kyle was sitting on the couch watching TV. My parents must have been in their room.

"Yeah, I'm fine, why do you ask?"

"Come here." I did as he asked. Normally I would have ignored him and walked out the door, but I had a nice buzz going. He grabbed both sides of my head and pulled me towards his face. He sniffed. "Ugh, you've been drinking that stuff."

"So, don't worry about it," I said tersely before grabbing my keys and heading out the door.

Kyle must have gotten up, because I heard him calling out my name as I made my way to the car. "Erik! You can't drive! I'll tell mom and dad!"

I got the keys into the lock of the Neon on the third try. "You want to tell them? You want to deal with dad when he's pissed?" He said nothing. "I didn't think so."

I got into the car as sped out of the driveway. Kyle stood under the porch light looking very lost. He really did worry too much. I looked at the digital clock in the car. It was 7:55, five minutes until the movie started. Shit, I'd have to hurry up.

I raced down the side streets of the suburb. Whoever planned them should have been fired. They curved around within each other. Friends from out of town could never find my house. The town was a virtual maze. I decided to take a short cut to Katie's, driving down a side road that wound around a baseball field.

The street was too curved. As I sped along, I could feel the centrifugal force pulling on the car. It was a lot of fun, sort of like a roller coaster. I was just starting to enjoy the ride when I saw the tree trunk in front of me. How did that get there? I didn't really have time to contemplate this as I heard crushing metal, and then nothing....