My old lady’s a lazy whore and bat-shit crazy, to boot. Sometimes, she just checks out, like she died but her body didn’t get the message. Her eyes get all big and grey, like in that movie about the ghost, and she just sits and stares. There’s nothing you can do to snap her out of it, either. Even if you slap the hell out of her. It’s damned creepy.
She’s always going on about having sore feet and a sore back, like pushing groceries through a scanner is hard. She’s a cashier at the local market, for Christ’s sake. It ain’t even a real job. She don’t know what hard work is. I used to work in construction. Now if anything’s hard, dragging drywall sheets up and down stairs, building walls and working from sun-up to sun-down is. Of course, I’m looking for something better now. I can’t help it if the economy’s in the crapper and people ain’t handing out careers. Sometimes, she acts like it’s my fault that I ain’t working. I want a calling, something worthwhile. Something that’ll pay real good so I wouldn’t have to rely on her old man’s handouts anymore. It’s not like I have my head in the clouds, waiting for the perfect job. But I won’t take just anything neither—I have my pride.
Sometimes, life is the shits, and I have to let off steam. The other day, I leveled up twice in just under eight hours. You’d think the whore would’ve been happy for me. “You just played video games all day,” she said. Two damned levels and she has to try and make me feel bad about it. Even her kid gets in on it, always whining about something or other. The brat has no idea how easy she’s got it, not like when I was her age. By the time I was ten, my mother used to make me clean the whole friggin’ house. I don’t make the kid do any of that shit. Mostly she plays outside all day.
This place is really starting to get to me, though. I first met the whore in a bar. She was something then. Electric. I’ve never been so turned on. She was on the dance floor swaying to the music all by herself. It was sexy as hell. She was hot! Now she looks like she’s eighty. Her and the old witch from next door make a good pair. It’s time for me to be moving on. Met my old squeeze Dana the last time I went to the city. She said if I ever needed a place to crash she had an extra couch. The way she looked at me, I knew she wanted to share more than her couch.
It’s not like there’s anything left for me in this craphole of a town anyway. I keep inviting Mom to come visit, but she says, “I ain’t coming to some little flea-bitten backwater dive.” She ain’t wrong. Mom’s right about almost everything. My mother’s one canny old broad.
My best bud, Arnie, said he overheard the boys at MacRay’s talking last week. He said my name came up while he was ordering a drink, so he stopped to listen. He told me Joel, my old foreman, was yapping on about how he wouldn’t give me a job if I was the last man alive. 
Joel’s a dickhead. We had a run-in on my last day; I told him that everyone skims a little when they’re on the job. He said,”‘No they don’t, only thieves do that.” Can you believe he called me a thief? I was real low after I got canned. Went out and got plastered, that’s how I ended up living with crazy.
Sometimes I lose it. It’s not my fault. If she wasn’t such a lazy skank, I wouldn’t have to. And she’s always going on about the kid. Well, who cares about that little piece of crap. She’s not even mine. The whore was married to some loser who buggered off as soon as he found out that she was knocked up. She was a single mom until I came along. I know what that’s like. Mom and me were on our own the whole time I was a kid. ‘Course, for a while, Mom had one guy or another sleeping over, until one night this perv came into my room and tried to fiddle with me. I think I was eleven or twelve. The next morning, while Mom’s back was turned, he made the jerk-off motion with his hand. So, when he reached for a piece of toast, I stabbed his hand. Stuck it right to the table. He hollered about calling the cops. I told Mom what he did and she kicked his ass right out. When she told him she was getting her gun, he disappeared without another word. Diddling with kids is messed up.
Sometimes, Arnie stares at the kid too long, it’s not right. For some reason, he’s scared shitless of basements, so I make her go sleep down there. It’s not worth losing Arnie’s friendship over a little snot-nosed girl. I make up for it in the mornings though, we have a good laugh when I send her next door to the witch’s place. The old bag freaks her out because of her grey eye. It’s a good life lesson. Shows the little brat that you have to stand up to your fears. Not that I give a good god-dammed about her, skulking around here like she owns the place.
Arnie says he’s got a job lined up in the city. Says the guy needs two reliable fellows on the docks who ain’t afraid to use their fists. That’s me and Arnie. He’s a good shit, a real friend. We had some fun a while back, beating the crap out of a couple faggots whose car broke down outside of town.
Sometimes, Arnie and I play Grand Theft all day and he gets so worked up that he needs a release. When my old lady has one of her fits and checks out, I let him have a go at her. It’s not like I can even get it up around her anymore anyway. I think of leaving every day. There’s nothing left to pawn off and I know her bank account’s empty, so she’s useless to me. I can hardly wait to get the dust of this place off my boots. The whore will probably spend the next thirty years crying into her beer after I leave. Too bad, so sad, she ain’t worth frig-all to me. I’ll miss the dog though.
Photo Credit
Photo from Flickr – public domain
Read more in this series:
Where could the pension cheques have gone? What happened to the ring, and who was it for?? And what about Mrs. Avery’s son…what’s his story? I’m dying here, Gab…looking forward to Part 4 of the ‘Sometimes…’ series!
Sometimes we must wait for the answers. 😉
I’m glad you are enjoying the tale. Part four is in the hopper!