Thing that I entered a few years ago, thought I'd throw it up here.
Feedback is always welcome.
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The quiet of the hospital room was offsetting, a myriad of whirs and clicks occasionally breaking through the stony silence, and yet they didn't disturb his sleep. Stretched out on the bed, his long legs just barely fitting onto the crisp white hospital sheets, was my father, lying in a deep slumber. It was no mystery what thoughts raced through his head at that point; my father was dreaming. Dreaming in red.
It was a very interesting moment in my life when I realized that my father not only loved the color red as if it were his own flesh and blood, but he dreamed it, too. I was a mere boy of six years old, standing with my father's large hands on my shoulder as we both watched my mother, a beautiful Korean girl with green eyes and a large face, go through her final breaths in this word. My father was swaying, drunk, his hands clenching and unclenching in the fabric of my shirt. He cried, I didn't. When it was all over, he whirled me around, and when we were eye to eye, he spoke.
?Look at that woman, son. Such a delicate creature. It's a shame she left me you.?
Thus began my relationship with my father.
You have to understand; the color red has very little to do with his dreams. Red is a means to an end; a symbol I use in place of a thousand other words that describe the pictures that fill his head when he sleeps. No, Red very rarely attaches itself to my father, but everything red stands for shows up often.
Red is the color of vengeance, passion, love, betrayal, and any number of other encompassing rituals that involve bloodshed or murder. My father loved these themes. He went to bed every night reading about them ? fictional or otherwise- and in the morning he'd shove my nose in a book, tell me about a character, and demand to know why I wasn't more like them. He'd show me Sarumon and the Ice Queen; he'd show me Sirius and Huck Finn and Lysander. Each time he'd say the same thing. ?Be more like them, son! Why can't you be more like them??
The beatings that followed were, of course, a small ritual that also attached itself to the color red. Red my cheeks would be, from his hand or his belt, or when he was drunk enough, the large fire poker. Red was his face, contorted in rage over simplistic things, like his son not being a warlord or a wizard.
The beating and drinking peaked when I was nine years old, around the same time my father met a woman. She never told me her name, but she was what people referred to as a gold digger. At the time, I called her Goldie, and was confused by the term. Prospectors and gold diggers were always bearded, with fewer teeth than gaps in their mouths and a raucous cough that irritated the senses. Goldie was the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and I often told her so.
My father would backhand me when I spoke to Goldie, telling me that I wasn't good enough for her. ?She's an angel; a goddess. You're a runt. Eat your dinner, son.? He'd follow the insult with a shove at the base of my skull, sending my face towards my plate. After some time, I ate in silence. Goldie, however, looked at me with sympathy and raw compassion that made me want to cry.
I usually lay awake at night, imagining her perfect voice and body sleeping beside me, comforting me, sending her long, piano playing fingers through my hair. Little did I know that across the hall, she was doing much the same to my father. He needed comfort almost as badly as his abused and malnourished son did, and I loathed him for it.
When I was eleven, Goldie left us. She left us when my father lost his job for being too drunk a time too many. She never spoke a word to me, just disappeared when my father was out begging for his job back. She left, and I watched her leave.
When my father came home, he was crying, and immediately started yelling at me, blaming his eleven year old boy for, once again, causing all of his problems. ?Why'd you let her leave, son? Why'd you let her go!??
After Goldie left, there was nothing tying me to the house and the man who owned it. I packed a bag that night, and a month later I left, getting a job at a warehouse a mile down the road. My father and I rarely saw each other until my fifteenth birthday, when I began to lean on alcohol just as heavily as he once did. We drank together that day, without saying a word.
Our paths crossed little that year, the year when we were both drunk so often that we were mistaken for brothers. I had aged beyond my years, a thick beard covering my face even at fifteen, and he had still retained the youth and vigilance of a thirty year old, albeit with a ruined liver. Occasionally we sat together and discussed life, girls, and how we were doing. Occasionally we griped about our jobs. Occasionally we fought.
The fights would last through the night, with him always the victor because I was simply too weak to fight back. Despite the fact that I was growing stronger with each day at the warehouse, he was much bigger and stronger than I. Even when I had the upper hand, I was always compelled to stop, pitying this man, this oafish beast who dreamed while awake, dreamed in such a vivid red that everything else faded away into nothing.
Whenever the fight ended, and he stood with a boot on my chest, he'd grin at me. ?You can't even beat up an old man, son. You're still worthless.?
He would then stumble away to spend another evening in the drunk tank, and I'd brush myself off and go home to my temporary house, which I shared with two brothers and their sister, a ravishing young lady named Rebecca. I'd unlock the door, throw the keys on the counter, and sit down on the leather chair. I'd sit there until morning, wondering who I had become.
The year I turned seventeen was magical; I decided to turn my life around and put my father behind me, for good. My form was tall and still lanky, but I had worked hard enough to afford a small apartment in a corner building, where I had a view of the London bridge. After some contemplation, I invited my former house mates to join me, as the rent was costly. Only Rebecca made the move.
My seventeenth year was a grand one. My job was well, my pockets were lined, and I had shelter. But memory is a fickle mistress; despite my achievements, I always revisited the thirteen years of my seventeen that I had spent under the heel of a red-obsessed tyrant. I was ready to move on, to explore, to get out on my own.
At least, I thought I was ready, until I ran into Goldie again whilst shopping for food. We had stared at one another for a good while before she broke into a smile, and trailed her fingers down my shirt sleeve in what I imagine was supposed to be a seductive way. I was wearing new pants, a new jacket, and looked like the man I was; financially secure.
She was wearing a ruby ring, the blood red of the stone glinting in the light from the store's bulbs, and I had been jarred into so many memories, memories of thirteen years of violence and cruelty in my own home. No schooling, no friends, just a slow burn, a tortuous pain that began ? and ended ? in a vibrant color that haunted both of our dreams.
I am not ashamed to say that I ran from that store. I ran like the hounds of hell themselves were chasing me, nipping at my heels. I ran into my apartment, grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper, and went to find Rebecca.
She was working at her family?s law firm, busily scratching down names and places and dates, hurriedly trying to move her business along. I marched over to her, dropped the paper and pencil in front of her, and leaned across her desk, until her eyes filled my vision.
?Teach me.? I said. She smiled at me, slowly, and that slow smile did more for my nerves than Goldie's caresses did, or ever would.
That night, I sat Rebecca down, put her feet on my lap, and told her. I told her about my father. I told her about the man who lives and breathes Red. When my story was done, our embrace was passionate, and the color red appealed to me in ways I never thought possible.
Two years later, when I was nineteen and Rebecca was eighteen and we were happily together, I met my father again, for the first time in years. He was drunk, per usual, but what wasn't normal for my father was the two little girls, barely dressed, pressed to his waist with two meaty hands. The smile he wore made my toes curl and my fingernails dig into my palms.
My father wheeled them around to stare at me, and let out another raucous laugh. ?Look, son. These girls are just like you. They'll never amount to nothing.?
My fist swung before I even knew what was happening, and the two girls were suddenly screaming as my father hit the pavement, the sound of stones and skull filling the air. Their screams stopped when I knelt down, my fist a machine, pumping back and forth, smashing the ugly, drunken bastard's face over and over and over, the rhythm becoming almost second nature, a sad tune without lyrics, a rhythm section without a melody.
When I could stand, I left the girls with an orphanage, and left my father in the street. His face now matched his dreams, a red splotch in a gray blacktop. He didn't come out of a hospital for three days, and when he did he went straight to my apartment. I told Rebecca not to come out if she heard shouting or fighting, and went to let him in.
I was still the skinny teenager, and he was still the large brutish man who couldn?t tell reality from the dream world. He won the fight. Afterwards, while Rebecca nursed my wounds and stroked my hair, I felt centered, content. As we lay there in intimate embrace, I spoke the muffled words against her collar, the best words I'd ever say in my entire life.
?Let's get married.?
It was not a question, and she responded as such. ?Okay.?
The matter dealt with, we both drifted off.
I was twenty-one before we raised enough funds for a large wedding. In the two years we were saving up, I met her family multiple times, and she had met mine more than enough to last a lifetime. Her father, mother, three brothers and millions of cousins were all invited to the wedding. I had only one guest to inform, and I visited him on a stormy night in July.
My father lived in an old shack in the middle of a rural area. He didn't do much entertaining because he was a shut-in, a man who was best left alone to his dreams and nightmares, his reds and ambers. I knocked on the door, and he answered. ?You look bigger, son. You've been toughening up.?
?I'm getting married, Dad.? I said, the term alien to my mouth and equally so to his ears. ?I'm getting married on Sunday, in a church, to a beautiful woman.?
He looked mildly confused. ?You expecting me to come??
I shrugged one shoulder. ?No, I'm expecting you not to. In fact, please don't.?
He slammed the door as soon as the words left my lips, and I walked away, my past shut behind me just as violently.
It was ten years before I heard from my father again, long after I had moved my family to Canada, long after the birth of my youngest daughter, Charisse. Michael was four when she was born, and it made us complete; a family of four. I received a call from a doctor in England, telling me that my father was ill, dying, and that he wanted to see me.
After all this time, after the hate and loathing and anger, I caught a red eye to London, spending the entire time on the plane alternating between nervous, worried, and determined. I was finally going to get some answers from him. I was finally going to find out why.
He said a single thing when I arrived. ?It's about time you showed up, son. You were a right pain in the ass, you were. Never even loved me, did you??
He was snoring when I noticed the cord. It was fat and thick, deep, blood red. It ran between the machine and my father's breathing mask, the only thing keeping him here. That fat, red cord.
My fingers wrapped around the red cord that attached my father to his machine, the machine that was breathing life into him with every labored pump. I thought long and hard about Goldie, Rebecca, fighting, drinking, Charisse, Micheal, and especially of my father. I remember everyone who broke him, and everyone who healed me, and everyone who had nothing to do with either of us but certainly played a large part in the world. I thought about my options, whether or not I would end the vivid dreaming session my father no doubt was going through, the color that haunted him suddenly swimming through his veins, the anger, the hate washing over him until he could see no more, hear no more. Breathe no more. I thought about all of this and more while running my fingers across that damned red cord, feeling its weight, the power I held while my father lay, battered and broken, upon those crisp white sheets. I thought about it all, and then I gave the lightest amount of pressure, feeling the cord slip slightly out of its outlet, hearing my father's breathing grow heavier, steadier.
He dreamed in Red, but the world didn't dream with him.
I pulled.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/dOH816qc3zg/viewtopic.php
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Dorie Clark
