he bedroom door was dead-bolted as it was every night after cocktail hour. Tommy listened to the venomous voices chewing through his walls like acid, as his parents snapped like rabid pit bulls. No one could fight like Tommy’s folks. They threw things, cursed a thesaurus, and threatened bodily harm. Even when they didn’t drink, the dinner bell meant an entirely different thing at the Flanders’ residence.

Tommy wouldn’t close his eyes for hours after he went to bed, fearing that they would break down his door and kill him. He knew that was irrational. Parents love their kids, right? But there was another side — a frightening rage in their eyes when they fought. How could people who love each other say such evil words?

“YOU... PATHETIC! SLEAZY! SELFISH! WEAK! CHEAP! IMPOTENT! WORTHLESS! FRIGID! STUPID! BALD! DISGUSTING! FAILURE!”

Tommy wrapped his pillow around his head like a bun and silently prayed for the yelling to stop. ‘Please make mommy and daddy stop fighting. I promise to be good...and do my home-work...and eat all my vegetables...and chew my food...twenty-seven times.’

Making matters worse, Tommy suffered from escalating nervous conditions. Twitches, migraines, rashes, stuttering, nail biting, teeth grinding and a sudden bout of blindness that his parents took as “an attempt to skip school.” It never occurred to them that their son’s blindness followed a violent row in which a dining room chair was thrown through a sliding glass door and the neighbors dialed 911.

The police knew the address.

“Tommy’s ‘fragile,’” offered Miriam.

“He’s weak,” interjected Ed, then muttering, “little runt.”

They were seated in the teacher’s lunch room around a coffee-stained Formica table at Hamilton Elementary.

“Little Runt?” echoed Mrs. Blinkmore, leaning in and frowning.

Ed often referred to his son as ‘the runt of the litter,’ even though Ed’s litter amounted to ‘one,’ and that was only after Miriam forgot to take the pill.

Miriam smoothed a wrinkle in her plaid polyester skirt. “What my husband means is... Tommy’s ‘petite’ for his age. We took him to a specialist in Sacramento who injected him with HGH — that’s human growth hormone. What was his name, honey? Dr. Something.”

Ed jumped in, “My wife’s ‘confused.’ It was a flu shot. Tommy’s fine, really.”

“And how would you define ‘fine’?” inquired the teacher (etching quotation marks in the air with her fingers).

Ed’s brooding eyes burrowed a hole through Mrs. Blinkmore’s judgmental eye sockets, an inch into her moist cerebrum.

“Are you aware, Mr. McLaughin,” she recklessly continued, “that your son sits by himself every day in the playground, on the rise of asphalt against the fence? He’s totally alienated his classmates. He’s sad and depressed. Do you have any idea why?” she asked rhetorically.

“He’s shy?” buzzed Miriam, like a game show contestant.

Mrs. Blinkmore, who had handled the most arduous parents, wasn’t swayed.

“Perhaps...but I think...”

Ed thrust out his calloused hand. “Well, this has been very constructive. I’ll be sure to tell the principal how ‘effective’ [making quotation marks] you’ve been.”

After meeting Tommy’s parents, Mrs. Blinkmore was more committed than ever to helping the troubled fourth grader.

So, Tommy was informed he was “special” and henceforth placed in a controversial program called Youth-Track, AKA a group for troubled kids. Tommy was amazed by all the whackos in Youth-Track, the worst head-cases from each school district. They made him almost feel normal. One kid had stabbed his teacher in the eye with a number two pencil. Another girl hadn’t eaten in weeks and was force-fed this puke-like stuff through a tube. Jason simply liked to blow things up. He started with firecrackers and ants, then moved to M80’s and rats. But Jason didn’t stop there. When he advanced to pipe bombs and cars, his father, an avid firearms collector, returned home one day and found Jason in the display room — limbs blown into all four corners.

On the lighter side, one girl believed she was a cat. She would only eat out of a bowl on the floor marked “Fluffy.” She meowed, licked herself clean and wore a pink studded collar. Tommy thought she was a fruitcake. Then, one afternoon she bit her teacher. The teacher bit back. Fluffy was cured.

Tommy, growing more despondent by the moment, was yanked from Youth-Track and put through all sorts of counseling, analysis, psychological testing, anti-depressants, even sandbox therapy.

“What’s s... sandbox therapy?” stuttered Tommy, fearing his head would be blasted with sand.

“Just pick whatever you want from the shelves Tommy,” encouraged the play therapist.

Tommy studied the rows of toy cars, trains, animals and plastic toy soldiers.

Ten minutes later, a single toy soldier was in the center of the sandbox surrounded by rows of troops, tanks and artillery, all facing outward.

Who’s the soldier in the middle, Tommy?”

“That’s m...me,” again stammered Tommy.

“And who’s the army protecting him from?”

Tommy couldn’t reply.

“Who are they protecting you from?” she gently prodded.

Tommy’s lower lip began to quiver, a worried look on his ashen face.

“It’s okay, you’re safe, you can tell me...”

A dark stain began spreading on Tommy’s trousers. He bolted from her office and came face to face with his father in the waiting room.

Ed berated the play therapist,“Why the hell are we paying for him to play in a freakin’ sandbox anyway?! He’s got a damn sandbox at school!” sneered Ed.

“But we’ve only just started,” the therapist pleaded, in a calming tone.

“Shrinks are for fruits and nuts. If I wanted a fruitcake, I’d go to... to... to wherever the hell you go to get fruitcake!” spat Ed as he shoved his son outside.

It was at these tender moments that Tommy wished he were dead and was actually jealous of Jason for blowing himself up. Tommy contemplated dozens of ways to “off” himself. He could cut his wrists on his dad’s skill saw, or jump off the roof at school head first onto the cafeteria on Sloppy Joe day, or take an entire bottle of anti-depressants and drown in the tub. That last one would give his shrinks pause. Or, maybe he could hang himself in his closet with one of the striped ties his mother gave him every year for Christmas. How poetic. She would look up at his swinging corpse and say, “So... you finally wore the green tie. What’s wrong, you didn’t like the blue one?”

The only thing that would make it sweeter would be to actually kill himself on Christmas Day. After all, it was the most loathsome time of the year. No matter how depressed you were feeling, everything seemed so damn jolly around you. Also, his parents fought the worst on Christmas day, like they’d been saving all year for something “really special.”

‘I’m dreaming of a fight Christmas just like the one we had before...’

Under the womb of his blanket, Tommy dreamed of ways to escape. He wished he could be older so this part of his life would already be over as he daydreamed of adventures in faraway lands. Sometimes he would be in the French Foreign Legion riding a camel in the desert, or a mercenary infiltrating the jungles of Tibet with a bandoleer slung over his shoulder. He went on countless adventures while his parents screamed their lungs out in the kitchen. He had traveled all over the world and back. He only wished he could somehow snap his fingers and make his daydreams real.

Then, one night after dinner, while his parents were maliciously barking vindictives, Tommy figured out how to time travel. Not in the literal sense, but at least in his mind.

“YOU...SCATTERBRAINED! SELF-CENTERED! EVIL! BORING! MEAN! DISGUSTING, FOUL-MOUTHED! MORONIC! FAT! DRUNK! PIG!”

Tommy, meanwhile, sat in his bathroom, squeezed beside his toilet, rocking his head back and forth and loudly humming: “Hmmmmmmm Hmmmmmm Hmmmmmm...”

He closed his eyes, contemplating new creative ways to kill himself, while compulsively snapping his fingers. When he opened his eyes, he was still in his room, same spot beside the toilet, his parents still arguing. But... it gave him an idea.

The next afternoon, in a quiet moment, Tommy stood on his blue shag carpet, remembering back to the previous night (when he was squeezed beside his toilet) and snapped his fingers once more.

And, with that snap, Tommy realized that an entire day had passed and his parent’s fight from the previous day was only a memory. He had time-traveled. Well, sort of.

He began doing this every time his folks were arguing and, since they were usually at each other’s throats by cocktail hour, Tommy did plenty of snapping.

Once, he made an entire month disappear. To accomplish this, he stood in his backyard one morning, smelling the honeysuckle and listening to the bees hum. He snapped his fingers, locking in the moment. A month later, Tommy’s parents were butting heads in the kitchen, about a carton of sour milk, when Tommy closed his eyes (recalling the time a month ago in the backyard) and again snapped his fingers. He could suddenly smell the honeysuckle and hear the bees buzzing. Not only had Tommy blotted out an entire month, but he had traveled backwards in time and changed locations, as well. It was magic. And, as his parent’s fights escalated, it was the only way he could escape.

Tommy grew into Tom with a snap of his fingers. He was now fifteen. That was the only thing that had changed, except for the pimples, headgear and epilepsy. Nevertheless, the arguing went on like clockwork. Only, it had gotten worse.

“I’ll GUT you like a TROUT!” his mother howled at her husband, holding a Ginsu knife.

Tom, his hand trembling, dead-bolted his door and lit a doobie, as the voices grew louder.

“Go ahead TRY IT you WITCH!” taunted Ed. “I TOLD you to have my STINKING dinner READY when I get HOME!! Is it too FREAKIN’ much to make a Christmas TV DINNER?! What the HELL do you DO all DAY?!... sit on your FAT RUMP and eat BON BONS?!?”

“At LEAST I’m not in a MINIMUM wage DEAD END JOB with no BENEFITS!! What LOSER takes a job with no INSURANCE?! YOU’RE the only PUTZ I know who climbs DOWN the ladder of SUCCESS!”

“SHUT YOUR MOUTH before I SHUT IT for YOU!” threatened Ed.

“Don’t YOU RAISE your VOICE to MEEEEEEEEE!!!” Miriam psychotically shrieked.

Tom took a deep drag of sinsemilla and held the smoke in his lungs. Maybe, if he never exhaled, he’d drift away to a place with no shouting. He wondered if his dad would ever hurt his mom and visa versa. Sometimes, Tommy wished they would get it over with, because anything would be better than this. It’s a terrible thing when you are frightened of your own parents. How can you ever feel safe? Then again, it was hard to determine which parent he would rather be left with, if the other were to ‘unexpectedly’ expire.

Tom exhaled and unlocked his dead bolt. In a pot-induced stupor, he exited his bedroom. It was oddly serene in the house as he glided down the long stone hall to the dining room where, neatly placed in the middle of the dining room table, on a sterling silver wedding platter, was his father’s severed head.

At first it didn’t occur to Tom what he was looking at, like it was a macabre Halloween decoration. Only, it was Christmas Eve. Maybe he had just gotten a bad bag of weed? But as his horror raced up on him like a freight train... it was soon followed by another terrifying thought.

Where was mother?

Tom noticed the aura in his left eye which signaled an approaching migraine as nausea crept up. He glanced over his shoulder down the long dark hall. Was she standing in the shadows? He squinted as pinpoints of light danced across his vision, like after a camera flash.

He whirled around the dining room as something else caught his eye through his diminishing vision. Were those his mother’s orthopedic shoes poking out beneath the curtain?

“M...mom...m...mother are you b...b...back there?” stuttered Tom, trying to see through the web-like haze.

As he tentatively reached towards the curtain, he felt a cold breath on his neck. He whirled around and saw Miriam directly behind him wearing her gizzard splattered apron. She had an odd, crooked slant on her face, like her mouth was in a mud slide.

Tom spotted the glint of something she was trying to hide behind her back, or was it just the aura, as he tasted a frothy bile bubbling over his lips and frantically snapped his...

homas opened his eyes on a beautiful pink coral beach. He was now thirty-eight. A humid breeze fluttered the pages of the sports section in his lap. Salsa music played on the radio and a sumptuous Latina, glistening with cocoa butter, slept on a warm towel beside him. He had made twenty-three years disappear with just a snap.

A tanned couple in bathing suits jogged down the wet sand and Thomas could hear them speaking Spanish. He gazed beyond the emerald waves and spotted a striped parachute overhead with a tiny silhouette dangling beneath, hovering above the translucent waves. A hundred feet below, a weather-beaten motorboat pulled a frayed nylon rope.

Thomas took a gulp of his ice cold Bohemia. It was too perfect. He was just starting to get into the rhythm of the music when he inadvertently snapped his...

INNER!” sang Miriam. Tom, fifteen again, sat at his assigned place, still loaded, facing his dad’s severed head. Was this supposed to be Christmas dinner?

“Now, chew every bite twenty-seven times.”

Thankfully, his mother placed a Swanson’s TV dinner in front of him and not the ‘Christmas head’.

“Turkey and mashed potatoes... your favorite!”

Actually, it wasn’t Tom’s favorite. He hated TV dinners. All those tin compartments made him claustrophobic.

“Your father doesn’t seem to think I can get dinner on the table, but I did.” She smiled to her husband’s head. “Didn’t I, honey?

“Now eat up, sugar bear... elbows off the table.”

Miriam turned on the metronome, so Tom could chew to the rhythm, and stood behind his chair, fingernails gripping his shoulders. Tom desperately wanted to snap his fingers, but he was afraid his mother would be transported with him and learn his time-travel secret. Then, she’d cut off his fingers so he could never snap again and she’d keep him prisoner in her house for the rest of his life... until his dying days.

“Let’s go around the table and tell what kind of day we’ve had...the funniest thing...the saddest thing...the most unusual thing,” encouraged Miriam, as she did every night, starting with...

“Ed...?”

His dad’s gaping mouth made a gurgling sound.

They stared at Ed’s head for a disquieting moment, then...

“You’re not eating,” Miriam said, frowning at Tom.

Tom, totally wasted, gazed into the rolled white eyes of his father, then took a bite of his turkey and began to chew... one...two...three...four...five...six...seven...

His mother stood over him, watching...and counting until he reached twenty-seven.

“Now, you better chew every little last bit of your green beans or you will be punished, Tommy. Really, really punished.”

Tom got the message — even through his pot stupor.

“You hear me?!” she continued, unabated. “Punished like you have never been punished before.”

So, Tom ate each waxy bean, chewing twenty-seven times, as his mother had trained him from childhood... twenty-seven times, until he could swallow.

“All gone!” applauded Miriam.

Tom pondered if she meant his father’s head.

But at least she seemed happy, for the first time in years, relieved as if she had not a care in the world, or her husband’s head for a centerpiece.

As soon as she turned to go back to the kitchen, Tom snapped his...

he U.S. Marine band was playing “The Marines’ Hymn,” as a regiment marched by, saluting Thomas — now twenty-seven. There were several medals above his Marine Corps uniform pocket: Distinguished Service Cross, Purple Heart, Silver Star.

Spectators observed from the grandstands. Thomas thought he spotted his mother, hunched over, looking gray.

A voice boomed over the loudspeaker: “Marine Corporal Thomas McLaughlin, in the name of the Congress of the United States, you are being awarded the highest honor today for gallantry beyond the call of duty. You are responsible for more kills in battle than any Marine since World War Two.”

The word “kills” echoed in his skull as a Marine Corps General pinned the Medal of Honor on Thomas’s uniform. The General crisply saluted Thomas, who saluted back.

Thomas’s eyes shifted towards the grandstands. The old woman was gone. A camera flash went off and he began to tremble as he licked the acrid froth from his lips.

He closed his eyes and wildly snapped his...

ounds of battle, tanks rolling, bombs exploding. Tommy’s eyes popped open. A rerun of Combat was on television, in black and white. Tommy, ten, was sitting on the den sofa, a Swansons TV dinner on the tray table in front of him.

As he methodically chewed his meatloaf, he could hear his parents arguing over the exploding bombs.

“PREGNANT?! HOLY CRAP! How the HELL did you get PREGNANT?!”

“I THOUGHT you’d be HAPPY?!”

“HAPPY?! Are you INSANE?! That’s the LAST thing I need... another FAT mouth to FEED!”

“But Tommy needs a sister.”

“Tommy needs a sister...TOMMY NEEDS A SISTER...,” he mimicked, “You’re getting an ABORTION... TODAY!”

Tommy, his hand shaking, reached for the remote control and turned up the volume. But he could still hear them.

“Are you out of your FLIPPIN’ MIND?!”

“You telling me you’re NOT going to get an ABORTION?!”

“It’s my BABY and I’m not going to KILL it!”

“FINE...then I WILL!”

Tommy heard a struggle in the dining room. The porcelain clown broke.

“OWW!!” cried Miriam as she thumped to the floor.

Tommy wanted to get up to defend her, but he felt glued to the sofa, terrified.

Moments later, his father entered the den, his cheek scratched.

“Go get your mother a hanger,” Ed said, nonchalantly, like he was telling him to take out the trash.

Tommy, his hand behind his back, tried to snap his fingers, but he was perspiring so badly, his arms breaking out in a heat rash, that his clammy fingers slipped.

“What are you hiding behind your back?” snapped Ed.

“N...n...n...nothing.”

“Show me your hands son!” Ed ordered.

Tommy showed his dad his empty palms.

“Then what are you WAITING FOR BOY? Get me a HANGER!”

Tommy couldn’t budge.

“You heard me, mister... N O W!” Ed spelled out.

Tommy leaped off the sofa and dashed to his closet. There were two kinds of hangers in there: The paper triangles his mother would bring back from the dry cleaners, and the nicer plastic ones she bought at Kmart. Which ones?! He panicked, knowing that if he picked the wrong one he would be in big trouble.

Five minutes later, Tommy nervously knocked on the bathroom door. It was eerily quiet. Not a good sign. He opened the door a crack and a hairy-knuckled hand burst out, grabbing the plastic hanger.

A second later, the door flew open. “What am I supposed to do with THIS?!”

Tommy was too terrified to speak.

“Honest to GOD, I wish I had used a hanger last time!”

Tommy, his eye twitching, dribbled in his pants, “b...b...but I th...thought...”

“Listen P...P...Porky,” mocked Ed, “You get me a WIRE hanger pronto buster or I’ll have you do it.” He pointed towards the bathroom.

Tommy raced off, trembling, and grabbed a wire hanger from his closet.

He quickly returned and knocked on the bathroom door again.

“That’s better nodded Ed,” you’re not as stupid as you look, runt.

Tommy then saw through the partially opened bathroom door, his mother lying on the floor, nude, semi-conscious, a bruise on her forehead. His father’s sleeves were rolled up like a farmhouse veterinarian.

“YOU want to see, huh? Well...come on in, partner!”

As Ed grabbed his son’s wrist, dragging him into the bathroom.

“NooOOOooooo!! Pu...P..Pu... Please!!” begged Tommy as he frantically wiped his sweaty fingers on his jeans and finally snapped his...

om tentatively opened his eyes. He was once again outside his parent’s bathroom door. He caught his reflection in the dressing room mirror. He was fifteen once again, gangly and pimpled.

He sighed with relief.

He slowly opened the door.

Ed was seated on the toilet, reading the sports page.

Tom’s right arm was behind his back.

“Don’t you ever knock?! Whatcha got behind your back you little run...”

Ed was stopped short by the abrupt separation of his third and fourth vertebrae. His severed head bounced into the tub and rolled back and forth a few times before coming to a stop.

“...t.”

Tom watched the blood spray like a Las Vegas fountain from his father’s headless neck, then spread on the cold tile towards his sneakers. Tom calmly stepped back, avoiding the tide as he dropped the sword, the one his father had bought at an antique store. Ed bragged that he had taken it off “a dead Jap” (even though he was stationed in Korea) and claimed it was authentic Samurai. To prove this, he had once tossed one of Miriam’s good silk scarves in the air and sliced it in two. After the demonstration, Ed warned, as he placed the sword back above the fireplace, “Don’t forget runt... if you’re ever ‘bad’... the sword’s right here.”

Tom never forgot.

Two hours later, the police knocked on the front door of the Flanders’ home.

Miriam was there to greet them in her blood splattered apron and yellow Playtex gloves, her impish face illuminated by helicopters floodlights circling their house.

“I’m so glad you made it to Christmas dinner! Can I get you a gingersnap cookie? Made them myself.”

The police officers, guns drawn, gracefully declined as they spotted a Samurai sword lying across the kitchen sink, freshly scrubbed.

As two officers handcuffed her, and led her towards the door, homicide detectives made their way through the rest of the house, weapons drawn.

As Miriam was led out the kitchen porch, she bubbled, “How lovely, we’re going out for Christmas dinner! I haven’t been out to dinner in ages. Tell me officer, what’s the funniest, the saddest, the most unusual thing that happened to you today?”

“I would have to say this is it,” said the senior officer, stoically.

Meanwhile, in the dining room, a police photographer began snapping pictures of Ed’s cleanly severed head.

In the laundry room, officers discovered Tom’s recently washed clothes and sneakers neatly stacked on the dryer. They continued down the hall and approached a bedroom door, which was dead-bolted. They kicked it open and found Tommy unconscious, lying beside the toilet, an empty bottle of Prozac in his hand.

As Tom was rushed to an waiting ambulance, the officers continued through the house. In the master bathroom, perched on the toilet, they found Ed’s decapitated torso, still grasping the sports page.

Tom, in the ambulance, an oxygen tube in his nose, listened to the heart monitor go beep-beep... beep-beep...beep-beep...

eep-beep...beep-beep...beep-beep...

Harsh shadows cut across Miriam’s ashen face from the barred window as she lies in the prison infirmary with an oxygen tube in her nose.

Thomas, now forty-seven, stands beside her bed.

“I have something I need to say,” offers Thomas, shattering the silence.

Miriam, wrinkled and pale, shakes her head ‘no.’

She gathers her breath, then rasps, “I did it for you.”

“Don’t speak, mom.”

But Miriam continues, between labored breaths, “You had the courage that I didn’t...so...I paid the price...I wanted you to have... a life... a family... not spend your days in here.”

“But you gave up everything.”

“I never gave up... you.”

Her eyes became fixed, like a fish on ice.

“Yes...you did,” he whispered.

Thomas closed her eyelids, then he shut his own and snapped his...

eep-beep...beep-beep...beep-beep...

Thomas, eighty-three, is now in a private hospital bed with a tube up his nose. His hands lay stiffly beside him like frozen spiders on their backs.

He tries to mentally will his fingers to move, thinking, ‘Come on, don’t let me down.’

A middle-aged Latino approaches the bed. He stares at Thomas for a long moment. Then...

“Hey, pop,” utters the man.

Thomas struggles to form words, but just stares at the hospital ceiling.

“I have to tell you something, dad,” says the Latino.

Thomas’s breathing slows.

“You... you were a good father.”

A single tear rolls down Thomas’s pale, wrinkled cheek.

Just as his soul is about to puff from his lips, Thomas tries to will his gray shriveled fingers to snap... one final time. But his hand tumbles off the bed, pointing an arthritic finger towards a small tarnished object on the floor.

His son picks it up and stares at it oddly. Holding it between his thumb and forefinger, he pushes the two pieces of rusted metal together, which make a sound like a — snap.

homas is back on the pink coral beach with the beautiful Latina. Not a cloud in the sky. He takes a sip from his Bohemia. Still cold.

He dips a salty tortilla chip into a bowl of guacamole and bites into it with a snap. The jalapeños sear his tongue and sweat beads glistened on his forehead as he began to slowly chew.

One... two... three... four...

 

[END]

© 2004 Robert Steven Rhine - Contributor's Bio