Everything Sucks
Short Story #3
Family Nonsense
Written by R. Smith
Edited by Shawn M. Greenleaf
Cover & Design by Savage1Studio
Copyright © 2013 R. Smith
All rights reserved
Books and Series by R. Smith
Pop Culture Sucks, Manifesto Of A Vampire
Everything Sucks Series
Knights Of Albion (coming soon!)
Family Nonsense
Dirty laces, of even dirtier sneakers, swing casually, not giving a shit about anything, not even the shoes they're attached to. They don't need shoes, the shoes just happen to be there.
Silas imagines this must be how her shoe laces feel. Silas is a boy's name people helpfully inform her all the time, as if she's seeking their opinion. Gender can eat me. She thinks. Old fashioned.
Silas Wellabae. Twenty two and bored with her own angst. Angst is for glowering teens. It still boils inside her like a pot of water eagerly awaiting contents, but at least she has enough self respect to be bored with--rather than indulge--the feeling. It's boring. Even the word is boring. Angst. Sounds like a sneeze trying desperately to cop an attitude.
Stupid angst.
She slouches her way downstairs, squinting against the bright morning sun.
It's one of those mornings when all the love she feels for her family gets poured into pancake batter. One by one she stacks them in the electric warmer. Baking always calms the inner bullshit.
Pancakes don't pay bills unless you make hundreds of them for hundreds of strangers, and Silas has no interest in doing that. She doesn't love strangers. She's indifferent toward them at best, and if she made them breakfast, those pancakes would merely be the fluffy bread of apathy, not love.
She can hear her parents and younger sister shuffling around upstairs, trying to get going. Eventually they plod into the dining room, still in robes and slippers. Silas is the early riser of the family.
Silas eats the Franken Cake, the one that always turns out weird somehow, then she pulls on her running gear and takes off while her parents give polite audience to her little sister's meandering story about how spiders and bugs could become friends.
There's a sharp chill in the morning air. It defies the glaring sun, refusing to surrender. Silas doesn't mind one bit. She barely notices the weather when she jogs, regardless. Jogging is her 'think time,' and it takes up most if her focus.
Lately she thinks about how she doesn't know anyone her age with a three year old sister. April was a huge surprise. Not only had her dad gotten a vasectomy years ago, but her mom was 41 at the time. Silas, at first, assumed her mom had hooked up with some other guy with Champion League Swimmers, but the docs confirmed her dad's (ick) vas defferens (ick) had re-attached at some point; rendering him once again fertile. Silas feels very comfortable with minimum detail on that front.
Anyhow, April looks just like dad, so she probably is his kid. If she's not then wow! Talk about a huge win in the ass-coverage lottery.
When she reaches her usual stop, a bench overlooking the valley below, she sits and waits for her Great Gramma Etta. This is their favorite spot to talk. Sometimes Silas even talks out loud. Not if there's other joggers around, of course, but the Watts Hill path isn't very popular. Too steep. So it's the perfect place to talk to Great Gramma.
Etta doesn't look like a movie ghost. She looks like something everyone ought to be able to see, but they can't. Silas understood (somehow) the very first time she saw Etta. She was four at the time, and throwing a spectacular fit in the grocery store. Etta marched right up and scolded her into obedience. They had since become good friends.
Silas can feel Etta's arrival. She doesn't even turn her head to make sure before speaking up. "I think Mom wants me to move into my own place."
"Could you afford rent on top of tuition?" asks Etta in her airy, gentle tone.
Silas shakes her head. "Nah. S'why I think she hasn't said anything. Well, that and she's worried I'll take it personally. But I'm so much older than April. Her little daycare buddies parents are all . . . sometimes April gets confused about who her mom is," she says heavily.
"Really?" Soft and calm. Always soft and calm.
Silas nods. "I overheard her the other day call Mom 'Grammie,' that's what her friend Sasha calls her grandma. She and Sasha have play dates a lot. Anyway, when Mom came out of the room . . . you know that look she gets when she's trying not to cry? She had that look."
"I can see how that would hurt a mother's feelings," says Etta. "This doesn't sound like a happy situation for anyone. Do you have any ideas how to fix it?"
Silas wedges a dandelion plant between her sneakers and pulls. She turns to Etta with a sigh. "I've thought about taking a Sabbatical from school to go help my Aunt Bina and Uncle Fred with the ranch. They always talk about needing more help."
By the time Silas arrives back home, her mind is made up. Montana or bust. Her mom seems both worried and relieved about her elder daughter's decision.
Silas packs a forest green canvas sack with a fistful of underclothes and two shirts and hops a greyhound to Missoula. She gets a taxi into Stevensville from there. It's a steep cab fare, but Bina figured it to the dime (including a nice tip), and wired the money to Silas a few days before she left. As the cab rumbles along, Silas tries to remember her last visit to Stevensville, when she was a little girl. The memories are dim, but it's clear the town has hardly changed.
She meets her Aunt in front of the old schoolhouse sometime after 7 p.m..
"Sorry to be pickin' you up so late," says Bina as she hops out of the truck. "Always something to deal with, you know how it goes."
Silas brushes off the apology with a hug. "Thanks for letting me stay here. You're seriously saving my family's bacon. I mean it."
Bina shimmies Silas's canvas sack off her shoulder and stows it behind the passenger side seat. She puts her hands on her hips and looks concerned. "What all's going on there if you don't mind my asking?"
They get back in the truck and situate themselves before Silas brings her up to speed.
"Must be uncomfortable," Aunt Bina says with a rueful sigh.
"Uh-huh. And Mom's a big bottler, y'know, she bottles stuff up instead of venting, so then Dad gets frustrated, and they both kinda passively blame me--I don't think they mean to or anything, but . . . yeah, it's been a tense few years."
Aunt Bina takes one hand off the wheel to pat Silas's shoulder. "Well we're glad for the help. I'll show you around tomorrow and break you in on the easier stuff. We'll see how you do and go from there. Oh, and I hope you like chili, because that's what Fred's got waiting for us back at the house."
Exhausted from the long journey, Silas decides to sack out right after dinner. She's surprised by what a great cook Uncle Fred is, and makes a mental note to ask for tips sometime when she's more alert. She falls into bed expecting to be asleep in moments, but instead a rush of unimportant thoughts start rippling through her brain. I need new socks. Where will I be in ten years? I should eat less processed sugar. The flotsam and jetsam of life. Its obnoxious current pulls her further and further away from sleep by the minute. An hour later, she's so hopelessly awake, there's nothing to do but give up and go for a walk. Darkness be damned.
She pulls on shoes and a coat, and creeps quietly out the back door, not wanting to wake anyone else. It's not a serious walk, more like a lazy kick about. She sticks to the perimeter of the house. She's not usually the cautious type, but she knows better than to go wandering through the dark on unfamiliar terrain.
The cool air is invigorating. Mountain smells strike her as distinctly d
ifferent from those of the golden grassland home she's fleeing. Bitteroot air had escaped her notice when she visited as a kid. Now that it's on her radar, she decides she likes it. She stares at the sky and shuffles forward; enjoying the sight of a million stars. Starlight is different out in the boonies.
Suddenly she notices a pair of eyes; they flash low to the ground along the fence line. The eyes are about half a football field from where she stands, but still. Silas squints, barely able to make out the form of a raccoon. Not wanting to spook the thing, she presses close to the house and holds still, watching the bandit-faced critter as it trots across the property. They're strange looking, like weird little cat-bears, she thinks. Then, without warning, her train of thought derails as a large creature streaks into view , snatches up the raccoon, and bites savagely into its throat. The animal shrieks and snarls desperately in the last seconds before its death. It all happens so fast, Silas isn't even sure which direction the