Plato Shrimp » LOVE, crumbsroom

crumbsroom · 6/25/2025 10:14 pm

Not to dwell on this, but I will.

Just an absolutely levelling blow.

In the course of nine months, losing the two people likely most responsible for whatever it is I've become.

The good thing is at least I knew they were both proud of me.

Or maybe that was just them claiming responsibility.

And then in that case, I hope they know I'm proud of them.

Wherever they are.

crumbsroom · 6/25/2025 10:16 pm

crumbsroom · 7/13/2025 4:46 pm

CATHY’S ROOM ISN’T SO GREAT EITHER

One day my father showed up, went into a room at the end of the hall and stayed there. Now he lived with my grandparents too.

Sometimes he'd wander down to my room out of habit, sit on the end of my bed and look around at how nothing was his anymore.

“This used to be mine”, he told me as he looked at all of my stuff, then pointed towards the other side of the room “I kept my bed over there though, near the window. So, I could smoke all day and not raise suspicion”

He had come back in November and all of the stuff from his old apartment, the one he’d barely escaped with his life, was now pushed into his sister’s old room. Cathy no longer there to stop him from entering.

“Did you know that phony bitch wouldn't even let me in here when she was still living at home”, my father would boast as he lay on his bed with his pink-bellied cat, smoking cigarette after cigarette and watching television. “Pretending hers was the best room in the whole house and too good for the rest of us. But who’s laughing now?”

I spent a lot of time in this room with my father looking at all his lousy stuff, noticing how everything he had was gummy and yellow and smelled like cigarettes. Especially the picture of Jane he’d made sure was already propped next to his bed, looking old and from another time. Turned brittle from all the cigarettes he’d smoked while staring at it. Sometimes he would even tap the glass in the frame with his yellow fingers and remind me how Nan used to tell him a girl like that would never marry a bum like him.

“But she did, didn’t she?”

I nodded, even though I didn’t really know anything about Jane at all. Just asked him if he ever noticed how she kind of smelled like boiled eggs. How that was all I really remembered about her.

And that’s when he’d tell me to get out. That this was his room now, not fucking Cathy’s, and he was sick of me hanging around all the time. Began pushing me off the corner of the mattress I was sitting on with his barefoot. This bed he had made sure was pushed beneath the window so he could smoke as much as he wanted. Eager to let fresh air in. Hopefully not let how he remembered things out.

But I wasn’t worried either way, as I returned to my room. His old room. I knew I’d be seeing him again soon anyways. Probably in a couple of hours. We were neighbours now. This was going to be fun.

crumbsroom · 7/13/2025 7:04 pm

TWO BIG ROCKS

The first rock was for quitters. That’s what you fished on if you were looking to cast your line into a bunch of weeds. Maybe catch the kind of fish that was so small you’d get made fun of all week.

The second rock was for Uncle John. You had to jump over and risk falling between the two rocks to get to it. Maybe end up drowning in the toilet sludge that had collected between them if you didn’t make it. But John was reckless enough to jump safely to it every time and thankfully, he would never leave you behind. Would act like a bridge for you to climb across so you could get to the second rock with him. Where you could fish like a man. Not catch the kind of things that made you less of one.

“Come on Bruce, you can make it”, he would say, offering my father his hand. And my father slipping and scrambling to the other side, was lucky to have John there to pull him up. Then John would pat him on the shoulder, never making too much fun once he’d made it safely over to us. My father had the beer, of course, and that was enough to make John happy he was here. They could now drink bottles of it for hours at a time, in a good place where no one could tell them to stop. Over on the second rock, where it was just me and them and our fishing rods and all that giant trout we pulled thrashing up into the sunlight.

crumbsroom · 7/14/2025 7:43 am

BOATS FOR BRUCE

All he wanted was a window to watch the boats go by. This is what my father would say when we told him he’d drank enough already. Just a little window. Big enough to see all the little boats. It was all so simple, yet he felt he would need to say it many times as if we didn’t understand. The only possible answer left for him when asked what he was planning to do with his life. My grandfather sitting at the end of the couch with his crossword pen, wanting to know what it would cost him to get this to finally stop.

“You can’t continue like this, Bruce. I know it. Your mother knows it. Your son knows it. You know it. By now, I’m sure even all the goddamned neighbors know it”

All of us had been called to the living room by my grandfather who sat with a pad of looseleaf paper he’d normally be using to handicap his horses laid across his lap, waiting to learn what the terms of the agreement were going to be. A legally binding contract we were all here to sign, if only my father would say something he could understand well enough to write down into words, but my father not giving him anything. Just kept going back to talk of his window, and telling us as long as the little boats kept drifting by, no one would have to bother with him ever again.

“I could sit looking out at them for a long time. Longer than any of you could ever believe”

Then lighting a cigarette, he told us we could even forget all about him if we wanted to. He’d be fine. Would even buy his own groceries. Food he actually liked to eat. Then he grew quiet, as if he could already hear the sounds coming up from the water. Waves underneath a dock. A distant outboard motor. I would try to listen too but then there would be the crack of another can opening. And I’d be back in this living room. My father the only one to have briefly escaped it. The rest of us stuck facing each other on these couches, waiting to sign our names to whatever future was being imagined in those soft and sunken-in eyes of his.

crumbsroom · 7/18/2025 1:29 pm

COTTAGE FROGS

Bruce didn’t let the frogs slow him down as he drove up by himself later that week. Making record time even as they kept crawling out of the woods from the lake to appear in his headlights on those dimly lit roads. Hundreds of them rolled over as Bruce kept the window down, listening for the sound they made, hearing nothing but the buzz of insects rushing at him as frogs noiselessly exploded just beneath. Driving really fast. Mouthfuls of mosquitos and whiskey the whole way there. Not stopping until he got to where he was going. Couldn't wait to tell them about all the frogs. How he didn’t slow down. About how fast he got here in spite of them.

crumbsroom · 7/18/2025 2:47 pm

ROBINSON CRUSOE AGAIN

That was the summer that my father fell between the two rocks and almost drowned. He’d gone down to the beach by himself to fish in the rain. Who knows where John was. Then soon came running back up to the cottage twenty minutes later, the legs of his jeans torn to shreds. His knees bleeding. Soaking wet and gasping and looking like Robinson Crusoe.

“The rocks are really slippery”, he said, “I kept sliding down into that horrible mud. I couldn’t get up. I lost my shoe in there”

My grandmother got him a towel and everyone laughed, especially Uncle John who had just appeared out of nowhere to tell him he told him not to try that when he wasn’t around. Then all the adults drank and played poker and I walked around in the woods looking for blueberries in the rain.

It had been a good summer and I remember it well. Unless, of course, I’m remembering wrong and it was that other summer. The one when my father did exactly the same thing, still not listening to John and nearly drowning in the same mud. Blaming those slippery rocks like last time. Ripping his jeans and busting up his knee and making him look like someone who’d just swum to us from a deserted island all over again.

“It took my shoe”, he said to no one’s surprise. “I couldn't get out of there. I kept sliding back in”

Exactly the same story but two different summers. One better than the other, even though it was hard to tell which one I was thinking of now. All these years later. But still laughing, either way. Just like I did back then. Funny both times.

My father. Very, very funny. Always.

crumbsroom · 7/18/2025 5:31 pm

Complete rewrite

DAD MA BARKER

He came out to watch the rain. Always sat on the porch when there was a storm. He liked when it came down hard and the sound of it when it hit the pavement was loud. Thunder was even better. Sitting in a wicker chair in his moccasins. With a gun in his lap, stroking the barrel.

“I feel like Ma Barker”, he said to his son. “Call me Ma Barker from now on, okay Bud”

“Okay, dad”

The boy had been with his father when he’d bought the gun. Or rather, the replica that a man named Dennis sold them. Had come with a handful of plastic pellets that Bruce had been firing down the upstairs hallway most of the afternoon since they got home. One time one of these bullets ricocheting around the boy when he dared to stick his head out of his bedroom door and see what his father was doing out there. And Bruce just laughing as his son ducked and put his hands over his head.

“Don’t shoot”, the boy said as he came down the hallway towards his father, now holding his hands out in front of his face for protection. “Don’t shoot”

Bruce, still laughing, showed off his brown, porch-coloured teeth, and instead of surrendering his weapon, held out his arms for the boy to inspect as he grew nearer. As a way to show the poor kid he had laid down his gun. At least for now.

“Cat scratches”, he said, cackling, as the boy looked at all the marks that ran up down his arms. “That’s what they think these are. That’s what I told them. Cat scratches. Ha!”

Then Bruce asked the boy to come out onto the porch with him, making it clear he wasn’t going to give up his gun, but they would have to go outside if he wanted to talk so much. And it was out there that, as the storm began, he asked if the kid wanted to make an easy hundred dollars.

“For what?”

“Just to walk with me”

“Where?”

“Up the road”

“For what?”

“Do you want a hundred bucks or don’t you? Up to the pharmacy. I just need you to wait outside”

There was a flash of lightning and for a moment he stopped stroking the gun in his lap as he waited for the sound of it to reach him.

“Just keep me company, will you? A hundred bucks to walk two blocks with your dad”. He cradled the gun closer to his chest as his son held out his hands for it. Made a face like he was sulking when he saw the look the boy was giving him. "You wouldn’t ask that of Ma Barker, would you?”

And this was true. The boy wouldn’t have asked that of her. Not even sure who that was. Just wanted to talk to his father right now. Ask if he was alright. And then see if there was any way he could make that kind of money, while keeping his father safely home instead.

“Just let me see it dad”, the boy asked, reaching towards him. “Hand it over, okay?

But instead, Bruce took out his wallet. Began pulling out twenties to show he wasn’t bluffing. That he’d give him the gun later, when he didn’t need it anymore. Counted a hundred dollars out onto his lap. Then just sat there, looking like he was about to cry as the thunder rolled in.

crumbsroom · 7/23/2025 8:54 pm

Complete re-write

THE COMEUPPANCE OF FART-FACE

My father is on the front lawn in boxing gloves. Staggering side to side as the sunlight tries to press him down. Wobbling. Or maybe dancing. Connecting with a stupid face no one likes. A boy down the street who just moved here and thinks I should be friends with him. A boy who keeps showing up at my door and who I keep telling to leave me alone and now my father knocking his head backwards over and over. A rhythmic thump all of us watching could nearly dance to as we watch my father burping and smiling and punching. The sun making his shadow long and mean on the grass. The boy nearly about to fall over and my father just hitting faster and harder.

The kids name is Derek and the blood has rushed up into his head, risen into his blonde nearly white hair making it seem pink. Can see the bright scarlet of his scalp shining through it. He’s exhausted. Breathless. His arms slowly being weighed down by the heaviness of the boxing gloves he is wearing. That he borrowed from me. No longer looking so eager to fight my father. No longer calling him a chicken. Looking around to see if his mother is running down the road to rescue him as sweat runs into his eyes. As sweat is punched off his face by my father.

Not that I needed anyone to beat the kid up for me. I had already done a good job of that myself that winter. On this very same lawn, throwing him down into the snow and kicking him in the stomach. Kicking him over and over again because he had snuck up on me and smashed a block of ice over my head. Kicking him as I watched the shape of a woman rushing down the street towards us. What would turn into his mother coming to save him. Yanking me by the ears before I could explain myself. Ripping my winter jacket open as she shook me for what I’d been doing to her son.

Ever since my father keeps warning me not to hang out with this kid any longer. Says he doesn’t like his face. That droopy-lipped expression of his. How he’s always squinting as if concentrating on some horrible thing churning inside of him. Calls him Fart-Face since he seems forever in the middle of pushing one out.

The very same face my father is now pounding on.

“How’d you like that one? Huh, Fart-Face? Or how about that?”

He had only come outside to tell the boy to get off our property, not to fight. Had been watching us box through the window all afternoon, sometimes yelling out tips of how to stop hitting eachother like girls through the screen, but never asking to join. Only took objection once he saw Derek had suddenly become a part of our group. Could see him standing there in his jogging pants, demanding someone fight him, and it was as he began strapping on a pair of old, decomposing boxing gloves that I had handed to him, my father rushed out to stop anyone from taking the boy up on his offer.

“Not him. Nope. No one is laying a finger on that soft little shit”

My father was clear. This kid was trouble. His parents were nuts. No one was to touch him.

At least not until Derek started calling him a chicken.

“Buk-buk, Buk-buk".

Immediately knew what had to be done.

“Give me your gloves, kid”, he asked Critty, who had been the next one of us scheduled to fight. Who also would have made mincemeat of Derek, but quickly did as my father asked. “Just watch me knock the shit out of this kid”

Less than five minutes later, my father was victorious. Raising his hands above his head as Derek called out for his mother. Calling for this woman who was soon rushing down the street, coming to see what horrible things had happened to her son now. Coming into view just as me and my friends raised my father up onto our shoulders in celebration.

“Bruce! Bruce! Bruce! Bruce!”

And for a moment, as Fart-Face struggled to get back to his feet, and my father spilled beer over all over our heads, the summer was beautiful again.

crumbsroom · 8/06/2025 3:15 pm

Re-write

AH ZUT, OTTAWA

Not the best year to skip a grade. Maybe Bruce shouldn't have convinced them how smart he really was the summer before they took him to Ottawa. Was moving to the wrong side of the street if he was going to be clever now. At least as clever as Cathy, they said, and if only they had moved a couple of houses down instead, he could have gone to go to a good school like she would be doing. Where there wouldn't have been problems. Where he wouldn’t have been bumped up to a grade full of kids who already shaved and had road burns from falling off motorcycles and talked about maybe getting tattoos. Who had ways to make you eat bugs in the schoolyard.

And now poor, smart Bruce, no longer sitting in the back. Put by his teacher at the front of this class leaving the rest of these awful bastards somewhere behind him. All of them looking at the back of his head and doing whatever they wanted. The ones sitting right behind him able to reach around and grab him by the neck and strangle him before the teachers could get even a single correct answer out of his mouth. Before he could remind them why he skipped a grade in the first place.

“Tabernac, you English fuck”

Sometimes they expected him to speak French. Sometimes there was the sound of switchblades opening underneath desks when he couldn’t.

At least they had cigarettes.

crumbsroom · 8/09/2025 10:06 pm

Rooting through my aunt and uncle's apartment before all their stuff gets sent to a dump and found this old valentine

I saved that.

crumbsroom · 8/10/2025 4:14 pm

A REALLY HEAVY BOOKCASE

When Bruce was little, his mother told him he’d grow up to be just like Johnny McMaster, his great uncle who built furniture. The hand carved chess table in their family room was his. So was the heavy walnut bookcase with the glass doors. Bruce liked them because they were simple and well made. That they were old and smelled like another time. Because he had seen Johnny McMasters hands many times before and they never looked like they could do much of anything. Usually gently cupping his knees as he sat in his kitchen chair. Going nowhere. But hands that had once built this beautiful furniture.

Even as a child Bruce had marveled over what these hands of his had made. He liked the little drawers that had been perfectly fit into the side of the chess table. Would open them to see the carved wooden pieces inside rattle around. Take them out and move them around the smooth tabletop.

But he liked the bookcase even more. Liked how it was impossibly heavy. How it had never been moved even once since it had been set there on the floor a decade ago. How even when they changed the living room carpet, they had to cut around it. Not even bothering to see if it would budge, or if they could get the old carpet out from underneath.

As he grew older, Bruce was comforted to see at least one thing around here allowed to stay in its place. Everything else, unfortunately, always under constant threat of being pushed about by his mother. Filling her days finding things that were wrong, things that were off-center, she would re-arrange the furniture all day long while they were off at school and while their father was at work. Whole rooms turned upside down by the time they got back, coming home to a different looking house every day. Sometimes the TV now put into ridiculous places.

“From the time you were a baby, I knew you and that old man were cut from exactly the same cloth”

All things considered, Bruce felt there were worse things to become than a builder of bookcases. Especially big heavy ones that could be put in their place and stay in the same spot forever. He would even be sitting right next to it, like had had been keeping it company, when his mother returned home from the city after having visited his great-uncle that afternoon.

“Such a sad little soul that Johnny McMaster is. A bachelor his whole life and all alone. If it wasn’t for me, I doubt anyone would visit him at all. Your father certainly isn't volunteering”.

Bruce looked towards the floor where he could see their old carpet still beneath his bookcase and smiled. Even though the man who had made it might have been old and sick and now at the constant mercy of his mother’s visits, it was clear his bookcase wasn't going anywhere. Was immune to her constant meddling and this was something Bruce felt a person could be proud of.

“Hardly any kind of life at all”, his mother continued, trying to get her son's attention. “No one to mop his floors. No one to bring him any sandwiches. So, I guess it’s up to me, isn’t it? No one else is coming to the rescue”

No longer listening, Bruce stood up and opened its glass doors and began to look for a book. Ran his fingers along the leatherbound spines they found inside. Not because he had any intention of reading anything that they found there, only to let his mother know he appreciated the handiwork. That being Johnny McMaster couldn’t have been so bad. That he might be young, but knew a good piece of furniture when he saw it.

crumbsroom · 8/15/2025 1:42 pm

NORMA AND THE RED SHIRT

Bruce was in her dream and so was the shirt. The red one he was wearing when he strangled the girl. That stupid girl from that awful house. Dreaming of Bruce murdering her and waking up and finding that shirt in the laundry and throwing it in the trash.

Not one normally for admitting when she’d thrown some beloved thing of her children’s into the garbage, this time Norma told her son exactly what she’d done as soon as he came down for breakfast. Already angry at him for what he’d done in her dream. How he was just horrible. Always knew he’d grow up to be horrible. Slamming cupboards and drawers. Making it known he better not start anything with her about throwing out that goddamned shirt.

“That’s some crazy shit”, Bruce told her as he finally sat down to eat his eggs. “Believe me, if I ever strangle Sandy, it won’t have anything to do with what I'm wearing. And now, because of some stupid dream, it’s probably going to be in some ugly shirt”

Norma didn't answer, just started to loudly wash the dishes. There was nothing more she had to say about the matter. It was just a shirt, for Christ’s sake.

But even years later, Bruce would still bring the whole thing up when he was talking to his mother in the living room. How it had been his favorite shirt. Had been a really nice color, made of really nice material. Still complaining about how he'd never found another one as good. Letting his mother know he hadn’t forgotten

"Well, you didn't murder anyone, did you?”

“Came pretty close”

And that’s when Norma got up and began slamming cupboards and drawers shut all over again, remembering that horrible thing he’d done in that dream she once had. How she hated that shirt. How she hated how she’d always known her son would turn out this way.

crumbsroom · 8/15/2025 4:03 pm

WHO KNOWS WHERE, WHO KNOWS WHEN

"We haven’t seen the last of each other, you know David”

“Nah, I think you have. It's over, mom”

“Me and your father will meet again, I swear”

“Not gonna happen”

“Yes”

“Sorry, ma, no. It's not”

“We're going to get a drink together, the two of us, and we’re going to talk. A long overdue talk”

“You know he stopped drinking, right?”

“He can have one drink”

“No, he can’t”

“Well, he will for me”

“Okay”

“You’ll see. It might not be until we’re old and grey, but we will talk again”

“Okay”

“And drinks will be on me”

“Sure, sure”

Sandy begins to laugh and takes another sip from her beer.

“I still love him you know”

“Okay”

Above her television is a black and white photograph of her sister Joanne who burned up in a fire a long time ago.

“Joanne didn’t love him. He didn’t love her either. I know he said he was going to marry her, but it would never work. She didn’t love him. Not anybody. She was too hard for her own good”

“Joanne was a mean bitch. She didn’t even love her kids”

Now the two of them laugh together. Let's her son know she loves him too. That she loves everyone. Even Joanne, whose photograph she points towards. Who she says she misses to this day. Wishes things hadn’t gotten so bad between them. So many years avoiding each other.

“She wasn’t a person who you could love though, you know. She really wasn’t, David. She wouldn’t let you. Wouldn’t allow it. Didn’t understand love, I don’t think. Sad to think about and now she’s gone. But I really loved Bruce. I loved your father. And he loved me and we’ll see each other again. Just let him know drinks are on me and he’ll show. He’ll turn up”

“Okay, mom”, her son said, going to get himself another drink. “Whatever you say”

Jinnistan · 8/15/2025 5:13 pm

I hate having to feel bad for the things I've apparently done in other people's dreams.

crumbsroom · 8/15/2025 5:48 pm

Jinnistan wrote:
I hate having to feel bad for the things I've apparently done in other people's dreams.

Was it you who got the shirt?

I knew it.

Jinnistan · 8/15/2025 5:51 pm

crumbsroom wrote:
Was it you who got the shirt?

I lost my pants once or twice.

crumbsroom · 8/19/2025 4:58 pm

re-write

GREEN TEETH

When Norma inspected the boy beneath a bare lightbulb as he changed for bed, she found no marks.

She had noticed the suitcase his mother packed for the boy was small. Couldn’t fit much. But maybe fleas. Cockroaches. So she checked him for bites. Signs of vermin. Thankful his skin turned out to be pale and unblemished, and so pulled down the covers.

Somehow though the boy had brought monsters with him. Big monsters. Big enough to fill a closet. And even though Norma resented how his mother had barely given him anything else for his trip here—a little bag that would only fit a couple of changes of clothes, a toothbrush, a book—she had been hopeful it was at least small enough not to house unexpected surprises

But as it turned out, monsters everywhere.

Every night the boy would wake screaming and she would go to him from her bedroom across the hall to listen to him say what was tormenting him. Something bald. Something with eyes. Something with pointed fingers. Never still in the room by the time she got there, but needing to stay next to him regardless. Soothe him back to sleep with her voice.

“We all see things we don’t always want to, David”, she told him. Thought to ask if she’d ever told him about the man she saw jump off a bridge: The Green Toothed Man.

The boy's eyes widened, and he listened intently as she told him of how it had been a long time ago. About his age when she watched the man fall all the way down until he hit the ground. How she and her brother Bill went rushing towards where he’d landed. Finding him there still alive and gasping. Grass in his teeth. Wound around a tree like he’d been tied to it.

Her grandson asked if she knew his real name and she told him that the next day the newspaper talked about him and this thing he had done and the time of his eventual death, but no one knew that about him. No one knew his name. Carrying nothing on him outside of the twenty-three cents they found in his pants pocket.

“And his teeth were green?”

“Well, mostly. It was green all around his mouth. Dripping green. But all of his teeth had fallen out and were scattered all over the grass”

Then she told him to go to bed. It was getting late. They could talk about it in the morning. Turned off the light.

crumbsroom · 8/24/2025 4:45 pm

TERRY’S KID

It wasn’t just my mom and her Sisters. The Boys got themselves some kids too. Drag them around wherever they go, clinging to their legs. At first happy dads holding bottles of beer with freckly faces looking up at them. Their little arms holding tight as these dads walk around our apartment and drink. These sons and daughters thinking they got it made until there are suddenly plans to hit the town, get out of this dead-ass apartment, go someplace kids aren’t allowed, and are quickly shook off onto the floor. Leaving everyone with only our Kitchen Gramma to keep watch over us. My mother and her sisters and brothers and friends and everyone else who is leaving the apartment pushing us into a bedroom to make it easy on the old woman. Closing the door so we can’t get everywhere. Because there are too many of us for her to deal with. A pestilence of children. Will crawl up the curtains if she dares let us loose.

And no one will check in on us, all night long.

Troy will throw crayons out the window.

Michelle will show the girls how to cartwheel and let the boys roll off the end of the bed and almost die.

Sarah and Sabrina will steal lipstick and quarters from a jar.

Sherise will colour outside of the lines on the floor.

I will wrestle Sherise to the ground to stop her from ruining everything.

And Cheryl will just laugh because Cheryl is always having a good time even when we are prisoners and are all behaving like we hate each other.

Only little Bobby doesn’t speak. Isn’t old enough yet. He will keep himself stretched out on the mattress with his legs in the air. Now awake and crying because of everyone being on the bed with him, bouncing and jumping and yelling and drawing and destroying the walls.

My cousin Bobby is always here now. He came with Terry, and Terry doesn’t leave much either. Not even when my father asks him to. Not even when he threatens to call the police on him or his supply of free beer runs out. He will just slink down to the parking lot outside and sit in our car and drink all the beer he remembers is still in the trunk that everyone else forgot about. A whole case of boiling hot beer in his belly, before he sloshes back up to our apartment to sit on the couch again like nothing happen. Tell us he’s going to jump off the balcony. Says he'll pop like a tick as soon as he hits the pavement. Already close to bursting he’s so full of beer and not even remembering he’s got a kid around here somewhere.

“You can only be so nice with Terry. Or any of those brothers. You can’t get rid of them. Had to call the looney bin on the guy to get him out of there”, my father says, thinking back on those days. “Well, that worked for a about a week, but then he was right back with us as soon as they couldn’t legally hold him anymore. Sitting right next to us in his stupid woolen hat in the middle of the summer. Just like he never left. Drinking my beer. Smoking my cigarettes. Driving me fucking crazy”

I say I sort of remember those days. Mostly one particular time when a bunch of strangers came into our apartment in the middle of the night. It must have been when Terry was still there because I remember him reaching to get his hands on his son who they were taking with them. All that screaming. Punches being thrown but not connecting with anyone. Bobby up in the air, being held too high to reach and me on the floor watching him disappear out the door. Not understanding what was happening. Not knowing who let these people into the house to take one of us away. Suddenly aware of how there were no end of legs surrounding me to grab onto but not bothering because I knew that got you nowhere. Knew where you ended up once they shook you off. Right on this floor. Leaving you to fend for yourself and no way of getting out of this goddamn place.

Unless you were Bobby. Strangers came for him. Never to be seen again. Bobby got out.

crumbsroom · 8/26/2025 5:45 pm

rewrite

KING GEEK

The freckled little shit. Bruce wouldn’t have liked Gordy anyways, but it was all because of that face of his. Nothing to do with the sucker punch he’d landed at eleven o clock that morning. How this twelve-year-old already had a fist that could knock him to the ground. Bruce turning around to see who it was coming up behind him and—

That redheaded bastard, smirking.

Smashing him in the nose for no reason.

Leaving him flat on the dirty hardwood of Sandra’s apartment, unable to do anything as the kid disappeared into the kitchen to take another one of his beers.

Now, all these years later, Bruce’s son saying how Gordy had been asking about him. Wanted to know how he’s doing. Saying they used to be friends.

“He was twelve. We weren’t friends. He was a redheaded prick. The bastard sucker punched me. That’s what I remember about him. Stupid freckly faced fuck”

Bruce’s son is 14 years old now and has just come home from spending his birthday weekend at his mother’s house. He’s already older than Gordy was the last time he saw him and as the boy talks, Bruce learns how he is back living in her basement. Which means Sandy’s new husband isn't any good at keeping all those brothers out either. The Boys.

“What’s Randy have to say about all this?” he asks.

But that’s not what his son wants to talk about.

“Mom’s got ghosts again”, he says instead. “Can you believe it?”

Bruce has heard this one before. Waves the story away before he has to hear anymore about it. “Your mother has always got ghosts”, he says. “But she’s got a lot less of those than brothers in her basement, I bet. She should probably start worrying more about those”

Bruce has only seen pictures of Randy. Never even talked to the guy. He looked like a geek but that was no surprise considering who he had married. Who he lived with. Sandy and now Gordy and probably soon the rest of The Boys as well. Had to be the King Geek and so Bruce thought of that face of his staring back from that photo he’d seen and wanted to know if it had been sucker punched yet. Couldn't help but wonder how hard Gordy’s fist hit now that he was a grown man.

Maybe the kind of guy who could destroy faces.

Possible

But definitely the kind of guy who now slept down in Randy's basement. And everything in that basement, as much his as Sandy's now. Randy’s crusty mattress. Randy’s beer stained carpet. Randy’s ghosts. And mostly importantly, Randy’s brother-in-law, always just beneath him. Listening in through the floors. Scratching at the walls at night. A thought that would be enough for Bruce to imagine a fist fight erupting in a kitchen. Mostly Gordy punching and Randy covered in blood. No longer listening to his son’s ghost story in the slightest. Not hearing a thing about how the lights going on and off, or the sink in the basement turned full blast, or the balcony door flying open, or the sound of The Woman Who Walks the Walls growing nearer and nearer, a sound like fingernails being scraped along wallpaper, which the boy would happily demonstrate for his father, who still wasn’t listening. Bruce only looking up from his reverie when he heard his son say what he had done when he couldn’t wake Cheryl laying next to him, no matter how much he shook her, no matter how much he called her name.

“Punched her right in the face”, the boy confessed. “That got her up. But still only barely. I knew she would want to see the ghosts, so I had to. But boy that girl can really sleep”

Bruce laughed, but mostly sighed.

“You hit the wrong face, kid”.

He lit another cigarette.

At least she had freckles.