Organ - Chapter 14
ORGAN
Chapter Fourteen
The sound of rain often calmed Oscar, that morning it sounded like nails being driven into a tin coffin, the porch canopy bounced the noise across the house, and it had woken him from the now regular lifeless nightmares that infest his dreams. The smell downstairs was toast and strong coffee, the way Mum liked it he thought rolling over, for a moment Oscar even forgot what had caused him to feel so shitty in the first place, but then the ache found him to greet him good morning, it let out the stab of awareness that kept him locked into the ongoing saga. He rolled out of bed and pawed around for his phone, forgetting of course that it was still sitting dead in his bag downstairs, the realisation did not bother him all that much, who was he going to call him anyway, Katie did not have his number after all, and she was the only other person aware he was alive. After brushing his teeth and making his way downstairs, he saw his mother in her pyjamas working away at some food in the kitchen.
“I thought you had work today?” Oscar asked plodding bare footed into the room and pulling out a chair at the table,
“and good morning to you” Mary joked back ignoring his question.
“What did you want for breakfast?” she asked carrying on as normal, “I made toast, but you can have cereal if you prefer” her demeaner was odd, Oscar spotted it immediately. Where was the rage or the sadness from yesterday he thought.
“I’m not hungry right now” he answered, the murmuring of his answer barely audible.
Oscar was in fact starving, but his nerves sounded an alarm, something was itching at the back of his skull, something was wrong. Mary did not turn to her son, which was when he knew something was really wrong. Mary rarely missed an opportunity to tell him how awful his eating habits had become, Oscar turning down food was always going to get at the very least, a passing comment about withering away or a guilt packed joke about starving people in some third world village, but she said nothing. Mary carried on buttering her toast and occasionally brought her gaze up and out of the window above the sink.
“You okay?” Oscar asked, hopeful she would spin round and lecture him, but she kept her back to her boy.
“I am fine, just a bit tired today I think. This has been a lot to cope with you know” she answered but still never chose to face her son, was this a hallucination he thought, dreading the idea that he was still tucked away in bed in the waking world. Had they followed him home. These lingering productions he imagined, he danced with the idea frantically firing around his head for a moment before lurching to his feet, knocking the chair back behind him creating a horrible screech across the tiles.
“Sit down Oscar, I am making you something anyway” Mary demanded.
“Not until you tell me what’s wrong?” he replied with worry dripping through his teeth.
Mary made her way over to her son and it was now plain to see why she was avoiding his direction, his mother had deep sunken eyes, blackened with a night of crying and likely a morning of the same. Oscar sank back into his chair with a thud, the impact stung but pain had a relatively new meaning for him at this stage. Mary joined him at the table and began taking mouse-like bites out of her toast, the crunch was the only noise that filled the air as she chewed timidly.
“Did you sleep at all?” Oscar asked seeing the answer already painted across the bags under her eyes.
“Nope, I didn’t feel too great, so I called into work and told them I won’t be making it today” Mary answered, this time giving Oscar the single most forced smile he had ever seen from her.
“And they are okay with that?” he asked.
“Well, No” she started “but they are going to have to deal with it, If I am not well how can I be of any help in a classroom,”
Oscar nodded in agreement but found himself still in disbelief of the lucidity of this breakfast.
“What should I do now?” Oscar asked sheepishly, licking his lips watching her discard food into the waste.
Mary wiped her hands on her trouser bottoms and reached for her sons hands; he obliged and put his forearms across the table. Mary turned her sons fingers and palms in her hands for a moment, seeing the damage caused by various falls, faints, and gouges since he left her care and became a burden on the medical system of their otherwise boring town.
“I hate seeing your hands this tore up” she mumbled to herself, not really sure if Oscar was even listening.
She could see his frantic eyes pacing across the room, it was a new trait her son had developed, and one Oscar himself had yet to notice, the same restless eyes that plagued his father, but Mary would never have the heart to tell her son that. Times are hard enough she thought without dredging up the skeletons under their family tree.
“Oscar I need to tell you something” she began,
Oscar snapped back into focus, his hands and wrists still placed in her hands that stroked and massaged them so gently, like a mother lion tending to her cubs wounds, it made the young man feel infantile, but he would never care enough to stop absorbing these moments of love in the routine of bile he endured.
“I called the police last night after you went to bed, they asked me to call them if you came home or if I heard from you” Mary began explaining herself to ease the burden of the betrayal she felt in her heart that day.
But seeing Oscars face twisting in anger it was short lived.
“You did what!” he barked across the table, his hands snatching at his mother’s holding them firmly in his grip.
“Oscar it is for the best, you aren’t well!” Mary pleaded with her son to understand, to see the supposed sense that she could see in the arrangement, but he was untethered now and moving with vengeance in his soul.
“This won’t help!” he screamed at his mother, picking her hands up from the table and slamming them back down against the solid wood.
Mary yelled out in horror as Oscar stumbled backwards, this time knocking the heavy wooden chair clean over and fracturing the sliding door behind him. Mary held her hands whimpering and sobbing as the boy she birthed stared with contempt across the table they enjoyed so many happy meals at, so many birthday parties and so many times she would sit, and spoon feed her baby boy in his high chair. Oscar burst into a run through the house, back upstairs and began frantically packing his bag once again. This time with enough clothes to sustain him for a good long while and changed into some normal street clothes. Mary pleaded from the kitchen table for her son to stop, to please calm down and above all to think this through before he ran off and got himself hurt again, but it was above her now, Oscar was in motion and with the voices of his newly acquired alien inner monologue preaching.
“Run! Not safe!” in his ears.
There was no stopping her boy from once more making a break for the open fields of freedom.
With his bag slung over his shoulder, Oscar made one final stop back in the kitchen where his mother still sat crying uncontrollably as she raced past and filled a separate plastic bag with various foods he could take for the journey ahead, wherever that may be.
“I won’t be coming back” he said to himself but knowing his mother would hear, “I can’t trust you anymore” he spat the words over his shoulder as though they consisted solely of poison intended to wound her soul.
Mary said nothing, she carried on crying into her sleeves and carefully holding her hands to avoid hurting them any further than her son had. Before he made his exit reaching for the front door, Mary called out to him, one last push to hold her sky rocketing wayward son to the earth,
“Oscar please, please don’t leave me here like this” the words fell out with a vulnerable honesty that would have cracked the iciest of hearts, but Oscar was gone and what was left staring across the passageway at her was a spiteful blackness, this swallowing sinkhole that consumed her boy was now taking him from her, perhaps for good. “
I couldn’t help your father Oscar, but I won’t give up on you….I promise whatever this is won’t win!” Mary shouted the words at him knowing her previous plead had fallen on stoic stone ears.
“You know what Mum” he replied pacing back towards her and staring but an inch from her face, close enough to smell the salty tears that bathed her wrinkled eyes and soaked cheeks, “The thing that took Dad was weakness! I’m not weak. I am not Dad, and I don’t need you or anyone else to help me!” the words stung with every syllable.
Mary wiped the smear of spit that followed his emphatic words off her face as she watched her son open the front door to their home, the family home, and leave their family behind with him. Stepping out into the fresh morning air, the pace of his heartbeat slowed for a moment, Oscar closed his eyes and breathed a deep breath into his lungs that took his internal furnace to a simmer from the raging house fire it had just been seconds earlier.
“Oscar Rubens?” a voice broke through the breathing, it was a police officer, stocky like a barrel with a comical porn-star styled moustache beneath his sunglasses.
More importantly behind him sat an idling police car, likely there at the request of his mother or Boothe to take him to the mental house where they believed he belonged.
“Got the wrong guy” Oscar shouted down the path to him, adjusting his pack tightening the straps at this shoulders.
Ready of course to make a dash from the final hurdle his mother was going to give him that day.
“Can I see some ID please?” the officer asked.
Oscar knew enough to keep his distance and took a few steps to his side as the officer started slowly creeping up the stone pathway to his front door.
“Well, I told you I wasn’t this Oscar Rubens guy, so why do I need to show you anything?” Oscar replied taking more steps out of the direct line the officer was taking; his twitchiness was obviously coming across as the officer stopped in his tracks and placed his hand on his belt.
Oscar assumed he had a weapon.
“Just come sit in the car for a second and we can talk this through, show me your ID and you can go along your way. Think how this looks kid, you are coming out of the Rubens address and match the description of Oscar Rubens, what else can I assume besides, you being Oscar Rubens” the officer explained himself.
Oscar was still uninterested in any attempt to comply.
“Okay, after you” Oscar said with a huff in his chest to get the officer on board with his deception, the police officer spun around and headed towards his vehicle before Oscar rushed him and knocked him into the rear door that was now open, a loud ear-piercing shatter filled the air as the back window broke from the impact.
Oscar looked down at the unconscious body of the officer, gazed in awe at his work at the red glistening pool of blood trickled from his ear and onto the pavement beneath the car. Oscar reached for the belt and removed the officers taser, it was not the gun he expected but it was something to defend himself with should this become a regular meeting with the authorities chasing him across the world.
“What have you done!” Mary screamed out as she opened the door to her home in horror, seeing her once darling baby boy standing red faced, fuelled by rage, over the lifeless body of a police officer.
“Oscar please, come back inside, this doesn’t have to get any worse” she begged once again but Oscar was swirling with the thoughts in his mind.
“Run!” it called out once again,
the young man took off in a vague direction away from his home, hearing nothing but the garbled murmurs as Mary called out various pleadings from behind his ears.
“Not safe!” it whispered again,
“I know!” Oscar shouted back ignoring once again the pain that emanated from the broken parts of his body.
As his pace increased, and his feet took great strides across the pavement. Oscar remarked to himself through the chaos just how good he had gotten at running lately, likely due to the weightless but this had not crossed his mind, his insides burned and the new appendage living off his lifeforce, bleeding living nightmares into day, but his ability to carry himself from danger was a new trait he greatly appreciated. He ran for the better part of the day until his feet turned to solid rock and the blisters became loose flaps of drooping bloody skin at his heels and toe knuckles, but despite the travesty he left lingering at home and on his front drive, Oscar was now slumped behind a bus stop catching his breath and hiding his face with the bulk of his backpack that rested between him and the metal frame of this dingy shattered stop, he wondered for a moment if the bus he jumped off yesterday evening was going to pass this same route, but judging by the surroundings this part of town was hardly visited outside of the lower reaches of the local societies public pool, that fit his description adequately right now.
Oscar felt at the taser still tucked away inside his deep pocket, it was alien in his hand, it felt like a gun should but only in his mind. Being from a country without an influx of dangerous weaponry he only had ideas about firearms from what he had seen in the movies or online, it was regular now for him to catch glimpses of police shootings on his socials, for a moment he felt lucky that he was not going about this resistance campaign in a country that might not be so willing to let him carry on without a gun in his face, or a bullet in his back. Feeling nerves creeping up his spine from the line of logic, he waited for a moment of confirmed safety and shoved the taser quickly from his pocket into the bushes before him and ensured it was plainly out of sight. Oscar took it out of instinct, but this was not an object he planned on using. He had no idea what caused him to grab for the officers weapon,
“out of sight, out of mind” he mumbled aloud.
The sun was setting, the chorus of police cars ran past and with every distant siren he would duck into a nearby alleyway, hide behind a parked car or in his worser moments dive into an open wheely bin that stood unemptied and reeking of the worlds throwaways. “Those clouds look nasty” he muttered keeping himself company, half expecting the lump to join in answering his unimportant observations. Oscar was fearfully unsure if he wanted this thing to keep speaking with him. It was essentially his only vocal ally left standing, the thought sent ice through his spine as the fear crawled into the shadowy parts of his mind. The weather was indeed turning against the runaway, his feet sore and bloody from the journey. Somehow he went unnoticed, but this was a poorer area, and the likelihood of some law-abiding citizens coming through felt very low.
Another police car in the distance sounded its siren, switching it on and off rapidly creating a bleeping bloop rather than its usual irritating ear pinching wail. Not long after the car was already leaving the area and the siren got quieter as it left his immediate vicinity. Oscar had no idea where he was going, but the further into the underbelly he crawled the worse his options became. Another siren past, it was enough of this for an evening, and the young man found his way down the alley, out onto another unknown street covered by the looming mostly vacant buildings and out of ear shot from this latest patrolling watchful eye. If Oscar was going to survive this way, vagrant, in avoidance of the law that was seemingly never ending in its pursuit, he would need to find shelter for the night, somewhere safe that would allow him to recuperate for a day or two before giving further thought to his plan of escape from the former sleepy town that now prowled in its woken state of ravenous hunger for what remained of his sanity.
Thankfully for the young runaway, this part of town had long been experiencing hardships that reached the buildings that lined the pavements, money came and went into the area going all the way back to his father’s hay-day working as a handyman and helping fit out most of the buildings he now snuck past, praying one of them could offer shelter. Empty lots and derelict storefronts dotted the road that cut the street clean in half with black tar asphalt. So, Oscar watched for visitors from his secure dumpster shield, peering out when the sounds of sirens faded into the nights gathering cold darkness, his head and additional friend tender in adrenaline fuelled distress. It was reaching desperation hour before he finally skipped away from his safe alleyway and attempted to walk as inconspicuous as he could act, musing for a moment of relief at the ridiculous idea that he had forgotten how to walk like a sane human being, not that anyone out this late, in this particular run-down area was considered “sane.”
The street was poorly lit, much to his advantage, the air was growing in an uncomfortable cold smother that grabbed at the brick and gravel for a chilling sleep, Oscar was running out of time if he was going to find a place to crash before it became a search in the pitch blackness that night. His resting place more or less found him, the wind howled through the shattered corners of a broken window to his right, the road to his left was vacant and no approaching car lights or siren sounds carried themselves any closer, it was a moment of almost fate given mercy. Oscar tiptoed along the side of the building, narrowly placing himself in the foot sized gap between two ruined shops, the squeeze was large enough for him to kick his feet against the brick and peel himself up to gaze inside the darkened store. Inside he could see some knocked over shelves and a floor littered with messy objects that he failed to make out in the dark, it was abandoned being the prevalent fact Oscar needed to obtain.
With the remainder of his strength, after a day of running, hiding, fighting and excruciatingly more running, he made his way through the window narrowly avoiding the glass and luckily only shredding some fragments of his jumper instead of his soft weakening flesh. Dropping to the shop floor he took his time. Carefully exploring around corners and doors, it looked like an old pharmacy, but as he never came through here in the good times it was impossible to know for sure. Ensuring he was alone for the night Oscar nestled his head down against his backpack in a backroom that gave him cover from the weather and any onlookers who might venture in through the same gap in the building he had used for the entrance, Oscar wrapped his jacket around his body and did all he could to sleep so far away from his usual life, so far away from his home and the woman who he could no longer trust.
