The Lion’s Mail Order Menage

His father had been a monster most of the time, that much was undeniable, but his mother had been a terror all on her own.  They had both done it to each other and in the process they had done it to him as well.  And Alice?  She could talk all she wanted about the importance of the family, but Tyler knew all about the people in his neighborhood. He had made it his mission to know as much as he could get his hands on, and Alice was no exception.  Alice had spent time in the beds of half the men in the neighborhood and god knew how many in the surrounding boroughs.  She had no moral high ground to stand on, not even the smallest bit. 

He chewed on that for the rest of his walk, growing more and more agitated the closer he got to one of the places he had grown up in.  He felt his mouth fill up with saliva, felt the contents of his stomach fight to make its way back up.  For all of his bravado, Tyler hated coming back here. 

He hated the way it made him feel like a little boy.  He hated the peeling wallpaper and the mildewed stairs leading up to the fifth floor.  He hated the sounds of people’s miserable lives drifting out into the hallways from the poorly insulated apartments he passed.  Most of all, he hated the way his body went numb when he stood in front of the old peeling door with the brass 56 hanging precariously to one side that meant he was home.  Or his parents’ home, at least.  There was not a chance that he would consider it his. 

Looking at it now, he just wasn’t quite ready to go in.  He hated himself for it, but there it was.  He lit a cigarette from the pack he swiped from Caleb just the other day, knowing nobody was going to say sh*t about him smoking inside.  Whatever toxins were floating around in this air were probably a whole lot worse than the carcinogens from his smoke (he was well aware of the meth heads cooking on the third floor) and the only thing it would do to the smell was improve it. 

He pulled a little silver flask out of his hip pocket and took a pull, sighing in relief when he felt the burn slide down his throat.  Geno had given him that flask on his eighteenth birthday, said he was a man and it was about time he start drinking like one.  He had kept it on him ever since as a reminder of who he was and where he had come from, of who it was he called his family now.  It came in handy in times like this; times when he felt a little bit shook up. 

It gave him the courage he needed, and it wasn’t just the booze that was doing it.  Having that little silver reminder of Geno and his faith was enough to get him through a lot of things, even a sit down with his mom.

Tyler took one more quick swig from the flask and shoved it safely in his pocket, knowing his mom would try to guilt him into giving it to her to pawn if she caught a glimpse of it, and raised his fist to pound on the door.  His knuckles hadn’t even made it to the grainy plywood surface before the door swung open, a big hulking man standing in the frame.

The apartment was much darker than it was out in the hall and there was the briefest period of time when Tyler’s eyes struggled to adjust, but it didn’t matter.  Even if he were blind he would know that man, whether he wanted to or not.

“Dad,” he said in a flat voice devoid of any kind of pleasure, “didn’t know you were gonna be here.”

“Where’d you think I’d be?  I live here, don’t I?”

“Who knows?  Mind if I come in?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, just shoved past his dear ol’ dad and into the front room of the apartment where he expected he would find his mom.  As he usually was when it came to matters of mother, he was right.  There she was, splayed out on the couch with a cold compress over her eyes, the lights off and dark swatches of fabric over the only lamps in the room. 

God damnit, he had told her time and again not to do things like that.  It was like she was trying to set the whole fu*king building ablaze and if that was her goal, she was sure to achieve it any day now.

He could hear his father slurring and running into the walls back in the entryway hall, which meant that he was drunker than a skunk.  It wasn’t a surprise that he would be drunk, didn’t matter whether it was day or night for that, but it was worrisome that it was so clearly visible.  His dad had been drinking heavily for many years and he had become highly skilled at hiding any of the signs of intoxication.  The way he was now meant he had been on a bender of epic proportions, and that was a potential problem.

“Mom, what the hell you doing in here like this?  I’ve told you, haven’t I?  I’ve told you about doing the lamps that way.  You trying to get yourself killed?  You think burning up is the way to go?”

“Tyler?  That you?  I can’t see you.”

“Course you can’t, mom.  You’ve got your eyes all covered up.  And who else would it be?  You got another son coming by to see you?”

“Nah, that I don’t have.  Most of the time I don’t even have one.  Come here, will ya?  Come closer so I can see better.  I gotta make sure it’s my actual son and not some kind of imposter.  Else I’m dead and this is hell.  Not sure which one would be more likely.”

What Tyler wanted to do was run screaming in the opposite direction, just haul ass past his dad and blow out of this sad building, this wasted neighborhood and go back to what he understood.  Geno and his people, he understood them.  That he could navigate just fine.  But this?  He didn’t even know what this was.  He didn’t know how to do this thing.