I Never Was Her Father's Favorite

But still.

***

“I imagine having the barrel of a gun pointed to my head; what it would feel like to have a bullet strike through my brain. My blood would freeze to the feel of the cold piece of metal on my skin.

The impact of the bullet on my skull would hit me like a migraine; or rather, a migraine on steroids. Soon after, I’d be forced into another world; a world full of darkness.

But, even so, her spirit would whisper to mine and force open my eyes to the sight of her silhouette against sunshine. The sunshine she took to her death.”

He sinks deeper in his seat, fumbling with his fingers, stretching his cracked lips to feign a smile. His eyes reflect confusion. Like he’s trying to remain present, but he keeps skidding between the world of phantasm and reality.

He flushes with want at the thought of being with her once more. Join her in the other world, the dark world. Only, she’s the one who left him in the dark. She was his light, and now she’s gone.

“Tell me, Jacob, do you ever think about harming yourself? Are you…” She pauses. She knows she’s going to elicit a different kind of reaction. So, she fixes her eyes on his, perhaps to provoke some sort of candor; truth about his lack of will to live anymore.

“Are you suicidal, Jacob?” It takes a second for him to gather his voice. He gives a chuckle in response to her question. 

 “Beth’s father owned a cotton plantation.” He titters; forces a laugh. There’s so much hatred buried in his past.

“He grew up watching his father and every other dark skin work in plantations, plucking cotton for ‘masters’.

So, he became a master of his own; took the bull by its horns, sucked in all the freedom after years of being a slave.

He’d call me the Albino. At first, I thought he couldn’t get my name right, that he preferred to give me a moniker. But, Jacob isn’t that hard to the tongue. 

I grew up alone. No one wanted a boy intended to be black but instead, was born too pale for black, and just not the right kind of white. Not even my mother did.

So, the streets raised me, the same streets that saw me a freak of nature.” He fiddles his forefinger against his chapped lips so hard that they bleed.

 “There weren’t many like ‘us’. There wasn’t any like me at the time; not in the small town I’m from. I had to get used to the vile stares; I could feel eyes on me even in the dark of night.

I was a beggar who had to work ten times as hard to get even a sip of water to last me the day. It was an impossible life, living in the streets under so much heat.

Just my luck, I grew up to become a heavy. So, I pressed home my advantage and looked for jobs that required built men, like me.

That’s how I started working as a bouncer at ‘Gangs and Liquor’; a bar. And, in that bar I met her; Beth.

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