Mercy

Slack-jawed expressions and shirtless torsos did no favors for the rampant, if not moderately accurate, imagination of Billie Joe’s younger son. He assumed our bare-chested, strained silence meant that something unspeakable was occurring behind the counter, and as his mind transitioned from groggy confusion to startled realization, Jakob contemplated whether keeping his sanity intact would outweigh a thirst brought about by the monstrous, yet invisible, cotton ball wedged snugly between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. For a while, he managed to keep his mind from the growing drought in his oral cavity by watching the infant which slept inside the barricade of blankets and pillows we’d constructed the previous night. Until the little tyke woke right on the ass-crack of dawn, putting up a righteous rage over the emptiness in his grumbling stomach, he had been curled upon Jakob’s chest. To the aggravated man on the couch, having the child so close to him felt more like a dream than anything else, but a massive patch of maroon staining an otherwise red shirt clearly proclaimed that there had been something drooling on his chest for at least three hours of the night. He found it odd how once the child finally did wake up, screaming at volumes loud enough to bring tears into his own eyes, he knew exactly what had brought the cries about. Jakob knew to prepare a bottle of formula for him, prop him up in the crook of his arm, and wait for satisfaction and slumber to steal him away once more. After all tasks had been completed, he had peered down into the blanket barricade with anxious fascination and wonder at how quickly he’d transitioned from a hopelessly inept fool to a parental prodigy.

As he kept watch over the child in attempts to keep his focus off what filthy escapades may or may not have been going down between his father and me, it was apparent that he was serious in his considerations of adopting the child. It was a vast transformation from his adamant refusal the night before, but nothing else in the world seemed to matter after you’d had an infant drooling on your chest for hours on end. I learned that very truth hard way.

“Jakob thinks we’re fucking,” I whispered to Billie Joe. It was the first sentence either of us had spoken since my reluctant epiphany, and my empty crazy-pill bottle was still clutched within his trembling fingers.

The old bastard casually craned his neck to catch a glimpse of his son, and needless to say, his reddened cheeks and the determined way in which he kept his eyes on the child was all it took to understand just how uncomfortable he had become.

“Who said we ain’t?” Billie muttered back with a theatrical moan, though his inflection held no humor. His eyes had gone cold with the realization of Lorraine’s true identity, and the flatness of his words sent a chill reverberating throughout my entire body. Yet again, I was haunted with the premise that there was something else the old bastard wasn’t sharing with me.

The pair of us looked out at Jakob yet again, and his features had grown even darker still. Billie Joe’s exaggerated moan confirmed his assumption that I was, in fact, boning his father. I scowled at the old man, distaste for his means of lightheartedly torturing his son written deep within each frown line of my face, yet it did nothing but encourage him to continue with his obscenities. It was his escape from a conversation we desperately needed to have regarding the Mistress of Mindfuck because he was well aware that such a tête-à-tête would end in a merciless war of words and accusations. He despised such confrontation and longed for a more practical approach in attacking the ghouls which lurked deep within our pasts. Oddly enough, the route he chose to achieve practicality was a perfected form of impracticality that was equally alluring and disturbing.

At that point, I was still unaware that it was his means of ridding every contemptuous thought towards sex from my tormented mind.

“Touch me, Fairy,” he panted in an effort to irk his son into some sort of fiery response. I observed Jakob’s reaction and had to cover my mouth to quell the laughter invoked by his open-mouthed look of horror.

“You ass pirates about done sword fighting yet, or am I gonna have to leave early?” Jakob groaned. “There are little ears present, y’know.”

“We know that, Jake. ‘S’why we ain’t doin’ shit back here with you young’uns so close by,” Billie Joe grunted back, stepping out from behind the counter to show his son that his ass was adequately covered with the fabric of his boxers.

“Young’uns? Are you serious, Dad? Mike’s younger than me, you pedophile,” Jakob snapped, pulling himself off the couch to retrieve the glass of water he’d been trying to deny himself for the past ten minutes.

“B’lieve the correct term is cougar, kid, ‘n’ Fairy ain’t jailbait. He’s legal.”

“Barely,” Jakob scoffed, rolling his eyes as he hunted through the cupboards to find himself a glass. While running the tap water, he caught my eye and sheepishly mumbled, “No offense,” to supposedly compel me to overlook his blatantly rude comment.

“None taken,” I grumbled, though it was an evident lie.

“Knock it off, Jakob. We ain’t been up longer’n fifteen minutes, ‘n’ already you’re goin’ on with the melodramatic bullshit.’ Keep it up, ‘n’ I’ll make you leave early,” Billie Joe snarled, pill bottle slamming to the floor with a hollow, echoing crash as it was thrust from his grasp. I may have noticed how close the old bastard had gotten to me with his body leaning against mine for just a bit more than support, but I was far too enthralled by their abrupt argument to notice a hand slithering its way around my waist.

“Why do you always take his side? You’ve known him for, what, less than a month? I’m your son, and I think I have more of a right to be here than a prostitute. Did you even consider he might be crawling with AIDS before you let him fuck you, Dad?”

At that point, I only became conscious of Billie Joe’s arm wrapped around me because his fingernails had commenced in digging furiously into the flesh of my hip. It was his subconscious outlet for sudden abhorrence, and I suppose a temporary state of physical pain was endurable if it kept the old man from harming his son in a bitter fit of rage. For a moment, I was mystified as to why Jakob swiftly determined that I was the antagonist due to our brief bonding session in the woods. He’d verbalized his fears and frustrations enough for an unspoken respect to be formed between the two of us, though he seemed all too keen in shattering whatever cordial amiability had been created in my knowledge of Billie Joe Armstrong’s supposed death the second his father appeared to be more interested in my affection than his.

If I didn’t know any better, I would have pegged Jakob as the type who would have relished the attention Momma Cass seemed to have bestowed upon me during my harrowing upbringing, but I knew that wasn’t entirely accurate. He had a far more prominent backbone than I’d ever managed to acquire. Years of oppression and various forms of abuse would strip one’s spirit of all necessary senses of self-esteem and humanity, rendering the mistreated subject a sniveling, spineless wretch.

“I fuckin’ told you he ain’t a whore. Mike’s a nurse. He’s here to make sure I take the right pills ‘n’ set the IV’s when them pills stop workin’ right. He’s here to make me as comfortable as possible b’fore I…y’know…”

There it was again. Mike, not Fairy. I smiled to myself regardless of the dismal verbal attacks which engulfed the room.

“Die?” Jakob offered in a distressingly pitiless tone.

“Yes,” Billie Joe replied meekly. His clutch on my hip deflated to a grip loose enough to be considered comfortable.

“And does making you as comfortable as possible include sexual favors because, honestly, that’s all I’ve seen from him so far.”

His words were poison darts laced with envious malice, and each one struck me with a pain identical to a physical blow. One sentence adorned an arm with pygmy-sized puncture wounds while another fixed me with a visage fit for a tasteless horror movie. I needed to remove myself from their argument before whatever ground I’d gained with Billie Joe disappeared as he recognized that defending me would likely end with his son denouncing him as his father. I couldn’t let that happen, but an unsteady hand on my hip made it far more difficult to slink away from the situation unnoticed than if I had been a mere spectator in the argument. Fuck, the way in which he possessively clung to my body forced me into a position of greater significance than the hapless spectator. The longer he kept me chained to his side, the longer I was a contributor to the war of words.

“Nah, that’s just an added bonus,” the old man sneered, planting a spiteful kiss to my naked shoulder. I froze, knowing full well that if I made any gestures to show I’d enjoyed his solicitation, Jakob would tear me a new asshole.

“Ugh, you’re disgusting. What’s in it for him, anyways? What could he possibly gain from screwing around with an old man?” Jakob demanded, eyes flashing from Billie Joe to me in a feverish eagerness that made my flesh all but crawl right off my body to flee his frightening glare.

My mouth opened and closed a number of times as my mind staggered about in vain to come up with a sufficient reply, but not a single thing to be gained from my stay with Billie Joe could be found. What the hell was I getting out of our unorthodox little arrangement? Fortunately enough, the old bastard knew exactly what he wanted me to gain.

“He gets a place to sleep where he knows he won’t get raped or beat ev’ry night. He gets to know what it’s like, for the first time in his whole goddamn life, to be in control of somethin’. This all ain’t just ‘bout sex, honey, so get your mind outta the fuckin’ gutter. I’m givin’ my Fairy a chance to be whole.”

His explanation was beautiful, and though it brought me to tears, a new bout of fury overwhelmed Jakob the moment his father had finished speaking. Eyes blazing, he shrieked, “Where were you when I was being abused?! Don’t I deserve to be whole again?!”

“It was too late! I didn’t know what he was doin’ to you ‘til you dragged my ass into that hospital ‘n’ I saw the way you flinched at everythin’!” Billie Joe whimpered, an extra groan added to his pitiful cries once they managed to wake a previously slumbering infant. The child let out an impressive wail, and everyone seemed to hold their breath, at a loss of where to go from there. Do we forget the outbursts and aid the child or proceed with the howling of a baby as unnerving background noise?

A startling, garbled cry passed through Jakob’s lips as his exasperation reached its peak, though he was the first to acknowledge Phoenix’s need for care. He darted forward, purposely avoiding his father’s questioning stare, but Billie Joe shied away from me the moment Jakob was about to pass and kept him from going any further. Turning to me, he uttered one word.

“Go.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I made a beeline for the temporary bed with the tiny, screaming child within its pillowed barracks and scooped him into my arms. His clearly vocalized complaints at being neglected ceased on a dime once he grew wary of no longer being imprisoned on the ground. Watery blue eyes ogled me in fear and enchantment before deciding that he wasn’t exactly finished with giving us all a piece of his mind, though his second round of pathetic weeping wasn’t quite as earsplitting as the first. Instead, he took to whimpering into my shoulder.

“Take ‘im outside, Fairy. Fresh air’ll do ‘im good, ‘n’ I need to talk to my boy alone, alright?” the old bastard suggested, eyes shining with wordless pleas and guilt for not having dealt with the situation sooner. I nearly allowed myself to question his parental abilities, but I managed to keep the notion from dancing menacingly through my mind in fear of Billie Joe being able to hear it. My thoughts were broadcasted solely for his brain, after all, and it undoubtedly was not the time for taking a massive stab at his confidence.

Heeding his proposal, I took the child cradled in my arms through the front door and wandered about the gravel path a few yards. The sun had just begun to make its appearance in the sky, and various rays of light peeked through the branches of trees as if they were all far too shy to show their true potential for illumination. A gust of wind invoked an uproar of malicious giggles from the leaves on the trees immediately following my description of the sunlight, and I wondered if they were mocking their timidity. Though it may have been my imagination going utterly mad with each and every one of my thoughts being heard by all beings which surrounded me, human or otherwise, I could have sworn the daylight had dimmed once the foliage had stilled and all hysterical mirth had quieted.

One particular beam of light, however, landed directly upon the decomposing tree in Billie Joe’s front lawn, and perched ominously on the topmost branch was a squirrel I wish I’d never crossed paths with.

“No,” I whispered, hair standing on end as the squirrel’s likeness became unmistakable. The silver streaks in its topcoat, the white tip of its tail that made it appear as if some callous prankster decided it would be a terrific idea to dip it in paint, the eerie way in which its beady black eyes bore into you with an omnipotent sense of knowing…

The squirrel I was staring at was undeniably Zombie, and the undead rodent lifted one mangled paw to me the way an old friend might do so if you were to pass them on the sidewalk. The sunlight passed through his paw flawlessly enough for the hole in which a nail had previously been driven through it to be easily recognized along with the blood caked around the puncture wound. I was so horrified by the image that even a scream failed to escape my throat.

“Hey Mike, look alive!” a voice behind me cackled, and I found myself ducking in preparation for something to come rocketing towards my face. It was usually what the term look alive implied, assuming the one who had shouted said phrase wished for you to catch whatever they intended to throw. With both arms full of angry infant, I could do little else but ungracefully lower my body to keep whatever this person aimed to hurl at me from hitting my body or the baby’s. When it seemed as though I was in no immediate danger of being pelted with projectiles, I whirled around, expecting to find one or both of the Armstrongs standing there smirking at me.

No one was there.

I turned back to towards Zombie only to find the scream that had been formerly lodged in my throat while my eyes perceived the image of a teenage boy leaning against the rotting tree. He was grinning at me, yet I felt no ultimate sense of doom in his malevolent charade. In fact, one name repeated itself again and again within my mind while I took a few cautious steps forward to verify the color of his eyes with unquestionable accuracy, and I was convinced he meant no harm despite how he’d locked me in a closet the night before. When I was less than five feet from where the boy stood, I was sure the eyes hidden behind a matted shock of copper hair were blue.

“Hello, Frankie,” I tentatively spluttered, unsure of how to speak with one who had reportedly been killed nearly three decades ago.

The boy’s grin broadened.