Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 23:17:44 +0000
From: M Williams <kollegekid54321@hotmail.com>
Subject: Living with a Past - Chapter 5

- DISCLAIMER - The following story, novel, or chapter
contains homosexual themes and is not intended for anyone
under the legal viewing age - If depictions of homosexual
activities disturb you - Do Not Continue To Read This Story
- Feedback appreciated
Copyright - 2005 - Max Williams
(Kollegekid54321@hotmail.com)

Chapter 5

     "You were out late last night", Pam Colby told her son
the next morning.  Jason had come bounding down the stairs,
smiling and cheerful.  He had on an old sleeveless white T
shirt that fit him so snugly around the chest that the brown
of his skin showed through, and some old jeans with rips in
the knees.  The Saturday morning was bright and cheerful,
and spring sunshine streamed through the little double hung
windows of Jason's small kitchen.  His mother was looking at
him suspiciously, and with a personal fierceness that
immediately birthed a little guilt in him.
     "Umm, yeah . . . sorry about that.  The guys and I were
playing pretty late - but I remember to get Dad and come
home -
     "Mmmph" Jason was startled and turned around to see his
father already in the kitchen, standing leaning against the
cabinets in the corner, buried in the newspaper.  Phil Colby
looked pretty red around the eyes, and his lips were so dry
that Jason thought he may have been throwing up.  Well,
hangovers were a bitch, but if Phil knew how to deal with
anything, it was a hangover.  A hot cup of black coffee
lived in his right hand most mornings, and he had a
remarkably efficient way of channeling the pain of his
headaches into the vociferousness of his actions - for
better or for worse.  "You were an hour late", Phil grumbled
toward his son.
     "Yeah, I know, the guys and I ran late - it wont happen
again"
     "You're damn right it wont", his mother broke back in,
"you're not getting the car again until you can prove you
know how to use it."
     "What?  Mom!"
    "No, that's it.  Now sit down and shut up."  Normally
Jason would've fought the issue, but something about the
fierce way that Pam kept glancing at her husband while
yelling at her son made him rethink his stance.  Something
had happened that Jason didn't now about, and the muttering,
angry, shuttered look on his miserable father's unshaven
face probably had something to do with it.  Jason put up his
hands in acquiescence, took the plate of store bought
waffles and toast from his mother, and sat at the kitchen
table.
     For a moment Pam Colby looked at her son.  The morning
light was glinting off his shiny brown hair, and for a boy
that she had raised, she had to admit that he had grown into
quite a man.  His square jaw was munching on the toast that
she had made, and his boyishly charming, yet angled and
masculine face was covered with a slight layer of stubble
that he needed to shave soon.  His apparent biceps were
flexing most attractively as he bent his arms to eat his
food, and she marveled at the thought of what girls would
enjoy themselves looking at that strong back and those broad
shoulders.  The brown of his skin was a testament to the
amount of time he spent in the sun playing sports, and Pam's
mind drifted to the girls that probably watched him while he
was doing so.  Her mind drifted to a time when she was a
young woman, unsure and unconfident in a college that she
didn't like, and sat on the same hill every day watching the
sports teams practice.  It was Pam's "in" almost, when she
happened to have a class once with a meek little guy that
happened to be on the football team, though he spent most of
the time on the bench.  She and he became great friends
because of what she was sure he could offer her, and she was
positive that through him, she might possibly get to be in
the in crowd at Buffalo State.  That man's name was Phil,
and Pam shook her head as she skipped over the years of
disappointments between then and now.  Meek, reclusive, and
with a hidden temper, Phil had been advertised as a good
deal, and finally, Pam had finally settled for him, and
bought.  But he wasn't part of the in crowd any more than
she was, and she was left with a disappointment that she'd
never gotten over.  And now . . . now that same man was
standing in the corner of her kitchen, after coming home
smelling like rum and throwing up on her carpet . . . she
couldn't believe her life.  It made her . . . it made her
angry.
     "Are you done with that", she asked her son.  Jason
wasn't, quite, but nodded and gave his mother his empty
breakfast plate.  His mother had been eating at the counter,
like she always did, watching to see when Jason had
finished.  His father was rarely ever around for breakfast
and Jason considered it a good day that Phil was there, even
if he was only reading the paper with glazed eyes.  And
Jason always ate at the table, like he had since he was a
little kid and it had been a family tradition.  But his
family had changed so much since then . . . pretty much
since Maggie had left.  Wow, Maggie . . . Jason didn't think
about her much these days.
     Margaret Colby was Jason's older sister, and though she
didn't come around very often, or stay long when she did, he
often worried about her.  She had tried college, she had
tried working, she had tried living with her boyfriend that
supposedly was "going to support her".  Jason was suddenly
amazed that such a close member of his family could be let
go so easily, but the truth was the truth, and that was that
Maggie hadn't visited for almost eight months now, and yet
said that she lived in town, fairly close by.  It was a sad
situation that she worked minimum wage doing . . . they
didn't even know what and living . . . they didn't even know
where and neither of his parents had the slightest interest
in finding out.  That had been the wedge that had been
allowed to drive his family apart, Jason thought.  The
problems with Maggie had been the infection that had
understandably grown in the emotional gashes his parents
were always leaving, and though the catalyst of the
infection had gone, the infection was still there.  It was
in her unsuccessful life, and it was in everything that she
did.  And the gashes were still at home, this time severing
parent from parent and parent from child, as Pam and Phil
clawed out to cling to some chunk of satisfaction, when
really, they only clawed at the air; only at each other.
Jason worried sometimes that he needed to change things
before the same thing happened to him, but then again, he
had enough to worry about with high school.  Raising his
parents wasn't something he wanted to do, especially when
the parents had decided they were okay.  Especially when he
had enough on his mind already.  For some reason Fredo took
that moment to pop into his mind.  Fuck!, he thought.  The
last thing I need to think about.  These, he decided, were
the kind of depressing thoughts that smiles were for.
    The sunlight still streamed through the small double
hung windows of the Colby's kitchen.  The small room was
bright and pleasant, but the atmosphere was almost black.
Pam stood at the sink, watching the water run over the dirty
dish she was supposed to be cleaning, buried in thought.
Phil still stood in the corner, gently massaging his stomach
with a bruised hand, looking at the paper but clearly not
reading.  And Jason, turned inward from the kitchen table
with his hefty arm thrown nonchalantly over the back of his
chair, was gazing downward, also lost in his thoughts.  How
ridiculously uninvolved all these people were.  And Jason,
snapping back into reality, took a deep breathy sigh and
then plastered his everyday, non-bothered smile on his face
and got up.
     "Well, I'm doing a lot today, I've got to go but Ill be
back later", he said, walking as he spoke so that hopefully
he'd be up the stairs before his parents could rebuff him.
     "Wait -" Crap, no such luck.  Pam continued, "You can't
     use the car."
     "Ill walk", Jason called from the second step.
     "No, you can't go.  I've got - I've got some things
that I need to do outside, and I need your help.  Don't
waste your time, do something useful."  Jason took a deep
breath.
     "Mom, just because what I'm doing doesn't help you,
doesn't mean it's not useful.  I've got homework to work on
- and yesterday was Meghan's parent's anniversary; I should
go see her -"
     "Funny, you didn't come to my anniversary party."
    "Mom, everyone left your party because you were three
hours late."
     "I had to work late!"
     "You've never had to work late before."
     "Look, this isn't the point, you hurt me and any normal
son would want to make it up to me.  Besides, you can go see
them any other day, its not like you have to be there."
     "But I HAVE to be here."
     "Don't take that tone with me!"
     "Mom, I'm not, I'm just tired of being commandeered for
your -"
     "I said DON'T take that tone with me!!"
     Even with the room dividing them, Jason knew that she
was using her look so piercing that it could transcend
walls.  He was pissed off, he wanted out of this crazy
house, and he wanted to be comfortable.  And she apparently
needed him to stay home and hand her her tools while she
gardened, a thoroughly pointless job that meant he would
probably be standing in the unpleasant combination of hot
sun and cold air until dinner.  He blanched.
     "I'm NOT taking a tone, and I'm NOT staying here."
Jason ran up the remaining stairs and flew into him room,
slamming the door behind him.  He quickly tore the t-shirt
off his lean body and threw a loose sweatshirt over his taut
skin before he heard his mother pounding up the stairs
behind him.  He ran to his door and locked it before she
could - fuck - the lock was still sitting on the floor.  He
looked around.  The window?  Wait - that was crazy; this
woman was mad, not homicidal.  At least, that's what he
thought before she burst the door open, eyes flashing, mouth
grimacing, and breathing hard with anger.
     "Look you little horse's ass -" But Pam's statement was
left unsaid as Jason simply brushed past her and quickly
went back down the stairs, leaving whatever it was that he
wanted in his room, in his room.  He finished the stairs and
grabbed his sneakers, opened the front door and quietly shut
it again, jumped off the small concrete stoop, went around
the side of the house and then pressed himself flat against
the siding, out of the view of the front living room
windows.  He pulled on his old sneakers as he heard the
sounds of blinds being pulled up and his mother calling for
his father to help her find him, and knew that he had about
three minutes to escape while his mother got exasperated and
returned to the kitchen to bodily force his father back to
the wide picture window.  He hunkered down, ready to jog
down the street when he heard the blinds stop rustling, and
spent one-tenth of a second formulating the thought, I
wonder if other families use this tactic to get the
gardening done, before he heard some heavy footsteps and
some yelling of the word "PHIL".  Jason ran.

***********************************************************

     Light streamed into the blackened room and some of the
wetness had been dried.  The shutters hung in scraps off
their rusted hinges, and piles of soft, black wood on the
floor was testament to their fragile condition to begin
with.  The cloth in the room was disintegrating in so much
sunlight and the wallpaper and woodwork weren't faring well
with the sudden acclimation to a vaguely drier atmosphere.
But none of that mattered much to the man that was wandering
around the room, pulling furniture away from the walls,
pulling drawers out of dressers, and lifting the carpets
where rotted holes had given access to the squishy wood
floor underneath.  His skin was still yellow, and his eyes
were still bloodshot.  He had regained much of his strength,
and much of his memory, but like most people that live to be
one hundred-and-thirty-five, had some trouble remembering
the details.
     Once he had come to terms with walking again, he'd
ventured out of the bedroom and found much of the rest of
this, his home, to be in similar shape.  Everything was
blackened and boarded over, covered with soot or mold, or
the carcasses of animals that had crawled in the house to
die.  His furniture was ruined; the contents of every drawer
had turned to piles of mush with the intense water damage
coming through the skylight over the stairs.  The back door
was a pile of splinters; the result of a robbery, certainly,
which would also account for the shambles in the dining
room, the broken china cabinet, and the missing silver
dinnerware.
     But none of that was important, he knew.  His ultimate
mission had worked, and even if the contents of his house
hadn't lasted as well as he'd hoped, even if the
accumulation of his lifetime of work had been stained by the
ravages of time, he was still alive.  He was still himself .
. . if he had any idea what that meant.  Sure, he'd found
some monogrammed silver, and some scraps of correspondence,
but he didn't know what the letters WRM stood for or who
they pertained too.  All the man had was a vague sense of
something sinister when he had found that letter, dated
1895, between William Renault Montgomery and Roberto
Richiazzi.  The man had a sense that he had lived with other
men for a time, before building this house - was he William?
Or was that one of the other men?  The man didn't know.
     He crossed the bedroom and looked into the path of
crystal clear mirror that he had made in the layers of grime
veering the rest of the glass.  His face, his scarred, ugly,
yellow face was hideous.  The man had found shaving
implements in the bathroom and had tried to remove the beard
and the hair, but unsuccessfully.  His arms and legs were
still morbidly stiff, and the razor was dull.  The cuts he'd
made in his face did nothing - they wouldn't bleed, they
wouldn't heal.  The man was scared for what he'd become, and
let his mind wonder about if he really was still human, as
he'd been promised he would be.  But damnit, that was what
he was looking for!
    In a wave of frustration, he ripped open the dresser
drawers and dumped out their contents on the sodden carpet.
Blackened papers, rotted quills, rotted hairbrush, broken
hand mirror . . . normal objects to store in a dresser.  The
damned letter!  The one thing that the man remembered
clearly, almost as crystal clearly as the mirror, was
himself, seated at a desk, licking, blessing, and sealing an
envelope with his wax and seal, and giving it to a man.  He
couldn't remember the man, and couldn't remember the date,
the location, or the contents, but had this overwhelming
sense that he had written to himself, in case this happened,
of what had been done, and why.  And he had no idea where
the letter was now.  Or if, indeed, it was one of the
impossibly black and rotted papers that he'd been finding
all over his house.
    The man returned to the bay window and looked out for
the innumerable time.  The mass of gray stone still
perplexed him, as did the surroundings.  He had built his
house on a densely populated street in Buffalo that he had
loved.  The street itself had been made of brick, and
stretched from the park across town to the edge of the
Niagara River, which his house, one of the taller manses,
what with the skylight and tower, had overlooked.  The
street had been filled with large homes, set back from the
street, shaded by graceful trees.  And now, stark barren
streetlamps - he wasn't sure - stood over that confounded
expanse of gray.  He remembered that being the Cremshaw's
big square house.  And the street itself, more gray,
disappearing to the left in a clump of wild trees, beyond
which was an overgrown and wild looking drop to some train
tracks, and beyond that was the Niagara.  Blue and calming,
he had always loved the water, and remembered when the red
brick street had gone right down to the ferry launch at the
river's edge.  The train tracks had always carried the New
York Central line from Buffalo to Niagara Falls, and he
remembered getting off at the Ferry St stop at 5:15 every
day, seeing the Cremshaws on their porch, coming to the his
house, being let in by the housekeeper, being told "Good
Evening Mr. . . Mr. . . ." Damnit!  He had to find that
letter!
     The man swore out loud, although no sound came out.  He
hadn't successfully spoken yet, instead producing the sound
of sandpaper on concrete.  He still felt dry and fragile,
and knew he needed to find some water.  Nothing was on in
the house, and his foray into the bathroom had shown that
the water had been off for years.  He'd also tried both the
gas lights and the archaic electrical system that he vaguely
remembered of, and found that they, too, had been shut off.
     He kicked the remains of the shutters under the remains
of a chair and walked right up to the window.  Where would
he have hidden it?  The man had a vague sense that in life
an inappropriate term given that he still had life, or so he
thought, he wasn't sure - he had been very clever.  Would he
have accounted for things rotting like this?  Would he have
known to put a letter in a more secure spot than a drawer?
The man desperately hoped so, and felt the beginnings of
panic start to squelch his otherwise elated mood.
     He turned and ran out of the bedroom into the cavernous
hallway.  It was large and wide, and a wide, square, heavily
ornamented staircase corkscrewed up against the opposite
wall.  The space left inside the turning stairs provided a
view up to the smudged and broken skylight that sat high up
on the roof.  The man vaguely remembered the space being
shaped differently, and thought possibly that there had been
a stained glass window in the ceiling below the skylight.
     He looked down through the middle of the stairs as he
descended them, and found that he was right.  The shards of
colored glass lay on the inlaid and water stained floor of
the entrance hall on the first storey.  Surely, if he'd been
so clever, he would also have accounted for the house
falling apart?  The man stopped in the middle of the
entrance hall and thought for a moment.  As blackened and
wet as the rest of the house, the room was of wide
proportions and generous height.  A low hanging tarnished
chandelier with six arms hung from an elaborated beamed
ceiling, although two of the beams had rotted and crashed to
the floor, destroying the delicate serpentine furniture and
marble topped tables that had been arranged around the room,
out of the way of the sweeping base of the stairs.  One of
the beams had even made a substantial hole in the floor,
around which squishy wood showed that the floor had been
long fragile before the beam came down.  The man looked
through the hole and pondered.  The basement?  Surely that
room had been wet even during his life, would he have
stashed it down there?  It was one of the few places in the
house he hadn't looked.  He turned to find the basement
stairs, when something suddenly occurred to him.
     Seized with a sudden burst of fortitude, the man
grabbed the beam that still stuck out of the floor, and
shoved it away from the opening.  The cracked remains of the
marble top of the table managed to shift and before the man
could catch them, fell though the hole in the floor and hit
below.  He grumbled, the last thing he needed were things
making the unstable house less stable, and he distinctly
heard wood crack - wood?  The basement floor was all stone
flags, as he remembered.  He looked through the hole again
and saw almost nothing, but couldn't imagine what had
happened.  Weighing his options, he took a dry breath with
his dusty lungs and jumped through the hole in the floor.

***********************************************************

     Jason turned around.  He'd been doing that all morning,
and didn't really know what else to do.  He'd been walking
up and down the length of Montgomery Avenue all morning, and
most of the afternoon now, but without his wallet he
couldn't stop at a restaurant, and the booksellers refused
admittance without a shirt - his sweatshirt didn't count
he'd tried.  What a fucking Saturday.  He'd thought about
trudging the blocks back to his house, but walking up and
down a street seemed like less torture.  He was nearly to
the traffic circle for the second time, and figured this was
a waste of time.  The park was going to be open until the
sun set, so he may as well go rest his feet for a while.
     Half an hour later he got to the circle and turned left
through the massive gates, and was deciding where would be
the best place to sit and possibly watch some of the girls
going by when he heard his name.  Instinctively, he ducked
his head and looked round - fuck - they found him - how the
hell - oh.  It was a Jeep approaching him, not his parent's
sensible little Acura.  And in the Jeep were three guys that
Jason was insanely pleased to see.
     Trevor was driving the thing in his responsible way,
although Sean was sticking his arms out the window to get
Jason's attention.  He saw Dave Pellegrino in the back seat
too, and laughed, waving to them as they pulled to a halt
along the winding road that led into Capetown Park.
     "Hey Jase - what're you doing?!"  Sean was still wildly
waving his arms around, although grinning like a madman.
Trevor was usually more restrained than Sean, and sat in the
driver's seat, obviously unhappy at idling so much gas away,
but still happy at having found Jason.  Dave was Dave, and
that was enough said.  The kid was crazy.
     "Hey - nothing much. I've been hanging out in fucking
town all day; it sucks.  What are you guys doing here?!"
     "Dude - we've been calling you all day - your mom kept
saying you didn't want to talk to us."
     "Wha -"
     "Yeah, so we stopped by your house just now and she
said you'd been on the strip all day.  Dude - you remember
Greg's party is tonight, right?  We came to pick you up."
Jason immediately remembered the plans he had made the day
he had fainted in Music Theory.  He slapped his forehead,
and smiled at his friends.
      "Oh yeah, oh yeah I'm going.  C'mon, gimme a ride
Trev."
     "Sure thing", Trevor said, happy to be on the road
again.  Jason, smiling genuinely for the first time that
day, went and jumped into the back of the Jeep, and they
were off.  Trevor had to spend a minute driving around the
park to get back to the main gate on the one-car road.
     "Hey Jason, how're you", said Dave, grinning at Jason.
     "Hey, I'm fine man.  What's up with you?"
     "Nothing much.  I'm stoked about this fucking party."
Jason laughed; Dave was the kind of kid that got "stoked" if
he passed a urine test.  He was still grinning at Jason in a
way that used to unnerve him, before Jason realized that was
the whole point of Dave's existence.  Nowadays, he ignored
it and played along with the crazy, but funny, kid.
     "That's awesome man.  So where's Greg live?"
     "Up in that Garden Acres shit", Trevor said.  "You know
all those new, fucking huge houses that look over the lake?
His parents are gone and he's got the whole fucking place."
Trevor smiled, and added, "We're getting wasted" with a
glint in his eye.  He may have played by the rules, but he
knew how to break them too.
     "Hey Jase - you want to go home and get changed?"  Sean
had been smiling into the wind of the open Jeep but now
smiled at Jason in the rear view mirror.
     "Oh yeah", Jason said.  "That'd be fine.  I'm not that
much bigger than you - anything you've got that's baggy
should fit me okay -"
     "No, Jase", Sean said, looking confused, "I meant your
home.  You want to go get out of your sweats?"  Jason
immediately smiled to cover his natural reaction.  No, he
didn't want to go back -
     "No, that's actually okay.  My parents aren't home
anyway."
     "Umm . . . but yeah they are.  We were just there",
Sean said.
     "Oh, yeah, but . . . I know they're going out tonight,
and I think they said they'd be gone around six."
     "It's five", Trevor said.
    "Oh.  Yeah, but they're probably getting ready, and I
don't want to disturb them."
    "It's not disturbing them to run in and get a shirt",
Dave countered.
     "Right, but then I'd have to stop and talk, and I just
want to get going.  Besides, I was supposed to be at
Meghan's at five anyway, because her parents had their
anniversary yesterday."
     "Didn't you go over there last night?" Sean asked.
     "Um . . . yeah, but I forgot their present."
     "Wouldn't that be at your house?" Trevor asked, looking
quizzically into the rear view mirror.
     Jason was silent for a moment. "No."
     "Yeah"
     "No"
     "Yeah"
     "No"
     "Yeah"
     "Yeah"
     "No"
     "Exactly", Jason said triumphantly.  "So I don't need
to go home."  Jason smiled his carefree smile into the
rearview mirror back at Trevor, who shook his head.  Sean
gave Trevor a let-it-go kind of wave-off, and Dave stared at
Jason for a minute, before bursting into laughter.
     "Dude", Dave said, "You fucking rock!"