The door slammed shut. The home lay a mess. 9-year old Brian woke up as he always would, nothing to do with his day. Coming to the kitchen area, he opened the curtain to see if the window had been untaped. It had not. He moved on to see if this was one of the days where the woman had forgotten the cabinet open, as he did everyday. Ever since the incident, it hadn’t been, and the streak continued. The last time Brian had been able to get in there, he feasted, having barely eaten in days. He longed for that luxury of just a few biscuits and maybe a cracker. But no, he was left, with his two asleep and useless siblings. They were too small to torment him physically like the woman, but they indulged in his mental deterioration as they lay, screaming and crying for hours without an end in sight. He would always consider that they were hungry and that that was the reason behind their tantrums, but then again, so was he, and he did not do that to them. He hated them almost as much as the woman. 

She kept him from the outside. A few times the door would come loose and he could get a glimpse of the outside, of the sun. It was no more than that though, as the chain remained strapped, tight as ever on the handle. He had however, also seen kids like himself running around, laughing. They would play with rocks, throwing them at one another, or sometimes  rubbing sticks together and making the smokey red, in which they tossed leaves and more sticks. He would call out to them hoping to get involved. Frightened and unapologetically, they would just leave Brian there, with nothing else than the sight of the smokey red. Brian would remain there staring at it until the woman returned.

When she was present in the tiny room that passed as a house on wheels, she acted as if Brian or his two siblings didn’t exist. She would sit in her chair, and drink. Drink. Drink. Drink. She worshipped her bottles until she was finished with them. Once a bottle was of no more use, she would throw it at the wall, shattering it. She would then yell at Brian to clean it up and bring her another. After a few run-throughs on the night, Brian might on occasion refuse, but he seldom found the war that ensued to be worth the trouble, and so he listened. When the woman fell into her nightly drunken slumber, Brian would scrounge through her bag for any food that she had left over. He took all he could without raising suspicion and gave some to his siblings to make sure that they would shut up. Sometimes he took more than he should’ve, and another war transpired.

He was getting more knowledgeable about these wars, making sure to move and squirm around the small enclosure so that she could not make good contact with him. He did however, make sure to let her get a few hits off, because if she came away empty, she would get the brown, an old two by four, always hidden around the room, or placed too high for him to grab. It was these occasions that he hated the most. One time, he had hurt his arm so badly that he was taken outside of the home, and taken to a large building with many people inside. Here, some people they called “doctors” put a strange stiff item around his arm, which they called a “cast.” 

He loved the experience, not only because he got to see the outside, but because he saw how uncomfortable it made the woman. She couldn’t sit still in her chair. He considered it strange. Did she actually feel bad or care about what she did, or was it because she wanted to get him back into the dark home. When the doctors asked him what had happened, and the woman told them that he had fallen, he knew it would have to be the latter. He did not speak out however, because if he did, he knew the brown was waiting for him back home. 

A few months had passed at this point, and nothing had changed. On this day, the boys had left the smokey red for him outside. It had almost become a custom at this point because they pitied him, but were still too scared to approach. The woman came home with another woman, much older than her. She brought her into the house, and they sat on the couch with the two infants. The infants had been especially fussy, but the woman fed them immediately when arriving, and they had shut up. She had nothing for him though. The two talked for hours, and when it had gotten especially late, Brian noticed that they both had fallen asleep, but this time, the door was left unstrapped! Brian seized the opportunity. He slowly and stealthily opened it and moved outside. He was not too worried about the noise though, as both the women had been drinking all night and he knew they would likely not awake. The smokey red was still burning outside and he touched it. It hurt him badly.

This gave him an idea.

With the two women and infants inside, he brought several logs over to the mobile home. He hadn’t been outside in months, but his surroundings did not interest him at this time. He wanted revenge. He continued to pile more and more sticks into his pile. He was about to begin rubbing two together but he heard a noise coming from inside. He abandoned his task and immediately returned to his cell. The women were still asleep but one of the infants had fallen onto the floor. This gave Brian pause, should he save them before creating the smokey red? 

What had they ever done for him other than give him headaches and work to piss him off. They wouldn’t save him if they were in his position, they would just enjoy his demise. Brian chose to proceed. 

Before leaving, he remembered that the woman always kept the key to the chain in her pocket, so he took it, and chose to give her a taste of what it felt like to be stuck in the dark room.

Brian went to the wood, rubbed sticks together, and watched as the home was engulfed in smokey red. He heard the screams of the woman and her friend. He considered it ironic that the children would have to listen to screams as they feel the pain that he did. He felt absolutely no remorse for the woman’s friend either. Anybody that could speak with the woman and enjoy themselves instead of helping him would deserve the same fate as the woman.

Brian left the smokey red behind him, walked down the road that he remembered leads to the large building with the “doctors.” There, he would find the only people that had ever been nice or even cared for him.