Erik

[Lai]

A story I wrote for a fiction writing contest. It was threatening to go over the word limit, so I had to cut down on details, as you'll see if anyone takes the time to read it. I think it's a pretty good story, personally. One of the few things I've written that I'm proud of.

With each smack, Erik’s cheek grew redder and redder. With no motive, it was impossible for him to learn his lesson. The only clues he had were the swears being thrown at him. Erik knew by now that if he cried it would just make matters worse. There was no explanation as to why, but he also knew better than to ask.

Through his puffed cheeks, Erik could see a woman several feet away, sitting on the sofa with her face in her hands. Seeing her sad just made Erik angrier. It made him want to just scream out, “Stop it already!” but he knew that would make it worse, as well.

Erik was a four-year-old boy living in the suburbs of New York with his mother and father. His father worked on an assembly line for the Ford auto company, and barely made enough money to support the family. His mother worked in a doctor’s office at the front desk. She was one of the nice ladies that greeted people, answered the phones, and wore scrubs all the time. She never made a great deal of money either, but her salary added to her husband’s was enough to get by. Unfortunately, she never saw much of her paycheck.

Allan had never been much of a family man. When he was a child, his father used to beat him. History has a way of repeating itself. Allan was fathering his child the only way he knew how; the only way he had ever been shown. Every slip-up his four-year-old son made resulted in strict punishment. It was the only way he knew.

Of course, nothing Erik ever did could warrant such abuse as this. For drawing in one of his father’s books, a good yelling and an early bedtime would make sense. For fussing over dinner, a good talking-to might seem all right. But nothing could possibly warrant constant physical abuse for such minor trifles.

When Allan felt like Erik had learned his lesson for asking why Daddy yells at Mommy all the time, he picked him up by the wrist and brought him into his room. Erik was tossed onto his bed and told not to get up until he was dragged up. Five hours passed before Victoria came into the room to fetch Erik.

In those five hours, Erik had tried to stifle his crying so that his father would not come back into the room. Sometimes Allan would stand outside of his room to make sure that he did not start crying again. If he did, Erik was smacked twice as hard for twice as long. It was a wonder that Erik did not sustain any permanent damage. Though he always left with a bruised face, Erik managed to always come out of the beatings in tact.

Whenever he would ask his mother why Daddy hated him so much, Victoria always told him not to question it, as it would only make matters worse. How can someone possibly tell a four-year-old boy that his father has a mental disorder that causes him to lash out violently at his family? How is a boy to understand that?

Erik being enrolled in elementary school was very beneficial to him, as it would take time away from being with his father, but it also meant that there were more chances for Allan to take out his rage on his son. Sadly, Allan got many of those chances.

On the very first day of first grade, Erik belched in the middle of the classroom, and was scolded by his teacher. He flinched and cowered, thinking she was going to raise her hand to him. Upon seeing this, Ms. Flinch was terrified at what she did to the boy. She thought she had threatened him unknowingly, and spent an hour trying to console him and telling him that she was not going to touch him.

Allan received a phone call that night during dinner from Erik’s teacher. She told him what had happened during class, and Allan told her that it was nothing to worry about. He told her that Erik had taken a liking to a more violent array of cartoons, and was now accustomed to physical contact along with vocal oppression. Ms. Flinch apologized for the interruption and hung up. Allan reached across the table, smacked Erik for burping in class, and sat back down to finish his dinner. After the meal, Erik was thrown back into his room for the rest of the night. The next day in school, Erik had no homework to hand in and got in trouble for it. When his father found out, he once again punished Erik. Every time Erik tried to tell him that he didn’t have the homework because he was locked in his room, he would get hit again.

First grade, second grade, and third grade all passed in the same fashion. Erik would get punished without access to his schoolbooks; he would miss the assignment, and then get punished again. In fourth grade, Erik finally learned to just keep his schoolbooks in his room. His father then punished him for trying to do his homework in secrecy, where his parents could not watch over him.

The rest of his grade school days went accordingly, and when Erik advanced to middle school, he began to decide to take a stand against his father. Of course he was no match for his father in terms of physical strength, but Erik began to wonder how his father would beat him if he had no reason to be beaten.

Erik worked hard the whole way through middle school. Every now and then he would slip up, but nothing ever too serious. His father, however, still found this grounds to beat him. Now that Erik was bigger, that meant that he could just withstand more pain. More pain meant more bruises, and more bruises meant more explanations to other people. It had begun to get harder and harder for Erik to come up with lies as to how he got all these black eyes and swollen cheeks. The administration had begun to think that Erik was a violent person who would get into fights, and his peers reused to get involved with him in fear of getting into a fight.

Without a social life, Erik had plenty of time to return the favor of his father’s cruelness. Erik would spend every night doing nothing but studying. He was biding his time until he was able to get back at his cruel father. Revenge would be sweet, and Erik had no intentions of letting anything get in his way.

Erik enrolled in high school, knowing that every day and every class mattered. From English class in freshman year up until calculus senior year, he had to receive full marks in order to truly get back at his terrible father. High school never comes easy to anyone, but it was not as if Erik had any other time for much else. People still avoided him, and he still had plenty of time for studying.

Now that Erik was in high school, Allan considered him to be a man. Being a man meant being able to fight back and defend yourself. Allan feared his son’s revolt, and just beat his son twice as hard from then on for even thinking about striking back. Erik had not planned on ever getting physical with his father, but one night he found himself falling over the edge. That moment was when everything started to fall into place.

“Get your ****ing hands off of her!” Erik yelled at his father, begging him to stop hitting his mother. Apparently Allan had had an unnerving day at the factory, and was in no mood for his wife’s pestering. Victoria had asked her husband very quietly and shamefully during dinner if she would be allowed to keep her paycheck the following week to spend it on clothing and jewelry. Allan yelled at her, called her an ungrateful wench, and began to slap her face.

“What’s the matter? I don’t provide enough for you? I don’t get you enough with the money that I make? I take away your paychecks because if I didn’t you would spend it all on shallow things like fancy clothing and jewelry,” Allan shouted.

“Like buying alcohol to fuse your rage is anything better?” Victoria tried to get in between hits to the face. She tried to fight back, but the more struggle she put up, the tougher the fight got. Working an assembly line for an auto company is enough to build up the muscles, much to Erik and Victoria’s misfortune.

Eventually Erik had enough, and shouted at his father. When his father did nothing but look at him and tell him to wait his turn, Erik could take no more. He jumped the dinner table over to his father and threw a punch with as much force as he could at Allan’s kidney. Unfortunately, it was not enough, and Allan took one swing at Erik’s head, knocking his face into the table.

With a broken nose and blood all over the ground, Erik found it very hard to get back up. Allan released his wife and walked over to his blood-covered son. He picked him up by the scruff of the neck and led another vocal assault at him.

“I support you with everything, and this is how you repay me? I give you food, shelter, and place to study, and you repay me by punching me when my back is turned?”

Erik found it unbearably hard to even talk back to his father with blood and tears covering his face. Allan dropped Erik back into the pool of blood, leaving him to “clean up that mess.” He walked out the front door and slammed it hut behind him.

Finally finding the strength to pick himself up off of the floor, Erik went to the bathroom to get enough toilet paper to stuff into his nose. When he walked back into the kitchen, Victoria grabbed the keys off of the counter and told him to get in the car. They needed to get him to a hospital.

The car ride was a very difficult one for the both of them. They had never had this chance to speak alone before, and Erik had so many questions he wanted answered.

“Mom, why does he do these things? I don’t understand why he’s such a violent man.”

“Erik…I’m sorry for putting you through this. I want nothing more than to get out of this house with you, but we can’t”

“Why not, Mom? We’re already on the road. We have his car.”

“This car is legally stolen. Both of our cars are under his name. All he would need to do is call the police.”

“So why can’t we run instead? We can go on foot in the middle of the night. Come on, Mom. We need to get out of the house.”

“Honey, I’ve thought and thought. There’s nothing we can do. He’ll find us no matter where we go. There’s nothing we can do.”

After a period of silence, Erik decided to talk again. He said the only words that had been repeated a million times a day in his mind. “I hate him.”

Tears began to swell up in Victoria’s eyes. “I know you do, hon. I know you do.”

“Why do you let him treat you like that? Why would you have married him if you knew he was this violent?”

“He wasn’t always like this, Erik. He used to be a sweet man, but as soon as you learned to walk, all of a sudden he changed. I’m scared, Erik. I want this to end. I want him to go back.”

After a long period of quiet deliberation, Erik decided to tell his mother about his plans. Maybe she would even get in on it. It would end up being easier that way. “Mom…I am going to get back at Allan for the way he treats us. I am going to get back at him for being such a horrible person and such a terrible father.”

A look of horror came across Victoria’s face as her foot twitched on the breaks. “What are you planning on doing?”

“I’m not going to touch him. That would give him too much of a reason for him to hit me again.” Erik switched the tissue over his nose. Erik had never taken the time to realize just what a beautiful mother he had.

Victoria’s skin wasn’t very tan, but it seemed to just add to her charisma. She had bright red locks atop her head, seeming orange in the lamplight. Her lips were full and a deep red that hardly needed lipstick. Though Victoria was never scrawny or very large, she always seemed to be surprisingly thin while giving the air of having enough substance to her that she would probably be heaven to hold at night. Unfortunately, that heaven was wasted on a man such as Allan.

Erik took after his mother very closely, with the exception of the black hair that he got from his father. He was a slim boy, but well rounded from all of the beatings he had endured. His body had no choice but to develop its own natural defense against the beatings, and Erik aided it along by working out in his room in between his studies. He barely stood 5’6” but he had a thick neck, which showed a lot of promise for a fifteen-year-old.

“I’m going to get back at Allan by using my head. Something he’s clearly incapable of doing.”

Victoria seemed completely unsure as to what that meant. “What are you talking about?”

Erik had never really put into words his thoughts. Every time he ran over his plan, he did so in his head. It was not a very complex plan, but every time he ran through it, he was happy with its utter simplicity and almost non-existent error ratio. “Well, it goes a little something like that. If I get physical with him, he’s just going to hurt me, as I said before. He’s a lot bigger than me. So instead, I’m going to get back at him by just being better than him. He won’t be able to stand it.” Victoria still looked slightly confused.

“I’m going to go through high school and study as much as possible so I can get into a really good college. There’s a good chance Allan’s not going to want to pay for it, so I’m going to have to get myself a job as well. Once I have all that in line, I’ll get myself into college, study as much as possible, and receive top marks. Once I have that going for me, I’ll be able to live on my own. Once I do that, I can stop relying on Allan to pay my way.”

“I wish you would stop calling him Allan, Erik. He is still your father.” Victoria seemed to doubt the words as they were leaving her lips.

“No father in his right mind would treat his family like this. Allan is not fit to be a father, and so I refuse to call him one.” His mother seemed to regrettably understand.

“I still don’t really understand why you’re calling it a plan. What you’re ‘planning’ is just what everyone does at one point in their lives. How is that any different?” Victoria questioned.

“Most people also support their families, don’t they? Once their parents are retired and can no longer work, the child usually helps support them. Maybe help get them into a home, or let their parents live with them. I have no intentions of doing that with Allan.”

“And you call that revenge?” Victoria asked, almost mockingly. “That sounds like you’ve barely planned anything out.”

“Most people die one day. When they do, they would like their family to be there. When Allan dies, I will be nowhere in sight. I’ll be the one who calls up the hospital and tells them to pull the plug.”

Victoria seemed appalled at the notion. “How can you say such a thing? He is your father! How can you have that on your conscience?”

“I’ve told you before, Mom. Allan is no father of mine.”

The pair reached the hospital and Erik was taken to a room. When the nurse asked what had happened, he told her that he was biking in the road when a car cut him off. He told her that he had swerved and had fallen, landing straight on his face. It was seemingly believable enough, as she did not question it. After Erik’s face was taken care of, they let him go back with his mother.

The next day in school, everyone saw the bandage on Erik’s face, but all the other students neglected to ask about it. The teachers had heard about his alleged fight record from middle school, so they all associated it with those. One girl, however, was different. Sitting in math class, Erik’s nose started to pound. He tried to find condolence in rubbing it when a girl passed him a note asking what had really happened.

Erik knew this girl. Her name was Amy Beckenson and she was one of those girls that nobody ever really notices. That was all Erik knew, as the girl never really made a name for herself. He mulled over the note for several minutes wondering why this girl was asking all of a sudden. They had been in the same math class since seventh grade, and his face was always covered in bruises. So why all of a sudden the interest?

Erik was not one of those mysterious dramatic students, and he was not about to pretend to be. He was not going to answer the note with a “Why do you care?” or a “You wouldn’t understand…” However, he was not sure how this girl would react. Eventually, with only a couple minutes left in the period, he decided to write back “If you’re really interested, meet me out in the hall after class, and I’ll explain it there.”

Sure enough, after class, Amy was waiting there for Erik to arrive. They agreed to walk to lunch together as Erik explained. He of course could not come off too strong, in case she really did not care, or if she severely overreacted. He began by telling her that he and his dad wrestled every once in a while, and it got a little rough sometimes.

“That doesn’t look like a wrestling bruise, Erik. Usually, wrestlers don’t go for the face. That’s boxing,” she said skeptically.

“Boxing, wrestling, same thing.” Erik was trying not to give her too much information. She looked at him with a face of disbelief, and he did not know what else to do. “Alright, if I tell you, will you promise to keep it to yourself? I’m already getting it taken care of.” Amy nodded. “My dad…drinks sometimes. And when he drinks, he can get kind of angry.”

A look of shock came across Amy’s face. She moved her hand to cover her opened mouth and her blue eyes opened wide. “Your dad did that to you on purpose?” she asked with a sound of worriment. Erik finished telling her about his situation, and continued on to tell her about what he planned on doing. She followed his every word on bated breath and agreed not to tell a soul.

Though it was their first time meeting, Erik had taken a liking to Amy. She was a very sweet girl and seemed to be very caring. She was not one of the ordinary high school girls who tried to flaunt their good looks or fool around with other boys. She was a very down to earth girl who seemed to have her head on tight. She was also a very pretty girl with short blonde hair, which Erik also liked.

From then until the end of high school, Erik and Amy were very good friends. They studied together, did homework together, and would sometimes spend free time together, when Allan allowed Erik to leave the house. Amy was always worried about what went on in Erik’s house, but he always told her not to worry too much, and that he had it taken care of.

Erik ended up towards the top of his class and Amy was not far behind him. Erik had gained a passion for learning about medicine while Amy became interested in marine biology. They agreed to apply to some of the same schools in hopes of furthering their education together, and were both ecstatic when they found out that they had both been accepted into Northwestern University.

College went smoothly enough for the two. Medicine and biology are not simple majors, but with all of the aid available, they both managed to graduate after four years. Erik went on to go to post-doctorate school, and eventually gained his PhD in medicine. Amy tried as hard as she could to stick with him every step of the way, and decided to get a job near New York so that she could spend as much time with Erik as possible.

Allan almost never got the chance to see Erik anymore, so the violence had eventually ceased. Erik still kept very close touch with his mother, calling her on the phone once a week, promising her each time that the end was almost there. She would always cry and tell him how proud of him she was, and it would only fuel Erik’s desire to succeed even more.

The time had come, just as Erik knew it would, when he would begin his own family. Much to their own expectancies, Erik and Amy had ended up marrying and starting their own family. Erik made a promise to Amy and himself that he would never be the way to his child his father was to him. Erik never laid a finger on his child his entire life, and their bond could not have been stronger. His son never had the chance to meet his grandfather.

The time came, as it always does, when Erik’s parents needed aid. Victoria begged Erik to care for his father. She cried on his shoulder, begged, and finally Erik agreed. One day, however, Allan’s liver had finally curled up and began eating its way out of his system. It was just one of the side effects alcohol has to offer.

Just as Erik had always hoped would happen, Allan found himself on his own deathbed not being able to support his own life anymore. Victoria knelt at his side, holding his hand, tears streaming down her face. Erik arrived with Amy and his four-year-old son Paul, just in time to hear the doctor deliver the news that Allan was merely hours away from death.

After exchanging looks with his mother, Erik left the rest of his family to go see his father. When he entered the room, he saw his father in the most pitiful form. What was left of his hair had gone completely white, and there were liver spots on his face. A tube was running through his nose, aiding his breathing. There were IVs in both of his arms, feeding him medicine. Erik pulled up a chair and had his final talk with his father.

“Who’s the weak one now, Allan? Now who’s the one suffering the pain?”

A terrible look of sadness and pain came across Allan’s face as he came face to face with fate. Everything had turned around since this boy’s childhood, and now Erik was the bigger man. “Why did you come visit me?” Allan struggled to release the words from his mouth. “After all that I’ve done to you?”

“As much as I detest admitting it, you are still my father. It wouldn’t be right for me to leave on your deathbed.” Erik was all grown up now. He had grown fuller and bigger than his father had ever expected. His black hair was neatly trimmed and parted on the top of his head and his face was covered in black stubble. He had grown to tower over his father in both height and muscle, and was twice the man Allan was in his adulthood.

“Please don’t call it a deathbed. It makes me feel weak.”

“Aren't you, though? You’re nothing but a weak man with a sad life whose fate came around to kick him in his ass when he was down. From the day I came into this world, all I’ve been served was misery from your hands. You’ve done nothing for this family and you should be ashamed to call yourself a father and a husband.”

Allan seemed to be contemplating everything he was told. Had they been able to, tears would have begun to come down his face. “Why did you support me this long? Why did you give your mother and I the money to afford to live in our own house?”

“No,” Erik said. “I gave Mom the money you never let her have. It was her choice to give it to you. She was a saint and you never treated her as one. The most you’ve given her was a black eye and a boot. You were lucky to have her stick by you for as long as you did.”

Allan kept his mouth shut in silent agreement. He had never realized until he got sick what a terrible father and husband he had been. “You never once raised your hand to me. You got bigger than I ever was, and you never came back to deliver to me the hand of God. Why?”

Erik’s voice was now filled with rage and belittlement. “Violence was your way. I would never raise my hand to another for as long as I live, so as not to be anything like you. I’m everything you could never be. I make money, I have a beautiful son now whom I will raise on my own the way you should have raised me. I’m delivering my revenge to you now. If you could say one more thing to me before you never saw me again, what would it be?”

Allan thought for several of his last minutes as to what he wanted. His dark eyes had almost lost all signs of life from them, and they wrinkled and dried as he decided on what he wanted to do. When he opened his mouth to give his son an answer, he was interrupted.

”You want to see your grandson, don’t you?”

Allan nodded. There was nothing he wanted more. Nothing Allan could do would possibly make up for the terrible past that he had given his son. All he could do was nod.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t allow that. I don’t want my boy to have any exposure to the likes of you. You haven’t seen him yet, and that’s not going to change. I’d apologize, but I wouldn’t mean it. It’s time for me to leave, Allan. Goodbye. I hope you’re happy with the way things turned out.”

Erik left the room and signalled to the nurse that it was ok to pull the plug whenever the time came.