@absentpublic asked: i can only observe , & it can be … frustrating to watch . / THE DEVIL IN ME: still accepting.
He is eleven, and he is eating his morning cereal before school. Mom and dad are already at each other's throats. He's not watching television despite it being on, but watching a fizzled out speck on the screen, the place where a pixel has given up on taking on any sort of technicolor. His mom's crying. Swearing. Dad beats her until her nose bleeds, and he leaves the RV just as mom's hip rams into the table and spills his sugar-bomb excuse of a meal everywhere. Oops. He keeps watching that pixel. Mom begins blaming everything -- the weather, the state of the economy, the fact that George W. Bush won the presidential candidacy, her busted lip on him. He only observes. That pixel will never come back. He only observes that speck as he's throttled into the window, biting so hard on his tongue, Cinnamon Toast Crunch tastes like iron. He only observes.
Driver looks at her then to his hands. It's late, and the animal shelter she volunteers at has shut for the night with the small whines of abandoned puppies. He comes here again because, down the street, the diner he likes was serving apple pie à la mode. He looks at her and knows that slouch to her shoulder as something he might have worn some time ago. "You can look somewhere else," he says, soft. Matter-of-fact. A television pixel, maybe. "You don't have to watch."
