Honest Men In Real Estate

Reflecting while punching walls.

   Sometimes, he would just sit there.
   The rain would whisper against the windowsill and the wind would whistle like a boiling teapot. The cat would purr from its perch on the fridge and the radio would be chattering away on political standpoints he had long forgotten about.
    Sometimes, he would just sit there, and he would do that for a terribly long time.
The chairs would creak with any sudden movement, the dishwasher would hum like rattling bones, and the kitchen would seem suddenly very lonely.
    At these times, he would throw his fist to a wall. The poorly constructed plaster would crumble within his knuckles, and he would watch as a hole would form in that tacky wallpaper. It would happen suddenly, a build-up of tension and stress that pushes him with such a force that he just has to let it out, somehow, by any means. It feels like gravity was pulling him into Earth's very core, and the pressure was hitting him at all sides, wrapping around his lungs without letting him just stand still.
   Stand still, and breathe.
   Whenever that happened, he would sit on a fold-out chair in his cramped kitchen, rapping his fingers against the surface of his cheap blue table, and hate himself. Everything, from the too-tight necktie that would strangle his beliefs every morning, and the pretentious, pristine black shoes that didn't seem to belong on a nobody such as himself. He was an honest man, he over-tipped at restaurants and never insulted an upset young lady. Even if he was still quite young, with a fresh face and white smile, even the self-absorbed of the world could see a flickering past in those grey eyes.
   He remembered when he saw his father die.
   He remembered it every time he brushed his teeth in the morning, or stared at his reflection in a puddle for too long, or saw the sly grin of the pretty girl in the window of the shop next door, the one with the red hair and even redder lips that is too afraid to talk to.
   In the movies he used to go see (he remembers going to the movies, too, back when they didn't make him nauseous) the child would have an innocent parent, murdered solely by circumstance.
   That was never the case for him. Father was a killer, and the entire family knew about it. His father would kiss him on the head, call him 'sport', then disappear for days and days at a time. Mother would talk nonsense about business trips, but he knew that when his father came back from a trip with wrinkles under his eyes and dried blood on his collar that this wasn't the trip other fathers took.
   One night his father told his mother and him to run. To run and never look back. He would look up from his coloring and open his mouth to ask 'why?', when the door would swing open and a man would enter. It was the gun he remembers the most, black, shiny and more toy than gun. His childish screams seemed to echo in his mind whenever he saw a little boy scamper across the street.
   Occasionally, when he sat in the kitchen, he felt like doing more than punching a wall.
   Now he was a real estate agent, trying to convince unsuspecting people that this house was perfect.
But it was all lies, all of it, and he hated lying. His father told him that honesty was key, even when the truth was wicked, and he went by that code with a hand on his heart.
   He was lonely. Never admitting it to himself, he would go to work, day after day, order a coffee, straight black, go home, read over the newspaper, listen to the radio, and then go to sleep.
   Sometimes, he would just sit there.
   Sometimes, he would stare at that hole in the wall, the blood from his knuckles dripping to the floor like pressure released from a ball.
   Sometimes, he'd wonder if would ever go farther than a hole in a wall, a broken slab in a kitchen.
   He never does.
   So he stands up, takes off his necktie, changes his shoes, and goes out to talk to that pretty girl in the shop window.

Author's Note

I've missed writing. So I buckled down and threw up this.

Reviews

[roarke]

Crap, you're insanely talented.

"But it was all lies, all of it, and he hated lying. His father told him that honesty was key, even when the truth was wicked, and he went by that code with a hand on his heart."

wish to heck I'd written that.
this is too good to even comment on. Your writing is growing, enriching, .... if you ever stop, I'm comin' lookin' for ya.