Dragons Games Chap 10-5 out of 5

2600 words. Biggest moments here, needs to be done right. 

And she did. For about thirty seconds she spoke, and Jim stood still throughout the whole thing, his expression shifting from concern to horror with each word she said, until she closed her chops with a sigh.

Thirty seconds. That was all it took to change it, for everything to make a kind of disturbed sense, his mind filling in the blanks that had been left open all this time. Thirty seconds.

He turned around, and when he started to walk she tried to stop him, but he shoved her back, the sound of the club’s cheers dying out, replaced with a sort of white noise as he made his way backstage, through the fire exit and into the dark.

His legs took him somewhere but, but his mind was elsewhere. He wanted to deny it all, that none of what she’d said had been true, but the facts were there, and the underlying suspicion he’d felt over the past few weeks only confirmed her words. And yet like what had happened after the finals, his mind simply didn’t want to process what was right there in front of him just yet, and he moved along as though in a trance, like he wasn’t really all there.

The cold nipped at his exposed skin, Jim still wearing his costume as he wandered out of the campus, and that was all he could feel – a coldness, spreading through his body like a disease. He saw no one, and that was a good thing, there was only one person he wanted to talk to right now.

He could almost see himself walking through the streets, like some kind of out-of-body experience as his mind tried to get itself together, while his body took him somewhere. Where that was he didn’t have to guess, the familiar silhouette of his house soon standing out against the night sky. He walked up the rocky driveway to find all the lights were off, and the front door locked.

He brushed his pockets with his hand, but he found it was empty. Of course, his spare key was back with the rest of his belongings in the drama hall. It didn’t matter, nothing really did as he took a seat on the front step, clutching his knees to his chest as he waited.

How long he’d sat there he couldn’t be sure, nor did he find himself caring much, but it didn’t feel all that long until headlights washed over the garage door, a car pulling up the incline. When the car switched off, two people got out, giggling and whispering to each other as a woman walked round the hood of the car from the passenger side, into the waiting arms of Jim’s father.

“Hang on, hang on!” his father chuckled, the woman reluctantly pulling away with a smirk. Jim had never heard his father sound so… excited before, it was disgusting. “Let’s get indoors first.”

“You weren’t thinking like that back at the game,” the woman replied, taking his hand in hers when father locked the car with a click. “Can’t say I’ve ever been chatted up at a footy game before. You pick up a lot of women during sports?”

“Only the good-looking ones,” father replied, the woman giggling like any laughing drunk would, Jim could smell the alcohol on her breath even from here.

“Ah, Jim?” father asked when they got closer, stopping a few feet from the porch. Jim had been sitting in the shadow of the overhanging roof, and only now did they notice him. “What happened to you? I couldn’t find you after the game.”

“Busy,” Jim answered. He gestured at the woman. “Who’s this?”

“Meet Marla, she was at the game.”

Marla looked well into her forties, the bright red lipstick doing little to hide her age. She wore a black jersey a few sizes too small for her, Mythics plastered onto the front in white letters. She had one hand on her bag, while the other was locked with his father’s, though her grip on him softened just a little as she looked Jim over. “You didn’t tell me you had a son,” she whispered to him.

“He doesn’t tell a lot of things,” Jim answered. “So how much did he pay you to come home with him?”

“What did you just say?” Marla snapped, her face going redder than her lips. His father stepped in front of her, his brow furrowing as he raised a finger.

“You don’t talk like that to friends,” his father chided. “What is the matter with you?”

“Me? What’s the matter with ME?” Jim growled. “You know what’s the matter! You know! This whole fucking time you KNEW.”

“Ah…”

Jim had never cursed at him, never had the courage nor a reason to, but something inside him had just snapped, and yet all he had to say was ‘Ah’?

“She told you, I’m guessing?” his father asked, nodding when Jim just scowled at him. “You weren’t supposed to find out from her, but I suppose it doesn’t really surprise me. There was always a chance.”

“And how was I supposed to found out, from you? How long were you planning on waiting?”

“I would have told you eventually, a few years if all went well, which it appears to have, barring the finals of course. Want to tell me what happened back there?”

“Oh we’re not changing the subject, dad,” Jim snapped. “How could… how could you do this to me?”

“Don’t start that, I haven’t done a thing to harm you. On the contrary, I did something any father would have in my position.”

“You paid her to fuck me!” Jim yelled, his voice wavering. Saying it out loud, with his own voice, it just made him want to lay down and curl up into a ball.

“I paid her to help you,” his father answered, as collected as he’d ever seen him. “Whatever you two developed in your own time was just a side benefit. I had nothing to do with that, you’ve only got your own impulses to blame.”

“Shut up! You had everything to do with it!”

“No, I didn’t,” father insisted. He sighed, as though he’d just been asked to do some menial task. “Do I have to explain myself in front of Marla here? Can this not wait till tomorrow?”

“Maybe I should go…” Marla said, but father shot her a stern look.

“Just a second, hun, this won’t take long.”

He was acting so casual, treating it like it was some minor thing he’d quickly deal with, it made Jim’s hands tremble as he tightened his fingers into fists.

“You needed help,” father continued, turning back and facing him, gesturing with his arms as though making an argument to a jury. “More than I could ever give you. That broad you were seeing left you in a state, don’t you remember? The sobbing, I couldn’t stand it, and neither could your grades. Would have had to renew your school fees if you couldn’t get your shit together, and if you wouldn’t start picking yourself up, I would. Hence the Garchomp.”

“That’s… that’s why she wanted to study? I… I…”

It made sense, and it also made him feel sick, bile building in the back of his throat as the weight of the realisation came crashing down on his head. He’d thought she just wanted to spend time with him…

“Then there was the whole getting you prepped for the game. We both saw how comfy you were getting around that drama club, didn’t want you losing focus on the big picture. So I had her remind you.”

“That’s why? That’s why she was acting so weird? You… You told her to say those things?”

“Clearly she wasn’t stern enough after what you did tonight,” his father replied. Jim drove his palm into his forehead, light-headedness washing over him as his father drove the proverbial knife deeper.

“H-How much?” Jim asked, not wanting to know but asking anyway.

“Depends on how you look at it,” father said. “Her family came into town looking for a place to buy, and they find one of my ads. Imagine my surprise when I see he’s got a lovely young daughter about my own son’s age, and who’s academically gifted too? Two birds, one stone, I thought. So I cut a deal on the property, I lose value on the sale, but they get a place to live, and their daughter helps my boy pick up the slack.”

“You’re… you’re sick,” Jim spat. “You’re fucking sick!

“Don’t be so dramatic. Her parents weren’t nearly as this bad, and they handed off their own daughter. She even agreed to it in person.”

Was that why her parents had come off as so strange? How could he blame them? He’d sat in their house, ate their food, fucked in Cassidy’s bedroom, oblivious to everything that was going on. No wonder his father had been a against the whole dinner idea, no wonder Cassidy had when he first mentioned it.

“She said you were acting like a nervous wreck when she met you, so I encouraged her to take the first step. Then look where you ended up!” his father added. “Bounced right out of that state Lara left you in, things were looking good. But, now I see you’ve thrown the towel in with the finals.”

“She… she came up to me because of you?”

He’d thought he’d been charming, that Cassidy must have seen something in him that she liked, but that had all been a farce. All a lie, every single word she’d said was a lie.

“Of course,” his father answered. “It’s not like you would have done anything.”

He wilted. He had held his father in such high regard, because he was the only family he ever knew, and now it was out there: his father didn’t think him capable of even talking to a girl. And what hurt the most, was that he was right.

He snapped, the last mental barriers coming down as tears welled in his eyes. Nothing about this was right, his father was supposed to look out for him, not lie to his face about hiring a whore to fuck him and help him with his studies.

“And what do you know about love?! Or partners, or anything like that?!” Jim shouted, coming over and jamming his finger in father’s chest. “All you care about is making sales, and the end result! My whole life you’ve never once given me attention unless I could make it worthwhile to you. That’s why you’ve been so interested now, isn’t it? The sponsors?”

His father weathered the barrage, his expression hard, neutral. It only made Jim more furious.

“Remember how you hired tutors for me back in primary school? You hired them because you couldn’t be fucked when I kept asking you for help! You always got this annoyed look on your face, and all these years, allthese years you’ve been keeping me at a distance, because you don’t know how to care, do you? That’s why mom fucking killed herself, because you could never just stop and give her the time of day, you never thought to-”

Jim’s words cut off as he recoiled, white-hot pain exploding through the side of his face. His father had never hit him, not once, not even when he was a troublemaking little toddler

“Don’t you ever, talk about your mother like that,” father said, Jim glaring up at him as he wiped at the corner of his mouth. “I’ve given you everything, Jim! And this is how you repay me? You little shit, you screw up your one chance for a sponsorship, and I’mthe one who’s at fault here? Should I have paid for two girls, would that have helped you to not be a fuckup?”

Jim lashed out, lunging forward and wrapping his hands around his father’s waist, sending them both crashing to the pavement. Father landed on his back with a sickening thump, Jim planting his weight on top of him as he struck at his father’s bearded face.

He caught Jim’s fist in his palm, but not the other one, the young man driving his fist into his father’s face, his knuckles crunching something that felt like bone. Tears streaming down his cheeks, Jim rose his hand again.

“Oh my god! Stop! Stop it!” Marla gasped. She tried grabbing one of Jim’s hands, but he shoved her back, the woman tripping over her own feet, landing on the grass nearby as she watched on in horror.

His father took the moment to jab Jim in the ribs, the young man gasping as the blow caught him unawares. Father shoved him aside with a grunt of effort, Jim’s shoulder denting the side of the car as he lost his balance, the metal still warm.

His parent staggered to his feet, but he clutched the small of his back as he did, staying on one knee for a few moments. He was stronger than Jim by a mile, but he was also much older, and Jim wasn’t about to let that go to waste.

He planted his boot in father’s side, the old man going down hard, his teeth bared in a snarl as he collapsed. Jim was on him before he’d even hit the ground, scraping his knees against the driveway as he straddled his father.

He brought his right hand into the air and brought it down as hard as he could, his father’s head snapping to the left as he struck him on the chin. Jim raised his arm again, and lamped his father on the nose. A stream of blood started to drip out of one of his father’s nostrils, another appearing on his lip as he hit him a third time.

Jim could just make out his father’s face through his blurred vision, his face contorting as he cried with sheer anger, punching him again, and once more, taking his father by the collar with his free hand. One of Jim’s tears fell from his face, landing on the line of blood forming from his father’s nose, the liquid diluting.

“Why did you do this?” Jim sobbed, his fist raised threateningly. His father wasn’t trying to defend himself now, too dazed to even get his hands up. “Why?!”

“F-For you,” his father murmured, leaning back and closing his eyes as pain shot up through his body. “I did it for you.”

The fight, the frustration that had been broiling up throughout the night, it all drained away at that, Jim’s body deflating as he sat back, his fist relaxing, a look of horror on his face when he realised the state his parent was in.

He crawled off him, clutching his head in his hands, leaving bloody fingerprints on his temple as he heaved up tears. It was only until he sensed movement that he looked up once more, seeing that Marla was moving towards his father, who was sprawled on his left, laying very still. The woman watched him like she was afraid he might lash out at her.

“What have you done?” she gasped, taking father by the chin and examining him. He was asking himself the same thing. “I’m calling the cops.”

Jim managed to drag himself to his feet, only half-hearing Marla as she spoke on the phone to someone. A car drove down the road beyond the property fence, and just before he disappeared out into the night, he heard his name being called. It was faint, nothing more than a whisper, but there all the same.

He didn’t look back, even as his father called out to him a second time.