Ch 005: Hell at Steve’s House

  Dear Jack,

  Today I’m going to get right into it. Let’s talk about Steve.

  We moved from downtown to out into the country, he had a few acres of land and some horses. He also had a dog named Socks, Socks was a really good boy. I never had too many interactions with a big dog before, and this was a good one.

  He helped keep the horses where they needed to be, and he was all black and white with longer hair. I don’t know what type of dog he was but he was super friendly.

  Inside the house which sat upon a large hill was a fish tank. It had two bedrooms and a bathroom, living room, and a big garage downstairs. Initially it seemed okay, there were a few new rules that he had. One was, if you drink a soda make sure to wash it out and leave it on the counter to be crushed.

  He had a big television in the living room across from the fish tank. Now the tank was really neat as well, there were all types of large creatures in there. Including the little sucker fish that clean the tank.

  My bedroom was about the same size as the one I had moved out of, and he told me I had to keep it clean and that I should make my bed every day.

  This was a change for me because my mom never cared about my room, our house, or the car. We usually lived in absolutely filthy conditions. She would only clean whenever we knew guests were coming over and she would still refuse to do the bathroom.

  Since I was old enough, a lot of the things she didn’t want to do got delegated to me. I did the dishes, cleaned the bathroom, swept, and occasionally cooked.

  Up to this point she had tried to cook meals for us but most of our food was frozen things and instant mashed potatoes. She used a lot of frozen dinners and frozen vegetables or canned things, there weren’t too many home cooked meals. When she started stripping she would make me a pot of something massive and say that was my food, and she would have her own food that I wasn’t supposed to eat.

  I was extremely tall, skinny, and the large portions of my diet were hot pockets and ramen noodles. I don’t remember much about my diet changing at Steve’s house, I think most of the time I just ate at school and had a little of whatever was at the house when I got home.

  My bed had been replaced by a futon at our previous home and I kept it folded up like a couch and used it as my computer chair.

  Steve didn’t let me leave the house and I was miles away from my friends. My phone had been taken after the whole situation with John a long time ago, so I felt really isolated. I would basically just play on the computer when I got home and the weekends. Sometimes my aunt Karry would come get me and she was a lot of fun, or my dad, or grandparents. In my mind the visits were few and far between at this time.

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  In short order Steve began getting more and more aggressive with his rules. Here’s a couple things that happened.

  First, it was extremely hot in the house so I cracked my window. He accused me of trying to escape and bolted it shut. I began to feel like Harry Potter at this point.

  I left a soda a few inches from where it should have been, or didn’t crush it, so he grabbed a thick chain and masterlock and locked the fridge.

  It was summer now, and I think my mom had paused being a stripper for the moment but she was gone during the day, and Steve was gone at work as well.

  I would be at the house alone and the fridge was literally padlocked shut. My window as well.

  Next he said I was on the computer too much, so he began shutting the router off when he left. Then; he changed the password and took away my internet cord. That was one of the final straws. You see, all I had was my online friends.

  That’s where I would talk to my friends from school on an old game called Tibia, I had an online girlfriend in a game called Ragnarok that I would chat with and talk to. I had forums where I would do photoshop jobs for people for money. I had a guild I was a part of on tibia where we would go fight people together and communicate over ventrillo.

  All of my social activity and all of my friends were in the internet since I had no way of contacting anyone otherwise.

  He began screaming at me at almost every interaction. He told me I was going to be a loser, he degraded me at every turn. He began shutting the power off to the house when he left and locking the breaker box. So I had no food, no internet, nobody to talk to, nothing. I couldn’t even crack the window at night for relief, I couldn’t tell my grandparents or my dad how bad it was getting. At this point he began taking The phone from the house when he left as wel.

  The phone he took was the old style ones where you pick it up and it has a cord attached to the base.

  One night when I was extremely frustrated and he had just gotten in my face, yelling, screaming and spitting at me, I was crying. It was bad, and my mom came in and she told me “All you have to do is follow the rules.” .

  Trust me, I never forgot those words.

  When I was at school I signed up for AOL and had a cd shipped to me, surprising but they were still around. They were a company who sent out disks to everyone in the mail trying to get them to use their service. They gave you 30 days of free internet. I began sneaking around and using the AOL CD and an extra cord when he wansnt around to stay in touch with my friends.

  When the thing expired I was out of luck, and I was about to do something drastic. I was contemplating two things, do I unalive myself or run away. My thoughts were on running away but I had no money. The other option didn’t seem bad either, I wanted this to end and my life was absolutely miserable. Get bullied at school, get bullied at home, get screamed at constantly and have my outside connections to the world cut off.

  So I sat there in the kitchen chair staring at a tomato and the phone with only the base. I was definitely going to smash his aquarium, it was gigantic and I knew that would piss him off. Next I was going to break into his locked bedroom and smash his PlayStation and all the televisions in the house. Then, I was going to run for it.

  As I sat there scheming, I picked up the tomato and felt it in my hand. Maybe I should just end it instead? My mind was 50/50. I could take a whole bottle of Tylenol, surely that would do something. I knew Steve had some prescriptions for his weird leg, I could take those too. For context, Steve walked with a huge limp, one leg was messed up from something and he couldn’t even walk a straight line.

  I held the tomato and something brilliant occurred to me, I could use it to make a phone call.

  I put the tomato on the receiver part of the phone, which pressed down the part you needed to make a speakerphone call. Then, I called Kristian. I talked to him for hours, I told him everything. He told me to keep fighting, and that summer was almost over. I nearly did something bad that day, but my friend, and that tomato, saved me.

  I had a huge grin on my face after we hung up. It doesn’t sound like much of a win, it doesn’t sound like something too significant, but to me… it felt like I had something that I wasn’t supposed to, and that idiot could take everything he wanted but at least I could make phone calls and stay in touch with my friends.

  Steve never got physically violent with me, and I thank my grandpa for that. He gave Steve the same old warning. “If you touch one hair on his head, I’ll kill you.”

  That sums up most of what happened at Steve’s house before my baby brother died. It might not sound bad on paper, but living through it was very hard for me and it drove me to a place that I have rarely ever been mentally. As I sat there crying myself to sleep as a 15 year old boy, I remember chanting to myself “In the end, all you have is yourself.”

  After that I moved in with my grandparents, and my time in high school truly begins. You’d think this was the hardest part of my life, but I assure you there’s more struggles yet to be had.

  With love,

  Izriel.