An Old Game

It was happening again.

His father, all silent, was standing in the crack of the doorway, not moving a muscle. And he, sitting caught on the bed, did not know what to say.

They had done this so many times now that he thought he would be used to the tactics of his old man. He thought that he might even be able to guess when exactly he would leap through the door and shout at him as if he were some sort of pest to be scared away.

But this felt different.

His father persisted at the door and did not budge for the longest time.

He shifted his weight on the bed and wondered about this. It was not a game that he knew any of his friends played with their parents. To be fair, he had never asked any of them if their fathers went out of their way to both terrify them and then humiliate them by complaining about all the other kids who were not scared by such a thing. “Your cousin…would never be scared…” “Your relative in…would not look away from…” No, no, this was a terror that only he could deal with.

And who were all those other people he mentioned? Thos cousins and relatives who were probably stuck in the old country and lucky enough to never have to play this game again? It would be many years later when he would discover that not only was his father married before he met his mother, but that he did have all of those relatives and half-siblings (no longer cousins) from another side of the family. And they would also turn out to be emotional wrecks. One ended up in jail and died while trying to recover from drugs; another went missing and never tried to contact the half-sister who was the only other relative left. She and he would get along well, especially when they both discovered that he had played the same game with both of them.

The old game…?

He had to think about that word as he dared to look to his left and see just how quickly the day passed. It was October, soon to be the end of Daylight Saving Time when it really got dark and cold. All he had on in the room was a lamp at his desk and that was for the homework he was about to do. He was excited about the project that the teacher assigned for the end of the week. They had to create their own game and present it to the class. His partner was the one who suggest a role-play based game, but he was the one who came up with a sort of Dungeons and Dragons scenario…set in another galaxy. It was not cheating if he used regular dice and did not have a list of skills that did not come from Gary Gygax’s world. And it was almost ready to go. He was just figuring out what the percentages would be for each attack or win. He had a lot of the numbers ready. He had been sitting on the bed, and…

His father now jumped.

He flinched back.

“Pathetic. So easy to scare, like you a mouse. Your relatives…”

And he let him go on...and on...

There would be a moment, after the man left the dark space of the hallway, when he would crack at his father's words. The tears would come and he would once again wonder why he had to go through this. But this time...he was ready to let his hate stay in his system like the medicine he did not know he needed.

But he had just about enough of it.

It would soon be his turn.

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Note: this is based on something my father used to do to me. As a child, he would stand in the doorway when he saw me sitting on the bed, stare at me from the dark of the hallway, and then suddenly leap at me, terrifying me and then he would begin to berate me for being scared. I was 7 or 8 when he began to do this and I never really recovered from this.

This is a work of fiction, however. I had no idea I would ever take this material and tell the story of a boy who would learn how to recover and fight back. And the description of challenge does not specify that it can only be a keyhole. A door standing ajar can be frightening in the right moment. And there are some things a child should never see.

-KD

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