Spaghetti Family

Waking up to his warmth, his crackly, slightly annoyed voice telling us, come on guys, get the day started already—- (the one I tease him about because I know he is not a morning person) I let his head lay on my chest a moment while I look out the window.

We finally did it.

I got us out of that crazy hell-hole of a house. No more insane, talking appliances or weirdo twins trying to teach us things we don’t need to know. Robin is happy and so is our son, Manny.

Once we escaped, the veneer of that colorful, manic, fascist world dropped off like a dead curtain in a kafkaesque play, we saw how the real world was. It was like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Everything filled with desert like trash lands and fire dumpsters that scaled out throughout the entirety of nowhere.

I knew that Roy, Manny’s biological father (I say ‘father’ in the most rudimentary sense as he is the most evil, diabolical, abusive piece of shit I have ever heard of and he never took care of his son Manny like Robin and I have), was in control of that mixed up madness we all had been stuck in, and when I attempted so many times to literally unplug the three of us from that house, that virtual reality of shit-fire and hell, he knew how to override my tenacity.

If only I had to opportunity to really kick his ass. I’d break him like he broke my family. Yes, my family.

Robin is my family and so is Manny.

I would break that psycho and then take him to prison where he belongs forever.

But, now that’s all over. I hope, I really fuckin’ hope so. We are all so happy now.

Robin found us a house after that first night living outside in that scary post apocalyptic scene, and through scrounging about an old map he had found, he located an oasis.

An unscathed community we all longed to live in safely, together.

For the longest time, I was never sure of my own identity or what I wanted or even why I was here, living in that house. Life was so unpredictable and scary and horrible that I tried to distance myself from the people I had. I told myself I wasn’t close to anyone or anything. It was a better alternative than what I really felt. Maddening, crushing pain and intense grief whenever one of my friends, well, family members, seemed to have died randomly in the simulation or hurt badly by a random ‘teacher’ or someone trying to kidnap us or hurt us. When Robin died and he told me how we were, “close,” I denied it flat out even though I knew damn well it was the truest thing I had heard in a long time.

In the simulation, I was “Red Guy”. Robin was “Duck Guy,” and Manny was, “Yellow Guy,” so now that we broke free, our puppet forms have been released and now we are humans again.

Robin is a bit shorter than I am, with light brown skin and short dark green hair, that spikes a bit when he wakes up in the morning. He’s about forty two years old, wears plaid suits and button up tops that suit his figure. He has an angular face and nice, greenish brown eyes. Like a chocolate mint cake. Very pretty.

Manny has long blue hair and the youngest one and has brown eyes. Robin thinks he is about twelve years old now, and we set up a calendar for birthdays that Robin assigned us to have. So we could, “celebrate each other’s birthday properly,” he said offhand, which made my chest warm up at his thoughtfulness.

I’m pretty tall, about six foot five and I have these long red dreads that go way past my chest. Robin likes to braid them before we go to bed. Manny helps sometimes after I read his bedtime story. I think I’m about thirty years old, Robin suspects as much as he says I have a young face.

Manny loves my bedtime stories, especially when I branch off from the plot and make up a new character or something else that could happen, and usually I’ll make up a silly song and make up a little dance to go with it, making him laugh hysterically at the antics. Robin joins in too, but mainly to watch and listen. Occasionally he’ll give me a critique and I’ll rebuttle with, “Well, why don’t you try to make up a bit if you’re so clever?”

And he’d quiet his cute face, leaning into my shoulder as I’d continue.

Thinking of just how grateful it all feels to be all together in a safe house, and a safe community, with no Roy and no worries, Robin wakes up and kisses my arm.

“Good mornin,’ sleepy head,” I mumble and he looks at me with tired eyes, yawning.

I lean down as my dreads tumble with me, kissing his mouth gently.

“Already? Harry, I just woke up, you silly thing, you,” Robin teased, still kissing me back anyway. He kisses my cheek and sighs happily.

“Good morning, dear,” He says softly but then looks about in a deep huff, and curtly he declares, “I need coffee,” and proceeds to start to get up.

I chuckle, “Hey c’mere, let’s wait a minute,” I say and he looks at me like I grew a mop head with big eye balls.

“Why? I’m needing some of that black bean juice to wake up, baby,” he says and I grin, snuggling close to him as he grumbles an unintelligible mess of discontent.

“I’ll make the coffee, I promise, just gimme a minute more…” I drone off, and he sighs, suddenly wrapping his arms around my waist.

“Ok, one minute,” he says in a fast, breathy way, staring at me with a crinkled forehead.

“Mister old-man, why’re you staring at me?” I say in a joking way, and he leans in closer, staring at me more intensely.

“Hmm, because I really like looking at you, remember you said that to me?” He says and I feel my face go warm, as I remember that day when the electricity went out (we forgot to pay the bill) and we admitted out loud how we liked looking at one another. It felt so good back then. Now it’s been what feels like a good solid year in between that scary and yet amazing time…

“Yeah, I do recall saying something like that…” I trail off and he chuckles.

“You were always so hard to read, you know, Harry,” he leans toward my face so close our lips are almost touching, and I feel my face go hotter, “and I couldn’t get you to admit anything about me, or us, or our… family, like you were so afraid.”

“I was afraid, Robby,” I say in a tremble, “I was even afraid to admit I was afraid…” I laughed nervously, messing with my unruly dreads that were left unbraided. “But, I made it my mission to… you know, get all of us the hell out of there. It made me a bit blinded to everything else, unfortunately.”

He nodded in a definite agreement, but then looked away, almost aggressively wanting to move on from talking about our old life in a jerking motion that seemed like muscle memory. Like he was ready to jump up and run away from someone or something. I could see that old pain surfacing up in his eyes and it made me want to hold onto him tighter, but he slowly started to smile and said, “I’ll admit, when you said that to me so openly, I was shocked. It was some of.. the most emotion I had seen you have in a long time. And your anger had come out in some ways, I saw that before in bursts, which I understood. Just not… anything like that,” he looks at the pillow and distractedly plays with the ends that are frayed.

“Well, knowing what we knew about our past, it being layered and cracked…. Bits and pieces being recreated or painted over with new stuff, bad stuff, and the fact that we saw Roy trying to get our Manny back,” I start to say and Robin gives me a stern look, as if to say that even speaking that monster’s name might bring him back, and I shut my mouth for a moment. Our eyes meet and he looks ready to double over and cry, but his face goes severe and his upper lip stiffens.

“That’s right. Manny is our son, not his. The law is on our side, anyways, Harry. So let’s stop talking about such nonsensical stuff. Let’s go get started on our day. I’m hungry. I need coffee. Okay?” He says in a decidedly cranky way and gets up. “I’ll make our bed.”

I shake my head. “No, dear. I’ll make our bed and make the coffee. Go relax and read the newspaper in the living room. Kay?”

He smiles a bit and sighs, making me lean down and kissing my cheek.

“Oh, you’re being very sweet,” he says as he walks off, and I can see him blushing.

“Don’t mention it, feather-bottom,” I sneak out and he turns giving me a very serious glare, which makes me burst out laughing.

“Oh! Don’t call me that!” He grumbles.

“But you used to be a cute little green duck,” I tease, and he immediately quacks, as if on cue.

The little quacking sound makes me blush, and I squeak out, “Oh, that’s very cute.” I can’t even begin to express how much I love his noises.

“Yes, I can tell you liked it,” he rolled his eyes, “with your monotone voice and all…”

I laugh harder and he winks at me, walking off.

“So, spaghetti tonight?” He yells at me as he walks to the living room.

“Yes. Sounds good!” I respond and quickly make the bed. I tuck in the corners so Robin would fuss over it or try to redo it. He’s such a neat freak. I try to act like I hate his neat habits but I actually love it. He’s so cute when he fusses about cleaning up.

“I’m waking up Manny!” He calls back.

“Okay!” I say, sighing a bit.

It’s Sunday but Robin likes all of us up together. It’s definitely our traditional kind of thing. Something we were taught to do,(by some creepy twins that were obsessed with their family) that families had to have. Something like a tradition. Something they did with each other for special occasions or just in general.

Ours is making sure we are up at the same time to eat breakfast and meals together.

After breakfast, I’m sure Robin will want to read with Manny. During the week, he homeschools Manny and I go to work in an office as an administration manager. It’s droll and repetitive work, but it pays the bills. It keeps us safe too and secures our residence.

And keeps us from being dead. A hard reality was when we were in the simulaton, we’d get killed off all the time.

And at one point, Robin died and I had a huge mental breakdown from it. Even tried to recreate him out of a new friend and dressed him up just like Robin.

It was at the point that when it was to be announced in the papers someone was dead,(I know it sounds crazy but that’s how insane our world had gotten) Robin was actually happy he saw the headline of his demise.

And yes, I was jealous, but not for the reasons I said or what was implied.

I wanted to be dead with him. I couldn’t bear to think of living without him, and it tore me up inside, so being dead alongside him seemed a better fit.

Now, it’s nice to live with him and Manny and not worry over stupid, horrible things like headlines of Robin being “definitely dead,” and other disturbing stuff.

I went to the kitchen and started coffee.

“Dad!” I heard Manny say, as he hugged my side.

I hugged him back, “Heya, champ.”

“Morning!” He said and I grinned, turning on the coffee maker as it started the brew.

“How did you sleep? Where’s pops?” I asked.

“Oh, he went to the bathroom,” he said, going to the kitchen table to sit down.

“Oh, okay. You want pancakes today?” I asked and he nodded excitedly.

“Yes. With chocolate chips,” he said, tapping his hands on the table in a musical beat. It sounded like, “Old McDonald had a farm,” or something similar.

“Hmm. Don’t know if papa got chocolate chips…” I started to say.

“I did! I did when I went shopping yesterday!” I heard Robin say as he walked in. “They’re in the pantry!”

“Oh. I’ll get it, then,” I nodded and went to the pantry to get the chocolate chips.

“Lemme help you make breakfast,” I feel eager hands slide around my waist and Robin’s breath against my arm.

I lean in to his touch and turn around to sneak in a kiss.

“Eww! Yuck! Don’t kiss in front of me!” Manny said, sticking out his tongue. I laugh.

“Aw, it’s just your old dad putting the moves on a proper gentleman,” Robin puts on a conceited tone and we all laugh. “How dare you, sir!” He continues saying in an angry, overtly, obnoxious British accent toward me, making Manny giggle uncontrollably. He leaned in to kiss me on the mouth and Manny said nothing, but smiled contently.

We all ended up making the pancakes together and quietly ate breakfast, talking about the week ahead and our plans. Robin asked if I could take off a few weeks in the summer next year so we could plan a proper vacation. I told him I’d ask my boss, and hopefully we could get that time set up for sure.

Manny looked around in a scared way. The word, “Time,” was a bit of a buzz word in our home.

Robin and I gave each other a concerned, knowing look.

“Manny, dear, you know the clock won’t come to life, and don’t worry. That isn’t going to happen anymore,” I said calmly.

Robin nods, taking my hand, “Absolutely not.”

He sighed in relief and I said, “Hey, since it’s beginning to look like fall outside, let’s go rake the leaves.”

“Why?” Robin asked in an annoyed way.

“Umm… so we can jump in the pile, of course!” Manny suggested.

I smiled, “Yes. Excellent idea. Love it. Let’s go!” I get up and swoop up Robin in my arms bridal style.

“Ahhh!” Robin screeches. “Quack!”

“Papa is scared! Let him down!” Manny yelled, pulling at my shirt.

“I have just eaten breakfast, Harry! I can’t begin to be up the air like this! So high! Ahh! Quack!” He quacks again and I sigh, gently putting him down.

“Sorry, love,” I gently tell him.

“It’s okay. You just got excited,” he brushed off his pants, eyeing me up and down, “too excited.” He rolled his eyes and I smirked.

“Let’s go out, Robby, come on,” I said, ignoring his commentary.

“Fine, I will. Only to make our front yard look nice for the community,” he nodded and Manny jumped up and down happily.

We all put on our coats and went outside, getting some gardening tools and the rake.

We all took turns raking and Robin attended to some of his flowers near the fence.

And of course, Robin and I tossed Manny in the big leaf pile, making him laugh so much he said he got a tummy ache.

After that, we went inside, had a quick lunch and watched movies together.

It wasn’t until dinner, I started noticing things were starting to run amuck. I got the spaghetti started, and Robin teased me that I was a spaghetti monster. A cute red spaghetti monster.

Manny came in the kitchen and threw some dry spaghetti at me, as he heard Robin say the new title of “spaghetti monster,” to me and I proceeded to throw some back.

“You are the spaghetti dad monster!” Manny giggled out.

“Oh yeah?” I threw more, both at Robin and Manny, who teamed up against me apparently. I got a bit of sauce from the jar and put it on both of their noses. “You’re my spaghetti monster family!” I hugged them both in a bit of a bear hug sort of way, and they gave up their fight happily.

Manny put some dry spaghetti up his nose and roared which made Robin and I look at him oddly.

We had a great spaghetti dinner (well, from the spaghetti we didn’t toss at one another!) and enjoyed it with lovely conversation. The day had turned out wonderful.

That was until clean up.

I went to take out the trash when it was too full and Robin yelled out something.

“It’s going to break! Harry! Red!” Robin yelled. “That bag is too full!”

I turned as I was by the door and said, “What was that? Did you just call me Red?”

“No, silly! I said the bag is full! Way too full!” He said back, washing the dishes.

“Heyyy friends! Why don’t we just have a look at that trash and see what we can do to-”

The chirpy, annoying voice was unfamiliar and I stopped, dropping the bag.

Oh shit. Was this another “teacher” to give us a useless, potentially dangerous lesson on trash or recycling or something equally dull?

I saw Robin freeze up by the sink. I couldn’t breathe but I saw something or some kind of creature nearby spitting out some rhymes about trash and recycling….

I couldn’t black out now. I had to do something.

I felt my panicked heart tumble around in my chest, and I bolted straight toward the menace, only thinking of protecting my spaghetti family and nothing else.