Synopsis: In this continuation to the first chapter of this novel-in-progress, we see Jack's home life and find out a terrible secret about him and about his mother's intentions.

Author's Note: Yeah, I know the synopsis sucks, sue me. But, anyways, I actually enjoy what came out in the first chapter and I'm really happy to be getting this second part out. (It means the story isn't worthless) anyways, favorite, comment, enjoy, critique, so on, so forth and world kept spinning.
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Chapter 2: The Night

“Jackie, you can’t keep fighting with Richard.” Mom chastises me as she places plates down on the crooked kitchen table. “He’s a very wealthy man and we are in no position to turning down his kind of help.”
“His kind of help,” I demand loudly. “He’s a crook, a perverted thief who has it in his mind that we’re going to worship him because he saved us from this!”
I throw up my arms and spread my fingers, indicating the apartment around us, with its twenty year old floorboards and carpeting well stained from spilled drinks, peeling wallpaper that has lost most of its color due to direct sunlight and the decade’s old furniture and fixtures that came standard with it. Mom looks up at me out of the top of her eyes and then glares.
She doesn’t like when I point out the condition that we live in, but, she knows it’s true. Taking her eyes off of me, she returns to placing the plates down on the table. The plates she is putting out are brand new. I spent a lot of money to buy brand new plates, silverware and cooking equipment for her. I figured that it would make her happy, at least for a little while. For the most part it did.
Leaning backwards, I put my back onto the doorway that separates the kitchen from the living room. Then I cross my arms, my legs and watch her put out the new glass plates. She’s still wearing the dress she usually wears when she goes into work. Mom works as some secretary at a branch of Ma Bell, where she met Dick.
She just got home from her work, same as I, but she already knows about the fight I had with Dick. I don’t understand how women can figure out that stuff so damned quick, but they can and she has. I’m sure Dick phoned her on his fancy-schmancy Blackberry or iPhone or something like that and informed her of the situation.
Mom places the last plate down with a clunk and then begins to spread out the silverware, which jingles about noisily in her hands and bumps against the wood of the table. Above the ceiling fan buzzes and buzzes as the motor in it struggles to make the four blades rotate.
The refrigerator, a tall tan one probably older than I am, hums away and gurgles. Light from the oven’s window casts strange shadows about on the floor and makes them appear ghastly and monstrous. I swallow hard and then hear my mother clear her throat and sigh as she stands up straight.
“Jackie, you don’t seem to understand. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life as a secretary working for a man who treats me like crap.” Mom begins again. “Mr. Lewis is able to get us out of this life and into a place where we can both succeed.”
“Sure, but at what price?” I ask her without moving, cocking my head slightly. “So we can kneel at his alter, kiss his feet and play a creepy version of an All in the Family episode?”
“Oh, come on, Jackie, you don’t want to live in this hole for the rest of your life?” She demands of me. “You don’t want to work your entire life just to end up here again?”
I step away from the wall and slowly trod across the linoleum floor, my heavy boots knocking against it loudly, the sound reverberating off of all the walls. My shoulders rock back and forth as I walk, but my head and my eyes never move. Mom turns around and steps up to the counter where food is cooking in the microwave.
At the table, I place my hands down onto its surface and then watch the back of my mother’s head, covered in black, long, well-kempt hair. I know she can see me out of the back of her head, watching and waiting. But she continues to watch vegetables cook in that little box on the counter.
“I would rather work my entire life at a job that I hate and be indebted to the state than sell my soul and be indebted to that devil.” I state, low and slow.
“Enough, Jack!” My mother commands and looks over her shoulder. “I’m tired of this. I’m tired of you fighting with him! I’m not going to let you make the decision for me. I’m going to marry that man so that we don’t have to stay here anymore!”
My face contorts and I slowly stand up, but, I don’t move anymore than that. I drop my hands to my sides and watch as she looks away.
“You would rather—”
“—I don’t want to hear it, Jack!” Mom yells. “I’m tired of all of this! I’m tired of you fighting with him, I’m tired of you fighting with the other kids in school, and I’m tired of the entire thing!”
Her arm goes out and she jerkily grabs the salt shaker from beside the side of the stove and quickly retracts it in against her body. The old microwave dings twice and she whips open the door without grace and yanks the hot black plastic bowl of green beans from within. I can almost see the blood in her lips, because they’re so tightly clenched.
“I’m sending you out West for the rest of the month,” Mom slowly states as she puts the vegetables down onto the white, glass plate, “To my brothers’ house. You’ve never met Dan and Dave, but they’re good men, strange, but good.”
My face relaxes and soon I feel my eyebrows lift high off of my face. My lips part, pulling at the dry, crusted skin and then dropping open entirely. My tongue goes limp and my shoulders hang down. Soon my head even begins to tilt unknowingly to the side, before I notice it and snap it back upwards and into place.
Mom doesn’t even react; she just continues to prepare all of the side dishes. Her hands and her arms move furiously, but the rest of her body is as still as a marble statue. Her silhouette casts upon me strangely and soon I cannot remember where I am or who I’m talking to. My mind buzzes around on that whole proposition.
“You’re doing what?” I quietly whisper.
“You’re not staying here during the wedding.” She says.
“You can’t do this to me.” I say to her, just barely louder than my previous words. “You can’t send me away. You know damn well that you can’t see straight! That man is just taking advantage of you! What the hell will happen when I’m not here to stand between you?”
“Hopefully something good comes, Jackie.” She says.
“Don’t call me Jackie!” I lash out at her. “I’m not a little kid anymore. I’m not the stupid, ignorant idiot you think I am! All those men that you’ve dated ever since Dad left, if I wasn’t there, then who knows where we would be? You remember that cop you dated? If I hadn’t ‘a been there to beat the hell out of him when he got drunk and came on to you . . . I don’t even want to think about where we would be.”
I gasp for breath and feel my heart pounding away like a steel drum in my chest. The muscles in my arms and neck convulse uncontrollably and I feel the anger truly begin to settle through my frame. Then I watch as my mother’s head bobs forward. Her arms settle down onto the countertop and she begins to whimper.
I know what I’ve done and soon a pang of pain begins to rise from a space between my heart and my stomach. I calm myself down and then lick my lips, my eyebrows falling and my eyes darting about the room. She covers her face and then stands quietly.
“Just . . . go.”
“But, Ma—”
I lift my hands up and take a step forward but quickly halt.
“Just go!”
I lower my hands and then sink them into the pockets of my black leather jacket. Shaking my head, I take a step backwards, rock onto my heel and then turn away. I clomp across the linoleum floor and go through the doorway into the living room beyond. Heading through the old front room, not stopping to survey anything in there, I head down a short corridor to one of the two bedrooms here.
My eyes blink uncontrollably and my face pulls downwards as if weighted down by metal. Soon my pace picks up and by the time I’m at the door at the very end, I’m almost charging forward as if into a fight. Slamming the door behind me, almost uncontrollably, I sink into the darkness of my room.
Throwing my hands up, I grip my face and hair and pull at it until it hurts. Dropping to my knees, I thrash about my arms and head and grumble in my throat, my teeth clenched angrily. My hands shake and my entire face convulses as so many different feelings attack me at once.
“Good job asswipe!”
“Shut up.”
“You’ve done it again! You’ve gone and done it again! Well, all I can say is congratulations!”
“Shut up!”
I lower my hands and look about through the darkness. The silhouette of my bed and nightstand slowly begin to appear through the pitch black. Focusing on them, I tear my eyes around. He’s here, I know it, I can feel him, and I can here him! But I can never, ever see him!
Throwing my eyes to my right, I look at the table just across from the end of my bed. The white, fake-wood figure appears to me and then I hear a chuckle through the darkness. He’s amused by it; he’s always amused by it! I throw my arms down and then force myself up onto my feet.
“That’s it, Jack, come and get me!”
I tromp across the gray carpeting and then throw myself in front of the huge glass mirror behind the desk. My hands grip the white wood and my hair, long and black, hangs crazily in front of my head. But there he is, just as he always is! He stands beside the bed, leaning on it and staring at me.
His arms are crossed and a large smile is pulled across his face. He’s just like me, mocking me again! His blue eyes pierce the darkness and I can feel them boring into me. He licks his lips and then uncrosses his arms. His arms swing as his body turns towards me and he strolls forwards.
“Hello, again, Jack.”
“Why don’t you ever leave?”
He rushes forward and slams his hands down onto the desk and he stares at me, his own hair falling forward and covering up on of his eyes. His smile disappears for a second but then begins to slowly return, stretching until it reveals all of his pearl white teeth. A chuckle rises from his throat as his Adam’s apple bobs up and down just above his white t-shirt.
“Because you need me Jack . . . that’s why I don’t leave you.”
“I don’t want you here!” I cry out at him. “I don’t need you to mock me and yell at me! I know what I’ve done.”
“And yet you can’t stop, now can you? You just can’t help yourself, can you? Mommy’s making a terrible mistake and poor little Jackie is there to save her.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, Jack, fuck you. I’m not the one out there fighting with all the kids that mock you. I’m not the one stealing from your boss when he’s too drunk to notice. I’m not the one who works his ass off in school and in work for nothing. You are.”
His finger jabs through the darkness and he throws himself up into a standing position and swings away. As he walks away, out of sight, he rocks back and forth his shoulders and even swings around his hair. But although I cannot see him, I know he’s there, just out of sight. His boots, the ones like mine, tromp against the floor conspicuously.
“You know, Jack? I bet leaving this shithole will actually make you more of a person. I mean, come on, there has to be something out there than a slow and painful death.”
“Come back here, you prick.”
“Oh, I’m still here, Jack . . . I’m always here.”
Everything is silent and soon I begin to take in short and choppy breathes. He’s gone again, disappeared into the darkness where he can see me but not the other way around. He always comes out when I’m the closest to it, closest to the bottom. But he always makes it worse. I hate him! Why won’t he leave?!
I slam my hands down onto the desk and then stand up. My muscles convulsing, my arms shaking uncontrollably, I turn around and march away from the glass. Going around the side of my bed, I march back and forth across the carpeting. My eyes dart around the room, searching for what wall he’s hiding in tonight.
“I know you’re still here.” I say loudly. “You never leave me, you sadistic bastard! I’m still here!”
I rock back my head and stare up at the ceiling, my arms hanging out at my side and my chest rising and falling with each heavy, deep breath. Slowly I lower my arms and tilt my head forward. Looking down towards the carpet, I lick my lips, swallow hard and then turn around.
I walk to the edge of my bed and then stare at the pillow and down comforter on its surface. My eyes begin to hurt and the bottom of my heart feels as if a knife is being wedged into it. Biting my lower lip, I sniff loudly and then plummet forward, catching myself before I hit the top of the bed.
Lying still, I pull my arms up in front of my body and then shove them under my chin where I lie on them like more pillows. For a while I stare at the headboard, my mind wondering what will happen as my body calms and relaxes. Then my mind’s engine begins to run dry of gasoline and my eyes droop and fall shut.
The world around me begins to feel like a distant planet and I fall into a black pit where nothing is there except the things I want to see. But even in my dreams there is no escaping everything. I am tortured, perpetually, by that man. He’s there, he’s always there, watching, waiting, mocking, yelling, screaming . . . antagonizing. He’s real, but I can’t make him leave.