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Writer
Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 26
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Killing Television(Another Glass Gone)
Killing Television(Another Glass Gone)
I come home, the television is on, the glow shines right through me shedding light on my worst fear. I can see it shining through the openings in the living room, like a beacon or lighthouse pointing me to the way home.
“Are you guys fighting?” I ask. My stomach is churning as I know answer. Of course, the answer is yes. It is always yes, never the two-lettered salvation of no.
My father, sitting silently in the face of my question, is watching MASH. He doesn’t say anything, but a delayed nod indicates what I already knew. I move from standing in the doorway of living room to sitting in our big red Lazy Boy next to my dad on the couch. I watch him watching MASH and wonder what they’re fighting about.
“Bout What?” I ask him, as my thoughts precipitated from my head to mouth without me knowing.
The small room is green from the television, making our once fashionably colored furniture looking old and out of date. But then again, so did my father. His face, in daylight, is solid and unwavering. But in the truth of night, it is shaky and vulnerable. His face, infested with hair, looked to be on fire; the glow of the box made the hairs on his face look like candle wicks burning into a deep abyss of MASH plotlines and the possibility of sleeping on the couch.
For this was my father’s fear as well, sitting in the dark with his son watching Radar and Hawkeye muddle through the calamities of army life-his eyes full of lust and anger but his heart full of anguish.
“You guys will work it out right? You always do” I say trying to sound as upbeat as possible.
My father sips his scotch whiskey rubs his face. The sound of his mustache being echoed throughout the room.
A commercial.
A break.
Maybe a chance for my father to answer me. He would never answer during the show, afraid that answering would make him miss something important. Not again, not again would he make that mistake. Never again, oblivious to the world around, would he ever be.
Time for more scotch whiskey.
Another glass refill.
Another glass gone.
My mother alone in her room, with no television to comfort her, is crying. Her tears cannot be mopped by small waves of entertainment. And her crying is making the dog bark. And the dog barking is making my brother yell. And my brother yelling is making the neighbors yell out their windows. And the neighbors is making my father turn up the television, to drown out all the noise. And my eyes shut, hoping a Robin Hood would steal silence from the happy homes down the block, and give to me, giving my house a dark, damp kind of quiet and a heavy, sleepy kind of grace. The kind of grace that lets the husbands and wives sleep together side by side, like stalk of corn in a marital field.
“Dad, could you turn it down?” I ask politely. He does not answer, further steeping himself in the show.
“Walter, come to bed!” My mom yells down the hall from her room.
“Be quiet Mom!” My brother yells, trying to silence my mother’s attempts to coax my father back to bed.
The dog barks, and barks, and barks, trying to make his voice heard.
“Keep that fucking dog quiet!” The neighbor next door- Mr. Yanski, whose dog is ten times louder than ours- screams in his native Polish accent.
And the television is turned up again. That fucking device was cutting the blanket that were my mother and father/ A lovely combination of warm and soft, covering my body with their love, keeping me close and alive.
“Walter, please come here! I’m sorry!” My mother manages to moan through tears.
“Dad, Mom is calling you.” I say, hoping might get the hint that the should go see her.
“I don’t hear anything.” He says, sucking another sip of poison into his body.
“The television is too loud.” I say trying to mange the to box’s volume, but I fail. My voice is lost in a sea of laugh tracks and our barking dog.
A commercial for a Dodge truck reflected off my face, casting a shadow over my blonde head and pale white skin. Looking at my arm, I can read the financing terms perfectly. I feel like I am being sucked in, I feel like I am becoming one of them, a brainwashed drone easily talked into buying anything.
I look up and MASH is back on, spouting canned laughter and political satire, and I think that there are probably worst things that I could be watching. Then a bright pixel from the show reflects off my dads glassed, bounces back to the screen, and the image of my father on the couch rests on my eyes. I see my father there, and worse, I see myself there. I see everything that he is, and everything that I am, and everything we could be.
Then, I see a girl. Not a specific girl, just a girl. A redhead with hazel eyes, dull and sharp at the same time. Her small body and long legs proved a good base for my erection, so I shift in my seat to hide it. And then I see me. Standing next to her, old and twisted, arms crossed sipping scotch whiskey. The girl looks at me, and cries. I don’t do anything to help. I let her cry. She begs me to help her, but I don’t. She begs me not to hit her, but I do.
I snap back to real life, the glowing room, green from wall to wall. I look around, grabbing the armrests of the chair, trying to get my bearings back. I do, and I cry. I cry for mother and father. For the girl in the reflection on the television, for myself, and for, well, I don’t know.
The television is killing us. I think to myself as another episode of MASH begins.
“Time to kill the television.” I say aloud, but my father didn’t hear me.
I rise, and walk toward the box. I’m not sure what I am going to do, but I know it has to be stopped. Down the hall, my mother is still crying and the dog is still barking. And in my head, the redhead is still crying, and I am still crying, as I walk. I stop right in front of the television, my father now yelling at me to move. I don’t, I just stand there, thinking about what to do.
“Didn’t you hear me tell you to move?” He asks with a frustrated tone in his voice. “Damn it, move!”
With one motion, my foot crushes through the screen sending thousands if not millions of tiny particles into the air. And then all the noise is gone. My father is silent, the dog is silent, the redhead is silent, my world is silent.
“What the fuck! You little shit!” My father screams at the top of his lungs, as he rises from the couch and lands his fist on my left cheek, sending blood and teeth into space as my body hits the floor.
“Why did you do that?” He asks.
I just lay there, one hand holding my cheek, the other holding my head. I am swaying, trying to keep conscious. His punch is a good one strong and swift.
“Wait until your mother hears about this.” He says in huff, heading down the hall to their bedroom, where he stayed with my mother the whole night. I sit there all night until sun up, waiting and hoping for no sound from there room.
No sound.
No screaming, no slamming doors, no dogs barking, no translucent redheads crying, no nothing. Just the sound of my jaw realigning itself.
And most of all, no television. No MASH! No television!
I lay there, looking around the room. The moon is coming through every opening, shining just enough light to see all the little pieces of broken screen. Everything is how it should be. Lovers are spooning, the night is damp and dark, and I am laying next to a dead television.
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