Posted by: Shelly on: July 13, 2007
The maids had rushed into the room and he could tell from the heavy, fake sobs behind him that his banshee of a mother was standing on the stairs, most likely still with her half-dried mud mask on her face. But the boy could not spare even one brain cell to worry about anyone else, nor did he have the time to control his racing heart. His eyes frantically searched the television screen for his father, but to no avail. with each new clip being shown, the boy crossed his fingers and prayed silently to God to let one of the men being put onto stretchers be his father. He needed to see that one of those men was his father. He needed to see that he was still alive, he needed to know that he would be saved, he needed to know that his father was not already with his brother and grandparents.
Hours had passed, and the boy remained in front of the television without having moved a muscle. Thankfully, he had remembered to continue breathing before he passed out. In the background, the maids shuffled anxiously around while trying to busy themselves with something other than getting in the way. He tried his best to ignore the shrill voice of his banshee mother as she screeched and screamed into the phone, trying to get a hold of her husband — a man the boy wished he would not have to see on television that night.
11:17 PM. Finally, his pig of a father was home, and as much as he wanted to stay in his seat, one of the maids pulled him up to join the rest of the family in hugging and wiping their worthless tears on the man’s suit, which clearly could no longer fit his body. But the boy did not join them, for he had no tears to wipe and no worry or concern to express towards this man. He still had not spotted his father on television that night. According to Miss Zhang at 10:58 PM, most of the victims should have been rescued already.
“You ungrateful brat,” came the shriek of the banshee as her bony fingers wrapped around his thin arm and yanked him closer to the rest of them. “Don’t you have anything to say to your father!?”
“He must be so scared for me,” his adoptive father said with a light laugh, before picking him up as if he were still five-years old.
The boy did not have the spirit to be angry at them that night. Over his adoptive father’s broad shoulder, he listened intently to what Miss Zhang had to report. ‘…many have been injured heavily, some have been killed…‘
And the boy felt all the strength in his body fade as the blood and color drained from his face — not from Miss Zhang’s generic words, but from what he saw on the television screen. The camera zoomed in on a body, buried underneath two burnt carcasses. But the boy knew this man, with his half of his face severely burnt and body drenched in mud, coal, and blood. His father was on the screen, in what could have only been the pile meant for the dead bodies that the company would later ship to a different county to avoid legal charges. It was the last thing the boy saw, before he passed out. He had not noticed that he had forgotten to breathe again.
When the boy regained consciousness that night, he found himself neatly tucked into a bed, a bed he thought was large enough to fit the pile of dead bodies his father was now tucked into. It seemed that he was not in his room, but in that of his adoptive parents. In the far corner of the bedroom, the boy noticed two figures talking in hushed tones over the yellow glow of his adoptive fathers desk lamp.
“H-how many dead?” asked the banshee, in a tone so low that the boy had at first thought she was another woman.
“Too many for me to cover it up,” his adoptive father replied, running his hands through the thin layer of hair he had left.
“What if we ship them to several different provinces–“, she was cut off.
“It was on the news!” he yelled harshly, assuming that the boy was still too unconscious to have been woken by his sudden raise in tone. “I’ll just have to lower the number somehow…“
Silence.
“What will we do from now?“
The pig laughed that snot-filled laugh of his, “Don’t worry, we still have hundreds of other mines. I’ll just move whoever survived over there and put them back to work.“
More silence.
“We will have to use some money. To pretty up some of the equipment so the media will be satisfied.“
“How much?“, the banshee croaked.
“Enough so that you and the children shouldn’t go out shopping for the next week or so,” the man said, laughing and putting his arm around her bony shoulders.
The boy laid staring at the high ceiling, his blood boiling inside of him. Murderer.
Early that morning, the boy could be found no where else in the mansion other than his seat on the couch, watching the morning reports that showed the same footage of the explosion that they had shown yesterday. He had seen so many reports of the incident they all began to sound exactly the same, because essentially, they were. Suddenly, the boy had the remote yanked out of his small hands and thrown across the room, thrown so hard that paint began chipped off the wall. In front of him stood his pig of a father, nostrils flaring so widely that the boy thought he resembled a roasted pig more than any other moment in his life. If only he had an apple.
“YOU!“, he snarled, grabbing the boy by his collar. “How many times do I have to tell you not to watch these reports? Why do you care so much about the mines, boy!“
The boy only stared blankly at him, until the man could no longer bear the silence and threw him back down onto the couch. Quietly, he watched the back of his adoptive father storm off. The back of the man who killed his father and numerous lives of others. Because he’s my father, you greedy bastard, the boy thought in anger. It was you who killed them all, who put their lives at risk. You and your mines. You and your precious coal. You and your money. The boy ran back up the stairs to his room, Had you even bothered to give them more than candles for lighting in those gaseous mines, my father might not have died.
He remained locked in his room for the rest of the day.
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