The Renfield Syndrome Ch. 02

David's jaw clenched involuntarily, and he exhaled a burst of air through his nostrils. The drunker the Old Man got, the more ferocious the abuse would become. Rather than cave in and engage, he grabbed the handles of the Old Man's chair and wheeled him around in the direction of the living room. There was the requisite, "Oh my head, I've been stabbed!" wail, which meant he'd be demanding another pain pill. Occasionally, David considered granting his frequent request to be given the whole bottle. Maybe he'd stuff them down his fat throat, not a jury in the world would convict him. Not one of his peers anyway.

People who knew of the situation but not the truth often believed the Old Man's tales of how abusive and neglectful David was to his poor old disabled "dad". He'd been scolded more than a few times by one of Dale's neighbors, a lanky old woman with big hair who doted on the Old Man and swallowed every drop of his bullshit. But people who had grown up closely familiar with Dale Martin and his family knew exactly what the Old Man's diagnosis was and had always been. He suffered from chronic, debilitating hypochondria with no cure in sight.

David shoved the mewling patriarch of his clan into place in front of the TV, no longer bothering to be very delicate about it. He was beyond ready to leave, and if he stayed much longer, he'd start shouting back which only escalated the problem. The worst of it was that the fucker knew exactly how unpleasant he was and wielded that like a weapon, ready to turn somehow even worse the second he wanted to punish you for daring to stand up to him. It would only lead to more misery and accomplish nothing. Also, the tiny part of David that still believed in the "honor thy father and mother" commandment seemed to still have just loud enough a voice to keep his sorry ass in line. So far.

Without waiting to be asked he went back to the kitchen to retrieve the remaining beer and booze, popped the top off the bottle of OxyContin to tip one out, and returned with his load to the living room, putting it all down within the Old Man's easy reach. "What do you want to watch tonight, Dale?" he asked with impatience leaking through. "Wayne, Eastwood? Stallone? Pick something, I got shit to do."

The Old Man was too busy socking down the small white pill and chasing it with a healthy slug of beer to speak immediately. When he did, he didn't answer but regarded his son with eyes that were glazing over quickly but were still filled to the brim with malice. "Where'd we fuckin' go wrong with you?" he mourned. "I didn't raise no goddamn faggots, but here you are rubbing it in my face every fuckin' day. It's goddamn embarrassing to have a pussy for a son! Why you gotta be like that? We did everthin' trying t' fix ya."

"I'm not having this conversation with you, Dale." David went to the Old Man's movie shelf and picked something at random, he'd seen them all a million times anyway and they were all the same. Big, strapping, and most of all masculine men doing big violent manly things, preferably with guns and flags and big boobied women. All with more buried homoeroticism than you could shake a baby-oiled gladiator at.

"No, I'm seerius! How could you fuckin' do this to us? You left the family, you left God and Jeezus, you started running around with a bunch of goddamn deviants and embarrassing the shit out of us. We're we not givin' ya a good enough life? Is getting' buttfucked really that goddamn good?"

"Jesus, just shut the fuck up, Dale," David said flatly without a lot of force behind it. But the Old Man was falling back on his favorite drunken discussion. Why in the name of all the saints would a son of Dale Martin ever want to be queer? Gay sex was just so gross.

"I ain't gonna shut up, why you wanna suck dick?" came the drunken demand.

"Go to hell." He slammed the movie into the player and started it up, then made a beeline for the kitchen to put a wall between himself and the Martin clan patriarch. Let him sit in there and rant while he drank himself unconscious, David was in no mood to listen to the barrage of accusations about his out-of-control sex life.

Like many people, the Old Man had a fictional image of a gay man sketched out in his mind to the last detail and utterly fabricated. He was unmovable in his opinion that being queer meant going to bathhouses and porn theaters every night, when you weren't lurking in public restrooms looking for straight kids to molest. A Pride flag was an advertisement for butt sex, nothing more and nothing less. What was really laughable was that David was currently enjoying the longest self-imposed dry spell of his life, and lately was wondering if he might actually be asexual. His last two sexual encounters had been failed attempts with women. Hell, he didn't even look at porn and barely jacked off. And when he did, it mostly just to stay in practice, and was a momentary thing and quickly forgotten.

David pulled the freezer open and stuck his head inside for a moment. All he had to do now was kill time until the fucker drank and drugged himself unconscious. This had been David's routine for coming up on four years and it was getting progressively more exhausting. And the worst part of it was that 98.5% of the Old Man's frailties and illnesses were entirely in his head.

About the only real medical problem the Old Man had in his life besides erectile dysfunction was his mild stroke a decade ago, likely brought on by long-term alcoholism. But even before that he'd always been obsessed with his own failing health. He had just enough of a military background to qualify for VA benefits, which is why the endless parade of doctors hadn't completely bankrupted the whole family. And not a one of them could ever tell him anything except to quit drinking, for the love of God, will you QUIT DRINKING! In Dale Martin's eyes, that was a sure giveaway the guy was a quack.

That was before the stroke. He got so much worse after that.

The poststroke headache that doctors said should have faded almost immediately became a permanent element of the Old Man's life. At least it was when it was convenient. Things sure to trigger the debilitating pain were denying him alcohol, disagreeing with him, or just a too-quiet moment when he was feeling bored. It was after this that he declared he could no longer walk, though no doctor could explain it any more than they could explain his chronic agony. He'd graduated from a cane to two canes, to crutches (short lived), and finally convinced some exhausted VA doctor to prescribe him his new favorite possession, his wheelchair. He insisted on being wheeled everywhere as his arms were too weak to propel himself around. Except, you know, when he wanted to.

"I just seen this one, come put in something else!" came the barked command from the living room. David clenched his teeth and counted to five, then to ten just for good measure. "TODAY!" the Old Man bellowed at the top of his considerable lungs.

"Do it yourself!" David yelled back, his mind on loading up the laundry and getting the fuck out of here as fast as humanly possible.

"I can't!" came the insistent whine and David cringed like someone had turned on a dentist drill.

Once upon a time, the whole family was still around to take up the slack. David's mother had worked her ass off to keep the money flowing, and there was always someone around the house to see to the Old Man's increasing needs. But over the years, one child at a time graduated, went to college, got a job in another city, got married, or whatever. Every last one of them took the very first ticket out of town as the Old Man's behavior was deteriorating by the day. The siblings in order, Dale junior, Daniel, their sister Mary (the only one spared the DM initials), and finally the youngest Douglas had found their various ways to escape the ever more toxic environment they all now associated this house with. Only David stayed in the Seattle area as his brothers and sister scattered to the four winds.

And then Mom had her accident. She was driving home from work just like she did every day, taking the same freeway exit she took every day. But somehow on this particular day she lost control of her car and crashed going close to a hundred miles an hour. She wasn't wearing her seat belt.

Once the funeral was over, that left David as the only person within range to care for the family patriarch in his decrepitude. As a bonus, he was also the only one remaining unmarried and childless, and therefore it was just so much EASIER for him to take over nursing duty. After all, it's not like he had a life of his own. And if anyone thought the Old Man's hypochondria was bad before Mom died, they hadn't seen nuthin' yet. David suspected that the only thing he was sad about at her funeral was having to share all the sympathy and attention with his kids.

Like someone had flipped a switch in his brain, Dale Martin became unwilling to do literally anything for himself that took the slightest effort. He demanded that he be wheeled around, bathed, clothed, fed, and sometimes even changed. This adult man who had never been incontinent a day in his life found that soiling himself was an agreeable punishment if he felt he was being in any way ignored. That was just the kind of guy he was now.

And it was the thought of this kind of punishment that made David relent and stalk back into the living room to change the movie that the Old Man could have easily changed himself with little effort. He just liked having his orders obeyed, and feigning complete helplessness was his plan A, B, and C. As the Old Man sat there clutching his head and pretending to cry, David wondered what would ultimately happen if he simply grabbed the handles of the chair, dumped the fucker on the floor, and left him there. The urge was strong and familiar, and for the umpteenth time David did not indulge it.

"Fuckin' pansy..." The Old Man was slurring heavily, another good sign. David just hoped he would keep his dinner down until after David left, that was a mess he most certainly did not want to clean up. "Fuckin' l'il faggit. Y' disgraced your pa, y' disgraced your God, yer a fuckin' disgrace. We did everythin' we could t' make a man outta ya, but you always was a fuckin' sissy girl. Your poor mother found out you was a fruit and it killed her!"

"Fuck you!" For the first time, David seriously raised his voice, the profanity coming out like a barked command and actually surprising the Old Man into silence. "Don't you ever fucking talk about her," he warned in a lower voice.

"Fuck you back, y' goddamn mama's boy! She ain't here for you's to hide behind her skirt! You broke her heart! She couldn't bear the shame you brought on the fambly and she fuckin' killed herself because of it!"

David's fists shakily clenched as white-hot fury surged through him in a wave. "She didn't fucking kill herself... It was an accident..."

"She killed herself and you made her do it! She died of fuckin' embarrassment that she gave birth to a fag..."

One of David's fists seemed to shoot up all on its own. He was shaking badly now in an equal combination of stress, fury, and a good old fashioned anxiety disorder. "Shut... the fuck... up!"

"Or what?" The Old Man sneered at his son through porky lips. "You'll hit a sick old man? Yeah, that's just what you fuckin' sodomites do! Go ahead, y' little sissy punk, don't look at me in that tone of voice, fuckin hit me! I dare ya', pussy!"

There was a long moment as the two men stared each other down, neither being willing to be the first to drop his eyes. David's hands were shaking violently as he ran through the scenario that would play out if he gave in to desire and finally took a swing. The Old Man would absolutely call the cops and have David arrested for elder abuse. And then sue him. He was just that vengeful and petty.

Ultimately David did the only thing he felt he could do. He strode across the living room toward the front door and grabbed his jacket. "Put your own ass to bed, you miserable fuck," he said as calmly as he could manage, which wasn't very.

"I can't..." The whine came back instantly.

"Then sit there all night! If you get bored, you can die or something!" He nearly kicked open the front door and stormed out into what was now a downpour, not bothering to pull his coat on. He had to get away, and he had to get away now before he made this situation immeasurably worse. He slammed the door behind him without a backward look and strode to his parked car straight across the wet lawn as the shortest distance from A to B. He considered kicking over one of the Old Man's self-righteous yard signs, but it seemed like a petty act of rebellion, however satisfying it would be at the moment. The words "just get away" repeated over and over in his head like a mantra, but he paused long enough to pull his own bottle of medication from the inside pocket of his coat. Good old-fashioned Xanax, not as immediately effective as booze but it was what he had. He dry-swallowed two and cursed his shaking hands, as the combination of rage and anxiety always gave him tremors. He had been like that all his life, but the problem had greatly worsened after his long fight with alcohol.

He climbed behind the wheel of his slightly battered two-door, iron gray in color, all the better to be invisible in the ever-present Seattle precipitation. He wiped a hand through his dripping hair and sat for a moment trying to get his hands back under control. Then he turned the key and pulled out and away so fast he spun his wheels on the wet pavement. Only when the hated place had vanished into the darkness and rain behind him did he take a deep, steadying breath and slow his speed to a reasonable level.

The Old Man was a situation that he couldn't handle to anyone's satisfaction. David's (kind of) ex-girlfriend Lori was firmly of the opinion that David should stuff the rotten old man in an old folks' home and throw away the key. Their longtime family friend Gloria was equally convinced that David was a horrific elder abuser, an ungrateful child, and a disgraceful human being. The Old Man himself would never and could never have his endless demands for pampering be sated, so no matter what David did, it was nowhere near enough and always done wrong on top of that. And David couldn't explain himself to any of them. Frankly, it had been so long since anyone had told David he was doing something right that he felt he was getting brain fried.

So, he did all he knew how to do, which was take care of the ailing patriarch of the family and endure his constant abuse, his own mental health be damned. It truly bothered David to hate the Old Man as much as he did. A man simply wasn't supposed to loathe his own parent, that was one of the rules that made God's top ten. He wished for the thousandth time that he had his mother's patience, she had been an unflappable rock up until the end.

The wet roads forced him to move at a crawl, even in this relatively quiet time of night. It was a rare moment to not share the road with a thousand others, but for now he was alone. His windshield wipers weren't in the greatest shape, replacing them being one more thing David had yet to get around to doing. The defogger could have worked better than it did too. That combined with the glare of streetlamps on the windshield, and David was lucky to keep his battered car on the road. Someone roared up behind him in the slow lane blaring his horn, his headlights utterly blinding in the rear-view mirror. David shaded his eyes against the glare as the truck swerved around and roared past with a belligerent howl of his engine. One more thing he'd done wrong, he couldn't make anyone happy today. He blindly gave the guy's taillights the finger, so dazzled by the sudden light that he had no chance to see the man on the side of the road before he clambered over the guardrail and lunged right into David's path.

The shape suddenly loomed huge in the headlights as David's blood turned to ice water. He slammed the brakes and tried desperately to swerve around whoever it was, but there was nowhere near enough time or room. He was jolted hard as he hit the crazy guy nearly square on as he dashed across the road. The pedestrian came up and over the hood and slammed into the windshield hard enough to crack it. Then as David finally screeched to a full stop almost giving himself whiplash, the man went tumbling off onto the wet pavement ahead, transformed into a motionless lump in the pounding rain.