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Reviews Requested- Contains upsetting material - Johnny
Mentions abuse and suicide, but it isn't graphic or anything!
Johnny was a bully just like his daddy. Stuck on ladies whose love ate his wallet and so many cigarettes that the butts littered his small yellow lawn, Johnny wasn't going anywhere. He stayed in that small house with his mama. Ate breakfast where his daddy used to beat him, and slept in the room his mama used to sing to him in. Every morning Johnny would sit on his mama's porch and watch the people. At night Johnny would meet a lady and feel whole for just long enough. Most nights he spent at the small Motel 8, the only motel we have here. Johnny would light up after, watching the smoke tendrils lazily ascend up as the lady took her price and crawled into a cab. During the day Johnny worked out back from his house. He chopped wood where his daddy used to beat him, and ate lunch at the town diner. It's the only diner we have here. Afterward he would walk back home where his daddy used to beat him, and his mama used to love him, and disappear until the night ladies called.
Johnny's mama is sickly now, and Johnny has a stay-in nurse come in to care for her. Mama doesn't remember Johnny on bad days, and on good days mama will sing to him. Johnny's daddy is a bad memory, like an ink stain but instead it is the red ink stained in the parlor. Daddy was a man stuck on tobacco and beating on his family. Daddy was beating on Johnny when the red began to flow. Johnny was pushed over the edge, and suddenly Johnny had a knife and his daddy had little clothing on. Johnny and his mama used to avoid the parlor and the pink shading in the carpet, but now mama is sick and doesn't leave her room. Now Johnny sometimes takes a smoke in the parlor and stares at the stain for an hour before dinner.
Now Johnny smokes too much, and goes out to little. The ladies stop coming by, and the wood stays un-chopped out back. Johnny's mourning clothes are still laying where he peeled them off a week ago. His mama's house is empty now. Only Johnny walks the halls, passing the old rooms his mama used to live in. The neighbors see very little of Johnny, and they whisper how tragic poor Johnny is, now all alone in the house his daddy used to beat him in and the house his mama used to love him in. It is in March that Johnny goes back outside. He sat on his mama's porch and shot himself in the head with his daddy's shotgun. The weather is frozen still, but there is a promise of spring in the air. The neighbors all whisper about how tragic poor Johnny was, living in the house his daddy beat him in, and dying in the house his mama loved him in.
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