Chapter 7 - The Barn

I stood behind Shirley as she watched her favourite show, sitting on her favourite chair in her favourite position - cross-legged. I held my arms out in front of me, zombie-esque in fashion, although instead of being comatose I was quite the opposite. With eyes closed I focused all my mental energies into my fingertips and pointed these at the back of Mama Shirl's head. My arms began to shake wildly from all the power flowing through them. My mind began to ache, droplets of sweat formed at the edge of my hairline and slid sluggishly into the bush of my brow. C'mon, c'mon... My concentration was beginning to break. Just a few... more... seconds... Shirley sneezed.

Ahah! Yes! My powers are working!

I chuckled wickedly to myself and did a Tiger Woods fist-pump as Shirley sat back in the chair, recovering from the high-powered propulsion that just rocketed out of her mouth and nostrils.

"What in Thor's name are ya doin'?"

I turned on my heel to find Jonny standing behind me. He had two big paper bags, one under each arm, which he violently let drop onto the kitchen table.

For the past few months we had been living in a deserted barn we found on the outskirts of town. The farmer still lived on the land, but his property was so large that he must have forgotten about the rotting pile of wood we called home. Or else he simply abandoned it.

The barn was quite miniscule. In one corner, where Jonny stood presently, sat a wooden box we used as our table, and surrounding it were three tree stumps we used as chairs. These were quite uncomfortable, but I felt like a badass each time I sat down on one and somehow this made me feel better about myself.

Beyond the kitchen - or what we called the kitchen - was the living room, distinctively defined by an old ripped up recliner which sat facing the far wall. It was most likely an emerald green colour at a younger age, but over the years the chair had greyed significantly and had broken a couple of legs. It limped miserably to the left and was quickly losing its balance, rocking back and forth on its good legs. The chair's bones squeaked woefully when it reclined, and the foot rest only managed to climb half its journey upwards. Even then it couldn't support any weight. But despite the flaws and deplorability of old age, the recliner was still warm and comfortable, wrapping anyone who cared to pay it attention in its experienced embrace.

Why Shirley called the recliner her favourite chair was beyond me. Besides the fact that she was stating the painfully obvious - the recliner was the only true chair in the barn - she must have realized that it was everyone's favourite chair. She couldn't honestly believe that Jonny or I preferred sitting on stumps of wood, even if the resulting increase in badassity produced by sitting on stumps of wood was quite intoxicating.

A television about as old as the recliner lay on the floor by the far wall. Amazingly the barn had electricity, however there was only one functioning socket which took turns powering the TV and the electric heater, depending on how cold we were and how good a TV show was playing. Sadly, these two criteria were subject to varying personal opinions, and very rarely did our respective subjectivities agree on what was good and what was cold.

There were two windows on opposite walls from each other. These were quite small and near to the high ceiling, and for this reason they were completely useless. Most of the light came from the TV or the electric heater, both of which did a surprisingly good job at keeping our small home lit.

I ignored Jonny's question, as I couldn't quite come up with a story to explain my fist-pump. And I wasn't about to reveal my special power.

Mama Shirl, having recovered from the sneeze I had cast upon her, resumed her irritating oral noises. Shirley had very odd habits, not to mention terrible manners. She was always sticking things in her mouth, chewing on bits of wood or sucking her thumb. Apparently she was deaf to the irritating sounds of smacking lips and blind to the disturbing image of chewed up food in an open mouth. For the time being she was gnawing on a rolled up greenish herbal looking thing. Fearing it was some sort of poisonous or rotting plant, I had to ask.

"What are you sucking on?" I asked.

"An em el."

"A what?"

"Oh em gee, you never understand me. A maple leaf, okay?"

I never understood this woman. "Why are you sucking on a maple leaf?"

"On an em el, you mean?"

God, what a supercilious bitch. "Yes, an em el."

"It's good for my es ee."

I pondered this last one for a moment. "Your self-esteem?"

"Yes. Now would you please es tee eff you? I'm trying to watch TV, okay?"

Shirley definitely had problems. She spoke in acronyms for god's sake.

I glanced up at the TV, only to see a family of 'little people' shopping for groceries. I didn't quite understand what was so appealing about watching 'little people' do astonishingly normal things. I turned back to the kitchen and sat down on a tree stump - somehow this made me feel much better about myself. Jonny was sitting beside me, reading the paper he stole from the farmer's front porch every morning. He put the paper down, gave me a quick glance then looked over at the TV.

"Shirl's watching her show again, huh?" Papa Jon was never much of a conversationalist.

"Yeah," I sighed. "I don't understand. The only reason the show has any appeal whatsoever is because there's a bunch of midgets on there. All they do is go grocery shopping or mow the lawn, or anything else that's completely mundane and ordinary. Seriously, no one would ever watch the show if it were a normal sized family. But what, all of a sudden the show becomes compelling because the cameras need to be pointed downwards at oddly proportioned humans? It's obvious the only entertainment value stems from the fact that they're midgets."

Jonny opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by Shirley who had turned the TV off, and was now making a point to put on her jacket as fast and as violently as possible.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

She turned around and stared at me, irate. "You are aitch em eff."

"What?"

"You are aitch em eff!" she said yelling.

"What the hell does that mean?"

"You really hurt my feelings!"

"Oh my god, can you please stop using acronyms all the time? No one understands you when you use acronyms for words no one else has ever used acronyms for!"

Shirley stormed off, yelling "it helps my memory!" as she slammed the barn door behind her. A moment later, the door cracked open and her head popped through. "And it's oh em gee, okay? When will you get that through your effing tee es?" She slammed the door shut again, more pointedly this time.

It seemed as though tantrums were a daily occurrence with Shirley, except on days where the silent treatment from previous tantrums carried over. Her frowning brow and closed mouth would hang over the barn like a black cloud. The rain of silence whetted Jonny’s desire for forgiveness, which caused him to fidget nervously and flop around the barn like a fish out of water. This was his soft spot and Shirley, the manipulative child she was, knew just how to jab her finger in there. She’d keep pushing too, deeper still, her hidden smirk overshadowed by the obvious agony on Jonny’s face. Only when the internal bleeding was about to take her husband’s life would she relent. Then just like that, all would be forgotten.

When it came to me, however, I was simply thankful for the peace and quiet, and the break from nonsensical acronyms. Despite this – what Mama Shirl called a “lack of respect towards her feelings” – she loved me to death and constantly feared for my safety. It took me and Jonny two hours to convince her that I should be able to leave the barn unsupervised. Even then she’d stand in the doorway to keep an eye on me. The tantrums, the worriment, the oh em gees and the tee em eyes: Shirley was the four-year-old sister, the overprotective mom and the teenage daughter I never had, all wrapped up into one very unpleasant package.

Jonny sat frozen, most likely mulling over the consequences my latest outpour would have. He rubbed the palm of one hand with the thumb of the other, most likely in unconscious anticipation of all the massaging he'd be doing in the next couple of days – one of his many tactics to get back into his wife’s good books. I let out a slight chuckle at this thought, which broke Jonny from the dreadful daze his mind had him swimming in.

"You'll have to apologize for that you know," he said despairingly.

"There is no way I am apologizing. I didn't do anything wrong!"

Jonny sighed. "Oh Son, oh Pepper, am I not the one who named you?"

I didn't like where this was going. "What does this have to do with anything?" I asked.

"Just answer the question."

"Fine. Yes, you are the one who named me. In fact you named me Pepper, after your dead cat."

"Then you must listen to me."

That was it, I had had enough. I was living with two lunatics! Shirley was somewhere outside, throwing a tantrum because someone happened to dislike her favourite TV show. And here was Jonny, exercising his delusional belief in his own godliness because someone happened to dislike his Queen's favourite TV show. Did he actually believe that his reasoning was sound? Did reason even matter?

I clenched my teeth and fists, looking angrily into Jonny's face. There was nothing I wanted to do more than punch out his few remaining teeth. "Don't make me make you sneeze," I snarled.

Fuming, I threw myself into Shirley's favourite chair. Ha! Shirley’s favourite chair. What a joke. What was wrong with these people? Jonny wanted to be called Thor, for Christ’s sake. His favourite shirt had TGOT written across the front, an acronym Shirley had come up with years ago. Thor God of Thunder. Even back then she was an acronymic-obsessive psycho. And hell, if it were up to Jonny he’d have us eating out of his hands and praying to him before bed. In fact when the couple first took me in, Jonny had demanded I call him Thor. I was only saved from such a conceited title because Shirley called him Thory in her more lascivious moods, and she didn’t want me tainting the nickname. There was nothing like running out of the barn when “Thory” escaped from her lips, the image of my old and semi-toothless parents coming together trapped in my mind like a vile rat in a cage.

I'm surprised the couple hasn't made me vomit more often since that day back in the park.

I furiously turned on the television. 'Little people' were still waddling around on the screen. I muttered "fucking ridiculous" under my breath and bitterly switched the channel. I fell upon a hockey game. The smooth fluid movements of the skaters gliding across the ice, the way in which the puck slid peacefully from stick to stick... it was all so beautiful.

I had found my happy place.

I had sufficiently calmed down when Shirley returned from her sulk. She stood beside me with her arms crossed over her chest and stared at the television, seemingly awestricken by the dazzling icy spectacle she was witnessing on the screen. Maybe hockey, as it did for me, would soothe her temper.

Mama Shirl began to speak: "We're humans right? We're supposed to be cultivated, educated, higher than the animals. But then what do we go and do? We run through fields and skate on ice chasing balls and pucks around like we're stupid fucking dogs. And you know what's even worse? When we can't run around like we're dumb animals, we watch other stupid lowly animal wannabes on TV. If you ask me, this is an insult to humanity."

I stormed off, angry and crying, slamming the barn door shut behind me.