What goes on behind closed doors is not always what you think.
They’re fighting again. Tonight is a little worse than most. He’s already hit her more than a couple of times. They don’t notice me. Why would they, they’re so focused on their hatred for each other that I doubt they’d notice a freight train if it barreled through the living room right now. I cower in a poorly lit corner watching.
The entire room is pretty dark and the curtains are drawn shut. They probably don’t want the world to know what goes on in here. They probably think that if they hide their fights then nobody will know they exist. That everything is okay. Tomorrow when they open the drapes again and the sunlight pours into this house it will seem like tonight never happened. But it is happening.
To see what I’ve seen, and hear the horrible shouting matches I’ve heard takes a lot more than a sunny day to forget. I wish I could get out of here. I sometimes cling to the windows staring out. Hoping for a chance, any chance of escape. It doesn’t come of course, how could it? I’m stuck here, with them. There is no escape for me. My whole body’s tense, ready to flee, wanting to flee. I don’t even know where I would go or how I would get there if I could escape. It has never entered my mind.
Every night, It’s the same thing however, I can’t seem to move and I can’t take my eyes off them. I feel small, insignificant. They don’t notice me. They never notice me. They don’t even know I exist. I guess that’s a good thing. I hide in the same corner as last night and the night before.
Maybe they’ll call it quits early tonight and leave the room. Leave me in peace. I doubt it though. He’s really yelling this time. She slapped him across the face a moment ago but that just made him madder, as if it was possible for him to do so. Wait, someone’s coming. It’s the big guy. Good, he’s picking up the black rectangle and pushing a button. The screaming couple disappears, the box they were in turns dark. He throws down the rectangle on the couch. Thank you, thank you so much. Oh no. I think he sees me. He’s coming over here. I think he has a newspaper in his han…SPLAT!
“Hey Ira.”
“Did you turn off the TV, Bill?”
“Yeah. Guess what. I finally killed that damn fly.”
“Good. That thing’s been bothering me all week. Come and eat.”
“Okay.”
Homer's Ill Iliad & Odd Sea Odyssey (420 pages) is an adult satire/parody rewrite of the classic stories of the 10 year Trojan War and of the 10 year adventure of Odysseus trying to return home to his native Ithaca.
