I Am The Wind Read Online Free PDF Page B

what you thought was right at the time. Mad as it sounds, I understand what you’re doing. I might not know why, but I understand. We all do crazy shit sometimes. Okay, your shit is a bit crazier than the average person, but I don’t reckon you’re a bad bloke. You’re desperate, that’s all. Mixed up, maybe.”
    I push the thought away that I might have gone too far—again. I don’t get the feeling he’s going to turn mean. Yeah, I’ve been confused, right at the beginning when he first put me down in that cellar, raged at his insanity, at how I wanted to beat the crap out of him for doing this to me, but I’ve had plenty of time to think since then, haven’t I?
    And now I’ve laid myself bare, told him my fears, my needs, my every-bloody-thing. I can only hope he wants to return the favour.
    “So, you want to tell me your story?” I ask, praying he does.
    “I don’t know. It’s nothing like yours. Mine’s…stupid.” He runs a hand through his hair.
    I wish his hand was mine.
    “Doesn’t matter. It’s bad to you, means something to you. What’s a simple thing to one person is a complicated ball of fucking hell to another.” I shrug. “I’m here to listen. Not going anywhere.”
    He stares at me. “I believe you. I think. But I’m scared.”
    “What of?”
    “Believing. It’s dangerous.”
    “It can be. I get that. Shit, do I get that. But I’ve done it. I’m here, still hoping you’ll want me to stay. Knowing it’s mad to think it but not caring anyway. I’m sick of doing what people say is right. I need to do what I want, what feels right inside, know what I mean?”
    He nods. Slowly.
    The kind of nod that shows he agrees one hundred percent.
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
    You’re on your own now, Alfie. The End.
    “ A lfie.” A pause. “Alfie?”
    What does he want now?
    “Where are you, you little cunt?”
    I got up from my bed, the same one I’d had for the past twelve years. The mattress sagged in the middle, box springs knackered, and smelled of the piss I’d released in my sleep ever since Mum and Dad left. They’d never been the normal parental type. You know, the kind who actually give a shit about their kids. Me and my brother, John—the one who called me a cunt—had been accidents, so Dad said. The pair of them had been high at the time of our conceptions, forgetting to use a condom, something Dad had great pleasure in telling me he didn’t like. Made him lose sensation, he’d said. Back then, I didn’t know what the fuck he was on about, being eight and whatnot.
    You know, I don’t think I’ll ever get over how they were, what they did. What people, in their right minds, treated their kids like that? Preferred the bottle, dope, and whatever the fuck else they could get their hands on? And I’m their son in more ways than one, aren’t I? I mean, look at me, at what I’ve done.
    I’m as fucked as they were.
    I wonder sometimes where they are, where they went. Whether they think of the two little bastards they made between them, and what became of us. It hurts, doing that, because I know full well they don’t think of us at all. We were nothing but burdens, stopping them living the life they really wanted.
    By rights, I shouldn’t even be here.
    I woke up one day, expecting Dad’s usual harsh cuff to the back of the head as I sat at the dirty kitchen table—a table covered in junk, hardly any space to put my cereal bowl—but that cuff never came. Neither did his hard voice or Mum’s grating whine. All I heard was John, smacking the crap out of the living room wall—nothing unusual there—then coming into the kitchen, his knuckles bleeding.
    “What are you fucking staring at?” he’d said.
    I’d looked away, ate my cereal—stale cereal Mum had got on the cheap to go along with the soured milk. Didn’t matter much to me. It had always been the same. Wasn’t until only John looked after me that I tasted fresh milk and knew what I’d been missing.
    Still, best