I spent the next five hours cleaning the house, inside and out, occasionally fetching things for Bruce, who, every time he sees me, chuckles and mutters something like “…made him bleed…” to himself. I realize that if I’m lucky and can keep on his good side, this lie might just keep Bruce entertained enough that I can ride it for the next few days. I didn’t plan on slacking off, of course, but maybe he’d just settle for mocking me instead of actively trying to make sure I knew I was dirt. And maybe, for the first time in a long time, I could sleep in a bed for a solid week or so.

Just past ten, Bruce passes out in the front room. I know he’ll be out for a least a few hours, so I grab my weed and roll a quick joint, slipping into the backyard to smoke. Halfway through the joint, the pain in my side finally begins to dull, along with the vividness of the memories of the night before.

Bruce always gave me his disability checks to cash; his credit was bad enough that he couldn’t even get a bank account, so he made me go to the corner store and cash them. I was allowed to keep back some to buy food, but the rest of it he blew on booze, smokes, and sometimes, meth. Occasionally, when he had an extra check or something, he'd get some coke to go with the meth. Apparently, last night when he’d woken me in an almost child-like state, it was a coke check.

******

“Psst! Duncan! Pssst!”

Bruce pushes at my shoulder with his fingertips. I groan and roll to face him. He is squatting next to my mattress, his filthy, unshaven face shinning with an expression of glee. His pupils are so wide I know that if the room was lit I would be able to see myself reflected in the mean little orbs.

“It’s payday!” he whispers excitedly, “Where’s my money?”

I carefully roll away from him under the guise of stretching. Rubbing my hands across my face, I mumble, “Wa’ day’s it? ‘S Sunday, yeah?”

Bruce looks confused for a half-second. “No… It’s Friday! Payday!”

“Bruuuuce,” I groan and drop my hands, my sleep-fuddled brain just having pieced together what he's asking, “Bruce, fuckin’…” I sigh, exasperated. He got paid last week: Seven hundred and seventy-two dollars. There’s no WAY he's spent all of it in a week.

“It’s SUNDAY, Bruce,” I tell him, forgetting, as my annoyance burned away the last of my sleep, that there absolutely is a way for Bruce to blow through that much cash that fast, “An’ even if it was Friday, it’s th’ middle a’ th’ fuckin’ night. Ya’d have yer money anyway, wouldn't ya? How ya' gonna spend it all in a couple hours?”

******

In answer, Bruce had lifted me from the bed and hurled my into the wall. I'd known right then that I should just shut my mouth, let him knock me around a bit to get his initial anger out, and then try and explain that the only money left was the twenty he'd tossed at me for me for food. I’d never been real good at keeping my calm when Bruce was spun, though, and sure enough, my mouth had led a fury-driven Bruce to kick the absolute hell out of me.

And yet, I reflect as I slip back inside and head to my room, here is Bruce, not twenty-four hours later, clean and laughing about two months of me fucking with his schedule. Pulling on pajama pants and a faded tee, I shake my head and curse the fact that Bruce is already sober.

When he's spun on meth and coke, Bruce usually goes on week-long binges, becoming unpredictably violent and especially vicious. Like the time when I was ten and had left his boots on the front porch over night in the winter. He’d very calmly gotten me out of bed, explained what I’d done wrong, and then put the boots on and stomped on me until he’d broken my arm and wrist. Sometimes, like last night, he's only high for a day, but he's usually still kinda violent for a couple days after. He’s never, in the entire six years since my mom had died, not once, been so amused by something I’d done wrong that he didn’t punish me somehow.

I sigh and drop into bed, pulling the sheets over my shoulder, and fall asleep some time later, the alarm clock lighting the darkness and Bruce’s snores a harsh lullaby.