Who Is To Blame?

A fairly short story about what goes on behind closed doors and how every family has their secrets. I did it pretty quick, so I plan on revising it and maybe rewriting it.

He was never any smarter, stupider, fatter, thinner, taller, shorter, nicer, or meaner than anybody else. He wasn't particularly athletic, but he'd shoot hoops with his friends at recess and toss a football around after school. You wouldn't look twice at him and you wouldn't look up or down at him. Jacob was average. 

Jacob's mom could be best described as a rabbit. She was petite, timid, and easily frightened. She'd been worn down all her life, and there wasn't much left of her but some bones, graying hair, and loose skin. She loved, but she lacked passion. What stripped her of her passion? No one knows for sure. Her dad drank himself dead and her mom drank herself vicious. She was teased in school for always being so small, but even then she didn't have it in her to fight back. She married herself a man who made up for everything she lacked 50 times over.

Jacob's dad was an average sized man that could make a larger than average sized man turn around and run. His words were sharp and unforgiving, not unlike the back of his hand. He was no better than a meathead in high school and while he still had his arrogance, he'd lost his hair, his muscle, and his scholarship to college by getting Jacob's mom pregnant - not that he ever let anyone forget it. He didn't need drugs to make him mean - that all came to him naturally. So it would seem all the cocaine he did was just for the fun of being a raging drug addict. 

When Jacob walked home from school, he'd open the garage and there would be the kind of painful suspense only a few people can really understand. As soon as the garage was lifted far enough, he would look for his dad's car. If it was there, he'd go in the back and step over the needles with the stealth of an assassin as he slipped into his room. He wouldn't turn the light on, because that made his dad angry. If the car wasn't there, he'd walk in and say hi to his mother and watch TV. Sometimes she'd tell him he should do his homework, but she wasn't the kind of person who could get anyone to do anything and she knew it all too well. 

Sometimes his dad didn't come home. Jacob liked those times, and he would sleep with his mom in her bedroom. When he did come, Jacob would retreat to his room as soon as he heard the garage open. If Jacob didn't hear the garage open, that was bad. It was bad if Jacob's dad was sober and it was bad if Jacob's dad was high. If he was sober, that means his endeavors to get coke had gone wrong and you could see a large vein protrude from his forehead. If he wasn't sober, that meant he'd swindled his way into some money to get coke and he'd be smiling in the scariest way you've ever seen. 

People didn't really know about Jacob's dad. The drug dealers knew and some of the neighbors knew, but drug dealers aren't going to help anyone and the neighbors just assume someone else will do something about it. 

How could this happen?

How could this be?

Why didn't he tell anyone?

People like to blame bad things happening on everyone else. No one likes to be the one to take responsibility. No one likes to be the person to step forward and say, "I saw there was something wrong and I did nothing." People just like to pretend like they knew the person a whole lot better than they really did and they like to see who can be the most sad for the most attention. That doesn't mean they aren't really sad. Grief is always present and always real, but there's always someone milking it.

So when Jacob was submitted to the hospital with severe brain damage and his mother had no choice but to pull the plug, this is what people did.

Author's Note

Thank you for reading, and please let me know what you think (:

Reviews

[NCalebD]

Very sad story, enjoyed the ending (in the most grotesque way). It added to the thrill and shock of the story. Great read!

[Katie]

Thank you, I appreciate it!