At first the thought of suicide seemed very easy to me. I was the only person that didn't like living in the desert. I, in my own way, looked at myself as a desert and this was natural because of the way I was raised. My parents were always in and out of the house and never around for long periods. They always had to do taxes and so always had to go somewhere with no rhyme or reason – other than the fact that they always found something wrong.
They had a way of taking everything around them and reshaping it into some kind of hurtful, terrifying thing. The way they took care of me was the same way they would have used a drill to cut my throat. They never talked to me, not about anything other than taxes. They never did anything for me or for the family. Everything was always about what they wanted or needed to do. It was like they were only interested in themselves.
On Saturdays they would always leave the house and go to some job they didn't like that didn't pay well and came home tired. I would often wonder where they went, but they always came back tired and they always said they were tired. They never told me why they were tired, but they always seemed to be tired. This always made me uncomfortable and so I always did whatever I could to help. Some days I would have ask my dad what was wrong and he would always say that he had a hard time at his job because taxes were hard to do for the IRS.
Hard to do? Taxes weren't hard to do. Taxes were taxes. Those were the ones he always used. They were always the same and every year he would get them back and then get nasty with his attitude. This was because the tax office would always somehow figure out that he was cheating and then they would ask for more. This meant the next year that he had to cheat more and to cheat more meant that he had to take over the neighborhood.
He had to take more money and to take money usually meant he would have to act in a very frightening way. He always did the things he had to do to get money and people to get more money. It always made me wonder why he just didn't work on the tax returns instead of extorting money from people, but then again I already knew – they never did anything they didn't like to do.
Most Saturday nights he would be tired from taking money from people and so he would be tired. That was when he would get mean. He would often hit my mom and I never understood why he did that when he was tired. He would always say he hated taxes and hated his job, but he always did it anyway.
One Saturday night after he had been drinking and screaming, he made us a nice little packet of snacks. He had been saving them up since we were staying over at a friend's house. I guess to the rich people the 'contractor' was like a hero because he would always finish the job in a shorter time. He would get an entirely different set of checks and they always folded. It didn't matter if he cut the grass or fixed whatever was broken, he would always finish the job in no time at all.
My parents always had a special interest in him for one thing and that was his health. They often told him all about his health. He would always get angry because they always asked him if he was ok. He would always say he was fine, but it was clear that he wasn't always fine.
That same night we had gone to the bank and my mom had gone to the restroom. I guess she had to go because she gasped when she came out. She always went to use the restroom like every other hour and she would gasp, but never did anything about it. The next day she wasn't wearing her usual face, but she had started to wipe her face and to cough. She said that the bank smelled bad, but at the same time she looked at me and said "put the truck away." That was odd. Even my dad looked at her funny, but then again he always looked at her funny.
My dad started going out on tax business so he could get someone else fined. I didn't understand what was wrong. My dad always got me to stay home and read a book, but this really wasn't that bad of a book. It was written by a man who hated taxes and he hated them because they were evil and they ate out his income. I really enjoyed this book and so I was reading it to my parents. They listened in a very odd way.
They looked like they were listening, but they weren't. It was like they were thinking of something while they were listening. I sometimes wondered if they were trying to figure out if I was trying to break into the house because they liked it when I was locked in my room. I don't know if my dad liked it or not, but he never said anything about it. He always looked at me like I was a weirdo and he hated me.
I used to wake up around 3 a.m. and try to sleep again because I was scared that I might have done something wrong. I don't know why. I didn't do anything wrong. I was lucky that I had learned how to find my way out of a situation, but I never had to do that when I was locked in my room. I was scared to go out of my room and I didn't know why. Sometimes I thought it was something else and other times I thought it had to be taxes.
At one point they would run out of my room screaming and then they would grab me and try to drag me into the room. I got away because I found a secret area in the doorway. It was a hook that held my bed in place, but when I moved it the hook fell out and so it was easy to drag my bed. I didn't want to do this, but that was the only way I could get away. It was just in case I wanted to get away because they were always out of their room looking for me.