Special Thanks to: James and Susan Nohelty Victoria Nohelty Paul Jarman Scott and Victoria Kent Thomas J Fortunato Monique Cordell Falk ALSO BY RUSSELL NOHELTY NOVELS AND CHILDREN’S BOOKS My Father Didn’t Kill Himself The Freeman Files Katrina Hates Everything The Little Bird and the Little Worm Gumshoes: The Case of Madison’s Father The Katrina Series The Lobdell Chronicles The Vessel The Pixie Dust Series The Invasion Saga The Marked Ones Worst Thing in the Universe GRAPHIC NOVELS AND COMIC BOOKS Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter Katrina Hates the Dead Gherkin Boy Pixie Dust Sorry for Existing By: Russell Nohelty Edited by: Melissa Van Natta Proofread by: Katrina Roets Cover by: Serenay Daphn Dedicated to my Pop, our complicated relationship was the basis for this entire book and he died while it was in editing. Thank you to my mother, who somehow had the courage to read this book even while she was grieving. This was the hardest, most personal book I have ever written. Copyright ©2014 by Russell Nohelty Published by Wannabe Press All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is either entirely coincidental or with explicit permission. First Edition, May, 2019 Printed in the USA. www.wannabepress.com ONE It started with a bang and a whimper. Well it wasn’t really a bang. It was more like a slap. Well, exactly like a slap. Actually, it wasn’t really a slap either. It was – what’s the sound a fist makes when it connects with a woman’s jaw? Like a woomp, or a thud, or a thwonk. Well, that was the sound. The sound of my mother being punched across the jaw by my father; her hair, her body, suspended motionless for a second, then falling gracefully in slow motion, as I watched horrified and petrified, nestled in the corner behind her. He’d aimed for me, but Mom jumped between us so that I wouldn’t face his assault. She always did that. She told me that the initial blow was always the worst; that she became numb after the third or fourth hit. At least that’s what she told me. I never believed her. I too often saw the pain on her face when he kicked her ribs for the eighth and ninth times. I watched helpless as the tears welled in her eyes. It was complete and utter misery. Dad screamed the vilest things imaginable while he beat her. I blocked out the worst of it through years of willful self- delusion. But a few burrowed deep into my memory. I used to wake at night, drenched in cold sweat. His screams jolted me out of my daydreams. They snapped me back to reality. “You vile, worthless WHORE!” Nohelty 2 “Lying sack of shit!” “Dumb Bitch!” Those were his favorites. She would cry and cry, for hours it seemed, until giant snot bubbles came out of her nose. He punched, kicked, screamed, and stomped my mother within inches of her life on more than a dozen occasions. She spent weeks in the hospital, battling to breathe, hoping to die. Punctured lungs, broken noses, and cracked rib cages became the norm; police reports and flimsy denials, standard operating procedure. He didn’t like lies, but truths only made him madder and the beatings more vicious. After a spell we kept our mouth shut and did our bid –hoping to one day get paroled. * Mom wouldn’t let him take out his anger on me. Not on her twelve-year old baby with an oxygen tank; not to the little kid whose simple existence was a miracle. Not to the kid that she made this way. And I don’t mean in the way her egg and his sperm did the freaky-deeky so I could eventually be popped out nine months later. Though of course that’s 100% accurate in the most literal sense. I mean you could interpret it that way for sure. But more so my condition was brought on by their negligence. I have a condition called pulmonary fibrosis. There’s a couple of causes from genetics to environmental factors. It basically meant my lungs were all messed up, scarred over, and didn’t work right. If they worked worse, I’d be on a lung Sorry for Existing 3 transplant list, but they work just well enough that I’ll just have crappy lung disease for the rest of my shortened life. Now, one of the causes of pulmonary fibrosis could have been my mother smoking during pregnancy. As much as I’d love to blame her for that, she took impeccable care while I baked inside her. She didn’t smoke, took prenatal vitamins, listened to classical music, and stayed away from fish. She didn’t even drink. Not one drop. It wasn’t until after my diagnosis that the pills and booze took hold. No, the cause of my condition comes from being poor; really, really poor; so poor that we couldn’t afford adequate housing. Poor enough to squat anyplace that accepted our meager cash, even if it meant buildings riddled with asbestos. As a child I was susceptible to all sorts of things that my parents’ immune system could withstand. I’m 18 now. I was 12 during this story. I was 8 when they diagnosed me. That’s the worst part. My condition wasn’t some genetic defect. It wasn’t some moment-of-birth botch. It wasn’t something I’d lived with my entire life. I remember being a normal kid; playing sports, running, jumping, living outside a protective cocoon. I remember biting into a fresh apple without tasting sand. I remember breathing without pins and needles stabbing my lungs. I remember a life where my parents didn’t blame themselves for my existence, where even for a moment we were blissfully happy. Nohelty 4 I mean blissfully happy. Over the moon, laugh every night, Norman Rockwell, Kodak stock portrait happy. The kind of happy we would nauseatingly shake our heads at today. The kind of happy that breaks my heart to think about, because I can never have it again. Seven though, that was a magical year. Dad came home every night to a warm cooked meal. He regaled Mom with stories of his day as she sat enthralled on the edge of her seat. We made pillow forts and watched old movies that went way over my head, all cuddled up around the tiny CRT Dad found at a yard sale. We were dirt poor. We didn’t care though. We didn’t need things to be happy. We just needed to be together. It wasn’t meant to last though. I started getting winded at soccer practice, then I could barely make it home from school. My chest began to burn and ache throughout the day and into the night. Then, the wretched coughing started, followed by the blood. We went to doctor after doctor after doctor and our meager finances ran dry, but Mom and Dad were vigilant. They endured any cost, no matter how high, to ensure that my health was sound. Specialist after specialist shook their head and confirmed my parents’ worst fears. By my eighth birthday it was a foregone conclusion. They didn’t get me toys, or video games, or even books. They got me two shiny oxygen tanks. I still use them to this day. Happy Birthday to me, right? * As you can imagine, having a kid that lived off oxygen tanks, with hardly any immune system, all because you couldn’t afford a nicer place, puts a strain on a marriage financially, Sorry for Existing 5 emotionally, and physically; even to the most well-adjusted, intelligent, and/or thoughtful among us. My father was none of the above. Seeing a constant reminder of his shortcomings was too much for him to handle. He, who was supposed to protect me, instead created a feeble monster – kept alive by tubes and machines. It pissed him off. It pissed him off more every time he looked at me. He was too simple, too stupid, and too cowardly to look inside himself – to beat himself, so he redirected it out onto everybody around him. He was once a gentle giant, now he was consumed by rage. My mother’s love, on the other hand, collapsed upon itself like a neutron star. She grew numb and callused. She gave freely and unrepentantly to my father, who for decades fed off that love to make it through the day. When his rage boiled over, she loved harder and harder. Surely her love could bring him back from the brink. Surely, they could get through this together. Surely, she would not have to go it alone. No matter how much she gave, it fell into a black hole of rage and bitterness. He shunned her, ignored her, berated her, and eventually beat her when she tried to reason with him. It’s very hard to love a man that changed so violently and so quickly. She gave everything of herself away to him and she had nothing left for the child that needed it. All she could do was use her numb, powerless body to take a beating for me. She had no other way to show her love. She’d given it all away, and my disease overloaded her circuits.