Chapter 4 - Part 4

Howell yawned as he trudged his way up the last flight of stairs.  He was a little hungry and briefly wondered if anyone had bothered to go shopping.  The teen pushed the door to his apartment open and froze.

When an apartment only had six pieces of furniture, it was very easy to tell when something was out of place.  The broken sofa had a new rip in the fabric and white stuffing spilled from the wound.  The kitchen table was completely turned upside down and what was left of a chair was inside a new hole in the wall.

Carefully shutting the apartment door, Howell slowly walked around the kitchen counter.  The bathroom door was closed, the one good chair wedged underneath the doorknob to keep it that way.  Sitting on the ground, next to the bathroom, was his dad and Howell carefully rapped his knuckles on the counter.

His dad jerked awake and blinked wearily up at his son.  With a sad smile of attempted reassurance, he said the words Howell was expecting.  “Everything’s all right.  Your mother just had one of her fits, but she’ll be fine soon.  Why don’t you go to the library for the evening?”

Howell studied his dad’s face for a moment before turning away.  Instead of leaving, though, he dug through the freezer.  His dad looked surprised when his son came back, but gratefully accepted the bag of unknown frozen food and pressed it to his face.  There was no sound coming from the windowless bathroom, and so Howell sat down near his dad and waited.

“Did she run out of medication?” Howell finally asked.

“We stopped taking it,” his dad sighed.  “I was getting weird side effects and stopped for only a week.”

The teen could hear the frustration in his dad’s voice and understood why it was there.  His mom refused to take medication on her own, so his dad took his own medication more often than he needed.  There was also a possibility that they were not even taking the correct medication.  Street drugs were always questionable at best.

His parents were both crazy, which is why Howell knew he was going insane.  It was genetic.  He also knew that it was possible to live a relatively normal life outside of a psych hospital.  Not like his parents had relatively normal lives, but they tried.  He knew they both hated the medication and how numb it made them feel and act, but they were both moody without it.

A stifled sob escaped through the bathroom door and was followed by a complete breakdown of wails and cries of apology.  His father cringed and looked pleadingly at his son and Howell nodded in understanding.  The teen pushed himself up and walked over to the balcony.

“I’d prefer you use the stairs,” came the soft voice behind him.  “I don’t know what we’d do if you broke your neck.”

“I know,” Howell said, but he still pulled aside the ratty drapes and stepped outside.  “I’ll see you both in the morning.”

He dropped his thin bag and was surprised at the noise it made when it hit the metal balcony.  Howell had completely forgotten about the things he had received from the library.  His plans changed in an instant and instead of climbing down the ladder, Howell snatched his bag and head up.

It was late, but there were probably still two hours of daylight left.  He sat down against the rooftop access door and immediately fished out the metal box.  Howell could not explain why he felt drawn to it, but it felt as if the box belonged to him.  It just seemed familiar to him.

Now, up on the roof, Howell could see that it was made of the same kind of metal that spotted the city’s ceiling.  It was a silvery black, but it also seemed to have that oily, rainbow look that soap bubbles contained.  The colors in the metal seemed to move and ripple as he ran his hand across the top.

It looked similar to a keepsake box, like the one his Grandma Barlow had.  It had intricate symbols around the edges and Howell felt like he should know what they said.  He had not even considered the fact that maybe it was just a design; no, he knew it was something more.

It was the faded symbols on the top that really had his attention, though.  There were eight of them; two rows of four that did not even seem to be carved on the box.  They were not painted on, but they were there like the flashes of color that he caught out of the corner of his eye.

Howell stared at the box, even though his head was starting to throb.  With concentration, the symbols on the top seemed to become clearer, but the cost was a migraine.  The lines were almost clearly defined when he decided to close his eyes.  The rainbow-haired teen let his head fall back as he loosely gripped the box in one hand.