Post-general assembly meeting

We went back home to find Bleach Eyes waiting at the doorstep. - ``I am sorry sir... for the intrusion. I realize you have a human in the house and I shouldn't have come...''

- ``Nonsense young man, you are welcome and my wife probably has a literally bloody meal waiting for us. She has a kind of sixth sense when it comes to our hunger.''

His bleach eyes turned to me, focusing on mine with a question mark making my spine tremble. - ``It's true, she does!'' - My eyes touched the ground and a rush blew my cheeks with heat. I couldn't really tell why, but I was still not comfortable with these Bleach eyes on me.

- ``Still. I should have phoned sir.''

- ``Stop calling me sir.''

- ``Sorry sir, but I can't. Even in reserve you clearly outrank me.''

- ``What?'' - My breath return with confusion, what did he mean?

- ``Oh! Nothing! Sorry, again.'' - He nervously turned to leave, but my father corrected his natural posture and didn't even have to turn for his instruction to be followed.

- ``Please join us for dinner. Phone your father and say you are with friends and curfew will have to be broken! What ever you should do!'' - I knew that voice, when I behaved less... properly or carelessly... that voice came to him. Richest, direct, his orders were beyond contestations, without him ever growing a decibel.

- ``Yes, sir!''

He followed us home, before I could react to the fact that these eyes were touching my comfort zone, tainting it with his anxiety inducing gaze. Skimming my personal history sprinkled in small wooden frames, my memories and life. The invasion was only attenuated by his clumsy nerves, that voided him of his typical cold indifference.

- ``Before, sir...'' - he struggled with words. - ``I should mention where my fidelity lays with.''

- ``No! First I order you to leave the sir home where it belongs and be at ease.'' - My father stopped to wink at me with a comic ``don't-you-just-love-your-Dad face'' - `` Secondly you are allowed to keep your priorities as you see fit. Which means that you will be attending our meeting conditionally and will resolve your own boundaries as a free man, as of which we shall close or not the deal.''

- ``Yes, si... Sorry.'' - His neck bent and he went facing the ground all the way to the kitchen.

- ``Honey, I'm home.'' - Dad's fingers turned the nobble revealing the warm feeling of a light full, food filled dinner table with a warm welcoming smile from my mother that lasted as long as she didn't see an extra mouth to feed.

The silence made his eyes lift. - ``I am sorry madam, I had no wish to impose and I am not hungry any way. I can just wait.''

- ``I will not have such talk in my kitchen!'' - She turned to my father that sat in his place enormous and pretending to hide in fear with an apologetic smile. -''You should have called!'' - She turned back to Bleach Eyes. - ``Don't be so nervous boy, just find yourself a seat and I will serve you as well. If it is not enough maybe it will serve them as a lesson, the worst that can happen is that our father doesn't get his tiramisu.'' - she smiled.

- ``Really? Tiramisu? Thanks mum!'' - suddenly I was relaxed and forgot that these eyes were the same haunting me at night.

- ``Oh! Mum, don't do that to me, mum! You know I love it so.'' - My father smiled with a childish face he knew would not meet sufficient resistance.

He sat on the corner near the window, so I had to sit next to him. I could hear his breathing during the whole meal, like nothing else existed. A strange tension was created by his presence in all my senses, the kind I would feel if my guts told me to flee, but they didn't. I was just not used to dining with a night... well... with another nightmare. This seems like shock therapy for panic and anxiety. The dinner continued lightly, with my mother bombarding the poor fellow with questions and as his difficulty in keeping his voice steady increased, my fear of him was gradually dissipated, giving room to a simple uneasiness.

After dinner the kitchen door rang and a few people got in. A thin tall man with long limbs and a flowerish fresh smell of whale-man with a large bald head entered first, his eyes were strong green and his left arm had a mermaid and an anchor tattoo.

- ``How is the wife?'' - my father sounded from behind me as I stood to greet the incoming group.

- ``Fishy as ever!'' - And they shook hands pulling into a short range hug.

- ``You, bed!'' - His eyes flashed back at me.

- ``What? Why? No!'' - My father looked back at me and moved strategically his brow so I understood I was to follow the order of this weird man in our kitchen. I looked around for a helper, an advocate of my unfair fortune. Bleach eyes looked apologetically as though he agreed with the decision and his posture was back to straight and detached. His face looked no longer from the shadow, his shoulders hanged loose no more and his soldier-like opened-leg stand gave him a position at the meeting. - ``How come he can???''

- ``He's elite!'' - There was that voice again and there was no fighting it. These were the kind of behaviors that got him fired so often. I left and spent another terrible night hearing whispers of what sounded like a party down stairs and without a clue as to what was going on. I had to face my father and make my stand... but it wouldn't be now, nor today. I couldn't just stay there and pretend I didn't know what was going on or that something was going on. No way! These are no ways to threat a person! I am a grown up, I deserve the respect and dignity that comes with the responsibility of... I had no money, no income, no house and no order in my life... if you would look closer you would find I had no power but to ruin my prospects and future, no freedom but to lose what I still had and gain a one way to ungrateful-land.