Spineless Greg

 He remembered there were some rooms still open and not locked by keys, but he had not slept in any other room in this house after his marriage except the one he shared with Petra.

Waiting for hours for her to call him in was futile as he started to hear her snores from where he laid. There was nothing he could do but sleep where he laid. 

Thinking of the events of the day with tears in his eyes, he succumbed to the grip of Mother Nature, sleeping on the cold hard floor.

***

 A cold hard kick in the stomach woke Greg up as a bucket of ice water was dunked on him.

Squirming to his feet, his hand holding his stomach where he had been kicked, he found Damien and Evan, his younger brother, staring laughing evilly at the pranks.

It was morning, Greg noticed, picking up the soaked blanket which still laid on the ground. 

"What are you doing outside man? Your wife kicked you out again?" Damien mocked, giving a high five to Evan.

"Oh come on brother," the latter bawled. "Maybe, he just wants to feel the ground and if it's cold enough to sleep on. Was it cold and hard to sleep on?"

They laughed out loud, garnering attention as the servants who went about their daily work peered at the three of them.

"You seem to be silent about my gift this morning. You don't have anything to say now?"

Greg knew that replying to the two men would lead to worse treatments. Being silent was the only way he was going to get away unscathed. At least, it had worked in the past for him.

"I dare you to speak to me how you did last night with my gift. Who knows? You could end up mopping the entire compound."

They bawled out laughing, slapping their thighs and hitting their chest at their own jokes which Greg considered to be dry.

"Let's not waste any more time with the dog, brother," Damien laughed, cleaning the tears which were running down his face. He had laughed so hard that he was crying.

"You're right," Evan concurred, stepping over Greg's foot as he stared into his eyes waiting for a reaction. "That's what I thought."

Knowing there was no other thing they could get the man to do, the brothers tossed their buckets away, abandoning Greg in the middle of the hallway, wet and cold.

***

Greg watched them leave biting his lower lip and hating himself for being so powerless. He hated his life so much for being the way it was. 

How had he come to this point in his life where he was not better than the trash in the bin?

He hates the treatments which he was getting. He was treated like he was worthless. With every passing day, he wondered how much more of the treatment he could endure before breaking.

He could not leave because he had nowhere to go.

His family had cast him out and the one family that had taken him in treated him worse than the streets did.

At least he had a roof over his head and food to eat when he was hungry, but it was still not enough when the dogs were given better treatments than he was.

Turning with his body still dripping wet from the water Damien and Evan had poured over him, he opened the door to the bedroom stepping into it.

Petra took one look at him and scowled. She still laid in bed but she was playing a game on her phone before he got in.

"Don't ruin the bedroom rugs with the water dripping off your body," she noted, going back to her game. She couldn't even look at him. He was nothing to her.

"Did you not hear all of what happened outside?" he asked, tossing his blanket onto the floor in anger.

"As you can see," she sighed, raising her phone to show that she had been preoccupied through the event. "I've been busy. But you can tell me what happened."

"Your brothers Damien and Evan kicked me up while I was asleep and they poured ice water on me."

He expected some kind of reaction from the woman who didn't even bat an eye when he was done talking.

"Are you not going to say anything?" 

"What would you have me say?" she mockingly asked, dropping her phone on the bed. "Would you have me call my brothers and spank them for their wonderful actions?"

"No," he sighed, taken aback by how calm she was. The day before, she had defended him from her brother and here she was acting like a totally different person. 

He thought she had changed, but she was just like the rest of her family. She was just as bad as them.

"Look," she said to her feet. "It serves you right for embarrassing me in front of everyone at the party yesterday. Now you know how I feel anytime your actions bring disgrace to me."

How were they related, he thought to himself. He had no control over the way he was being treated. They all hated him for something that he didn't even know about. 

"You can use the shower, but stop your whining and man up. Even my brothers have more spine than you."

Those words hit him harder than he had expected.

He had so many horrible words to tell her, but he kept them all to himself, walking off into the shower.

***

While the water poured on him, he realized that he had gone back to square one with his wife. She obviously hated him more than she did before.

"Yesterday she was sweet, defending me from her brother's claws and today, she's changed," he muttered to himself.

There was nothing he could do to get her back. Her response that morning was cold. It stabbed him to know that she was the only one he could talk to but even she did not care about him.