There was no winning. No ties or truces. No middle ground or treaties. Not in this house. This was Jeb's house. Otto's father never had a positive thing to say to anyone; Otto especially.

A young sixteen year old blond boy found himself at his father's mercy yet again. Otto's room was out of the way, yet the man found a reason to walk upstairs to the attic, and accost the boy for it's condition.

"It's a ********' mess! Who's house do you think this is, huh? What is this s**t!?" Jeb kicked a book across the room. It nearly took off a symbol from his drum set.
Otto knew better than to talk back. Knew better, but never did take well to his own advice. A rampant surge of teenage hormones had him itching to prove a point. To be right for once. To show the man he deserved to be treated better.

"Hey! Don't trash my stuff!" Otto yelped back, "It's my room! It's my s**t!"

Jeb's eyes went as wide and round as saucers. His face steaming red. Otto knew he was in trouble the moment he raised his voice, but it was too late. No going back.

"Don't you ********' raise your voice at me! You wanna sass me, boy?! You pay the bills? You got a job? No! You don't even do your ********' homework! You're a damned waste of your mother's time and you're a pain in my a**!" He took one long stride at Otto and smacked him over the head with a large hand. "Clean your ******** room, you leeching little brat! No sass! You hear me?"

Otto's mouth quivered with anger and fear. His head stung from the strike of his father's hand. "Yessir." He grumbled.

The man started to storm off, stepping on a CD case in the process. One of Otto's favourite CDs was now broken within it, laid on the floor beside his stereo where he'd camped out the night before engrossed in his music. He was outraged, but he was broken hearted. He rarely got money to go buy his own things, and now he was down one of his favourite things to listen to.

But Otto's heartache was nothing compared to Jeb's temper. He cursed and looked down at the shattered case and CD. "You leave this s**t on the ******** floor!? If I wasn't wearin' boots I'd have cut my foot! If this room isn't clean in ten ******** minutes, I'm burnin' those God forsaken drums of yours in the fire pit!"

The door slammed shut.

- - -

Otto was quiet at dinner. He usually was. Dinner was either quiet talk between Jeb and Bethany, or it was a heated argument between Jeb and Otto. There was never anything else. Beth never took sides, but she never tried to break it up either. Nor did she bat an eye if something was thrown at Otto when the boy cussed by accident. She ate her food, waited it out until both boys were finished eating, and then cleaned the table and did the dishes.

But tonight it was only Beth and Otto. His mother was slightly more interactive when it was just them. A tap on his back to remind him to sit up straight. A flick of his ear when he was avoiding eating his greens. She'd even speak to him. "Do you need more gravy?" or, "Pass me the beans, sweetheart." Spoken kindly. Politely.

Otto's unfinished school work lay to the side. They'd spent over an hour on it. Beth did what she could, but more often than not, Otto was too impatient to understand much of what she tried to teach. She took his melancholy for being disappointed in himself. When really, he was weighted down with just another thing Otto Graves did wrong. His room was messy, his homework incorrect. She finished her own dinner, washed her own plate. Otto barely touched his food, but she made no attempt to wait for him. She waited on Jeb. Not on Otto.

Before leaving to busy herself in her office, she leaned down and kissed the top of Otto's head, rubbing his shoulder. "You'll get it, sweetheart, Give it time."

And then she was gone.

But what had she been referring to? The homework, or his constant battle with his dad? If Otto was home, and Jeb was home, their paths would always have to cross, and it was never silent. If Otto was sitting in the living room at the TV, he'd be accosted for lazing about. If he was at the table doing homework past the allotted homeschooling schedule his mother laid out, he'd be berated for making a mess at his dining room table, or simply being too slow and stupid to get his work done on time.

Otto could breathe in and be told he was doing it too loudly. It didn't matter. The message was clear. Otto was not welcome, and he'd never been wanted. Not by Jeb, at least. His mother had hopes that Otto would take on the family business. But as years passed she realized, it wasn't just a lack of focus that made Otto useless at learning, it was a lack of everything. It was a family run business, and they were running out of family interested in continuing the Graves Funeral Home.

Regardless, Otto was alone at the table now. His mother left him with his uneaten food, not even asking him why he was sad or even mentioning that he'd not spoken a word the entire evening. He knew he needed to finish his food soon, lest his father get back and yell at him for wasting food by letting it go cold. And again be angry that his mother had wasted another evening with him on school work, only to still be working on it on 'his' table. That was the thing with Jeb; if evidence of Otto's existence was seen in his house, Jeb got angry.

Suddenly, a wave of misery poured over Otto's heart. He seemed to come to a realization that he'd never be welcome here. never be loved. Never would he do anything right. Never would he make anyone proud. He'd be hit with fists for cussing when he was upset. He'd be punished for chores he didn't do well enough. He'd be yelled at for simply taking a trip to the bathroom too late at night.

Otto knew his father would be home soon. He knew he needed to eat his food quickly and clear his mess. But that one task felt impossible, and a dam within his heart cracked open with a swelling surge of sadness gushing forth. Otto dropped his fork on the floor as he buried his face in his hands, sobbing all alone in a darkening kitchen at sunset.

And then he heard it. A break between sobs, he heard the crackle of tires driving up the gravel path. His father was home, and Otto, and the table, were both a mess.

He panicked. He couldn't eat this in time. He was forbade from eating in his room. He couldn't trash it without Jeb finding out. His homework was still askew and unfinished on the table.

A car door shut.

Otto sucked in a breath. He couldn't do it. He couldn't go through another round of this. Another hour of being yelled at, scolded and berated. He couldn't breathe, he could barely think. He stood, looked to the back of the house, where the back door was. Where he knew his only escape was.

- - -

He ran. Bursting out the back door as if running from a storm, Otto shot through the manicured backyard and into the overgrown brush bordering the property. He wasn't crying anymore. He was too scared to cry. He was listening for his father's screaming. After all, he'd left wasted food and unfinished school work on Jeb's dining room table. Again. Tear stained cheeks felt raw in the evening air. And as Otto got further and further from the house, the darker and darker it got.

He stopped dead at the border of the woods on the outskirts of the field he was in. Every rustling blade of grass in the breeze sounded like slithering snakes looking for a meal at his ankles. Every chittering rodent in the woods sounded like a signal for the wolves to come eat him up. Darkness began to blanket the wild field of weeds, and his house was but a bright light in the distance now. The sky was becoming a heavy dark and suffocating shroud that threatened to trap him.

He would not be safe here. Shadows whispered and cackled. Branches teased at his goose bumped skin. But in that house? The only thing that waited there for him were screaming, crashing, and a porcelain plate likely to be aimed at his head.

He was stuck between a rock and a hard place. His phobia of the dark looming behind him, or the endless torture that waited for him at home.

As Otto sobbed, as he struggled with his indecision, that's when he saw them. A hooded figure in bright white coat that slipped out from the darkness.

They were headed right for him.