You've Never Seen the Sea by Grayson Sydney

Author:Grayson Sydney [Sydney, Grayson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-09-06T23:00:00+00:00

March 7th, 1982.

The chain attaches to the metal rod above the window. It’s six feet long. A lot of links that get stuck between the wall and his sheet if he tosses and turns too much in the night. Sometimes it makes too much noise; when it’s too hot and he needs to open the window, or he’s looking for an excuse. Because while Jeran’s reasons are few, if indeed there at all, then Johnny’s reasons match. He could scratch his fork a little too far to the left while going at his steak if Jeran looked particularly annoyed one night.

It doesn’t take much.

Johnny used to surf as a kid. Sailed once or twice. He hasn’t been in over a decade, but it was often enough to stick once Jeran got back from the war. He had ten peaceful years living with his mother, and then Jeran got back. Jeran was angry. Johnny doesn’t remember having a father who wasn’t angry because, as his mother once explained, they got pregnant before he left. She gave birth while he was gone.

He can’t even use the excuse he’s got violence in his blood. That he’s predisposed. That there’s no helping it. Because before ‘Nam, Jeran was supposedly a peach. Used to buy his mom shakes, take her to flicks, used to sit her out under the stars and promise the world.

So where’d his violence come from then? If it didn’t spill out, splat, from Jeran?

He used to go sailing.

Had some rich friends back in California. Rich, meaning the parents of the kid Johnny befriended in second grade had a boat and house in Malibu. So he learned how to pull the rutter. How to tie knots. How to cut slack and believe he was contributing when they shouted to pull, pull, tie her down.

Pull, he thinks and twists the chain.

Pull, he thinks as the metal links rub and burn the skin on his neck. Sensitive. Weak, thin skin. It’ll bruise black and red and he’ll be swollen.

His California friend, that guy. Johnny beat him so bad he ended up needing a tube to eat. They were fourteen. Twenty-four hours earlier, he’d been Johnny’s first kiss.

Fifteen and Johnny’d got a forty-year old man’s cock shoved down his throat because he found that bar down in WeHo. Nice place. The toilet seats were covered in piss. The holes cut rough into the sides of stalls covered in worse. Johnny bruised his knees and felt sick after swallowing. Gagged himself until he puked on the sidewalk outside. Went home at two in the morning, woke Jeran up on purpose, and got his right knee twisted for it. His face got it worse.

Just shy of seventeen, Jeran moves them to Hartford.

Johnny’s got eyes for the king, for Happy Hapstader. Johnny knows he’s in trouble. Throws himself into overdrive to prove himself better, better, better. He knows how to pull rope tight, knows how to lock in a promise, knows how to lie through his teeth and get pissed when he sees others do the same to him.

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