Stolen Me by K. Michael Washington (read with me .TXT) 📕

labeled every receipt, including the one for me. When I was thirteen I was going through “his things” in “his home office”, which was a habit I had picked up around six months earlier when Judy got a part time job during the week at a coffee shop. Aaron was extremely organized but he saved so much shit, I would go in the office once a week and it would be a totally different place. It’s what I did on Thursday afternoons. It was always the same on the surface, old gray metal desk in the middle of a dingy tile floor, the off-white kind with the speckles. The walls were lined by gray filing cabinets. The one window looked out to the street in front of the house, but it was almost completely blocked by a cabinet. I would peep out the three inch gap above it when I heard cars pass. You could easily see a car slowing to turn into the driveway.

Through his receipts I could spend the day with him, on the road, going place to place fixing folk’s computers. It also told me he would sneak an occasional forbidden hamburger when Judy wasn’t looking. From the newspaper clippings he kept, I could tell you how he would vote in the next election. From the adoption paperwork on me, I found that I was adopted the same day of the accident! The adoption process couldn’t have been that fast. I circled the date and stuck the certificate to the fridge, packed a bag and left. As the sun was setting, Judy’s Volkswagen paced along side me. I walked proudly carrying my suitcase as I had for the last five hours, going nowhere in particular. Aaron yelled from the window that it was a typo and they put the date I went into state custody by mistake. He said he was proud of me for catching an error that he had missed, and then he called me son. Judy and Aaron always called me Marcus and insisted that I called them Judy and Aaron. This was Judy’s idea but Aaron, as with the typo story went along with it. Their story was a leaking dam, Judy stuck a finger in to stop the leak and two more sprung. I went home where Judy…now Mom said that the incident had brought us all closer, but I never trusted them again. I started to question everything. Everything they had ever said. I didn’t think I had to relive my thirteen years without their perspective to gain the perspective of who I was. I just wanted to know what I came from.

Aaron very lightly reprimanded me for going through his things and I promised even lighter that I would stop. The certificate no longer had a file in his cabinets. I searched the entire house and never found it. By the time I was fifteen I had searched both of their cars and Aaron’s business office, which was just a tiny warehouse building filled with computer parts a desk and of course too many filing cabinets. I finally broke down and stopped Aaron on his way to work one morning while Judy was still asleep. Even without her coaching he managed to get out the door without anything more than a promise to show it to me later. This convinced me that it defiantly wasn’t in the house. Later on that after noon as promised, they as a united front furnished me with my paperwork. This time some other numbers raised a question, it was the issue date a full year after the accident. They said that when I was a baby I grabbed and ripped the original while Judy was showing it to me as she talked me to sleep, she said its important that babies get to touch things and that I always had a strong grip for a kid. She would talk to me, instead of bedtime stories. She called it conditioning. She would always say things like I’m great, or beautiful. When Judy lied she talked softer and carried her words…almost singing them. I refused to give the certificate back and Aaron was infuriated. Had he not been a six-foot beanpole I bet he would have hit me. He was taller than I was, but I was a healthy boy whose frame was having a hard time containing the strong man inside. The look in their eyes was the final factor in my choice to leave them, it was obvious to me that they were lying, I just couldn’t figure out why.

An older kid had showed me how to break into arcade machines about a year earlier. All you need is a screwdriver and a backpack to carry the coins. You can pry the door open really easy, and if it has a pad lock, the screwdriver through the loop and a hard stomp will bust almost all of them too. I did it on occasion, and changed the coins to bills at an arcade across town. Now that I had to get away, I did it all the time. I had a five-arcade rotation. One mall, two bowling alleys, the airport terminal, and then the place where I cashed my coins, a monster of an arcade called Carnival Fair. It was owned by an Arab family, the Dad would smile and call me “my friend” because he knew I was robbing his competition and spending their money with him. After I had been his friend for about a year he grew balls enough to tell me he knew what I was doing. I opened my book bag and dumped the change in his counter looked at him and said “Then you’re just as guilty and I should charge you a fee.” The noisy machine stopped on two hundred dollars even as always and we never got that personal again. After the transaction I would always play a couple pocket’s full of change I didn’t cash in. The Arab Dad thought he was making money, but he was just paying my fee that he always paid, every time I cashed in coins. I would spend an hour playing games all over his arcade, but before I left I always would empty two or three of the border line popular games. I wonder how mad he would be if he found out one fifth of what he cashed out to me came from his machines. Another source of money was my guilt ridden adopted parents who loved to over compensate. I started embezzling money from them just after the issue date incident. I would ask for new shoe money then go steal the shoes or anything else I could steal and they were willing to pay for. I never spent a dime unless I had to. I snuck on the bus or rode my bike, I always ate at home or somewhere else for free, never had a girlfriend that didn’t foot the bill. The day I left, I had just over thirteen thousand dollars.

Judy the self-described backbone collapsed under the pressure that the discovery of my rich uncle applied. She fell out of my arms into a kitchen chair and didn’t speak a word until Aaron came home. When true colors shined through, Aaron was the strength and Judy the weakling. She sobbed quietly to herself as he told me everything. As he lifted the weight of the lies stone by stone off of his shoulders, he pelted me. For his finale he slammed me with a granite slab. Everything was in slow motion when he said it. “Your father is still alive…”

FATHER

Summertime is the best time to work country roads because the corn is always high, providing a unique form of cover from potential witnesses. It’s a good idea to look for isolated properties. Some homes aren’t visible from the road so look for mailboxes and driveways. If you can, check the mail, more than a couple different postmark dates or several newspapers means a vacation. Another advantage of the summer time, but the season also presents the disadvantage of stay at home kids.

I was working on the road one summer and stopped in Iowa. I got a room in one of those, filthy side of the highway motels around thirty minutes from Iowa State University. I was twenty-five years old and three times as sharp as most cats, but still didn’t have a fucking clue what color the sky was. I run across this beautiful two story farmhouse peeking above a corn field at least a quarter mile from the only road. Not a single neighbor in shouting distance. Everything smells good down the driveway and even better when I see I can park behind the house. Not a single car outside, but a four car garage might have hid something, so I played it real cool and just went to the front door and rang the shit out the doorbell. Glass pains lined both sides of the front door, so it would be an easy entry. Now a day, you should avoid places with alarm service and of course look for sirens on your initial walk around, before your second pass at the doorbell and knocking, hard knocking. You’d be surprised how many people miss the next step. Some let the anxiety get the best of them or they’re just too gun-ho and start breaking glass. I try the door. Half of the time, just like at that old farm house it’s unlocked. I walk in and by rule close and lock the door behind me calling out a couple times, “Is anybody home? Is anybody home?” Nobody answered. I checked the garage, which only had room for two cars because of all the clutter, but there weren’t any parked, so I went to work. Fifteen hundred in cash and some really expensive Jewelry came out of the master bedroom. A beautiful, shiny black twelve-gauge pump shotgun caught my eye sitting in the corner of the room. I didn’t need the extra heat so I left it. At the time I thought the master bedroom is the first room you should always hit. I call it the sweet spot, next is the home office. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have made it to that room, but I was young and stupid, so the best thing that ever happened to me was just dumb luck. I’m walking out that bedroom with my cargo pockets full of her parent’s shit and she was barley awake and hobbling down the hallway directly towards me. She was in a bra and panties, showing me every inch of a goddess. Rubbing her eyes she cuts a sharp left into a bathroom. She didn’t even see me. The door straight away from the top of the steps was closed when I came in but now it was open. I decided instantly that from now on I would open every door in the house before I hit the sweet spot just to make sure I was alone. As soon as the bathroom door closed I started running. I know I heard the bathroom door close but she faked me out and had opened it right away. As I was running by she hit me violently with a blow dryer. I was running full speed so my feet kept going while my face was smashed in place. I landed on the back of my neck and head. My toes hit the ground behind my head. The next time she knocked me off my feet was when I regained consciousness. She was fully clothed and I was lying in her bed in some real pain and none of it mattered because of the compassion her bright hazel eyes looked down on me with. She smelt like a flower and her touch was soft as talc. When she would brush her hand across my brow, it was like she was