Prose

            ‘GET
UP!’ screamed a voice from somewhere nearby. ‘GET UP YA UNGRATEFUL LITTLE
BASTARD!’ came the same voice while a pair of hands grabbed the boy and lifted
him off a mouldy mattress shaking him awake.
‘LET GO OF ME!’
bellowed back the boy.
‘WHY DID YA TAKE ALL
O’ ME BOOZE?’ the man yelled.
‘I DIDN’T TOUCH YA BOOZE!’
the boy replied.
The man threw the boy
over the mouldy mattress and turned stupidly to leave room, leaving him
sprawled on the floor.
As the boy tried to
recover from this wakeup call, he remembered what day it was – Monday, and that
meant that he was supposed to be going back to school after the summer break.
He rubbed his eyes, thinking about what it would be like to have a father who
wasn’t blind drunk all of the time. The boy’s name was Jonathan Green, but
everyone called him “Jono”. Those who hated him called him “Jono The Psycho”.
Jono was seventeen,
on the verge of turning eighteen. His birthday on the 13th of
February always leaves him feeling depressed and flat. He knows that no one
ever does anything to mark the occasion.
But almost nothing
infuriated Jono more than how his parents treated him! Even on his birthday his
father, Darren Green, won’t stop beating him up.
While his father is
Anglo Saxon, his mother, Alkina Green is an Aboriginal descendent. While his
mother is less aggressive than his father, she finds herself forced into
prostitution in order to make ends meet: Darren Green seems to drink away all
their money so that there is none left for food or any other necessities. In
any case, Jono prefers his father’s beatings to his mother’s ongoing neglect.
Anything’s better than being treated like you’re invisible, right?
Jono groaned slightly
as he pushed himself off the ground, staggered a little, and began to walk
towards a tall cracked mirror that was leaning against the wall. Jono looked
into it. Staring back was a boy with shaggy, black, shoulder-length hair. His
fringe covered his eye and the entire right-side of his face, all the way past
his bearded, pointed chin. Large but narrowed steel-grey eyes gave him a look
of cold hatred mixed with anger and his small hooked nose was slightly crooked
where it had once been broken. Jono’s smile was broad and white with big, white
teeth and generous lips. He rarely smiled. He rarely had anything to smile
about.
The tall well-built
guy in the mirror was six-foot-and-one-inch tall and fit because, without a
driver’s licence he had to walk or run wherever he wanted to go. His parents
had never taken him anywhere he had wanted to go. His heavy biceps and sculpted
six-pack were the result of serious weight training, which aided him in brawls
and petty crimes. As young as he is, Jono already had several tattoos. ‘Blood
Type: O’ was announced inside his upper left forearm. His left elbow was
covered with a spider web design. A more complicated design of snakes
intertwining with a dagger was on his upper right arm. In addition, Jono had
acquired a number of body piercings: studs adorned his left ear, right eyebrow
and left nostril while a silver labret decorated the indentation between his
lower lip and chin.
Jono lifted his head
from his hands to look at his watch.
Better get movin’ for
school, he thought. He raced over to the old scrubbed and rotting chest of drawers
and pulled out some boxers, baggy torn denim short jeans, pair of shin high
socks, baggy black   t-shirt with white,
red and green skulls on it, and a baggy black and red hoodie with white skulls
cascading down the sleeves and back with the words “JONO GREEN” written in
green letters. Jono threw these clothes on the floor as he went then when he
was finished choosing clothes, he slammed the chest of drawers shut and quickly
got changed. He picked up his shoplifted skateboard and his schoolbag and
climbed out of his window and onto the lawn.