Princess and the Pea

Princess and the pea didn’t have a bipolar for a stepfather. Can you see it? Her in her royal pink nightdress, awakened by the turbulence of shotgun shells atop the tile floor. A shotgun makes more of an impact than you think, but if she is pestered by a pea, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have survived this story. Sometimes I wonder if the tickling in my back in the morning is that shell reminding me that if it was a little more keen I probably either wouldn’t be here or writing this by the air pulses id blow into a straw like Christopher reeves. Irregardless – my stepfather is lucky his actions only resulted in a puncture wound in my king size mattress after chucking a rock at the passing car on the dirt road near my house. If I was to ask him why he decided a 12 gauge shotgun was the best solution to a neighborhood speeder, he would ask me to shut up and find the remote control. This story must be released from my memory because I can’t get over the mechanics of it. I remember the fake, electric smile after he released the rock and gleamed with pride when he heard the window shatter. He didn’t know this man had a gun and I’d love to think that if he did, things would have gone different. Then the mattress I still sleep on today would be absent of lead. His every action screamed of clumsy proof like these criminals who say “the devil made me do it“. I still think jack Daniels speaks louder for Troy. Almost as soon as he

disappeared he reappeared, but 12 gauges heftier this time. As I heard the glass door shatter behind me, I dropped to my knees and crawled what seemed like a football field to the safety inside my abode. The gunshots seemed as if they could be heard around the world. Out of my peripherals I noticed Troy was now inside:
“Put that mattress against the wall!” he yelled still high from the adrenaline of the lustrous steel gun in his hands.
“The bed I sleep on?” I asked even though I already knew exactly what he was getting at.
Slamming the