Eddie will be recording an audio version of chosen stories from his book Stolen. Please check back for updated files.

Here is one of the stories from his book.
 

Blood

I must have been around seven. My stepfather used to disappear into the bathroom with his friends, two and three at a time, for long periods of time. You never, ever disturbed them. Mom would grow silent and sober, serious.

Once, in my single-minded urgency to pee, I forgot to knock and barged right in. Lou, my dad’s friend, was passed out. He was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, elbow on the tub and head on his knees. My dad was passed out sitting on the toilet in the opposite corner from Lou with his head sunken on his chest and leaning against the sink. A syringe with about a quarter an inch of blood and yellowish-clear plasma backed up into it was dangling from the prominent vein in his left elbow.

I stared at this morbid scene before me, absorbing, frozen. I thought they were dead.

Fear and indecision had paralyzed me. I knew I was not supposed to be there. I knew a child should not see this. It was a thing I shouldn’t understand.

I stared at dad searching for signs of life. I wanted to shake him, tell him to wake up… desperately. But I also knew I would be beaten for being where I wasn’t supposed to be.

And deep down…I wished he were dead, and then felt guilty immediately afterward.

A dry rasp in his throat, almost a snore, confirmed both his life and pathetic-ness. I didn’t bother to check Lou. If dad was still alive, then Lou was his problem. Before this I had always liked Lou. He was kind of like an uncle to me. Unlike dad, he never hit me, and he had never said a bad word to me. But now, seeing him this way placed him on the same plane of existence as my dad, representing the same evil, the same animal, the same monster…the same beast.

I remained standing in the doorway just inside the threshold and there at my feet were drops of scarlet. I stared transfixed at the perfectly round bubbles on the octagonal patterned white tiles with black grouting in between. I became fascinated by those three tiny crimson drops. Squatting down I examined them further. The red had separated to form a clear liquid. It had a watery, slightly oily consistency, but not the potent coppery smell that had always accompanied the taste of my own blood.

Then I remembered a movie with Bill Cosby and Robert Culp, “Hickey and Boggs.” Dad and I saw it in the theater not long before. In the movie there was a scene where they approached an apartment door where blood was pooling out from under the door. Cosby knelt down, touched his fingers to it and touched them to his tongue to find that it was blood. I always associate that movie with my ill-fated trip to the bathroom that summer afternoon.

I now imagine my stepfather coming out of his mood groggily, dreamily, opening his eyes and abstractly focusing on those three crimson drops. Zooming in to an extreme close-up he sees the larger of the spots has the imprint of a child’s fingerprint. Realizing what has happened he stares… frozen.