7904 Hermitage Rd,

Henrico, VA, 23113

1(804)763-9313

Young Adult Novel/Coming of Age

50,000 Words­­­­

The Brothers Z

By

Ryan Spitzer

Table of Contents

Chapter One – All Hell Breaks Loose ​1
Chapter Two – Our Great Escape ​10
Chapter Three – At Last Liberation​16
Chapter Four – Lights, Sirens, Action​24
Chapter Five – Home at Last?​34
Chapter Six – Demon at the Gate​43
Chapter Seven – Outlaws…The Journey Continues   ​51
Chapter Eight – Give us this day our Daily Bread…​58
Chapter Nine - … And Forgive us our Trespasses. ​68
Chapter Ten – Time To waste… No Apologies ​77
Chapter Eleven – On the Road Again​92
Chapter Twelve – Our Cover Blown​95
Chapter Thirteen – Grand Theft Auto​96
Chapter Fourteen – Green Acres is the Place to Be​97
Chapter Fifteen – Hot Pursuit​98

“I can't get it out of my head. A dream of seven years. Every day I have this. And sometimes I wake up and I don't know where I am. I don't talk to anybody. Sometimes a day - a week. I can't put it out of my mind.” – John Rambo (Rambo: First Blood)

Many kids grow up on their own these days in spite of having a parent or both parents. Parents, huh, glorified donors if you ask me! Our parents, our folks, whatever you want to call them, never really meant much to me or my brother Zeke. Neither of them, alone or together, sure as hell, was worth anything to either of us. Looking back after all these years I can honestly say I haven’t changed the way I feel about them and neither had he I am certain. Many people grow up, and try to preach to you about, “Do not forget the importance of family…” or how “You must honor your parents, and respect their wishes” among the other dumb as shit advice adults like to spout off in an effort to guard their pointless authority. These types of yuppie clueless people make me sick, and they always seem to be saying some broken record sentimental comments and shit when they have no clue. I’ve heard it all things like, “if you don’t make an effort to forgive and mend the past with your folks, sooner than you know it they will be dead and you’ll wish you had told them how you felt. You never know what tomorrow holds, and people change time heals all wounds. It is so lame to even think of saying “I love you… I’m sorry… and I forgive you… do you forgive me?”, or some weak ass statement like that. If you cannot tell now by reading this that I am bitter and have a chip on my shoulder the size of freaking Texas you’d better stop here. I may piss you off if you keep reading this, and heaven forbid I offend your pathetic optimistic little outlook any farther. Now where was I? Parents, oh yeah! I could go on for days about the many worthless parents in this world and the messed up crap they put their children through. I am not saying that I hate all adults, or parents, and for the people that have great ones, well the stars sure shined on you didn’t they, but nothing personal it is all just luck of the draw I guess

Abuse! What a broad termed word for such an endless list of harmful actions that can be committed against another helpless being be it child, animal, or weaker individual. My bro Zeke (short for Ezekiel), and I were abused or at least that’s how we saw it back then and still see it to this day. Not only were we abused by our parents, but we were also abused by all of the adults that ever came into our lives save a handful small enough to count on one hand. I am not going to get into some argument over semantics by trying to judge which abuses are less or more traumatic and harmful. Some people argue that “rough parents” build “character” which is totally bull-shit! All that being pushed around, and beat on does is make bruises, broken bones, broken spirits, and closet loads of secret skeletons. All I will say is that it comes down to simply this (to*ma*to, toe*mat*to, po*ta*to, poe*tat*to), meaning things are relative to the ones experiencing them. What might be a cake walk to some could be endless torture to another individual so in this right Zeke and I felt we had it pretty bad off from the way our parents treated us (or rather didn’t treat us you may say).

My name is Zachariah (Zack for short) and at the time this story begins I was the ripe old age of sixteen and my brother Ezekiel (Zeke) was fifteen (we are about eighteen months apart). Zeke was a high-school sophomore, and I was a junior this particular year. How would I describe myself? Well hmm I suppose I would say that I am a thick build and muscular but not really trim in the way a fine athlete would be, but more like a linebacker or heavy lifter all bulk and no cut. My brother Zeke was taller than I was but not by too much (ugh… okay really like three inches), and was skinny as a freggin rail. I used to tease him, saying junk like, “Zeke you look like and Russian Gulag inmate”, or “ Hey Zeke there’s wind advisory don’t go outside without weights in your boots, it’s supposed to be five mile per hour gust all day, you’re going to fly away”. He wasn’t obscenely skinny or malnourished so much as he got the good genes and could pig out all damn day long on the worst, most disgusting junk food, like a person with a bad case of the reefer munchies and never gain a single ounce. His perfectly squared trim jaw-line and rectangular head just reminded me of Ivan Drago, the Russian Boxer from Rocky Four, or in some other way I guess what I thought looked like a stereotypical Russia soldier. I on the other hand was the opposite, I wasn’t fat per say just really bulky and I had the strength to prove it. Sadly I never played sports; neither did Zeke, mostly on account that there wasn’t anyone to be proud of us for winning games, or competing, since our deadbeat parents had been ignoring our existence since we were in middle school and maybe even before that (young kids have a way of blocking things out you know?).

Zeke and I were not particularly close at first either, not that we weren’t friends and brothers, but we had our own separate groups in school. I mean, come on back in high school, who wants to be known for hanging out with their lame kid brother or sister and vice versa? It was sort of an unspoken agreement that at school and when we were with friends we would ignore one another, and occasionally just to keep up appearances, even tease one another so as not to look un-cool amongst our clique of friends. It’s funny thinking about this but his group of friends and my group of friends were kind of similar in that both of the groups loved the finer (more creative nerdy hobby-esque interest) things in teenage life. We all collected similar comic book series (sometimes sharing issues we had finished reading), watched similar movies, and we were both involved in all of the creative or artistic based elective classes, clubs, and extracurricular activities in school. I liked drawing (okay I will admit loved!) Zeke liked snapping photos, and we both loved creating our own little worlds as places we could not only control, but also escape to from time to time. In many ways it is my belief now that Zeke and I developed our skills in creativity and artistic ability at an early age as a necessary coping response and escape from a turbulent childhood. To this day I dare you! Any of you! Try and take that away from me. You see you can’t because the mind is mans own dominion, and “that paradise” is freedom from any prison you could ever put me in.

One day in me and my brother’s lives seemed to take the cake when it came to the way our parents abused us. We got home (from skipping school) neither of our parents noticed nor cared. For the better part of the afternoon we chilled out upstairs talking and watching TV in our room alone as usual. Of the months prior I can only remember seeing my parents physically in my presence three times, and all of those times were to beat the fucking life out of me and my brother for some bull shit like: the neighbors complaining about us being out late wandering, being loud, or trespassing and so on. It was really weird in many ways, because our parents were living in this fantasy where they must have forgotten they had children all together. They went out late and stayed out late, and sometimes they were gone for days, we are assuming on mini-vacations or romantic getaways, and other times they were even visiting family without us. Their usual excuse was that we couldn’t be bothered to miss time from school, or any of our other commitments. We hadn’t seen or heard from our extended family since I was probably ten years old and Zeke was eight (maybe even younger). They had formulated this elaborate ruse, and pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes and we were merely pawns in these two sick adults game.

We lived in a nice middle class neighborhood with semi-unique cookie cutter houses on small lots, and everyone drove nice cars and kept their lawns in good care. We were even dressed nicely, which was the only favor our parents ever did for us (tying to keep up the guise naturally). They would spend time with the neighbors have dinner parties and we were never seen, or heard from. Zeke and I had learned to act that way very early on to avoid unnecessary encounters with adults. It doesn’t take being partially deaf in one ear to tell you to “keep your god dammed mouth shut” (in the words of my father) as you unsuccessfully try to evade and block a hammer fist aimed directly at your ear. I was told the next day under even more threats by my mother and father to tell people who asked that I was hit in the ear with a base ball while horsing around with my friends at the practice fields the other night in the dark. Now I only speak for myself in saying I never really minded being hit or yelled at because it was the most attention we’d ever get from the two of them and even that seldom ever happened. My brother on the other hand had taken to having problems with night terrors and even loud noises all together. One time at school there were people arguing and yelling in fits of primal rage at one another prior to exchanging blows in the hall, and my brother froze in the middle of the halls shaking like a leaf on a tree and pissed his Levi’s to the point that a large yellow puddle had soaked his Chuck Taylors bellow and began spreading on the freshly waxed commons room tile floor. Since then we had grown savvier of the game our parents played, and almost completely adapted to the idea of “invisible children”. All four of us were actors playing our parts to Oscar quality on the set of some sick, demented movie. The game was so well rehearsed that remember when I talked about the family trips earlier? Well our other family members would sometimes even make calls to us on our birthdays and other occasions when we could not attend and we were scripted into saying everything was fine and we were doing well in every area possible while cowering in the shadow of our intimidating father or mother just behind us on the phone. In some ways Zeke and I loved it when family called the house asking to speak with each of us, because even though our extended family (aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents) hadn’t seen us in years we knew they loved us, but our parents were so sadistic and well practiced that they had even fooled them into playing the game. You could tell by the fact that none of them ever came to visit our home or even questioned why my brother and I were never in attendance at family gatherings. For this fact I think my brother and I still harbor some hatred toward them all as well, sort of like any victim blames other family members for not knowing what is going on when the cryptic cries for help or the warning signs are all there. At any rate the rest of our family even our most distant relatives were in other states, and were not really within convenient driving distance, I suppose.

Later that day Zeke and I cautiously lumbered down the stairs after we saw headlights leaving the driveway. I said to Zeke “looks like Fred and Wilma Flintstone have left to go get schlitzed, and shit faced again at some uppity bar” Zeke replied “Yeah seems bout right, and then the two wasted assholes will probably drive out to Lovers Ledge and Relive a bit of their youth huh?” I replied “probably… well at any rate that gives enough time to dig for cash and get something to eat I’m starving it’s been almost two days since our last meal”. You see… the other abuse we suffered from aside from physical abuse were the habits of extremely neglectful parents. Suffering from in many ways was even worse than starvation the physical or mental pain our parents caused us to suffer from. They seldom bought groceries, and were always eating out, or ordering in food, and only getting enough for them to eat alone. Another part of our game was that Zeke and I had gotten really good at gleaning for food, money and anything else we needed that our parents deprived us of, although this survival instinct also faced its dry spells. We had devised ways of taking money right from underneath their noses without getting caught, by waiting till they left it lying out, or were too drunk to notice us rummaging for cash or coins in and among their things. We had also developed a semi-random (or what seemed to be random at least), pattern for eating at our friends houses, church freebies, and school events involving catering. In the worst of it we would steal money and food from others, but only when it had been too long since our last meal and we had exhausted all other options. To Zeke and me it was all about survival and we never intended on hurting anyone else or placing our burden where it didn’t lie especially since out parents were the ones who owed us bad. Even the school had to be part of the plan Mom had arranged it so we could eat a meal three times a week at school in prepaid lunches, if we wanted to eat other than that we have to fend for ourselves. The way she figured it, and she was right, was most kids packed food from time to time, and other kids would even skip lunch if they needed to study or attend a club, so in this manner nothing was suspect. Only thing is we never spaced it out, we ate every day in spite of it, taking what we could and making up when we could in other ways.

This was one of those weeks where we had used up all or lunch tickets and still had ten days or so to go without paid food. We hadn’t been successful at grazing, or stealing either, so hunger was driving us mad. On this particular night there was a twenty sticking out of the junk and change drawer in the kitchen, so my bro and I thought it best to order Pizza as a treat. We ate a large pizza to ourselves we were so damn hungry, but in the midst of hiding the evidence our parents came in through the back entrance of the house into the kitchen where we were cleaning. Without warning both of them unleashed upon us striking first and then yelling after. Zeke was by the trash can inside the pantry door when mom came running at him. “You little son-of-a-bitch” she yelled as she smashed the open door onto his head as he was beginning to back out of the doorway area. Pops got me as I was putting down some dishes when they were coming in. I was on the other side of the kitchen island playing zig or zag trying to evade him attacking me in order to get to Zeke and help him out. During the game of cat and mouse around the counter island, I miscalculated my movements, and my father punched me in the lower abdomen with so much ungodly force. He hit me so hard that for the next few days to come I would be pissing blood; it would ooze out in this thick, almost mucus consistency and hurt like hell each time. He yelled with the tone so obscenely loud that it shook the dishes inside of the glass fronted cabinet and reminded me of what I had always thought Satan’s voice would be like. After the two of them had traded turns beating on us my father strong armed us to the living room right to the base of the stairs, by keeping our elbows and wrist bent up the middle of our backs in a swan’s neck fashion, breaking Zeke’s shoulder out of socket… Again… and inflicting so much pain we were forced to move. He let us go at the base of the stairs and kicked us to prod us up the stairs to our rooms, shouting behind us

“You two little shits count yourselves lucky we have nosey neighbors, if we didn’t I would have killed you both a long time ago,” our mother said.

“Both of you were mistakes!!! Complete accidents, and if’n it weren’t for your ma’s folks we’d have aborted you both with a clear conscience!” Dad was yelling as he forced us up the stairs

Imagine, on top of everything else we had been through in our lives, to hear that you were never wanted, not even from the start. You’d ask yourself if there was a God, and if so where was he to let two of the most evil people walk the face of this earth. Neither of us blamed God and of course, really thinking about it I suppose that God and our creative outlets is really what kept Zeke and me going, day after day waiting the end of our prison sentence. That night my brother and I lay in our beds for a moment, numb to the pain after years of conditioning to it, talking, quietly planning our great escape. That night had been so bad it was all we could take and nothing about this town or the small lot of friends we had in it was worth sticking around playing this game for any longer. We had devised that night that after school we would skip out of everything else and walk as far as we could in an attempt to make it to the bread factory and distribution center miles through the woods behind our hell of a home. The rest of the plan would come from there after we stowed away in one of the delivery trucks.

After a few minutes of calming down and gathering our thoughts, it was time for my brother and me to doctor our wounds before getting to sleep in anxious anticipation of the following day. Setting my bro Zeke’s arm back into its socket became routine to me to the point that it only took a few brief moments to get it to pop back into place. To this day the feeling of bone and ligament grinding inside tissue haunts my hands in a way that brings a sick reaction to the back of my mouth making me gag. There was nothing on our collective minds after fixing ourselves up, but sleep and thoughts of what our new lives would be like. For whatever reason I cannot explain despite being completely, mentally, and physically exhausted sleep was a stranger to me that evening as I lay in our room desperately trying to get some rest for the next day.

It is weird; after calming down and finally getting to sleep I slept better than I had in my entire life. Even though for most people leaving their family behind would be uneasy and distressing, my brother and I one the other hand were completely at peace. The only thing that was running through my mind that evening as I drifted deeper down the levels of sleep was the way the first taste of freedom would be like. Images of green fields, and tall trees and all that lame corny shit that you would see in some inspirational poster about teamwork or something is what filled my mind. Zeke and I had never seen anything outside of the small boundaries of our town and really anything outside of going to school, hanging out with friends, or staying inside at home was a rarity. I almost didn’t know what to feel when I thought about how we would finally be able to see places we had never been like the ocean, and many other sites our friends and kids visit growing up that he and I had to fake like we had visited for the sake of being normal. Sometimes the smaller things my bro and I lacked growing up hurt us even more than any physical abuse of neglect could. It’s rough not getting birthday parties, having a sleep-over at your own house, or even going on small insignificant trips or places as a child. That would all be in the past soon enough because when morning broke Zeke and I would be off into the world on our own. We were all the family or friends each other needed at that point in our lives given the hell we had been through since almost as far back as day one. As I lay there just about asleep I thought it would be a good idea to see if Z was sleeping or still awake anxious and quiet like me. I got up and crept across the room to his side of the room quiet as I could so I would not rouse our parents from sleep downstairs. Zeke lay there with his limp arm bundled and restricted in his sheets fixed like a makeshift sling to give the torn shoulder some support and rest. “Zeke… hey bro you awake still?” I said as I gently nudged is arm. “Well, guess you’re sleeping, that’s good, love you dude, night” whispering as I crept back to my bed on the other side of the large room.

The sunlight peaking between cracks of our makeshift bed-sheet curtains, and an awesome alarm song from my I-pod woke us from the best sleep of our lives. Today we did not hesitate as we normally would have any other day getting ready for school, and we were dressed, and out the door ahead of schedule. To keep up with our tracks we decided for appearances sake to ride the bus to school as usual and to even attend our home room classes. Lastly, we would both fake sick to be released from school just in case the school called our parents or snooping neighbors wondered why we were walking through the neighborhood and not in school. We never got picked up from school when we were feeling sick; our mom would usually lie to the school nurses, and say that a neighbor would be coming to get us. In reality we would have to hit the pavement and walk the almost three miles home regardless of how we were feeling. This time the three mile trek would be our victory march out of that small little snob town and our hellish existence; living in a house that posed the greatest ruse and away from parents that damned our existence anyway.

“Zack, hey Zack, come one man snap out of it the bus is here. Where are you right now anyway?” said Ezekiel as he poked a boney finger into the crook of my shoulder waking me from a day-dreamed daze.

“Huh… yeah okay sorry dude just sort of spaced out there for a second cool?” I replied.

“Yo come on we got to get on now… Earth to Zachariah”, Z called out as he was waving his arms in-front of my face like a person testing a victim of head injury for attentiveness.

“Yeah jeeze I’m here, I’m here. Come on just get on the damn bus and quit messing with me”, was my reply to him in a half joking, half serious tone.

We climbed up the three short steps of the bus me following behind Z, and we took our usual seats away from one another with our separate group of friends. It was weird though riding there I thought to myself why we hadn’t just sat together and not with our lame ass disgruntled friends. Starting today, Z and I were going to have to rely on only ourselves if we were to make it in the world out there, and wasting time faking things being cool as usual for people we barely knew seemed odd. I looked back down the aisle just to check for my brother’s subtle approval toward the back of the bus where he and his buddies sat listening to some new metal song on a small portable CD player and mini speakers. Again I was doing the same thing he was, and that was evident in the way that I made an excuse to make eye contact with him. I brushed my hair out of my face and reached down to my left side lifting my book bag up to show him. I pointed at the bag and mouthed “are you cool?” to him making it look like I was trying to make sure he didn’t forget his. This was my way of making sure that my friends didn’t think I was interested in what my dorky brother and his posse were doing. Looking back, I am somewhat ashamed of that day in that I didn’t just sit with him and say “fuck it” to anyone else we were never going to see again anyway.

Everything from the bus drop loop , the hallways waiting for the bell, the walk to home room, the pledge, the morning announcements, the collection of attendance, and home work played out in the exact manner it always had that year one-hundred or more days prior to that. It was almost completely certain that the same was true for Zeke and his morning rituals after entering his home room on the opposite side of the school where freshmen stayed. After some time in class and the usual bull-shit we’d run through, I forced myself to vomit on my desk in a manner that was pretty common now as a means of getting out of class. The teacher Mrs. Reibsimon was always freaked out by stuff like that and instantly dismissed me with no questioning to the nurses office with a pass to go home sick. Ezekiel had taking a sling from his book bag and thrown it on before going into class as well as presented the teacher with a fake note from “mom” to be dismissed if the pain became too intense during the day from his injured arm. We met up in the halls by chance and we had even both almost been let go at about the same time. Nobody cared, not even our friends were concerned for our wellbeing as we left class. Many things are messed up about being a forgettable person, a shadow in the real world, but people in our straight laced community were so selfish and apathetic. Was everyone else crazy or was it the two of us? Sometimes we didn’t even know the obvious answer to that question when we considered how nuts things were around us.

When we got to the nurse’s station we chatted for a bit and laughed amongst ourselves about how we had managed to get out of class.

“So barf brains, how’s your mouth taste after losing you breakfast all over the desk and floor of old Reibsimon’s classroom?”, Zeke teased.

“Did she freak; you know the usual? And what about the hottie bimbos in the back row, did you get any yak reflex from them?” Z began teasing me in our usual name calling manner.

“No sick cheerleaders today just the regular shocked and pissed off old lady routine”, I snubbed back at him.

“Little whiney baby skinny wimp pulled the injured helpless act I see…priceless!” I congratulated in an underhanded manner.

“Yup sure did… Oww aggggh oooo ouch damn this hurts (wince ect.) gets em every time” Z reenacted back at me.

With our passes for release and a voicemail on the home phone from the nurse we were permitted to leave along with notes regarding the conditions of our ailments. Z and I walked side by side, slowly, and calmly out the front doors of the school to the faculty parking lot which was closest to the main road leading back to our neighborhood. While my brother Zeke and I were walking away from the building across the lot and eventually down to the side of the road neither He nor I said a word to one another. Sure we were joking about how we ditched school, but now as we got a few hundred yards away from the school it suddenly began to come clear that we were leaving it all behind. No matter how terrible our lives were, things were going to get a bit more complicated now that we would have to find shelter and have no food provided (even thought what we got was next to nothing anyway). I imagine that Z was thinking what I was “Where to now? What will we do? Where will we stay? What is going to be the purpose of our new lives?” All of these things I guess we would just figure out as they came along no need to break the peace now with such distressing matters while we walked home to pack the last few provisions and embark on our new journey.