A cold chill on the side of his face woke him from his troubled sleep. The heat of the night and the horror of his vivid nightmares had driven him to perspire, and once the air conditioning unit had finally kicked in it had made his pillow so cold he couldn't help be be jarred awake.
He shuddered, if not for the cold, for the permeance of the sensations echoing in his mind, remnants of a dream that refused to be ignored. It took only one hint of a memory to bring back that feeling in the pit of his stomach; a feeling that could only be described as soul nausea.
Shaking his head violently, side to side, as if to expel the thoughts through his ear canals, didn't help. It just added dizziness to the already toxic concoction of regret, embarrassment, shame, self-loathing, and indigestion, the latter of which he couldn't understand at all given that he hadn't eaten anything for at least a dozen hours.
He knew he wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep, at least not for a while, so he got up and went to the bathroom. Before he had a chance to stop himself, instinct had already kicked in and he had switched the light on.
There stood his reflection staring back at him; that disgusting hairy lump of uselessness. There wasn't much he hated more in the world than that thing in the mirror. It brought him nothing but misery and agony. It let itself be entirely motivated by its feelings, and its feelings were never in his best interest.
The only redeeming quality he could see in it was that in its obesity it no longer completely resembled his father.
He remembered how even when he had gotten in good shape for that one brief moment in his life, when he had literally worked his fat ass off, at his absolute best, he could see his father so clearly in the mirror that he was never able to appreciate how far he had come.
He hated himself for looking like him. He had worked so hard to change his mannerisms, gestures, posture, poise, his social ineptitude, and all of those idiosyncrasies that defined him, but could not escape that face in the mirror. If he could have cut out every trace of him with a knife he would have, but he knew that there would be nothing left of him when he was done.
He hated himself for having been too small and weak to defend himself from him when he was a child. He hated himself for having believed, despite knowing it to be impossible, that if he just tried hard enough he could make him proud. He hated himself for trying to reach out that one last time, knowing it would end as badly as it did.
But most of all, he hated himself for not being able to show an ounce of self control and restraint when he needed it the most.
Every time he had the faintest hope that the man was not actually his biological father something stupid would happen to put him back in his place in the family tree.
He remembered something his mother had said one day when they had come back from a committee meeting visibly upset. He had asked what was wrong, and her answer had been permanently etched in his mind, “You know your father. He can't keep his mouth shut.”
“Like father, like son.” It was his personal mantra of hate, one he hardly passed a mirror without chanting to himself in his father's honor. It was typically accompanied by a two-fisted bird flip, but this time he just didn't care enough to make such an empty gesture toward something he knew would never change.
He knew that no one could ever hate him more than he hated himself. It had become somewhat of a safety blanket in his relationships, knowing that no matter how bad he screwed things up by saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time, they could never hate him that much.
But that didn't mean that there wouldn't be consequences. Those had always mattered, not to his father, of course, but he had always understood that his words had an impact on those around him and, as much as his limited social skill permitted, he tried his best to keep from hurting those around him with his words.
It had only taken one time in his life to learn that lesson. Even in his 40s he still remembered vividly how he had made a girl in his first grade class cry by calling her a turtle for going slower than some of the other kids on a gymnasium obstacle course.
He tried his best to keep from saying things that were too easily interpreted as offensive or hurtful, but had always struggled when tired or sick.
He had never taken to drinking because he knew how hard it was to keep himself in check when he didn't get enough sleep. Those were always the worst times, and the ones that made his resemblance to his father the most poignant. He couldn't even count the amount of times he had made himself look like a complete asshole just by uttering a few contextually misplaced words. The ones that stood out were the ones he knew had left a lasting impression.
There was that time he had finally gotten the nerve to take his coworkers up on an invitation to a party. Things had been going so well, but when it came time for him to leave, he had blurted out something along the lines of, “I gotta go. I've got more important things to do.”
There was also the time his coworkers had thrown a party for him when he was transferring to a new location. He hated standing in front of people to talk about himself so his going away speech ended up turning into a cacophony of embarrassment and accidental bridge burning.
But as bad as the social issues were with friends and colleagues, the worst times were always when he had feelings for a girl. He'd become an utterly senseless buffoon. It was the one part of himself that he hated almost as much as his similarities to his father.
He'd fall for a girl and do and say the stupidest things, and invariably it would turn out badly; especially that time he ended up marrying one of them.
Worst years of his life. All because he had a stupid childlike crush on some woman who just happened to be lonely and desperate enough to latch on to him when, like an idiot, he had confessed to her that he had feelings for her.
Thinking about her and those long and miserable eight years gave him the energy he had been lacking to flip himself off, but he knew that standing there like a head case certainly wasn't going to help him get any sleep. And he also knew that not getting enough sleep would only make things worse the next day. He knew he had to stop acting like a pitiful adolescent and get himself back to bed.
As he was about to turn the light off and head back he could hear his alarm start to buzz. He distinctly remembered checking the time when he had gotten up and it was only 3:30. He knew he hadn't been staring at his ugly face in the mirror for two and a half hours.
As he headed down the hallway the alarm grew increasingly louder, almost to the point where it started to become painful. He practically ran to his night stand.
As he turned it off he looked at his bed. There was someone in it. He froze. His heart nearly leapt out of his chest. He felt the heat rising from his chest, to his neck, then to his head. A drop of sweat rolled down his face.
Unable to move, he watched as the person who was in his bed began to slowly turn toward him, their face still covered by the blanket. He tried to shake himself loose of whatever was keeping him pinned in place, but just kept getting more and more terrified.
As if being controlled by a puppeteer, his arm raised and stretched out toward the bed. His hand gripped the blanket tightly, and with a swift tug yanked it hard.
Lying there, eyes wide open, with that blank, empty stare looking right at him, was his father.
He tried to scream, but instead jolted himself awake.
His pillow was cold from the sweat that had chilled from the air conditioner kicking on in the middle of the night. His heart was racing. He sat up and tried to shake it off. He looked at his alarm clock. It read 3:30.
