Every careful step downstairs to the kitchen sent a
thunderstorm of pain across Marty Hunt’s head. He held his temples and whined
“Ouch!” the entire way down. It was a slow and laborious process, but reach the
bottom floor he did. Wearing only plaid pajama pants and white socks, the
pain-wracked father dragged himself over to the kitchen table and sat down with
a quickness.
He leaned his head all the way back and breathed a sigh of
relief. No more ouches, just a nice self-head massage with sinewy fingers. The
coffee pot could wait a few more minutes. Marty wanted to milk this small
moment of relaxation for all it was worth. He might have even fallen asleep at
the table with his head in his arms if he wanted to.
“Morning, Dad!” yelled little five-year-old Kevin. The high
pitch jolted Marty awake and the thunder and lightning in his brain was going
batshit crazy. The single father rubbed his temples even harder while Kevin ran
around the kitchen with his favorite action figure, the beefcake barbarian Deus
Shadowheart.
“I’m going to eat your soul like a bowl of cereal!” yelled
Kevin in his version of a manly barbarian growl. “I shall chew your flesh like
bubblegum! And I shall drink your insides like Coca-Cola!” The little son shook
the Deus Shadowheart action figure in front of his father’s face and roared
some more.
“Please don’t do that to me this early in the morning,
Kevin. It’s been a shitty couple of months with this divorce hearing. Cut Daddy
some slack today,” said Marty as he continued to massage his temples.
“I shall enslave your people and force them to make bowls of
Quaker Oatmeal for the rest of their lives!” said Kevin in his warrior growl.
“Is that what this is about? You want Quaker Oatmeal?
Alright, I’ll get you a bowl…”
“Silence, peasant! You shall bring me a bowl of oatmeal and
put extra brown sugar in it! Raaaaaaaaaaargh!” Kevin shook the action figure in
his father’s face some more, causing him to clench his eyelids as tightly as he
could. No matter how many times Marty rubbed his own temples, his head would
always feel like it was under Deus’ mighty fur boots. The thought of his own
brain popping out sent a shiver through his body.
“What’s the matter?! Do you not like that I am king of this
wasteland? Too bad! I rule with an iron fist and a big bloody battleaxe!”
yelled Kevin a la Deus. In between words, Marty kept pleading with him to shut
up, but the overly energetic child said, “Bow to me and my big bloody
battleaxe! You cannot win, mere mortal!”
“That’s it! I’ve had it with this shit! Give me that goddamn
thing!” screamed Marty as he stood up and knocked his chair over. He and his
son played tug of war over the mighty toy with the little guy screaming, “No!”
repeatedly at the top of his lungs. The screeching voice to Marty was like
having Deus’ meat cleaver go through his skull. He felt like his brain was a
hand grenade ready to go off. His heart was pumping and thumping like a
barbaric war drum.
In one harsh pull, Marty yanked the toy out of his son’s
hands and yelled, “I don’t like this thing! And here’s what I’m going to do
with this piece of shit!” Despite Kevin’s foot stomping and repeated “No!”
screams, Marty ripped Deus Shadowheart’s arms and legs off before throwing the
dismantled mess across the kitchen floor.
Kevin knelt down beside his toy and cried a tearful storm
over the broken remains. Marty watched on with a sorrowful guilt over what he’d
done, but remained strong in the face of having to discipline his son for his
ballistic behavior. The father’s defenses were knocked down a few pegs when
Kevin turned his tear and snot-covered face to him and said, “I want to go live
with mommy! I hate you, Dad! I hate you!”
Headache and heartache were one in the same for Marty Hunt.
Every pump of blood throughout his body made him groggy with depression, yet
his face maintained its angry expression as a sign of strength against such
powerful words. “You can’t go back to your mother, Kevin! We had a divorce and
it’s been finalized! She cheated on me with another man! She cheated on us!
She’s the one who’s tearing this family apart, not me!”
Kevin stood up and rushed over to his father to pound his
tiny fists into his hairy stomach. “Stop it, Kevin, you’re hurting me! Knock it
off, kid!” yelled Marty. The little spitfire wouldn’t listen. He pounded harder
and harder until his father’s breath was completely drained from his system.
The old man collapsed to the ground and clutched his chest
in pain. His breathing was raspy and shallow as he said, “Call 9-1-1, Kevin!
Hurry!” When Kevin folded his arms and refused to move, Marty let down his
authoritative guard in an act of desperation. “I’m sorry!” He wheezed. “I’ll
buy you a new toy! You can have any one you want!”
As Marty’s vision was fading to black, he could hear his
son’s voice shout “Daddy!” as well as little footsteps scurrying across the
linoleum kitchen floor. Hopefully, those footsteps were on their way to the
house phone to call an ambulance. Marty didn’t even know if Kevin was
physically capable of making such a call. He lost hope as his breaths grew
shorter and the peace he wanted at breakfast was finally obtained. Nothing but
a dull gray screen clouded his vision. No tears, no angry words, no sorrowful
thoughts, just the kind of grayness one could expect from an Emergency Alert
System screen.
And then the father could feel his heart beating again.
Little by little, the thumping and pumping was dominating his overly sensitive
ears. His heart raced a little faster with each passing second. The gray screen
before him became a field of blurry shapes and lights. He had a strange plastic
mask over his face and the air pressure felt overwhelming to him. Soon the
blurs and lights concentrated themselves into a clear picture. He was riding in
the back of an ambulance with EMT’s by his side. Even more important to him was
little Kevin staring down at him with a worried look on his chubby-cheeked
face.
“Kevin…Kevin, dear god. I’m so sorry about this morning. I
meant what I said about the toy. Come on, little guy, just give me another
chance,” said Marty, his voice weak through the plastic mask.
Little Kevin Hunt held his father’s index finger in his tiny
hands and said, “I don’t care about the toy. I just want my daddy back.”
Marty’s eyes began to well up with tears and his heart rate
sped up. He cursed himself mentally for being “stupid” enough to not realize it
was never about toys. He made enough money at work that he could buy the entire
Hasbro catalogue if he wanted to, maybe even a few collector’s items. It was
love that he failed to show at breakfast time, not finances. The whole divorce
proceedings with his wife were all about who loved Kevin more and in the end,
Marty ended up pounding the sides of his gurney in frustration that he became
the world’s biggest hypocrite.
The EMT’s tried to pin Marty’s tight arms down in an attempt
to slow his skyrocketing heart rate. It was Kevin’s voice yelling, “Daddy,
don’t!” that finally subdued the hypocritical father. He collapsed into the
gurney bed sobbing hysterically while his son hugged him around the waist.
Hugging around the chest would have been ill-advised due to Marty’s heart
condition.
“Hey, Kev…” said Marty with a little more conviction. “Have
I told you lately that I loved you and that you’re the best son a father could
ever have?”
“Do you mean it?” asked Kevin with dewy puppy dog eyes.
“Absolutely, little guy,” said Marty. “Me? I’m just a
monster…” He took a while to catch his breath before he said, “I’m the monster
who’s going to have the biggest battle with Deus Shadowheart this universe has
ever seen!” His throat got more hoarse and villain-like, much to Kevin’s
beaming delight. “I shall unleash hordes of minions upon the barbaric wasteland
and I will burn everything to ashes! Nobody is safe, not even the big badass
Deus Shadowheart!”
Father and son laughed together while hugging around the
waist. In all of this legal mumbo-jumbo, the one thing all three members of the
Hunt family forgot to do was laugh. How such a simple gesture could change a
man’s heart rate and give his burning headaches a heavenly cure. Isn’t laughing
and playing what action figures and families were all about?
