Do You Even Need Me?

| He feels like he's breathing in and out, without permission

Falling snow never felt so mesmerizing as it does this night. It swirls and grazes the brick walls of the mansion and the glass window. Behind those windows stands a fine young man in his cotton creamy-white pajamas, messy brown hair sticking out at each end, and hazel colored eyes, droopy from the caress of sleepiness. It’s too late in the night for him to be awake but something seems far more important than sleep to this father, who is wideawake.

Through the window, the boy looks over at his father in the backyard, where a heavy blanket of snow has already dusted the ground and trees. With a cheap-looking spray bottle in his black leather-gloved hands and a figure whose limbs are splayed out on the snow at his father’s feet.

The usual.

A sense of disappointment, dry as dust, settles in him, like a dull knife that missed a vital organ.

“Doesn’t look like he’ll stop anytime soon...” he says.

Seeing these acts by his father used to numb him to the point of sleepless nights, filled with guilt and thoughts that eat away at him. Now they just seem like mundane acts of habit that his father does. Like every morning, when he heats up his cup of coffee after it had been poured and gotten cold. Like every time he ruffles his son's hair and rakes his fingernails on his scalp, even though his son had told him that it hurts. But he would do it anyway.

Through the faint light given by the moon, he can make out the movement of his father’s hands as he sprays water on the lesser man below him. Realization hits him when he understands his father’s action. It’s one of those slow punishments his father speaks so highly about, he would say how the thrill excites him and how useful it is. This punishment seems like having an unconscious person out in the cold and spraying water on them to help the process of freezing their body. One that is only reserved for when the holidays and festive season approaches.

"Why does he even need me?" He asks the gold-painted walls that engulf him in warmth. Sure, he asks and questions his existence from time to time, but he knows the answers to all those questions. Why does his father need him?

Well, that's to put up a façade that he’s a devoted single father with wealth to share.

Does he even like him?

Not really, his father likes the thought of love though. He has an unrealistic understanding of love and relationships. Like they are supposed to be each other’s everything and do whatever it takes to prove it.

That's why his father does those things to those people…to prove to himself that something doesn’t exist between them.

Fatherly love.