Milk-Blood by Mark Matthews Read Free Book Online

it’s not his fault. It’s a family disease.”
    “His dad’s in prison. He’s a monster and a junkie,” his mom would answer.
    The therapy went into his brain and he waited and listened until they left. Medication bottles followed with pills that turned everything off and made him eat too much and bloat up like a fat pumpkin. He became gross, got angry at girls, then he’d stop taking the medications and try to carve himself up.
    He went to a home for kids where they would do five-point take downs when the voices inside won and made him escalate. They dragged him to the “quiet rooms” where he was locked inside and made noise with such energy for hours. When he left the home for good, they gave him a paper GED and everyone clapped. More medications followed.
    Then Dad died in prison, and the ashes were delivered to his mother’s house. Jervis went home too, and lived in the basement along with the ashes. Just like his father he fell in love with smack. Heroin. For Jervis, it was the best medication to stop the voices in his head. Heroin, weed, liquor, all of it armed him for the fight.
    He had a pretty good run living in his mom’s basement, until he fucked up. He stole —too much. He was so full of drugs he had to. Then his mom stopped that, and the thing happened with his dad.
    That thing in the basement .
    Milk-Blood .
    3547 is all I need to keep money so I don’t have to do it again.
    After the basement thing happened his violence exploded. Jails followed in different counties. Wayne, Oakland. Macomb. Oakland again. He got haircuts before seeing judges, had psychiatric evaluations, and lawyers told him to “stand mute” before any judge he saw. Incarcerations went from jails to a prison, lithium made the time go by and stopped him from constantly having to be restrained and taken to isolation. If only they would give him a prescription for smack like they do Lithium. As it was, even out of jail, he could only get the drugs after check day. Or he’d have to whack someone outside the house and drag them inside and take their Milk-Blood.
    Finding this house kept him out of jail for 12 years. It was the perfect street. The home he always needed. The first time he came here, he had just traded the Oxycontin his Medicaid paid for to get a bottle of Vodka and was looking for a safe place to squat. The house was freshly burnt, abandoned, and quiet with an overgrown lawn. It was asking him to come inside. There was a board on the front door to pull back, but after that, the house was empty and warm.
    He sl ept one night in mostly silence, slept two, and then brought some supplies—an old rug to sleep on, a can opener, and a sack of white socks. He’d have to share his space for a moment or two with white folk coming in to smoke rocks. That wasn’t so bad, because if he wanted something they had he’d hit them with a pipe or act crazy enough to scare the shit out of them. People are scared of dirty black men.
    Sometimes people were really nice to him. They’d stop by and say things like, “Good day, sir.”
    The spirits of those who lived in this house before him were still there . He could feel the heat from their body or the whoosh of the air when they walked by. There was a child who died there, who sometimes made voices, and Jervis could feel his memories living inside the walls. How the glass window had shattered and flames filled the front room. The air was so thick that the boy’s lungs had filled with black and then he died.
    For many days Jervis didn’t bother talking to this boy. It was like looking for the rat that was never really there. He just blocked it out. But this rat kept coming back and pitter-pattering on the floor.
    “ What’s your name little man?” Jervis asked softly with his lips but loudly with his mind.
    “Oscar, I’m Oscar, but they calls me Oz.”
    “Oz, that’s great , Oz. Are you for me or against me?”
    “I’m with you is all. With you here. We’re