Robbie left the house still shaking.  His hands, arms, and legs all felt numb.  He was in total shock… complete disbelief—and was riding a high he had never before experienced.

                A T.V. played, and screams and explosions filled the background of a silence.  Two, obese, and well affronted women remained on a loveseat, propped up by their cigarettes.  They pulled, and pulled on their cancer sticks with an unsteady focus in their eyes… unready to make contact with each other from across an uncomfortable cushion.  It was very important that they meet with the same opinion, and they had not finished deducing which opinion they shared.

                “He is the most selfish child.”  Betty, as always, set their precedent.  Robbie was down the street by now, walking at an adrenaline induced speed.  “How could he ever find the nerve to insult us this way after all we have done for him?”

                “I have no idea,” Pam replied, in a wistful bewilderment that was nearly comical.  Her head was held toward the ceiling in a deep, questioning blankness.   “But he has been different ever since… ever since… ever since everything happened.”

                “I don’t know what he expects from us.  He has to change his life!  He has to figure out his next move!!  We all lost his mother, not just him, and to tell you the truth, he has been different since way before she died.”  Betty comfortably set cadence to their attacks.

                “The whole time she was sick”—Pam, excited to stack accusation—“he was like a zombie.  The only things I could get out of him were weird, psychological assessments of everything that was going on.”  She quite feared his assessment of her.