Free The Withdrawal Method by Pasha Malla

twenty-seven twentyeight twenty-nine thirty thirty-one thirty-two thirty-three thirty-four thirty-five thirty-six thirty-seven thirty-eight thirty-nine forty forty-one forty-two forty-three forty-four forty-five forty-six forty-seven forty-eight forty-nine fifty fifty-one fifty-two fifty-three fifty-four fifty-five fifty-six fiftyseven fifty-eight fifty-nine sixty.
    Nothing. Sixty seconds is a minute. Sixty minutes in an hour times sixty seconds = three thousand six hundred seconds. Twenty-four hours in a day = ?
    Hold on, I need to write this down. I just have to turn on the light and find a paper and pen.

    24 hours in a day = 1440 minutes = 86,400 seconds. And that makes ... 604,800 seconds in a week. How many seconds in a year? Whoa, hold on.
    31,339,600.
    The other thing you can do if you can't sleep is have some warm milk. So I wait until exactly 12:00 midnight and get up to go down to the kitchen. I stop on the stairs. My dad Greg is still up. I can hear the TV. I lean over the banister and look into the den, all quiet. Like a spy.
    The TV's on. There's a lady moaning, like she's being hurt or something? My dad Greg has the sound way down, but I can hear it. He's sitting on the couch - I can see him, with his feet sticking out from under a blanket. He's sort of twitching or something and the couch is going creak creak, and the lady on the TV is going uh! uh! and he's making noises too, like grunting. Creak creak, uh uh, grunt grunt.
    I take another step down on the stairs and lean even more over the banister so I can see the TV and there's a lady with her boobs shaking and flopping around, like slapping up against herself, and now there's a man on her too with his butt in the air and I realize he's humping her, and the blanket on the couch is shaking in time with the boobs and the butt and I can see my dad's face and his face is different, it's like a secret side of him I've never seen, mean and hungry and weird, and the couch goes creak creak and the lady with the floppy boobs goes uh uh and my dad Greg goes grunt grunt. But then something in my tummy goes gloop and I have to pull away from the banister because my head is all funny, and I turn away and run upstairs to the bathroom.

    And then I'm washing my hands. I didn't even turn the lights on, so now I'm washing my hands in the dark with hot water and lots of soap, hard, and the water's too hot and it hurts and I can already feel my hands burning from it, I know they're going pink but I don't care.
    I hear someone behind me but I don't look. I hear my dad Greg go, BG. He leaves the lights off and comes over, so he's right behind me. I still don't look.
    He reaches over and turns off the tap. My hands are sore, my stomach still feels weird and like gurgly. BG, he says again. I don't turn around. We stand there in the dark. Then he reaches out to put his arms around me but he sort of stops and just stands there, and then he pulls a towel off the rack and holds it out to me, but I don't take it. I just want him to go away.
    PENIS: DINK DICK wang schlong dong winky wiener cock peter rod pud monkey johnson prick willy member purplehelmeted-warrior tackle twig-and-berries banana sausage meat doodle noodle package privates one-eyed-monster rocket hard-on boner steamer stiffy erection.
    THE NEXT MORNING I wake up at 7:47 but it's not really waking up because I didn't sleep very much, obviously. I have to wait until exactly 8:oo to get out of bed, so I just lie there for thirteen minutes thinking. The curtains are closed now, my dad Greg must have come in during the night and closed them, and that makes me feel weird - the idea of him being in my room when I'm sleeping, looking at me, standing over me, being there.

    Through the curtains the light comes in grey, and I can hear the rain hissing outside. I decide it'll have to be an indoor day, which means games, so at 8:oo I get out of bed and go into Brian's room, and he's just lying there with his eyes open like he's been