Mean Joe All Alone...

Mean Joe sat eating a shitty TV dinner type breakfast meal. He didn't like it but that was pretty much all that was in the cabin and in the storage shed out back. At least now he knew how fat Bob got so fat. He shoveled another fork full of shitty processed eggs into his mouth and thought over the days events.
All in all it had been a pretty productive day. Killing those goons would put more fear into Fat Bob which was defiantly a good thing. Plus if he sent anyone over to take him out, Mean Joe knew he could take any number of them easily. He almost wished they would try and take him down. As for the reasons he was hiding out, well that was a bit more complicated. Mean Joe told himself it was the smart thing to do as he choked down a few pieces of sausage and looked at the kitchen clock. 3:00 AM. Time for bed. He pushed open the entryway door and threw the horrible slop onto the grass outside. Tomorrow he would go find some real food. Lots of things to do tomorrow...

The upstairs loft was the roomiest in the cabin. It was one large space that spanned the whole upstairs. It contained one large bed, a small dresser, and a wardrobe closet, and a small table with a lamp. Mean Joe sat down at the table, took off his overcoat, and cleaned his pistol. It was one of the only things in the world that he loved as it never let him down. He took care of it and it took care of him. As he cleaned the bore and oiled the cylinders, he let his mind wander again...

With the gun to the goons head, he had searched every room in the place. It wasn't hard since there was only two rooms downstairs. The bulb in the second room, which turned out to be a living area with a few small couches and a coffee table, was burnt out. He had ordered the kid to turn on one of the desk lamps but before he could move there was a noise behind them. Mean Joe turned and fired at the sound. After they had gotten a light on they looked at the splotch of blood, fur, and guts, against the wall that had recently been a mouse. The kid had turned pale. Then they had searched the upstairs and all around the outside. When they had gotten to the outhouse Mean Joe had grabbed the kid and dangled him over the hole, head first.
"You like shit kid?" He had said and dropped his head a little lower towards the fetid pool of human waste.
"Tell your boss if fucks with me he's going to be in a lot of it." Then he had dunked the kids head in, pulled him out, and sent him on his way with a hearty kick to the rear. There was really no point in doing this but fun was fun, you had to get it while you could...

Mean Joe finished cleaning his 44 and climbed into bed. He put his gun on the nightstand, turned off the light, and sat listening to the darkness. The quiet unsettled him. The city was always noisy but here all he could hear was the crickets outside and the creaking of the cabin as it settled. Maybe that was what was bugging him, he wasn't used to the silence. No, no. It was something else. Something was picking at the back of his brain. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. It was another hour and a half before he finally fell asleep...

Mean Joe was 8 years old again. He knew this because of where he was, which was the shithole apartment he shared with his mother till he had run away a year later. He looked at the dingy walls, the shitty junk pile furniture. He could even smell the stench of utter poverty, a heady mix of dirty clothes and rancid garbage. He looked down at his hands. He had been reading a comic book. Donald Duck was getting beat up by a punching bag on the cover. Now where had that come from? Suddenly his stomach felt sick. He thought he knew what day it was...
Suddenly the front door slammed open and a woman stumbled into the room. She had a bottle of gin in one hand. The other was wrapped up with dirty bandages. His mother. With mounting horror he noted how her makeup was smeared all over her face, making her look like a clown, but not a funny one. This wasn't funny at all. Her dress was torn open and he could see her breasts. She came right for him and he tried to make himself run away but he was stuck to the floor. She stumbled over and picked him up, roughly, putting her face right next to his.
"You little shit." She whispered and he could smell the booze on her breath. Then she threw him against the wall.
"You little shit, this is all your fault! You stupid little shit, you ruined everything!" She screamed and stumbled over with her fist raised to hit him. Suddenly she stopped. Something had caught her eye. She leaned over and picked up the comic book he had been reading. She waved it in his face.
"Where did you get this? WHERE DID YOU GET THIS?"
"M-M-Mr. Blakeston gave it me mom, I..."
"No he didn't. You stole it. You little liar."
"M-M-Mom I..."
Then she hit him with the book. Over and over and over. And he could feel it. He could feel the sting of every blow. She hit him till the book was nothing but rags, then she threw it in his face and stumbled off into the kitchen.
Mean Joe desperately tried to remember what had happened next but he kept drawing a blank. He knew it was something bad but what...
Suddenly he knew, even before his mother came out of the kitchen with a carving knife in her hand.
"Gotta, go-gotta teach you a lesson boy. Can't have you stealin' anymore, didn't raise you that way. No son of mine..."
Then she was on top of him, holding his mouth shut with one hand and cutting his face with the other...

Mean Joe sat up in bed and stared out into the darkness. He fingered the long scars on the side of his face. To his surprise, they felt numb, the whole left side of his face did. Before he could think of what that meant or why he had had that particular dream, there was a loud crashing noise downstairs. Mean Joe grabbed his pistol and slowly climbed out of bed...