Ordinary Sunday Chapter 3

So I started writing a book when I lived in Italy... it's remained largely untouched and unfinished since I returned (3 years ago) and I'm thinking about finishing it. Here's a sample of the writing style and content. All feedback and criticism is appreciated --

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Chapter 3 – ‘Bama

I woke up on a sunken, decrepit, stained heap of blue and yellow cross-stitched fabric that some idiot in the 70’s decided to dress a couch with. I regained some of my faculties and found myself alone in the living room, slash dining room, slash kitchen of the trailer. It was dark outside and the only light came from a single unmasked yellowish light bulb glowing in what can only be considered the hallway. Shag carpet met peeling linoleum two-thirds of the way across the room and like a natural border, distinguished cooking from living space. Instantly my parched Mojave of a mouth begged for moisture. I crept to the kitchen like a cat on a fence. At the sight of blood in the sink, I remembered passing out in the dirt and gravel driveway. Not a plentitude of blood, yet enough had dried around the drain to refresh my memory. To the right of the sink was the butcher knife my Uncle had chased me down the stairs with. It also had hints of dried blood on the blade and handle. I grabbed a glass out of the cupboard and filled it with tap water wondering what in the hell was going on.
The water was remarkably fresh and clean and quenched the palate perfectly. I filled and drained the small glass three times before I was satiated. The trailer sat alone in the dark of the night, in the middle of nowhere, silent except for the ticking of a small antique wall clock. I had to pee but felt that I had done more than enough investigating for the night. I tiptoed back to the couch, covered myself with a nearby blanket and fell into a deep undisturbed sleep.
My dreams were vivid and intense. Pristine beaches riddled with Romanesque orgies met by ships filled with exotic animals leading into an endless summer of sipping paper-umbrella cocktails and rocking in a hammock; one dream melding into another into another, a sweet amalgamation of Eros, fantasy, and leisure. The next morning I awoke to the exact opposite.
The sun was up and it was already hot. I brought myself to sit up on the couch and have another look around the place. It didn’t seem quite as ghastly with natural light pouring through the windows. There obviously hadn’t been a woman there to decorate in a few millennia, but other than that, it just needed a good cleaning and a little organization. In one corner sat a TV stacked on top of another TV with two sets of rabbit-ear antennae at the apex. The carpet was old and dirty but wasn’t overly worn or bare. The kitchen was, on the contrary, a disaster. Pots and pans stacked on top of dishes stacked on top of more dishes stacked on top of more pots and pans. It was disgusting. How could someone acquire so many pots, pans, and dishes for such a small trailer? Why were they all over the counter, stove, and table, but none were in the sink? I sat on the couch asking myself these questions when Uncle Earl came through the front door holding a couple of black fish hanging from their gills on some sort of chain. His left hand was bandaged but he appeared to be in a fresh and lively mood.
“Hey there Benjamin,” he said showing his crooked teeth through a crooked grin, “I caught us some catties for breakfast.”
“Oh, umm… great,” I replied.
“Sorry I scurred ya last night, Benjamin. I was cuttin' up some veggies and nearly jumped out of my skin when you banged on the door. The knife slipped and I gut a finger damn-near to the bone.” He held up his bandaged hand and brought his shoulders up the sides of his thick neck towards his ears. He paused, looked at the catfish hanging from the chain and continued, “How about you’s clean ‘em while I find us a clean pan to fry ‘em in?”
“Umm… yeah, that sounds . . . umm . . . great.” I said staring at his hand, disbelieving that this man ever ate vegetables. My response came before realizing that I had never cleaned a fish before in my life. Oh well, I thought; really, how hard can it be to clean a damned catfish?
“Scale brush and filetin’ knife’s is around the side of the house on the cleanin’ bench next to the trash.”
“Great,” I said false enthusiastically and headed towards the front door.
He handed me the chain with the fish and gave me another enthusiastic crooked smile. As I started down the warped stairs he said, “Oh yeah, Benjamin, welcome home.”
I went around the side of the trailer, placed the fish on the dried blood alter of a thousand previous sacrifices, and scrubbed the fish with the scale brush vigorously. It was easier to do than I thought it would be. The scales flew off in every direction and the fish became a fleshy pale meaty texture that was pleasant to the touch. Next I slit the bellies of the fish and cool blood and innards coated my hands and the bench. A refreshing sensation of roughing it took over and I felt accomplished. This was the first time that I experienced true carnal pleasure destroying something pure and innocent. Ignoring the gloves next to the bench I used my bare hands to extract the guts, using my fingernails to pull out every last piece of lining and every untethered object. Deciding that I liked the way the fish looked at me after I cleansed them of their organs, I left their heads attached and returned the fish to the house.
Miraculously, Earl had found a clean pan. In fact, the pan was sitting on the stove and still had plastic wrap holding its lid in place. He came back in the room, walked right past me to the stove, and took the plastic wrap off the pan. On went the stove, in went a tablespoon of minced garlic, half an onion, and a whole stick of butter. He took both fish from me and tossed them in the bubbling mixture, on went the lid, and he left the room without saying another word. Becoming self-conscious of the drying blood nearly reaching each elbow I washed my hands and sat back on the couch – the couch that I so detested that morning had become my saving outpost from awkward situations.
The fish was delicious. Soaked with butter and garlic, it peeled off the bone with the easiest pull of a fork, morsels evaporating in my mouth into a mist of decadence. Each of us finishing a fish, Uncle Earl looked at me like he was challenging me to do something. His message totally lost in translation I tried to give him the same look back. He squinted one eye at me, picked up the remains of one of the fish with his right hand and stuck the head of the fish in his mouth. A loud slurping and sucking noise was preceded by two quick popping sounds. He threw the fish back down in the pan. The fish had mucus and blood oozing out of its eye-sockets. I gasped in horror but was interrupted by a thunderous belch that wreaked of garlic and whiskey. Followed by a knee-slapping and bellowing roar of laughter. I was so caught off guard by the whole situation I didn’t see the comedy at first. Still unsettled by the situation I put out a fake chuckle. Uncle Earl stood up and walked towards his bedroom without saying a word. Earl was drunk again, the house reeked like fish and garlic, and I didn’t start school for a week. Now, I thought, was as good of time as any to go for a walk and explore the woods.

The dense forest was dark, damp, and dank. Riddled with trees growing at odd angles, covered in hanging moss, and the impending doom of accidentally stepping in a snake pit kept my senses keen and my nerves alert. As I traveled south the ground became softer and the forest morphosed into marsh, bog, and swamp. This discovery came at the surprise of water up to the knee when the ground looked solid beneath me. I unstuck my shoe from the tight grip of the mud at the floor of the swamp and pulled my leg out of the dark water. Brushing the wet leaves off my jeans, my socks felt bumpy and strange. Pulling up my pant leg revealed three leeches that had affixed themselves to my circulatory system through my skin. Trying to convince them that I meant business I slapped them with the back of my fingers. Two of them must not have completely attached because their diaspora back into swamp came with ease. I slapped the third one again the same way I had done previously but it refused to budge. I raised my arm above my shoulder and swung down at full force with the base of my palm. Crushing the leech completely flat against my shin. It looked dead but didn’t detach from my leg. Using my middle finger tucked behind my thumb, like a fully cocked spring, I flicked the leech and it broke into two pieces. One landing back in the water and making a gentle yet beautiful ripple and the other still attached through my skin pumping blood like a rogue oil well. Evidently leeches don’t actually need a body to pump blood. The head does it autonomously. Half trying to close the wound with my fingertip and half picking with my dingy fingernails I managed to stop the critter from sucking me dry. I didn’t pick all of the head out, however. Instead, that leech, like the part of so many other creatures that try to suck the life out of us, would become a part of me forever.
Being even more cautious than I was before, I returned to Uncle Earl’s knowing that there was no escape through the woods. There were no beautiful beaches with scantily-clad vixens in speedboats waiting to race me off to some tropical paradise. Instead, there were bogs, marshes, swamps, leeches, snakes, alligators, and impending death; my limited knowledge of the South was not only ignorant, it was dangerous. Drunken Uncle Earl and his trailer were not options; they were facts. I knew from that point on that I would have to do what he said and play by his rules, not only if I wanted him to like me, but if I wanted to survive.
I started cleaning the trailer the next day and it took me all week to finally get the place in respectable order. I made it my job. I thought that if I could stay busy I wouldn’t notice that we ate catfish for every meal and that I was stuck in a trailer in the middle of a deadly wooded prison. Boy was I wrong, but at least it passed the time better than watching the TV with a picture on top and adjusting the sound on the TV beneath. I finished cleaning every last thing in the kitchen, living room, and yard the afternoon before school started. The timing seems a little too perfect, so I have to think that I subconsciously worked it that way. I ate my typical catfish dinner and laid awake on my yellow and blue cross-stitched couch daydreaming the night away.