Read Kobe for Free Online Page B

dirt.
                  Skaggs picks up a hatchet. His smile is sinister in the reflecting glass. A box-cutter catches his eye, and the wheels in his brain excel with manic thoughts.
    * * * * *
                  Quinn fills a backpack with clothes, an electronic tablet, a couple chargers. The essentials.
                  "Yeah I'm comin' over now, Rob. It's gettin' too crazy here for me. Skaggs is high as fuck, stomping around the room, and making all kinds of noise. My mom's in the shower so I'm gonna wait and tell her goodbye. She ain't gonna be home until six in the morning.
                  "Poor lady's pulling graveyard again. I slipped an extra twenty in her purse while she was drinking last night, enough to get her gas and food."
                  He tosses his bag over his shoulder and makes his way to the door.
    * * * * *
                  Tina massages her sore arms with a pink loofa. The water washes over the wrinkles on her face.
                  "I'm going over to Rob's ma," Quinn yells from outside the bathroom door.
                  "If you wanna wait a few minutes, I'll drive ya."
                  "You sure?"
                  "Of course babe." Tina hears his footsteps wander away, leaving her with nothing but the rhythm of tap water and incessant bass oozing through the wall.
                  Skaggs, her other son. The one she sometimes wishes was never born, but only for a moment. She comes back to reality and remembers him as a little league baseball player, a kid that took piano lessons. The bass thumps and Tina cries.
    * * * * *
                  Skaggs pulls apart the box cutter. He meticulously picks up a razor blade out of the plastic casing. Careful not to drop the stainless steel sliver onto the dirty carpet, he digs it into his yellowish fingernail until secure. The maniac picks up a hatchet, and with the flat of the blade, whacks the razor hard enough to split through his index finger.
                 
                  His neurons play laser tag with each other, bouncing around his mind, riding each brainwave like a Tsunami.
                  Skaggs puts down the hatchet and takes another razor blade out of the box cutter. He digs it through his middle fingernail, once he gets to the pink flesh, he leaves it be, watching intently to make sure it's positioned perfectly. Satisfied, he smashes it through his finger.
                  He repeats the process until his homemade claw is complete.
    * * * * *
                  Tina opens the curtain and steps out of the shower. She wraps her forty-year-old body with a towel. Varicose veins map out her trials and tribulations.
                  Her tits, once so sought after in her twenties, are now victims of gravity. She uses a green towel with bleach stains to wrap her hair up.
                  Tina hears loud banging from the adjacent bedroom.
                  "Damnit boy! I'm through with all your bullshit!" she screams through the bathroom wall.
                  She fixes her towel, opens the door, and darts down the hall to Skaggs' bedroom.
                  "Get your shit packed and get the fuck out! I've had it with you!"
                  She walks into the living room and sees her purse open on the floor, her medicine ruffled through, damn near gone.
                  Tina dashes back to Skaggs' bedroom door and pounds as hard as she can. "Open up you piece of shit!"
                  Skaggs opens the door, slowly. He's higher than she could ever imagine. Geeked out.
                  Zooted.
                  His pupils stretch so far, all she can see is black with a slim line of green and white.
                  Tina looks beyond Skaggs' hollow eyes, down to