Mom hasn’t stopped moving around the house since I told her about what Pa had said. I listen to the sounds of her footsteps on the wooden floors, boards squeaking under her weight. Her nightgown shuffles, fabric struggling to keep up with the constant movement of her legs as she glides throughout the house like a ghost. She doesn’t venture far into the hallway that leads to my open bedroom where I watch as her shadow dances.
I sink deeper into my covers, relishing the coolness of my blankets and the steady breeze that flows from my open window. The moon is bright and full. Its light casting shadows onto my carpeted floor where an unfinished book lies open, pages set on its last chapter. I stared at the ground until the image burned itself into my mind, until it was all I could see as I closed my eyes and hoped for a silent night. Mom’s pacing comes to an abrupt halt, air pulling taught and thin. There is a pause in the house where even the crickets cease their timed unity. I hadn’t heard him leave his bedroom. I never do.
Their conversation is quiet and strained, an expected standard turned custom. Pa’s voice cuts through Mom’s hushed mutterings. “The boy grows. Yet you do not tell him. What foolish bypass do you wish to fuel with your hope this time? What are you stalling for?”
“I’m not stalling. He’s fifteen. He needs to go about his life like a normal child. Like someone who doesn’t have the misfortune to share the same bloodline as you.”
“Time waits for no one, Stella. Your delusions will only lead you to insanity. Your precious boy has already been brainwashed into sharing your ideals.”
“Don’t you dare utter my name from you‒ Yes, of course.” Mom’s voice is smug, vindicated. “For as long as I am alive and as long as he and I share the same goal. You will never have him.” Cold as her tone was, the slight tremble in her voice was enough for me to pick up the fear that tainted her fearless facade. Pa picks up on it too. He chuckles, a deep, unpleasant noise. It was like listening to gravel crunch underneath my feet.
Silence. The kind that only Pa could cause. I hear nothing else but I can feel a presence shift into the hallway and a familiar creak of a thick, wooden door swing shut. Only then do I open my eyes to see mothers gaze firmly trailed on my face. Her face is pale, eyes sunken in and surrounded by dark circles. Her lips are cracked and dry as she lingers at the door. Her expression unsettles me. There’s a darkness in her eyes, a threatening promise that shunned away the calming blue of her irises. Hurriedly, she creeps into my bedroom and sits at my side.
“What do we do?” I whisper to her, worried that if I spoke any louder, Pa would hear. She seems tired, defeated. It scares me. Her clawed hands find mine tucked away under the sheets. I can feel the sharpness of her blackened nails even through the fabric. Her touch grazes over the mark she and I share atop our hands. With a deep, drawn out sigh, she moves to place a ghost of a kiss on my forehead.
She does not look at me as she stands.
“All things will come to an end. Soon, Soft One.”
I jolt upright, completely drenched in sweat. My hands rubbed at my neck only to figure out that the sudden pain was emitting from my chest. Right where my heart would be. Lightheaded, I blink, taking in the surroundings of my room and the man that stood at the foot of my bed. I can feel him looking at me, his figure stretching, blending in with the shadows. “Nightmares, Boy? What are you, five?” I clear my throat before I speak, my voice low and faint. “I was once.” Rubbing my eyes, I push the blankets off of me. “What time is it?”
Silence.
Pa moves to leave my room, his face completely shunned from the light. There are no words needed in order for me to understand that I should follow. I must follow. This is not an uncommon occurrence between us. He would appear on the times the moon laid its head just past the horizon but the sun was yet to rise. When the stars shone in an endless sea of black.
We walk down the hallway and out the backdoor into the forest. Pa favored the earthiness of the woodlands, the chill that can only be found in the wind that rustled over shaking leaves. We continue our trek through the shrubbery. Eventually, I realized that I was walking barefoot when the dampness of the soil took my attention from Pa’s retreating figure. Panic soon gives way to relief as I spot that Pa had done the same.
We arrive at the stream just at the unseeable border between my memories and imagination. I’ve never seen Pa or mom leave the border. When I was younger, I’d attempted to travel downstream, only to find myself back at the house the moment I’d stepped into unknown soil. “I dreamt of getting stabbed.” My voice is unnaturally loud in the quiet of the forest. “It was painful. Like someone wanted it to hurt.”
“What did you learn from it, Boy?” Pa’s gaze draws my attention from the stream. The water is clear, cool, and pristine. Pa made sure of it. I keep my eyes on his but my hand lingers as I crouch and dip my fingers into the running water. Pa was a harsh looking old man. Everything about him spoke of venom and spite. I liken him to the snakes I often find on our early morning escapades. He was pale, boney, wrinkles folding in on his lean frame. Despite his appearance, his words sank deeper than any punch.
“That someone’s going to kill me.”
“Someone is going to try.”
Disappointment flashes over his sunken face, his skin seeming to move and writhe under the rising sunlight. Unsettled, I tear my gaze away from the strangeness that surrounds my grandfather’s existence. “Why would someone want to kill me? Who would want to kill me?” I was well aware of who it could be. Was it foolish for me to seek direction from my murderer? Was it right for me to assume such thoughts about my grandfather?
Pa and I knew what the silence between us meant. We didn’t need words to understand the way the wind shifts, the way the stream sparkles at dawn. We shared what mom and him didn’t. A connection that surpassed familial bonds. Does this mean that I am speaking ill of the innocent? Am I making the right choice?
“What do I do?”
“Whatever you need to.”
That night, I managed to sneak into Pa’s bedroom. My steps were quiet and calculated, skipping over the floorboards that I’d spent my childhood mapping out. Trial and error has now led me to face the mahogany division that separated itself from reality and imagination. Where light never penetrated and sight never pierced. Fear ripples through me as I turn the handle. It swings open, suspiciously simple. The blade in my hands shakes as my knees buckle. Gripping on to the handle, I step into the room, trembling with adrenaline.
The sigils burn my hands, two marks on either side scorching themselves into my already bleeding flesh. I stifle a shout. Mom’s eyes are frantic. I’d barely felt her walk past me and into the moonlit room. Soft like feathers, light as wind, she moves around the bed, gaze trained on Pa who slept soundly on his beaten mattress, completely unaware of the betrayal that his own kin had plotted against him. What could I have done to deserve this punishment? What have I done to have been born with a curse so ruthless?
The pain spreads up my arms, clashing with the pounding in my head. Through gritted teeth, I shake my head, regretting it immediately as the pain flares. I look at mom’s guidance but there is nothing but a blankness to her. She looks through me as if I am a ghost. Her chapped lips twist into a strained smile that exposes her crooked teeth. My words do not reach her ears. I raise the blade above my head and bring it downwards, striking Pa in his chest. I’m sorry.
Agony.
The world spins. The pain spreads. For a moment, I am at Pa’s bedside, the next, my body folds into itself as I crash against the wall. The sounds of shattering bone and tearing flesh draw me to Pa’s violently convulsing corpse, dagger nestled deep into his bleeding chest. Mother’s rage strikes me next, bile rising from my stomach and catching at my throat. “You fool!” She screams at me and it does not take me long to realize that I had failed. She dives to unsheathe the blade from Pa’s body and charges at me.
Pa’s jaw slackens, twisting at inhuman angles before detaching completely in an explosion of blood and hanging bits of muscle. But this was not enough. Something moves under his skin, uncoiling and pushing itself up his limp body. Pa’s skin looks like it’s melting off, turning into mush as a head rises from his throat, pushing apart the sagging skin. Slitted, serpentine eyes meet mine and my mouth goes dry. Its body slithers from my grandfather, scales catching and leaving wet entrails to drip on to the bedsheets. It’s larger than any snake I’ve seen before. Its mere head the size of my own leg. Guilt floods through me in tidal waves.
The pain sinks in faster than the blade. Electrifying shock passes through me for only a fleeting moment before I am plunged into a symphony of gurgling agony. Blood sinks into the fabric of my roused shirt, my hands trembling as they search for stability, an anchor to grip on to through the ringing silence.
I open my mouth and my throat is torn raw of noise, twisting unrestrained cries and pulling them from my lungs. I can feel the warmth of red on my skin like spilled paint. Some old, dry and flaking. Others open, bleeding, hurting in a cacophony of abstracted art. I can feel my lips moving, fluttering over the words that empty themselves into a world I try desperately to latch on to. I am chasing after the slightest of breaths, pleading with the air around me to lend me their mercy.
A million crumbling thoughts pass my conscious awareness. Endless possibilities, countless assumptions, denial, all of which formed a canopy that hangs over my judgment. I cannot tell which one of them is the truth. I fear that I may not want to know. Yet it faces me with a brutal honesty that somehow slices deeper into my chest, tearing apart the flesh that grows over my heart, shattering the glass walls that kept it safe. Through the storm that thundered within my mind, it occurred to me that I had not been mouthing a series of phrases, but a whimpered chant of two words, repeated until they were dried of meaning. The blade sinks deeper, my body giving way to its silver-tipped edge.
“Mom, Stop.”
A blur of force relieves me of the pressure of Mom’s hands on the blade. Her body is taken into the serpent’s jaw, its fangs piercing through her like dough. Through the ringing in my ears as I lie limp on the wooden floor. Mom and the serpent erupt in a devolvement of shouts. “You’ve killed our only hope of escaping this wretched land. You ungrateful, spiteful, rat!” Pa’s voice rings out, shaking the walls as the serpent coils around mothers flailing body.
Pa? Despite the rage that sent tremors down my spine, Mom’s laugh echoed out in glee. “You’d have killed him either way. I will not sit back and watch you take the only hope I have of leaving this accursed life you have bound me to. As long as you live, my kind will never find peace. You are a stain on a canvas. It is only right for me to rid it of you.”
Mom raises a small box from her hand and flicks it open. A flame flickers and the serpent roars in outrage. Still, it’s too late. The lighter drops to the floor, catching at the fluid that she had spread throughout the house earlier that day while Pa and I were conversing by the stream. Manic laughter from a woman driven to insanity, a serpent hissing and flinching away at the flames that spread throughout the house.
The heat of guilt and fire mingle and swallow me whole.
What makes a family? At what point does familial love turn into hatred? How do I know who to trust when either side is too busy betraying the other? The only answer that I can think of at this moment is…I don’t know.
I’m not sure of what I’m hoping to achieve by writing this. I don’t think that I want to. I’m still drowning in guilt and ceaseless pain but I’m somewhat relieved that this is all over. The house has been rendered to ash. I can barely see the foundations. I’m basically homeless now but more than that‒ I’m free.
I managed to collect some of my stuff to last me a few days while I thought about my next move. You won’t find Mom or Pa’s bodies. It’s like they’ve been completely erased, wiped off the face of the earth. Lives just turned into nothingness.
I’ve never known about this‒ the internet, the sites, the people. Have I truly been raised under a rock? It doesn’t matter. While the world may not accept the way I look now, it’s comforting to think that I am not alone in desolation.
I’m leaving for a while. I feel like heading downstream like before. I’ve never been past the beaver’s den. Maybe I’ll see you there. Maybe I won’t. Only time will tell.
Hello and Goodbye, Strangers.
- C