In the wake of my mother’s death, my father became obsessed with life. It shocked no one when Mom passed, given her proclivities for smoking, drinking, and gorging herself, but the drawn-out nature of her death surprised me. I thought that death by cardiovascular disease meant keeling over and dying suddenly of a heart attack. Instead, she withered away over the course of many difficult years.
I was eight when she passed, and my dad became a whole new person in the aftermath. He grew obsessed with health and longevity—an innocuous fixation at first, but one that quickly spiraled out of control. One morning, weeks after her death, my dad shook me awake at 4 A.M. and drove us to a lake a few miles from our house. He dragged me down to the shore and pushed me into the cold water, and I was certain for a moment that he was lost to bereavement psychosis, about to drown me and then himself. Instead, he jumped into the water beside me and started droning on about the health benefits of cold plunges. I was so distracted by the cold that most of what he said was lost on me, but I remember the last thing he said before we got out:
“We’re not gonna be like her,” he told me. “We’re gonna live a long, long time, you and me.”
He pulled a lot of similar stunts after that. It felt like every week there was some new method he wanted to try out with me, some of them more scientifically-backed than others. A few of them I grew to like—clean eating, meditation, sauna therapy. Others I wasn’t a fan of—cold water plunges, detox diets, acupuncture. Some were deeply unpleasant. Extended fasting. Sleep-deprivation therapy. Bloodletting. The worst of them I’m loath to mention, even all these years later.
I wasn’t a big fan of my dad’s obsession, and wouldn’t you know it, neither was CPS. By fourteen, I was the pinnacle of physical health, but my mental health had taken a sharp decline, and my extended family finally took notice. In the end, my dad didn’t have to serve any jail time, but he did lose custody over me, and I was sent to live with my aunt for the remainder of my childhood. He moved out of state to work with an OCD specialist on his “problems.”
Life moved on. I did well for myself in high school and eventually college, maintaining good grades and running cross country for a D1 team. I met an architecture student named Daniela who became my wife after we graduated. My dad never called, never wrote, never visited. I was convinced that he was dead, and the thought filled me with both relief and despair. As a tribute to him, I revisited some of the old activities we used to do together. I despised them, but when I tried to stop, I was overcome by a terrible sense of guilt. By the time I graduated college, I had an impressive cold-tolerance, a BPM of 38, and more week-long water fasts under my belt than I could count.
Eventually, my wife and I moved back to my hometown. My aunt had managed to hang onto my childhood home, renting it out until I had the money and maturity to come back and claim it as my own. The day I married Dani was the happiest day of my life, but the day I signed the deed and carried her across the threshold to our home was the proudest. We were 26 when she had our son, and I couldn’t have been more ready to be a parent. I was blessed with the chance to become the kind of father I never had, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t waste that chance.
We named him August.
Four years later, there was a knock at my door. When I opened it, I saw the last person I ever expected to find on my porch: my dad. He had a suitcase in his hands and a smile on his face.
“There he is!” He said, immediately pulling me into a hug. I was speechless. I recognized him instantly, but the past sixteen years had taken a profound toll on him. He was sallow and bald, rake-thin and unsteady on his feet. His eyes had the same piercing quality they’d always had, but despite his lucidity, I could tell that he was very ill. He eventually let me go, and as if to confirm my suspicions, he said, “Come on, now; won’t you invite a dying man inside?”
Once the shock of his appearance and his morbid news wore off enough for me to move again, I let him inside my (his? our?) home. He set down his suitcase in the living room and took a seat on the couch, taking in the room while I nervously sat on the chair across from him.
“You sure gutted the place. Hardly recognize it from the inside.” He gestured disapprovingly at the home Dani and I worked so hard to make our own. “Wanted to remove all traces of your old man before you moved in, did you?”
I didn’t humor the contentious question. Instead, I asked him what he was doing there, and with all the nonchalance of someone commenting on the weather, he told me that he had a glioblastoma. He had been fighting the cancer for years, undergoing surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy to no avail. Eventually, it all became too much, and my dad, who had never given up on anything in his life, finally decided to throw in the towel.
“They said I’ve got a few months at most,” He said with a laugh. “Ain’t it ironic? All that work just for God to snap his fingers and send me to an early grave anyway.” He gave me a sad, wistful look, and for the first time, he looked like the dad I knew before my mom’s death. “I know it’s been a long time, son, and I know I haven’t been there for you. But I’m hoping that, with the little time I have left, I can finally start making up for it.”
I accepted immediately. He was still my dad, no matter how rocky our relationship had been, and I certainly wasn’t going to cast him aside now that he was so ill. Poor Dani was in for a shock when she came home from work, but she hid her surprise much better than I did and welcomed my dad graciously into our home. The three of us ate dinner together, and then I set my dad up in our guest bedroom as Dani put our four-year-old to sleep.
“Are you sure you’re ok with all this?” Dani asked me later as we tucked into bed.
“Me? I was about to ask you the same thing,” I laughed, but Dani didn’t laugh along with me. Instead, she regarded me very seriously, her hand reaching out to trace along the phlebotomy scars on my arms. I promised her that she and August were still my top priority, but it did little to ease her disquiet. Unsure how to comfort her, I eventually drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
That night, I had the strangest dream. I was in a meat locker, laying on the cement floor while a faceless butcher flayed me with a curved blade. I screamed and fought, but my torturer didn’t stop until every inch of my flesh was exposed to the freezing air. Once he was finished, he grabbed one of the hanging carcasses by its leg and brought the knife to its stomach, slicing a long, vertical slit into the meat. Letting the knife clatter to the floor, the butcher dug both of his ungloved hands into the slit, then violently pulled them apart. He inclined his head towards my writhing form, pointing towards the hole in the carcass in a wordless question:
Coming in?
I woke up with a jolt, sweaty and sick to my stomach from the nightmare, which had been so vivid that I had to take a few moments to ensure my skin was still attached to my body. Once I had steadied myself, I got out of bed and made myself presentable. I found Dani cooking breakfast in the kitchen. My dad was there too, sitting at the table and helping August cut up his pancakes and strawberries. The sight of three of them sharing a happy moment together made my heart soar. Forgetting my dream, I joined them, cooking and sharing stories of the past sixteen years with my father. It was a perfect morning.
I enjoyed having my dad in my life again, but his rapidly declining health was difficult to contend with. I did my best to care for him while still giving him privacy and autonomy. Deep down, although I knew it was unfair, I couldn’t help but be frustrated by his weakness. So it was all for nothing? I wanted to scream at him. You put us both through Hell all those years just so you could leave me again? Instead, though, I put on my brightest smile and tried to make his days as easy as possible. I had learned nothing from all of those fasts if not restraint.
I was prepared to watch someone’s body shut down—I had my mother to thank for that—but I was unprepared to witness the deterioration of my dad’s mind. His personality fluctuated often and violently. Sometimes, I had my old man back, the witty, caring father who had provided so dotingly for my mother and me. Other times, he was depressed and lethargic, reluctant to rise from his bed or even acknowledge my presence when I brought him food and medicine.
Sometimes, he was the dad from my adolescence.
“You’re letting yourself go, Sawyer,” he said to me one night as I helped him into bed. “All you do is sit at your desk and eat. Your mother was like that too, in the end. Murdered by her own sloth.”
I started running more after that.
What was more difficult to deal with than my dad’s criticism was his newly developed habit of sleepwalking. One night, I woke up in the dark to a figure standing over my bed. Barely holding in my shout, I quickly turned on my bedside table lamp and saw my father staring down at me. He looked awful, exhausted and fearful and disoriented. His thin skin looked too tight on his body, like a bone might poke through at any moment. Honestly, when I saw him, I wanted nothing more than to pull the covers up over my head and hide, but I forced myself out of bed. My dad had taken care of me for so many years. It was the least I could do to guide him back to his room. He mumbled the whole time, as had become his habit. Most of it was nonsense, but sometimes I caught a word or two about a “deal”.
As the weeks passed, my nightmares continued. Sometimes the faceless man in my dreams was a butcher, sometimes a doctor, sometimes a mechanic. Sometimes I was in an operating room, sometimes my childhood bedroom, sometimes the banks of the lake my dad used to take me to. No matter who he was or where the dream took place, it always unfolded the same way. I’d be slowly skinned, and then the faceless man would invite me somewhere. A carcass. A crevice. A shell. A tear. A hole. Coming in? He’d ask, and then I’d wake up aching all over.
After one such night, I awoke before Dani and went to wake August up for kindergarten. At four years old, August was good-tempered and easy to entertain—a genuinely sweet, smart kid. He was the light of my life, Dani’s too, and we were both admittedly guilty of spoiling him. I made my way into his room, softly calling out his name as I turned on his light, and saw something that made my heart stop.
There was blood in the corner of his mouth. Panicking, I ran to his bed and gently shook him awake, asking him what had happened. He was groggy and confused, unable to answer my questions. I dabbed the crusted substance off of his lips with a damp cloth, but there were no scratches beneath the dried blood. I thought he might have bitten his tongue, unlikely though it seemed, but even when I procured a flashlight and looked inside his mouth, I couldn’t find any signs of injury. Regardless, I told Dani what had happened, and she offered to take him to the pediatrician since she had the morning off. We figured that no harm could come from having a professional check him out.
After my wife and son left, I went to check in with my father only to discover that he was already out of bed. I found him in the dining room, staring out the window at Dani’s car as it pulled out of the driveway.
“Everything alright?” He asked without taking his gaze off of the window.
“I think so.” I said, reaching into the fridge for the pitcher. I offered my dad some water, and he gave me a small nod in answer. I poured cold water into a glass and made my way over to the table. I set it down before him, and then he wrapped his hand around the glass. I studied that hand for a full minute, confused at first, and then unnerved.
“What happened to your hand?” I asked. My dad pulled his eyes away from the window to look down at the angry slit running up the pad of his thumb.
“Cut it a few days ago. Happened when Daniela and me were making dinner.”
No he hadn’t. I would’ve noticed. I would’ve bandaged it for him, and the cut looked too fresh besides.
“Dad.” I took a step forward. “Were you in August’s room this morning?”
His sharp eyes met mine. He studied my face for a moment, then his head tilted ever so slightly to the side. A faintly disappointed expression overtook his features. It made the scars on my arm sting.
“You know, Sawyer, you really take after your mother.”
He raised the glass to his lips and drank. When he finished, he set it on the table with a sigh, announcing that he was tired. I helped him to bed, and then I took a very long run. I didn’t mention his thumb again, but I did start locking his door at night.
The days dragged on, and my dad got worse. Dani grew withdrawn. The faceless man’s visits became more frequent.
“Coming in?”
I nearly jumped out of my own skin. It was a sunny afternoon, and I was in the kitchen with Dani as she flayed a fish for our lunch.
“What?” I asked her, a bit too loudly.
“Are you coming to the inn?” she repeated slowly. “The one downtown, remember? Where my firm’s hosting that dinner? My sister said she can take August for the night.” Dani’s knife slipped under the fish’s skin. It yielded with ease, peeling away in long sheets to reveal the meat beneath. The room suddenly felt very hot. I opened my mouth, fully intent on responding, but instead I doubled over, both hands coming to rest on my knees, and retched.
I stayed home that night, though I had to convince Dani I was well enough to care for both my son and my father on my own. With some reluctance, she left for her company dinner just after dark. I spent my evening playing with August. Never before had I been so grateful to have him around; although my nerves were a wreck and my body ached, being around my son made me feel lighter. He was such a good kid, so curious and joyful. When he had tired himself out from crawling around and playing with his toys, I put him into his crib for the night, took a deep breath, and then went to check in on my dad.
I found him in his bed, propped up in a sitting position and staring at the door like he’s been waiting for me. Perhaps he had, for the minute I stepped into the guest room, he began to speak.
“Come here,” he instructed. There were no lights on in the room, just the ambient light from the moon and stars spilling in through the windows. Figuring he preferred it that way, I walked into the dark room and took a seat on the edge of his bed. Outside, it had begun to storm.
“I tried so many things,” he began. “So many things, and look where they got me. All those routines, all that restriction, none of ‘em could stop my own cells from destroying each other. Didn’t stop me from looking, though. I kept searching after my diagnosis, searching for anything that could give me more time. And you know what, son? I found it.”
I looked at him as he spoke, finding myself squinting involuntarily. Despite being seated so close, I couldn’t see his face very well.
“What … What did you find?”
“Someone who could help. For a price, of course, but nothing in this world comes for free. Your old man taught you that, didn’t he? You gotta tear your body apart if you want it to grow back stronger. Healthier.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to. No one else can really understand the deal I made, anyway. But I don’t have much time left, and before I go, I need you to tell me …”
He leaned forward, and all I could see of his face was a glint of teeth.
“Do you want to know how to live forever?”
Feeling a pang of anger at the question, I shook my head.
“No?” My dad asked, the surprise palpable in his voice.
“No, Dad. Christ, you’re still more concerned about cheating death than you are about appreciating the life you’ve lived? Even now? You’ve missed out on so much because of this obsession. I’ve worked damn hard for what I have now, for this house and my job and Dani and August. If I lived forever, there’d be no meaning to any of it. So no, no I don’t want to know. And I don’t want to hear any more about deals and death and immortality right now.”
My dad didn’t say anything for a moment, and then he gave a humorless chuckle.
“Alright.” He said, reclining back against the pillows. “You’re still young, Sawyer. Life hasn’t beat a healthy fear of death into you yet, like it has to me. You’ll come around one day, and when you do, you just let me know that you’re ready for an answer, and I’ll give you one.”
I shook my head at his nonsense, but said nothing. He was too far gone to argue with. Maybe he had been since that morning at the lake. Instead of trying to convince him, I placed my hand atop his and listened to the rain. After everything he and I had been through, it was nice to simply exist beside him. I sat there all night in silence, turning his offer over and over in my mind. When at last the storm ceased and the light of dawn broke through the darkness, I looked upon my dad’s face and knew that he had died. To this day, I regret the fact that I do not know the exact time of death, nor do I know how long I was holding his hand after he was already gone.
Before I called EMS, I went to check in on my family. Dani was asleep in our bed, tired from her night out. I gave her a light kiss on the cheek before making my way to August’s room. When I opened the door, I found my son sitting up in his bed, staring at the door frame in much the same way my father had.
“You alright, buddy?”
August did not respond. Instead, he gave me a small, self-satisfied smile. If he weren’t a toddler, I might’ve described it as a smirk. He reclined from his seated position until he was lying flatly, though he never stopped staring at me, even as I backed into the hall and closed the door again.
Things never quite returned to normal after my dad’s death. A part of me had thought that I’d feel relief once he was gone; instead, I was consumed by loss. The house seemed to triple in size once he died, every room seemed colder. I might have thought that the house was haunted if that terrible emptiness I felt didn’t follow me everywhere. No matter where I went, I felt untethered from reality, like a lost ship at sea, too far from any shore to let down its anchor. The months I had spent with my dad had changed me in ways I didn’t like, and my relationships suffered because of it. I lost friends in the years that followed, and though neither of us wanted to admit it, Dani and I lost our spark as well. We grew apart more and more over time, but we agreed to stay together for the sake of our son. If you had told my nineteen-year old self that I would ever feel anything other than pure infatuation for Dani, I would’ve called you a liar. And yet, there I was. Here I am.
The most significant change of all was in August. August, who had once been the friendliest boy I knew, but who started picking fights with other kids during recess. August, who used to beg me for hours to read to him before bed, but who began to want nothing to do with me. He’s a smart kid, well-spoken and self-sufficient, but as he grows older, so too does he grow crueler. These days, he’s less like an elementary-schooler and more like a teenager, and a mean-spirited, sarcastic one at that. I’m not sure where my kid went, or why he left me on the same night that my dad did, but God do I miss him. God, do I miss them both.
This morning, I woke August up and invited him on a trip to the lake with me. I’m not sure why, exactly. Maybe I thought that it would bring me some clarity, or maybe I was just hoping for a chance to bond with my son. Whatever the case, he accepted my offer, and so we loaded ourselves into the car and drove to the same lake my dad had first taken me to when I was eight years old. It was a cold but beautiful day. There were no other cars around, and so I parked right on the bank. I stepped out of the car into the bracing morning, walking down the shore with my son close behind me.
Once we made it to the water’s edge, August picked up a smooth rock from the shore and flung it towards the water. It was an impressive throw, and the rock skipped a full quarter of the lake’s length before finally sinking beneath the surface. I wondered where he’d learned how to do that.
“Your grandpa used to take me out here,” I told him. I had planned to follow up the statement with a happy memory of my dad and I at the lake, but none came to mind. Instead I stood there in awkward silence, toeing the sand at my feet as August searched for more stones.
“How’d Grandpa die?” August asked suddenly, watching his pebble as it skip skip skipped across the surface of the water.
“Cancer. He had a tumor in his brain.”
Skip skip skip.
“Why didn’t he just cut it out?”
“Oh I’m sure he tried that and every other cure under the sun. Your grandpa … he was a bit of a health nut, actually. Completely obsessed with living a long life. He once asked me …”
I trailed off, considering whether it was appropriate to share my father’s last words with my eight-year-old son. But when I looked over, August was giving me his full attention, and that occurrence was such a rarity that I was encouraged to finish.
“He once asked me if I wanted to know how to live forever.”
“What did you say?”
“I said no.”
“Why?”
Why indeed. My dad had been right—I was young and stupid when he’d asked me that question. I had thought that I had all the time I needed. I thought I would be forever satisfied with what I had. The past four years had made me doubt my contentment, but I couldn’t tell August that. I couldn’t set him down the same path that my dad had gone down, couldn’t leave him forever unsatisfied with the time he had left.
“Because there’d be no meaning to life if we were all immortal.” I finally answered. August looked as unconvinced as I felt. He looked out to the far bank of the lake, his expression solemn. He appeared far beyond his years.
“What about you, August? Do you want to know how to live forever?”
He looked back at me slowly, smiling that self-satisfied smile. When he locked eyes with me, he gave me a wink.
“I already do.”
He took off from me then, running until he was knee-deep in cold water before diving inside. My father’s last words played on repeat in my mind as I watched him breach the surface, yelling and laughing with glee despite the frigidness. My scars burned hot with the knowledge that whatever I had done had not been enough. In that moment, I knew.
I knew.
“Hey!” He shouted at me from the water.
“Coming in?”