by Mark Leslie
“Dad?” Scott said over his father’s shoulder. “You know I’m in. One hundred percent right?”
“Right.”
“But let’s say that I refused to help, to join you, to join the cause. Let’s say that I wanted to go back to my life, walk away from this.”
His father hugged him tighter, the pressure almost cracking Scott’s ribs. “There is no going back, son. I don’t want to dwell on that.”
“I figured as much,” Scott said, barely grunting out the words from the tightness of his father’s hug. “But, out of curiosity, if I said no, and needed to be taken care of, how were you going to do it?”
Scott could feel his father shaking his head as he let out a short laugh. “I always loved the fact that you weren’t ever afraid to ask the hard questions.”
They both shared a nervous laugh, neither wanting to think too long about what that horrid possibility meant.
Finally, Lionel pulled back and placed his hands on either side of his son’s shoulders, giving him one last quick squeeze. “Okay,” he said. “Time to get moving. We have a shitload of work to do.”
“Together,” Scott said.
“Together,” his father agreed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark and his father, Eugene (late 1990s)
Mark Leslie is a writer, editor and bookseller from Hamilton, Ontario. He has edited North of Infinity II, Campus Chills, and Tesseracts Sixteen: Parnassus Unbound. Mark’s books include One Hand Screaming, I, Death, Haunted Hamilton, Spooky Sudbury and Tomes of Terror. His website is www.markleslie.ca