by Aven Jayce
“What? At this time of the night? You haven’t asked me about your grandparents since you were a kid.”
“I know, but I’m curious to learn more.”
Her bed creaks and I hear a lamp turn on. A hard swallow precedes a loud moan with clear intent to express aggravation. “I’m your mother, make time for me at a decent hour, mister.”
I fucking hate it when she calls me mister.
“Why haven’t you called? Are you angry about her death? Saddened by the news? Any reaction at all? You and your sister are so inconsiderate. It’s like I raised a couple of selfish monsters.”
Boy, she woke up fast.
“You kids, I’m out here trying to repair this house so I can sell it and live the rest of my days in a senior community, and the two of you are enjoying the high life, gallivanting around like I don’t even exist. I could use a little help out here.”
“I’ll hire a handyman for you.”
“A stranger? No.”
“I don’t have time to discuss this, the house, or my feelings about my ex-wife’s death right now. I haven’t called recently because Jack and I are both exhausted from the funeral and I’m trying to get him settled.”
“I don’t give a damn! You need to make time for me!”
That nasty, high-pitched, witch voice of hers just kicked in. I can picture her sitting in bed, wearing a baggy pair of jogging pants and a loose top with a pile of used tissues on the nightstand. She’s been letting her body and the house deteriorate for years. Depression is the main reason, but I’d suspect there’re others as well, like age. Fuck, I wish she’d just stay on the subject.
“Are you going to answer my question, or not?”
“Why don’t you care? How can you not care?” She begins to sob.
“If you want to know the truth, yeah, it fucking sucks that she got cancer and died. I hate seeing Jack so upset, this is killing him and he’s going to be fucked up for a long-ass time. Today was the first day in weeks he actually laughed.”
“Marky.” My name’s spoken like I’m an ignorant toddler. “I was referring to me. Why don’t you love me?”
“Of course,” I sigh. “Of course you were.”
This is a perfect example of the source of my sister’s personality. My mom’s selfish and she produces a rapid-fire flip of emotions. She either explodes into a rage or ignores you and the subject being discussed like it never existed. It’s so fucking passive-aggressive. “Hello?” I say harshly. “Fucking answer me!”
“They’re dead,” she exhales. “Both of your grandfathers died from heart attacks. I’ve told you that. Why are you asking?”
This is ridiculous. I don’t know who the fuck this guy is, but...
“Tell her I said hello,” his harsh voice interrupts. “Ask her if she misses my dick.”
“Excuse me?” My gun raises back to his head. “What the fuck just came out of your mouth?”
“Mark?” my mother whispers. “Where are... who is that?”
“Tell me about Abram, Abram Jameson,” I say in a steady and firm tone. “When did he die?”
“Your father’s father?” she questions. “It was a long time ago. I don’t remember the exact date. Why? Why are you calling here this late to ask about him?”
“Was he in the hospital after he had a heart attack? Did you see the body? Was there a funeral?”
He shows his elderly teeth and laughs, enjoying the fact that I’m starting to squirm.
“I don’t remember,” she says softly.
He’s touching his tired dick again, trying to get erect. And my mom... she’s fucking lying. I can hear it in her voice. I’m stuck between an intrusion and an evasion.
I concentrate on the badge, still seeing his arm jerking out of the corner of my eye.
“What did he do for a living?” I exhale, wishing I could turn away, but needing to keep him in sight.
“He worked for the county.”
“Doing what?” Jesus, I’m tired of having to ask twenty questions to get a direct answer.
“I don’t remember.”
“Great, are you finished lying to your son? I swear, Mom, you’ve been the only one who hasn’t fucked with me. You’ve never been deceitful. What the hell? Was he a detective or not?” my voice rises.
“Where did you hear that?” she gasps. “How did you get that information?”
“Did he work for the fucking goddamn police department or not?” I yell.
He reaches into his suitcase and takes out an envelope, shoving it across the table with a snorting chuckle. My mother asks me again who’s there, but I ignore her to open the envelope.
Photographs... a handful of photographs. One is of my father when he was a kid, standing next to a much younger version of the man in front of me. There’s another one of... “Oh, dear Lord.” I look away and start to panic, searching for air. What the fuck’s going on? The dread of seeing... I look again. “Jesus Christ.” I toss the photo of this creep molesting my dad and stand like I’ve been set on fire, pacing, rubbing my chin with my gun, listening to my mother ask me what’s wrong... “Fuck!” I keep pacing, my body temperature an easy thousand degrees as my blood races through my ignited veins.
“Tell me about Abram Jameson!” I shout. “Tell me!”
She’s silent, and I know. It’s him, Paul’s father. My grandfather. He’s here.
“Mark.” She pauses, and starts to cry. “If he’s there with you... you need to get out of the room.”
“So he’s alive?” I laugh. “Fuck you, Mom. Fuck you. I can’t believe you lied about this. Why? What the hell are you hiding?”
“Listen to me,” she sobs. “Walk away. Get away as quickly as you can. Don’t talk to him. Don’t listen to—”
I pitch my cell into the wall, watching it break apart and fall to the floor. The fury I feel that this guy sought me out, came to my fucking home to taunt me, and carries photos around of him molesting his son... fuck, I’m killing this bastard. I don’t care if he’s family. He’s dead.
My knife comes out and he holds up a finger, nodding for me to sit.
“No, I’ll stand,” I pant. “You touched your own son? Is that why my dad was so fucked in the head? I thought he was cruel all on his own, but no, it was you. You fucked him up.”
“Sons are created to submit, serve, and obey their fathers. Isn’t that how you feel about Jack? Sit, sonny.” He pats the bed. “Be an obedient boy, like Paul was. Try it for me.” He touches himself. “I’m only asking for one last erection before I die.”
“Screw you, you vile shit.” I almost spit in his face, but administer a solid drop kick to his chest instead. He falls back and holds his ribs, winded and emitting a low moan. In anger, I swipe the pile of photos, spreading them wide across the table. I can’t believe this fucker photographed himself fucking his own son, and he kept them all these years. A fucking detective, no less.
“You...” My jaw drops at the sight of one of the photographs. I pick it up with a trembling hand. “You fucked my mother?” I speak like thunder, staring at the image. “You fu... f-fucked my mother,” I stammer. The photo’s from the 80s, I can tell by my mom’s hair. It’s night, shot outdoors with a flash. “You fucked...” Two cops are in the scene. Abram’s one. He must’ve been an officer before he became a detective. He’s in uniform, smiling and holding a baton around her neck as she cries. He’s got his dick in her while another guy is raping her mouth.
“No, you didn’t fuck her, you raped her.”
My world just shattered.
The photo floats out of my hand and I follow its descending path, wide-eyed and breathless. “Fuck.”
He laughs... the wheezing piece of shit laughs.
I jump on him, blade out, slamming it hard into his chest, excited when a gush of air whizzes from his mouth. I pull out and raise my arm to strike again, only my wrist is gripped as he begs for me to wait.
“We’re not
finished.”
“You’re a sick fuck, worse than my dad. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but yeah, you asshole, you’re worse than my dad.”
“Mark,” he heaves. His trembling hand resting over his wound while his forehead furrows from the pain. “She should’ve aborted you.”
“What?” The word expels in a spectral midst, hovering between us with a massive question mark fixed on the end. What is he saying?
“That faithful Catholic bitch, she wouldn’t get an abortion. I should’ve cut you out of her myself... son.”
“No.” I lean back with a shudder. The room spins and a blast of heat passes through my body. Horror and angst surge as I clutch my knife.
“Paul was your brother,” he coughs for a good minute while I move away.
I can’t look at him. I can’t.
“He was my possession before you came along and tore our relationship apart. A boy who always obeyed, even when he was in college. If I wanted him, he was mine.” He stops to catch his breath, bringing his bloody hand to his face in a gaze. “His last year,” he continues. “He said he met a woman who was different than his usual frat house whores. She was innocent and wholesome, and not uptight or threatening to his manhood.” He tilts his hand, examining the sticky red coating on his flesh as it glows in the dim light. “That’s hard to find in a college girl. She wasn’t one of those females who needed to have a career in order to prove she was just as good, if not better than, a man. That’s no woman for a Jameson.”
I shake my head at his wretched words.
“And she was sympathetic to his past... I’ll assume she was the first and only person he ever opened up to about our perfect father son bond.” His breathing becomes more labored. My first stab won’t kill him unless he bleeds to death, and that could take hours. The fucker’s just old and tired, taking breaks between long sentences. “She was a recluse, a woman who would keep his secrets safe. It was such a switch for Paul, and I suppose that was the attraction.” One long agonizing breath. “And it was good, my son could finally tell someone about his life.” Two long breaths. “But, I wanted a taste of her... so I fucked her behind his frat house at his graduation party. Hard and long.” Three long breaths. “Then he wanted me dead.”
“You raped her!” I rage and pace. “Were you jealous? Didn’t want him to start a life without you? What?” I twirl my blade and pace. “You’re weak.” I spit and pace. “You’re nothing but a cowardly sack of shit!”
“And you’re just like me.”
The corners of his mouth turn upward as I come to a grinding halt and contemplate my two weapons. Gun or blade? I set them both on the table and remove my sport coat, rolling my sleeves.
“Show me more,” he commands, massaging his junk. “Take off your shirt.”
I stand cross-armed, stricken with an unsound mind, transforming into a savage, cold-hearted animal.
“I think he felt sorry for that bitch when he saw my dick in her. He had only seen me fuck his mother in the past... apparently sharing another woman made him jealous.”
“What do mean, sharing another woman?”
“My boy did what I said. He slept in the same room as my wife and me. She was his first.”
“Keep your trap shut. I don’t want to hear anything else!”
“I bet he liked your mother because they shared a special bond,” he laughs. “Me.”
I pick up my gun and introduce the fucker to a decent pistol-whipping. One, twice, until I see a wide laceration and blood gushing from his cheek. He doesn’t make a sound. No yelps or moans, only a dying voice thudding about the room.
“Paul tried to be someone he wasn’t when he met that woman. She was pretty back then, maybe not so much today.”
I’m finished listening to his shit. He’s wasting his breath describing his account of my family’s past. Time to tune out and focus on his rust-scented blood instead. Seeing the deep red is a pleasurable thrill for my brain and as pacifying as a sedative, which I need right now. It flows down his face and leaves spots on my heavily bleached hotel sheets. Drip. Drip.
“He tried for a few years to escape his past. Everyone craves normalcy on occasion, but having you in his life, having to raise his brother...” he laughs. “You killed any chance he ever had of breaking free.”
I inhale deeply and turn his body to the side of the bed, dragging him to the edge so his head hangs over and his neck’s exposed.
“You, my boy, were a constant reminder to him of his own father. He couldn’t escape me if he tried.”
I know the feeling. Paul’s hatred for me has been a noose around my neck since I was a child, and now this fucker will be too.
“My Paul turned you into a splendid killer. I saw you in action from a distance once in Vegas,” he wheezes. “It was late one night after I had left a boy on the front steps of Paul’s house. A loving anonymous gift.”
“When you what?”
With his head hanging over the edge of the bed, he views me upside-down. “If I had to guess, I’d say,” he takes a deep breath, “if I ever surfaced in Vegas,” perishing breath, “his plan was to have you kill me. He was as skilled at manipulating people to do his dirty work for him as you are at taking a man’s life... my two magnificent sons.” His hand reaches for my dick. “Please... let me touch you before I die.”
“Ergh!” My gun beats his face causing a spurt of blood to shoot out his nose. A second full swing and a gash splits open on his forehead. His lip bleeds from my third hit, but he still doesn’t let on that he’s in pain.
Gravity pulls the blood to his head where it trickles onto my damask carpet. I don’t care if the entire room is coated in his putrid, sticky blood. My heart is as hard as metal and every bit as cold. I switch my gun out for my blade, holding it steadily against his neck.
“It’s time,” he pants with a busted face. “I got to see my grandkids, Sophia and Jack, and passed my existence onto you. But I’m done living. I no longer need this life or want to be in this old frail body. Nothing on me works. Everything aches. So kill me,” he groans. “I’ll be with you forever, Mark. That was my plan—to meet you and pass along the truth. Now, please, do it... I want to die by way of my boy.”
I foam at the mouth, having been infected by a rabid animal—another Jameson virus. Abram’s disease will embark on a long voyage within my body by damaging my heart and slaying my mind, just as Paul did for so many years.
“Fuck!” I rage, sinking the blade into his neck and handling him like a slab of meat. I work through his flesh, euphoric from the butchery and even more delighted that he finally expresses pain, pointing his feet upward, and digging his nails into the bed. Cutting into a man’s neck is the most painful of all deaths. His skin is tough and thyroid membrane firm as I cut my way to his trachea. I hold my breath while he succumbs... ordinarily an exquisite sight, though not tonight. Tonight I see the blood of my own life flowing from this man—a man who I’ll never call my father.
His dying expression is as warm as the blood surging onto my leg. The fluid seeps through my clothing, trying to attach to my body, forcing its way under my skin.
My life-long desire to kill my father has been fulfilled because of the foul invasion of a stranger. A man who resided in my body from the moment I was conceived, a phantom follower who so kindly blessed me with his presence on the day he wanted to die...
Sick. Sinister. Rapist.
Is it possible to hate someone you’ve just met more than a person you’ve known your entire life? Well, I do. I fucking hate the bastard. And I wish I had held out and made his painful death last throughout the night.
Once his fixed pupils dilate and his face is slack, I plead for him to return. “Breathe so I can kill you all over again.” My fist slams into his chest, causing his head to bob and more blood to color the room. “Breathe!”
His vacant stare is too goddamn peaceful. I want more. He needs to rise so we can have a badass figh
t. Then he has to pray for forgiveness while I’m killing him. “Get up!” I pace next to the bed, shouting at the carcass. “Get the fuck up!”
The photos spread across the table pry their way into my heart. They mock my very existence. Blocking them out isn’t an option, especially my mom... she... Paul.
All women should be worshipped and protected. Paul... he was a pussy like every man I’ve ever met. If a sack of shit did that to my wife, ex-wife, even if we loathed each other, I still would’ve stepped in, rolled up my sleeves, and put the scum in his place. And what did he do about it? Nothing. He let Abram get away with that shit. I would’ve killed him on the spot. I swear I’m the only man in this world with balls. Fuckers. All of them! A bunch of dumbass fuckers.
“Freakin’ A.” I rub my temples then glance at my blood-coated hands. I try brushing the evil away, swiping them together, wiping them on my pants, but it won’t come off. He’s hanging on. The man’s under my skin, soaking in... damn it... “I can’t...” I pant. “I can’t...” Calm the fuck down, Mark. Calm the fuck down.
“No.”
I climb over him, my gun raised; beating his face over and over until his teeth break and nose is bashed in. I want his jaw to crack, his eyes to disappear, his cheeks to sink, and, and, and...
“I’m a troll!” I roar.
Whack.
Punch.
“I’m a fierce fucking troll!”
Strike.
“You wicked... son of a... motherfuck! You’re malicious! You didn’t have to come here! I didn’t need to know any of this!”
Whack.
“I’ll fucking eat you for supper!”
Smack.
How the hell could you do this to me! I was fine not hearing any of this!
Slap.
To hell with you!
A whistling sound halts my psychosis. My arm’s raised high, prepared for a final swing, only someone else is in the room.
Of course it’s him... my kid.
He’s shirtless, leaning against the low dresser with his tat reflected in the mirror, trimming his nails, and yes, whistling. Nonchalantly whistling while I’m breaking the face of a dead man with a sliced open neck.