Doug
“Daddy, I’m hungry.” Nicole whispered the forbidden words.
Doug watched down the street through the window at the side of the house. He hadn’t seen Trent, but he knew he was there—watching and waiting to come and take what he had saved up over the years. With the kitchen’s butcher knife lying over his lap, he remained vigilant, swaying back and forth in his chair. Nicole had ghosted into the room again. He knew she was there, behind him in the dark. He hated that sneakiness about her.
“You know the rules, Nicole. You had your meal earlier. That’s all you get today. You can have some more tomorrow. We have to save it. I told you that. We don’t know how long this will last. I saved you last time this happened, after your mother and the rest died, and I’ll save you again. You’ll be okay, trust me.”
“That was yesterday, Daddy. Don’t you remember? You fed me yesterday. I haven’t had anything today. Not even water. I’m so hungry. I think you forget sometimes, but it’s not your fault…Dad? My stomach hurts and we have lots of food stored everywhere. Can’t I have maybe a little? I won’t eat much, just a small can, I promise.”
“I told you, no!” he yelled shaking in anger, pounding his fist into the chair that he had faced directly in front of his lookout window. She dropped to her knees in a sob. He hated it when she cried and begged. He was keeping her alive. She should be thankful. He had to keep her alive and, even if she lost weight, she wouldn’t starve to death and neither would he. “Don’t be greedy, Nicole. Go to bed now.” She left the way she came, silently drifting through the house like a ghost.
Trent would come and take his food stores, but he was waiting for him this time. He hadn’t slept more than a wink since this all started. Except for the one time Nicole slipped away. He’d seen her walking home with that damn cat. As if they could spare anything for an animal.
“Daddy, can I keep him?” she had asked.
Why didn’t she understand what he was doing was for her own survival? He needed to protect his daughter, especially from Trent Carson.
He hadn’t slept for three days and even then, he dared not shut his eyes for an hour or more at a time. He only watched and waited, keenly aware of the danger Trent posed.
“Hurry up, you bastard. Come and get it. I’m waiting for you this time,” Doug mumbled.
“What, Daddy?” Nicole asked a moment later from the hallway.
“Nothing, Nicole. Go to bed,” he repeated. He hated her staring at him from behind his back. She was just like her mother, Carey. A daily reminder of his failures. Carey blamed him from beyond the grave, he knew it. She berated him from beyond as she did in life. He heard her mostly from the basement, near the bulkhead doorway where he’d stored her body—and those of their other children—four years ago.
Carey didn’t like it down there. It was too cold in the winter and too damp in the summer months. Nothing would please her. She always complained, even in death. If only she’d stay down there to haunt him, he could live with that. But lately, she’d come up from the basement and spoke to him from the darkened living room. She’d stand behind him, whispering in his ear as his head nodded off. She told him Trent would come in if he slept. He would sneak in and rob them of all he’d accumulated. He will take it all for himself, she warned him. He would again feel the pangs of hunger, the dread of failing; he’d watch Nicole die before his eyes, and it would be all his fault, like before, she told him. He was an utter failure.
He had let them die. She’d begged him to do something. She begged him that night when he broke into Larry’s house and tried to steal antivirals. That was the night Trent nearly blew his head off with the shotgun, and she watched it all from their bedroom window. It was humiliating for him.
She died the next day—but she didn’t stay dead. No, she’d haunted him since then. He couldn’t sell the house. He wouldn’t leave her here by herself. Their other children sometimes cried at night. He could hear them even now in the distance. He couldn’t abandon them in death as easily as he’d failed them in their lives.