Lightning flashes once again. The moments of the past roll by in reverse. We are here and we are there, like the endless loop of time, the snake eating its own tail.
I stand in the basement, my brother in my ear.
“You need to avenge her. He killed her.”
My head spins. “What?”
“I saw it. He took a pillow and held it over her face until she stopped breathing. Then he had me lie about it. To everyone. Even to you.”
Everything turns as red as the floor. Years of crushing anger. Years of veiled abuse. Years of being the toy stuck between two sets of claws. It all crashes down on me in that moment, this moment. I think to avenge my mother. But I am the weapon of his revenge. I am as good as the gun in his hand.
My brother’s hand opens. I see a shine of metal, the blade of one of my mother’s pristine kitchen knives. A set my father bought for her years before. A set that sat on the counter, unused, as her life slowly wasted away.
“Take it,” Drew says.
With a smile, my brother places the knife in my hand.
“Stand up to him,” he whispers.
The words bounce off my skull, flashing through my mind over and over again. He touches my face, his fingers tender but firm. He tilts my head, looks deeply into my eyes. He is close to me. His eyes are sharp. His breath is hot.
“It’s okay, little brother,” he says, so softly. “He hates you. I tried to tell him, but he won’t listen. He’s always hated you because . . . you aren’t like me, Liam. You’re weak and small and you cry all the time. He thought Mom babied you. He’s ashamed of you. He wants to send you away so that he doesn’t have to be seen with you. He doesn’t have to explain to people. That’s why he’s always leaving. It’s either him or you. Either he goes . . . or you do.”
His hands move to my shoulders. Gently, he turns me, guides me back toward the open workshop door.
“You need to stand up to him,” he whispers, or maybe the words just repeat again.
It’s not right.
You shouldn’t be treated like that.
You shouldn’t just take it.
I have your back, bro.
He does not push me, not physically. My father’s back is to me. His thick fingers work with a delicacy that seems impossible. I am there and not there. He is there and not there.
The rage lashes out like a storm. It crackles and burns inside me. But there is something else, too. Fear. Revulsion. I don’t know. But it makes me shake. It makes time fold in on itself. It makes the knife so heavy in my hand. My feet so cold. My legs stiff and awkward.
My father turns. He looks at me. But his face is gone. It is nothing. It is emptiness.
“Liam, what are you doing? Where did you get that?”
I expect him to rise in a flash. Lunge at me. Rip the knife out of my hand and beat me to a single second from my death. But he just sits there and looks at me like I do not matter. Like I might as well not exist.
My heart races. My body tingles. My father sits in front of me. Looking at me. Judging me. Embarrassed. Ashamed. And I swear someone stands behind me, whispering.
“Do it,” Drew says.
Or maybe I just hear his voice in my head.
Do it do it do it