What happens next . . . I don’t know. Was it rage? Or worse, was it calmness? Did I move with intent? Did I stumble? Was I even there? Really there? I just don’t know. Even today, I’ll never know.
I stood in my father’s workshop. He sat on his stool, still holding on to his model, a ship or an airplane or something else. His face was there. It had to be. But I still can’t see it, no matter how hard I close my eyes.
Nor can I see the moment that I finally moved. One second I just stood there, staring at him. The next, I felt the resistance in my wrist as the knife’s blade plunged into his back. It caught for an instant, maybe on a rib. I remember that. But my momentum, the abandon of it, pushed past that, diverting the blade. With a hitch, it sank deeper into my father’s body.
He lurches to his feet. The harsh light of his desk lamp flashes off the knife’s handle like a lightning strike. The gurgling sound that rumbles from his chest sounds so much like the driving rain. His hands, like talons, grasp for the handle of the blade in his back, just out of reach. A blossom of blackness stains his work shirt like a flower opening after some dreadful storm.
“Dad?” I whisper. “Dad?”
And all I hear is the sound of his pain.