Harrison Schofield sat down for breakfast beside his three children: two girls and one boy, ranging in ages from five to fifteen. His oldest daughter, Alison, placed a plate heaped with pancakes into the center of the dark granite island. He and the kids ate breakfast together every morning at the island in the middle of their kitchen. They had an elegant dining room, but it seemed so formal and impersonal. He and the kids typically ate cereal or Pop-Tarts for breakfast, but Alison had been taking a cooking class at school and had insisted that she prepare them a real breakfast at least once a week.
He knew that he should have felt a surge of pride and pleasure at her responsible and caring nature. After all, his firstborn child was becoming a young woman. But he felt very little, only the same dull ache that permeated every other moment of his existence.
Despite this, he went out of his way to make sure that his children couldn’t gauge his true feelings. He sniffed the air and put on a false smile. “It smells wonderful, Alison. I’m very proud of you. You did a great job.”
She sat down and winked at him. “You know me, most awesome daughter of the year and all.”
He grinned back at her and gave her a loving squeeze on the shoulder. His fork shot out to the plate of pancakes and stabbed the first of the heap.
“Daddy,” his five-year-old, Melanie, said. “We need to pray first.”
“Of course, dear. Would you lead us, please?”
They joined hands, and in a tiny high-pitched voice, Melanie said, “Thank you for the world so sweet. Thank you for the food we eat. Thank you for the birds that sing. Thank you, God, for everything.” She pronounced the th sound as just t, making “thank” into “tank” and “everything” into “every ting”.
Schofield barely noticed. His mind had traveled back in time to prayers that he had recited during his childhood. The prayers had been taught to him by a man he knew only as The Prophet while he’d been living in the commune of a satanic cult known as the Disciples of Anarchy.
He thought of the other children within the cult.
He thought of their screams. He thought of them burning alive.
“Daddy?” Melanie said.
He snapped back to the present and said, “Yes, honey?”
“I need the syrup.”
“Sure, babe.” He slid the bottle toward her and leaned over to kiss her on the top of the head. She smiled up at him. Her two front teeth were missing. He smiled back at his beautiful little girl and thought of how much he loved his wife and kids. Although he could rarely feel joy, he could feel other things such as love, loyalty, and attachment. It would hurt them terribly to discover how much of a monster he truly was, but he only wanted to make them happy and feel happiness himself. Visions of his children spitting on him and calling him a freak cascaded before his eyes. He imagined their angelic faces curled into snarls as they stoned him to death.
Schofield thought of Jessie Olague burning and bleeding to death during the previous evening, and he knew that he would deserve such a fate. He had earned every stone.