Page 39 of Viparious

This motherfucker is supposed to protect her and he fucking failed.

His face turns red as I keep squeezing, but he doesn’t try to fight me physically as he croaks, “Don’t, my boy, think about your?—”

I cut him off, squeezing tighter, and my blood roars in my ears as my voice booms off the walls.

“I fucking pay you to make sure she’s safe. You don’t give me your self-righteous fucking bullshit in a house of lies!” His aged wrinkly hand weakly taps against my forearm as I ask, “Why the fuck weren’t the security lights on in the first place?!”

Something stops me killing him, and I take a step back, letting him go. He chokes down air around his weak fucking answer.

“You asked for there not to be any attention on her.” I failed her twice. I keep fucking failing her. “It would be a beacon, and your mother and father would know where she is.”

It made sense when I said it, now it doesn’t. They wouldn’t give a fuck, they never did. They kept their children as a means for power or payment. The dead wouldn’t serve any purpose. My face contorts with disgust as I step forward, ready to expel all the anger inside of me and spit out, “Fuck you, old man.”

Grigory hardens and admonishes me as though he’s any fucking authority figure in my life.

“Do not curse in the house of God.”

Everything hardens, my tone, my muscles, my resolve for death.

“Fuck you both. When has your God ever helped me?!”

But he doesn’t react to it as he rubs across his throat and calmly asks, “Who do you think put me in your path all those years ago?”

He’s an old fuck who needed a piss in the middle of the night and trying to pass it off as some divine intervention that doesn’t exist. His eyes soften, showing more creases.

“I woke up with a sense of loss so deep and powerful that it ached through my bones. I didn’t know you would be beyond the doors, and you may have become this, but you will always be a grieving boy.”

“I’m not one of your sheep to lead into the lies you tell yourself to feel like there’s a purpose in the world. The real purpose is kill or be killed, use or be used.”

He shakes his head and steps in my path again. His shoulders straighten and he meets my eyes, yet a-fucking-gain.

“You do not frighten me, Vladik, you frighten yourself.”

My fist raises, hitting the stone wall beside his head as I change course at the last second.

“Do I look afraid to you?!”

He nods once and adds more fuel to the fire of my rage.

“Yes. The same you were that night, even with blood on you, and your face was frozen. But you weren’t shaking due to the cold or to soothe V?—”

“Don’t say her name.”

My jaw is going to snap. She’s too precious for unworthy tongues and I won’t allow anyone to taint her name with their sins. He holds his hands up, acquiescing and alters his little speech.

“You were a child, a child born in the house of evil, but you don’t need to feed yourself poison to become immune. Let your anger go.”

Fuck him. He doesn’t know shit. I’m not weak or incapable of taking every pound of flesh that was laid to waste, that was robbed from me, stopped from growing beside me and infusing my life. Even the memory of Vanya has been taken from me because life is a cruel fucking bitch, fracturing the small amounts of time I had with her.

He must see my resolve because he steps aside as I give a parting shot. “You should write your own book. The do-gooders would love it and make plaques to hang in their bathrooms.”

There’s no argument as he shakes his head, and I know my first target when I leave the church. The old fucking bitch sees me as soon as I step out of the gates. Her nose is pressed to her window, and she backs away upon seeing me. Her lights all turn off as though I’ll decide against my anger in favor of letting her sleep.Delusional old bitch.

My lips move up, but there’s no joy in my world. I don’t knock on the door when I reach her house and let myself in. The lock isn’t even secure and snaps against the wood with the weight of my rage slamming into it. The low streetlights behind me cast a faint shadow into the dark room and I see her. She’s sat in the dark like a fucking idiot and holds herself rigid as thoughI’mthe predator.

“Who was it?”

Her flinch at my tone is visible in the low lights, and I flick them back on so she can’t hide. There’s no answer. Even if there was, I wouldn’t give a fuck.

---