Page 144 of Panic-Button
The first time I saw fear take over my father’s face was the moment he turned his head and saw me standing there.
“Marnie, this isn’t what it looks like.”
His pathetic dick was still inside her, and he was trying to deny it?
A silent message passed between Trina and me when our eyes locked.
Without a second thought, I snatched a belt off her dresser and jumped onto the bed, where I wrapped it around my father’s neck. He bucked and shot up, trying to knock me off his back, but Trina stopped him. She wrapped her legs around him and seized fistfuls of his hair, yanking his neck down into the pressure of the belt.
All the pain and sadness I’d felt through the years came out in a scream. All the times, I had to sleep on my stomach because my back hurt too much—the lectures and holy taunts and the grains of rice that dug into my knees were now coming out in coughs and sputters. He was going to choke on every second I cried myself to sleep.
My arms burned from the exertion, but I refused to stop. Hell was waiting for its next victim, and I hoped his righteous ass burned all the way down.
When my father finally went limp, I still couldn’t stop. I held that belt up high and brought it down on his back, over and over and over again. Every single strike wiped a quote from my mind.
‘Desire is the devil’s sin.’
Smack.
‘I will not let you taint and corrupt your sister.’
Thwack.
‘Pray for salvation, Marnie.’
“You pray for salvation, motherfucker!”
I rained down a fury that the god of wrath would be envious of, and when I couldn’t do that anymore, I grabbed the first sharp object I could find and started carving him up. Revenge was all I could taste. It clouded my vision in a bright red curtain of rage.
“Marnie.”
Trina. My sweet sister’s voice was right there. She was supposed to make it out clean. I could endure the abuse because she was safe.
“Marnie, stop.”
But it was all a lie. Everything was a lie, and I was going to keep digging into his corpse until I found the truth.
“That’s enough, Little Bird.”
It would never be enough. Not as long as his eyes were still here.
But it wasn’t his eyes I was staring into—his eyes weren’t gray…
Preston?
His hands were cupping my cheeks, and he was talking. “He’s dead. You can stop now.”
Who’s dead?
My eyes trickled over my arms. They were slick with a thick red substance. Blood? We showered before we came, didn’t we? That was when I noticed the torn flesh around my wrists. My hands were buried in my father’s stomach. I killed him. I murdered my father because he was raping my sister!
“You, son of a bitch!” I ripped my hands out of his stomach and slapped my father across the face. “I’m going to kill you!”
“Yeah, you already did that.” With a grunt, Preston lifted me off the bed and carried me across the room.
I screamed and kicked out, trying to reach back for the bloody mess on Trina’s bed. “I’m not finished.”
“Yes, you are.”
