Page 1 of Inevitable Destruction

EVERETT

“Let You Down”—Divided Minds

Rain surroundsus in a heavy mist, dampening everything in sight—including me. The moisture slowly soaks through the leather of my jacket, leaving it clinging to my arms while the front of my black, cotton T-shirt molds to me like a second skin. My steadily rising irritation spikes with the uncomfortable sensations crawling across my skin.

I don’t want to be here—not with him. His presence taints my father’s, and yet, I’m still standing in this same spot, watching him mourn the people that ruined my life. The people he has no right to fucking miss.

I will make him regret ever missing them, make him regret his life and who he sees when he stares back at his void in the mirror. When he does, he’ll think of me, of who I am and what I did to him.

I swallow down the rage, clenching my jaw so tight, every bone cracks under the pressure, forcing a deep ache to settle in my jaw. A comfortable ache. I push my damp hair back from my face and brush my fingers over my eyes, wiping the rain from my lashes as I glare at him, not bothering to hide my blatant hostility.

In the ten minutes since I laid eyes on him, he hasn’t lifted his gaze from the ground once. He’s idly twisting a piece of grass between his fingers as he bobs his head slowly, almost absentmindedly, to the music I’m sure is blasting in his ears if the cord hanging down his neck is any indication.

His back is resting against the dark gray headstone his parents share, a headstone that rests about twenty feet from my father’s. Too fucking close for comfort. Though, I suppose it would still be too close if they were buried in a different fucking hemisphere.

I force my gaze back down to the headstone at my feet. My eyes lock on his name, and the pit of despair settles deep.

Steven Boyd.

I was twenty-five when he died, and he was forty-five—forty fucking five. Except he didn’t just die. He was fucking murdered by the one person on this planet who never should have turned his back on him. But he did.

Now he’s gone, and all I have left is questions. And anger. Lots of fucking anger.

I brush my thumb over the rigid texture of his headstone, my ring scraping across it as I do. The rock is cool to the touch, and when I swipe my fingers over the glassy front of the stone, the beads of water combine and blur, trailing down the smooth stone, running over his engraved name and death date before settling at the base in a small puddle.

The small pool of liquid reminds me of us, of this, of how we’re just as small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. My Pops was murdered, and yet, the vast majority don’t give a shit or even know who the hell we are.

Our lives don’t matter. We don’t matter. But my father? He fucking mattered to me. And I thought he mattered to the Reeds, but I guess that was proven otherwise with a slew of bullets to his chest.

I wonder where he is, if there is such a place like Heaven, or even Hell. If there is, I hope he ended up in Heaven, but I have my doubts. Mainly because it is so fucking unbelievable that there’s a “higher being” called God.

My logic is; why the fuck would there be someone—or something—that dictated and controlled absolutely everything and then let something like this happen?

None of the religious bullshit makes any sense, hence why I tend to lean towards the absence of an afterlife. When we die, we’re just fucking gone. Nonexistent. No darkness, no light, not even a fucking void. We simply cease to exist.

That would be the best way—to not have the burden of your life on your shoulders without being able to do anything about it. I think having that guilt, even if you were in a place like heaven, would feel more like Hell—being stuck with the pain of your life, what you left behind, unfinished business.

Although, that would be a great thing for Hell—the torture of every regret eating you alive for the rest of time… How apt.

I swallow the lump in my throat, forcing it down so fucking deep as I lock my jaw and grate my molars together. I focus on the grinding sensation, on the painful locking and popping of my bones as I blink away the angry tears that threaten to spill over every time I come here—which isn’t often at all anymore. A choice of my own making because now, the guilt and rage are as fresh as the day I found out what happened. I thought I had moved past it all. I fucking swore I did, but then I saw his goddamn pretty boy face—a face that could be a fucking replica of his father’s. If they didn’t share such a resemblance, I probably never would have guessed who he was. But that day, all it took was one look, and I knew.

I fucking knew. And ever since then, everything I have been shoving down for years, to the point I thought I was genuinely okay, is back and more brutal than ever. It’s debilitating. Consuming. Wreaking havoc on my mind and soul.

I don’t know what to do about it either. What is there for me to do when my father is dead? The man that killed him is dead along with the woman who was the reason for it all. Granted, I know Pops fucked up. He did, and I can admit that. Having an affair with your best friend’s wife is the biggest mistake he ever could have made, but he didn’t deserve to lose his life because of it.

And now, I’m all alone, stuck in the motions in a life I couldn’t care less about, all because I can’t bring myself to leave this place. To leave him.

Finding out about the existence of Dominik Reed was something I should have expected. Not when I first laid my eyes on him, but because I knew the Reeds had a son. I never met him, any of them, because by the time my father and his parents became friends, I was already an adult and living on my own, but I knew of his existence.

As far as looks go, I was… pleasantly surprised to find out Dominik is a spitting image of Alexander. I hadn’t the slightest clue what anyone in that family looked like—for obvious reasons—but after it all? I couldn’t stop fucking staring at the photo of him—of all of them they placed in the paper. So much so, I now have every fucking thing about their traitorous faces dedicated to memory—against my will but unable to resist.

The article was quite the spectacle, too.

A rustling noise pulls me from my weighted reverie, and my gaze snaps from the large, and now blurry stone in front of me to the one twenty feet away. I shove my chilled fingers into the front pockets of my dark-wash jeans as I watch Dominik stand unsteadily.

My fingers wrap around my pack of smokes, and I pull it out along with my lighter. I flip the top and pull a cigarette out with my teeth before pocketing the half-full pack again. I flick my silver zippo and bring the orange flame to the end, sucking in deeply, inhaling as much nicotine into my lungs as I can stand before flicking my wrist, cutting off the flame.

I squeeze the zippo in my fist as I take another drag, blowing out the smoke between my teeth still biting into the filter. The heat of the lit end curls upwards, burning my nostrils, but I welcome the slightly unpleasant sensation.

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