Page 74 of Was I Ever Free

The room goes dark, left alone again.

* * *

My father’sfist connects with my jaw. I tongue my cheek, tasting a coppery tang, and idly wonder if the taste of my own blood has become the most familiar of flavors in the sixteen years I've been alive. I’m now old enough—have endured enough—to know not to say a word or react while he takes his rage and insecurities out on me. It’s for my own good, he’s said innumerable times before.

I’m the son of a Sin Eater. He has a reputation to uphold.

I look at him now, aging but still strong. Dark hair, dark brows.

We look so alike, it sickens me.

While he continues to beat me, I decide tonight is the night.

The quarter moon is shining through the window when my father wakes up gasping for air, clawing at his neck. Rope wound tight around his throat. Found it in the shed. Maybe it’s the same rope my mother used to hang herself with. Wishful thinking. Still makes me smile while I watch my father’s mouth open and close like a dying fish out of water.

I don’t say a word, while my father tries but fails to even say one. Adrenaline is rushing through my ears, I can barely hear a thing. Transfixed by my hands ending my father’s life. Engrossed by his hands now rendered useless, powerless, his fingers weakened by the lack of oxygen to his brain and lungs. His lips turn blue, blood vessels bursting in the white of his eyes.

I’m giddy.

* * *

My eyes burn,the light’s back on and I struggle to find the strength to pull my head up.

What does it matter anyway?

My eyes lift and I startle. The chains clatter on the floor as I pull myself into a crouch and instinctively try to get myself as far away from my father as possible. I blink trying to clear my vision but still my father remains.

“Are you finally smart enough to fear me, Lover Boy?” he drawls, and the very same fear he’s describing grows thick in my throat.

“I killed you,” I say confused, still huddling in the corner of the room, the clasp around my neck taut and pulling me back to where the chains are connected to the wall.

My father laughs, but it doesn’t quite sound like his. I squint, trying to look closer at him but all I can see is his revolting face grinning at me.

What the fuck is happening?

“Only in your wildest dreams could you kill me,” he responds, strolling up to me. “Ready to give me what I want? Or are you going to waste more of my time?”

Give him what he wants?

Numbers and lines of code flash in my mind.

An encryption key, I vaguely think. That’s why I’m here.

It doesn’t explain my dead father. Was he alive this whole time?

“I killed you,” I repeat distractedly.

My father hums. “Maybe those drugs were a little too strong after all.” He’s holding a pocket knife in his hands and lazily waves it around while looking down at me, still crouching against the wall. “You’ve been our lab rat of sorts.”

He crouches down, now eye to eye. His face seems to flicker, just like the doctor’s before. Someone I recognize. Someone I hate. But then it steadies and my father is still here, staring at me with a wicked evil grin.

“I’m an impatient man, Lover Boy. You have twenty-four hours left before I feed you to the pigs. But for now?” He flicks the blade of the knife open. “Maybe a little bit of pain will jog your memory.”

My head slams into the wall, my father’s palm holding me by the chin, his fingers curling and digging into my cheeks. I can feel the cold blade slicing into the skin below my left eye before the pain even begins to register.

Why is he doing this?

I killed him.

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