Page 17 of Together We Rot

I hold on to the belief as I shimmy the latch. The window creaks louder than I’d like and my heart lurches in my chest at the sound. I pause, wait, and then raise it up some more and climb through. The bedroom is steeped in darkness, but I suck in a breath as the shadows collect on a silhouette.

I hear the click of the light switch first before I see him. My father stands in my doorway, his face the picture of rage.

A stillness overtakes us and we’re suspended in time, caught between the Before and After and trapped in the miserable Now. My father’s green eyes burn black. It’s no use backing away. When time catches up, he slaps me, and it’s enough to make my eyes well with tears and my teeth rattle in my mouth. I heave for air, but it’s been knocked right out of my lungs.

“Where on earth were you?” The threat in his eyes is more than a warning. It’s a promise of more pain to come. That’s when I notice my mother watching in the wings like a vulture waiting for a kill. Perhaps she will swoop in to feast on what’s left.

I open my mouth, but my voice won’t come.

“I smell it on you. You’re drunk,” he snarls, his words striking me harder than the sting of his palm. On the floor I see the smashed remains of the Tracfone Lucas gave me.

“I’m not, I—” Thou shalt not lie to thy parents. The proverb pushes the words right out. “I mean, I was, I—I’m sorry, sir.” My words plummet like anvils. They crush through the silence and echo back in my ears.

“You would disobey us like this?” His fists tremble at his sides. “Tonight, of all nights? We prayed over you, Elwood. Have you forgotten that, or do you simply not care?”

“I care!”

Neither of my parents have changed out of their church attire. Did they know I was missing before the sermon even started, or did they find me here after? Either way, they’ve been standing in my room waiting for quite some time.

I should’ve known better.

“You just what?” my father demands. “Care about those boys more than your family? More than the church?”

I think of the Lord’s eyes burning on my neck as I heaved up my sins. “I wanted to say goodbye.”

“Those boys shouldn’t matter to you. We aren’t like them, Elwood. You aren’t like them. Their families don’t even attend mass.”

“They’re my friends.”

“Your friends?” My father laughs like it’s the best joke I’ve ever told. “Those boys are worthless. Worm food at best.”

“Don’t say that.” I surprise myself with each word. Every muscle in me wants to tremble and cower beneath his stern eyes, but my mouth has a mind of its own. Perhaps it’s some of the rage, the bubbling leftovers spewing from the core of me.

It takes my father a moment for the words to catch up with him. His blank face pulls back in a disgusted sort of disbelief. “I’ll say what I please, and as my son, you will shut up and listen.”

I swallow and it hurts. “Are you buying Wil’s motel?” My treacherous tongue will see me dead.

Father is momentarily quiet, but the silence doesn’t last. “Don’t say that viper’s name in this house.”

Wil, Wil, Wil, Wil, my thoughts sing. Wilhelmina Greene. I feel her fingers latch onto my chest, the snarl of her breath against my skin. I remember the anger swirling in her eyes and the pain buried beneath.

“But are you?”

My mother looks between us both. I know if it was her, she would have struck again already. Her eyes drop to Father’s swaying hand and I know she’s counting the seconds in her mind, but my father doesn’t move an inch. “What I do doesn’t concern you. What concerns you is not affiliating yourself with a good-for-nothing snake who publicly smeared our family name, or have you forgotten that?”

“No, sir, but—”

My father’s voice smooths over and it’s ten times more dangerous than before: “Tell me, what does the Bible say about children who disobey their parents?”

I clear my throat, already dreading the outcome of my words. “D-do not withhold discipline from a child... If you punish them with the r-rod, they will not die.” I can hear my heart in my throat. “Punish them with the rod and save them from death.”

“Then you know that you have earned this punishment.”

I flinch, but my father isn’t reaching toward me. Instead, he lifts one of my butterfly displays from the wall and the sound that rips from me is hardly human. More like a desperate croak. I’d take the beating. I’d take it gladly if it meant—

“No, please!”

His face scrunches and he sends the first piece of my collection flying. It hits the wall in a deafening shatter. Broken glass no longer looks like stardust. It looks like flying shards and vision blurred by tears. Like sin and punishment and God’s ever-watching eye. More and more of my collection is hurled against the wall. I’ve covered every bare inch of this room in framed displays, and one by one they fall in a deadly kaleidoscope.

---