CHAPTER FOURTEEN

May not be suitable for some readers.

How had my life gone to shit so fast? I had had to say goodbye to the one person I cared for, I had been threatened by a gun, I had become a wanted criminal, gotten beaten up, jabbed a pencil in someone’s arm, gotten expelled, and now I drove silently to my death all in a matter of a four days.
My hip hurt from where Ron threw me into the stick shift, so I practically stumbled out of the car when we arrived at his enormous manor. Even though he was quite aware I could walk myself, he still dragged me up the path and to the front door and threw me inside. It was like he was waiting until he was in the comfort of his own home to unleash his demon wrath, because right when he shut the door he transformed and gave me a wicked smirk. He shook his head, circling around me like he always did right before he planted pretty bruises all over my body. I just stood with clenched fists, ready for anything he was about throw at me.
“You’re just like your mother.”
“Don’t you dare talk about her—” A cold stinging slap across my cheek.
“Always getting into trouble.”
I tried to swallow down my anger and focused all my resent toward my father. My eyes were severely narrowed and I was practically bursting at the seams with rage.
“Didn’t you ever wonder why you’re here right now?” Still he circled around me. I was beginning to wonder where he was going with this. Did he mean why I was here, with Ron in his manor and not with my mother?
“It’s ‘cause you fucking killed her you monstrous son of a—”
But he was too fast for me to finish my phrase. He sped over to me like a silky black cougar and wrapped thick red fingers tightly around my neck. I could feel my throat caving in, my eyes getting misty.
“That isn’t what I was talking about,” he whispered menacingly. “Your mother was a whore. She slept around with everyone she met.”
What the hell was he saying? I tried to break free from his grip but he now had me lifted off the ground as if with such ease, and I kicked and kicked until he released me and I fell, toppling to the ground. I ringed and massaged a hand around my neck, trying to regain my breath.
“No, she wasn’t,” was all I could manage to say while choking on oxygen as it entered my mouth again.
“You were nothing but a simple slip-up. She never thought anything of you. You were just another one of her lousy nose-drippers.”
“You’re lying!” I shouted at him now. I knew this wasn’t true. I had known my mother, after all, for almost half my life. To have him intrude and stampede all over our relationship like this was out of the question and I couldn’t believe what my ears were hearing.
“And you’re just like her, aren’t you?” His foot took a blow directly to my stomach, right where Malcolm had kicked me. “You’re a whore, just like her.”
He reached down and yanked my head up by my hair. It felt as though it was being sucked into a vacuum cleaner. I was dazed and couldn’t see things properly. It was like a few light bulbs blew in the room and everything was two or three shades darker than they had previously been. Ron spit in my face and threw me back on the ground. I struggled to get up and saw that he had begun walking away toward the main staircase just a few meters away from where I was. But even if he was done with me, I was nowhere near done with him. Did he honestly think he could get away with lying to my face about my dead mother? Not a chance.
“Well I guess that finally explains why she fucked you. I always wondered why anyone in their right mind would want to get it on with you.” I decided to play along with his little game. “Now I finally know. That giant wad of cash must have looked pretty inviting. It’s sad that you had to pay to get some decent action, though.” I stood now, and he was turning slowly, twitching. “But then again, I can’t say I’m surprised.”
His face was red and probably as hot as a stovetop grill when he turned around to face me. I hadn’t planned what to do next, which was stupid, I realized after when Ron came charging at me. He was blocking the way up the stairs and he had probably locked the front doors which would have taken too long to get open, so I made a straight bee-line for the kitchen. Maybe I could chase him all around the house and eventually find an open window to crawl through that he couldn’t fit in. Well, he was faster than I thought because by the time I reached the kitchen he was right behind me, twisting me around. He forced me against the counter and now had both hands enclosed around my throat, stopping any flow of air I had. I could already tell I didn’t have long before I passed out. My vision was darkening again and I desperately tried to knee him somewhere it would hurt, but he only struggled right back. That was taking too much energy out of me so I quickly tried to think up something else. My arms were free so I reached behind me and they fell into the steel sink. I felt around for anything, hoping a steak knife would magically fly into my hand. There were no knives. In fact there was only one utensil and a plate. I grabbed the utensil and plunged it forward, right into Ron’s neck without thinking twice. To my amazement it was a sharp steel four-prong fork. Ron keeled and let out an ear-splitting cry. I didn’t stay to watch him bleed as I bolted right up the grand staircase. There was a window in the bathroom I was sure I could fit through and crawl down the side of the house. That would make Ron scratch his head when he flew open the door to find no boy there to disembowel.
The bathtub below the window was, to my surprise, full to the brim with steaming hot water. It was as if Ron was about to take a nice relaxing bath when he received an unpleasant phone call from St. Benedict’s. I barely had time to register everything when the door behind me surged open and in came a disheveled, bloody Ron. How the hell had he gotten up here so fast?
“Now you’ve really pissed me off, boy.” Ron gave me a huge forceful shove directly toward the bathtub and I actually lost my balance and toppled in, my head crashing against the tile on the back wall. The back of my scalp felt hot and might have been leaking with blood now. The water was boiling my skin, and I felt as though I was in a pot over a hot stovetop. I tried to scramble out with haste but Ron only threw me back down, his arms pushing my shoulders down with all his force. That’s why it’s full, I thought. He’s actually going to drown me!
I tried my hardest to take a deep breath before I went under, but I choked on some water on the way down. It was silent under the surface, only the sound of bubbles rising up above me. I could hear Ron faintly yelling something. When I came to my senses I gripped his arms which were now ringed around my neck and kicked and splashed and scratched and did just about everything I possibly could. I brought my knee up and it went straight for his head, colliding with it with great force. It threw him off guard and his hands released me. I climbed out of the tub with a huge amount of effort. It felt as though I was being pulled back just by the weight of the water itself.
And there I was, reaching desperately for the doorknob in sopping wet clothes, practically tripping over my own feet. And yet no matter how close I was, it didn’t matter, for I was tugged backward one last time. However, this time was different. I wasn’t thrown backward by a punch in the face or a stinging slap on the cheek. I was actually pulled into my father…like something that was verging on an embrace. Only I didn’t feel warm. I felt cold. My whole entire body went weak and I almost collapsed on him, unsure what was happening. There was a strong force that I felt in the pit of my stomach, like a strong queasiness or indigestion. I almost vomited but it was like nothing came out. I suddenly grew tired, and my limbs felt like they were detaching from me. Everything was as cold as ice and chills ran up and down me from head to foot. There was only silence. Ron was holding me up now because I had grown too weak to stand on my own, but I couldn’t feel him there. I couldn’t feel anything. For a brief second I looked down and placed a hand to my stomach. It was drenched with something that wasn’t water. The vomit came now… only it wasn’t regular vomit. It was a liquid and it was a deep red, like silk or satin.
All I recalled from then on was a shiny black revolver in Ron’s palm and I realized everything that had happened, even as he threw me into the tub once more and my limp body hung over the edge. I knew at once I was dying. I had been beaten up and kicked around and scraped up thousands of times but nothing compared to this. I couldn’t even describe in words how it felt. It was nothing I had ever felt before, and although this may sound crazy, it wasn’t entirely awful or even painful. It was just… very different. I remember thinking that I would finally be put out of my misery for once in my life, and that maybe I would go some place where there wasn’t such thing as pain or hatred, like somewhere it hadn’t been invented yet. You’d think I would feel furious and want utter vengeance for what Ron had done, but actually it was the complete opposite, and not even I could believe it. My whole body was at ease and relaxed, and I felt like I could shut my eyes and that what I would find would be nothing but what I wanted to see. No sweaty face of my father, no guns, no blood. Just everything I found worthwhile.
Right before I drifted away for the last time, I heard distant sirens and voices and a couple gunshots. All of it seemed a mile away and even the gunshots seemed to ring in slow motion in my ears.
My emotions, my feeling, my vision, everything disappeared and went black and I went somewhere far off, unaware of anything that was about to happen. All I knew was that I was dead.

• • •

I wasn’t sure whether I was dreaming or if this was some sort of parallel reality. I was in a meadow, but it seemed as though I had already been here before in the past. Everything looked familiar, right down to the last orchid, and I already knew where everything was. When I stood I was on a hill of green, shimmery grass, looking down on a valley where a tiny cottage stood in the distance. Everything almost seemed sketched in with colored pencils, it was too perfect. There were trees surrounding the cottage and as I stepped further down the hill I saw the place was made of sheer cobblestone, like the old-fashioned days. I almost felt as though I had stepped through a time machine and ended up somewhere in the Middle Ages. I could see a large water wheel spinning on the side of the house. Someone was home. I trudged down the hill and for the first time realized I didn’t have a single injury on me. My hands we spotless, my clothes were clean and smelled like fresh blueberries and my jet black hair was tame and hung neatly over my face.
As I approached the cottage I noticed a woman on the porch. She was a shriveled old lady, probably over a hundred years old and was sitting on a straw chair that was low to the ground. She was hunched and long, straggly silver hair hung to her knees, hiding her face. For some reason, she too, seemed strangely familiar.
And then it hit me. A book. This was all part of a storybook my mother used to read to me when I was young. The meadow, the orchids, the house, the water wheel, right down to the little old lady was all part of the story. I remembered in the story she used to snatch up children when they passed her house, and she would bring them inside and, I fabricated, eat them for dinner (I could never remember the real ending).
Even though I was aware she was probably going to snatch me up, I approached her nonetheless. I was almost hypnotized by her for a reason I wasn’t quite sure of.
“Mrs. Meadows, right?” I remembered her name from the story because I always found it so appropriate.
“Come closer, let me see you…” She didn’t move at all. I didn’t even see her mouth move. I almost asked aloud how she would be able to see me if she was frozen in that constant position of looking down at her stomach but I resisted. “You’ve gotten so big.”
I must admit, I was a little freaked out now. She hadn’t even flinched and yet she somehow saw me? Her mouth wasn’t moving yet she was speaking? And she didn’t sound old at all. I wasn’t even sure it was her who was speaking, but there was no one else around. Her voice seemed to flutter around my head like butterflies and it was not coming from one direction alone, but it was all around me. It was soft and it echoed, almost like she was speaking to me under water. Her voice was so calm and so pleasant it almost made my knees give out.
“Do you know me?” I asked, now curious, as I made a single step closer. I didn’t dare join her on the porch, though. It was low enough that I didn’t need to go up. We were practically face to face anyway; I could see her wrinkles toppling over her eye sockets and cheekbones.
“I know you, Shuro. I have watched you grow up from afar, seen all that you have accomplished. Watched you succeed, watched you fail. Watched you make mistakes…”
I didn’t understand. But then again, I was somehow in a storybook, so maybe I wasn’t supposed to understand.
“I want you to know something, Shuro.” Her words still fluttered around me. I almost didn’t see a point in looking at this old lady anymore. It clearly wasn’t her speaking. Yet there was something about the way she said my name that triggered some sort of spark deep within my memories. It was warm and I got butterflies in my stomach and it made my feel genuinely happy, which hadn’t occurred since… since…
“Please know that I am here. Even though at times it may seem that I no longer exist.”
My eyes were glossing over with liquid and I didn’t know why. I tried hard to swallow down a hard lump in my throat. “I don’t understand—”
“You are too young right now. It is not your time.”
“Wait, who are you?” I asked, even though I had a good idea.
“You will find me again… my boy…”
“Wait!”

There was a blinding flash of white and I was thrown into the air and found myself being sucked through a tunnel of nothingness, just pure light. Wind rushed by me at seventy miles an hour.

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