Consummation of the Past

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A young man comes to terms with the pain of his past.
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"Does it hurt?"

The answer was a pinched groan, followed by a short stream of obscenities. The wounded man slumped further in the wooden chair. One hand grasped a swollen gut, crimson honey spilling over his splayed fingers. In the whitening fist of his other hand, a bottle of amber liquid hung half-gone. From the bottle the man took a healthy mouthful, swallowing it down with a hacking cough.

"You gonna finish it now?" the man said with a leer. His shaking hand set the bottle on a table next to his chair but seemed hesitant to release its hold, falling away with the forlorn reluctancy of releasing the hand of a lover.

Brian looked down at the gun in his hand, almost surprised to find it there. It was such a little thing; could it honestly be the blame for the gore spilling in front of him?

Without thinking, he set the gun on a small table near the door, nudging a set of keys over the edge and onto the floor.

"Where have you been all this time?" he asked, taking a step closer to the chair and the man dying in it.

"We need to talk, you and I," he said, disregarding his own question. His voice seemed hollow to him, and tinny, and he wondered if it would be capable of the truths it would soon carry.

The man seemed to sink further into the chair as Brian approached, and the stain of blood was spreading lower, almost to the straining waistband of his pants. But, even through the pain, a contemptuous fire burned in his glaring eyes.

"What happened, that was a long time ago," he labored to say, a film of red spittle coating his lips.

The heat that burned within Brian had been left simmering for years, but the man's words brought all the anger and pain to a quick boil. Before thought was even formed, he had taken a fistful of greasy hair and was pulling the man's head back as he loomed over the wrinkled face.

"How long is long enough?" he spat. "How long makes it go away?"

"We were just kids, for chrissake."

He released the man, nearly toppling the bleeding ruin from his chair. Thoughts and blood rushed through him like heated oil and on shaking legs he strode back to the discarded gun, all want of talk gone. What could words ever undo? What was it that he even had to say?

"Wait. No," the voice pleaded from behind him. Underneath the words, Brian could hear a desperation borne of both panic and pain. But even the plea brought no satisfaction to him. He wanted to leave the cold apartment and forget that he had ever been there.

The ghosts that haunted every day of his life could never be forgotten.

"No?" Brian repeated, hearing a coldness harden his voice, an echoing rage that had been waiting for this moment for nearly fifteen years. "How many times did I say that? How many times did Kevin say that?"

The gun felt weightless in his hand, another ghostly apparition, like the ten year old boy who stood beside his bed each night when he woke up sweating and choking on bitter tears. The recoil barely shook a tremble through his arm as a second hole appeared in the man's chest. The cry echoed in the room but still he remained seated in the chair. The bottle toppled from its table and tumbled onto the worn carpet, spilling whiskey into the pool of blood.

"Please," the man whispered, his voice scraping against the insides of his throat. "Please, Brian."

Brian stood close enough to smell the man's sour odor. The staleness of wasted years. His eyes had lost any indignation they had held and now Brian only saw a pathetic old man staring up at him. An old man ready to pay for his sins.

He leveled the barrel of the gun at his father's forehead. Through every inch of his body, he could feel his heart beating madly. Sweat had broken on his skin, chilling as it left his pores.

"This is for Kevin," he breathed, the words barely audible over the rush of blood that was filling his ears. The sound of the gun firing seemed distant, not even real. Tears and blood ran down his cheeks and he turned away from his father's body as the man finally fell from the chair. He tucked the gun clumsily in his jacket pocket and hurried out of the apartment, wiping his face with his sleeve.

Outside, rain was falling in thick sheets, smearing the blood on his face and hiding the tears. He walked without seeing anything, the world having gone fuzzy behind a streaming curtain. His feet carried him blindly to his beat-up car and he sunk into its shelter, barely aware of the refuge from the rain. Outside there was no screaming of sirens or hollering of concerned neighbors; this was not the sort of neighborhood where gunshots often roused much concerned attention. As he pulled away, he wondered if he had closed the apartment door behind him, if anyone would find the body any time soon. It didn't really matter to him one way or the other.

For three hours he drove, only instinct guiding him through splashing turns and darkened roads. The early dusk accompanied him as he drove through the black, iron gates. He wasn't surprised at how little the cemetery had changed over the years. What need did the dead have of change? What could the passing of years hold for them? He walked through the abating rain without looking up from the ground, winding his way through the maze of headstones until he came to his brother.

He knelt in the sodden grass and placed a hand on the flat grave marker. Fresh tears had filled his eyes, tears wrung from him by an aguish far greater than than the anger that had filled him previously.

"He's gone, Kevin," he said through his sobs, bowing his head. "I'm sorry I couldn't keep him from hurting you, but he's gone now."

"Rest in peace, Kevin. I'm sorry."

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AnotherChapterAnotherChapter5 months ago

Heavy. Wish all the abusive fathers in the world could read it just before the bullet.

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