Obedience and Betrayal

"He's out, dad. Good hit."

Wait a moment, this was not some mysterious forest monster, that sounded suspiciously like Alex, Felix's older son.

"I think he's already dead," his younger brother Gregor contributed, his voice full of hope. "That was easy."

No, this was not the way to go. Some forest deity or mighty predator, yes. Those three morons cowardly ambushing me? No, that wasn't how I wanted to go.

"We better check to be sure," Felix stated while his voice came nearer. I felt his hand grabbing my shoulder as he started to turn me onto my back. I tightened my grip on my hiking stick and swung it around as hard as I could, hoping I would hit something. Something like a sneaky, murderous bastard. Not that I could really claim any moral high ground in that regard, as I might have killed Gabriel much in the same way.

My stick sure connected with something solid, but until the swearing started, I had no idea whether it had done any damage.

"Baftard."

"Dad! You alright?"

It sounded as if some coward had gotten hit on the mouth. In the near darkness, his sons had no idea what was going on. I used the time to make a run into the trees, but someone tackled me and I crashed into the scrub. Shit. Why were his sons that much bigger than him anyway?

Again, I tried to get up and run when my luck finally ran out. The clouds parted right at that point and the moon bathed everything in what seemed glaring cold light. Right then, I felt the other juvenile giant slam into me left side and we rolled downwards, back towards the path. Suddenly, he screamed and I realized that he must have received a blow from Felix that was meant for me.

I jumped up again, ready to flee, when it dawned on me. Why were those boys so damn big? They weren't just tall, they were already muscled and overall, massive. Felix was a smallish, scrawny man.

The pity I felt for him overruled my flight instinct. I just stood there and looked at him with compassion. Even in the moonlight, my three attackers sensed that something had changed. I was behaving wrongly. I should be fleeing now, like a proper prey.

"What?" Felix demanded, probably without having a clear idea what exactly he wanted to know.

"You at least suspected it, didn't you?"

"What? What are you talking about?" he replied, having lost most of his confidence.

"Your sons."

"What about them?" he angrily asked, but we both knew.

"What's he talking about, Dad?"

"They are my sons, you listen? Mine!"

"Dad, what is he talking about?" His voice sounded a bit shrill by now. The boys had probably already suspected something like this as well. Gabriel, you damn bastard, I just thought.

"Alex, Gregor, come here, please," Felix said, sounding a bit muffled. He had probably prepared himself for this talk for a long time, but certainly didn't expect it to happen while he tried to kill someone in a dark forest. "Listen, you are my sons and you always will be, you understand? Nothing will ever change that..."

I couldn't understand the rest as I just walked away, further into the forest and into the solitude I needed.

Shit, those boys had just learned that the man either Felix or I had presumably killed was their biological father. For their sake I hoped that they hadn't helped kill him. What a mess. Once again, I was glad that Carla never got pregnant, either by me or by Gabriel.

Leah always seemed as if she was not made for that harsh environment. Everyone in the village, including the women, was somehow hardened by the life we had to live. Carla wasn't huge, she wasn't fat, but she was sturdy, physically and mentally.

Leah was different. Shy, pretty, introverted and fragile. She didn't belong there. She was almost always reading books, and when she wasn't, she seemed to be daydreaming. None of the things happening in the village seemed to concern her. She wasn't interested in them and they didn't seem to affect her. She was like a being from another world, stranded in our dirty little village, but never taking part.

This made her somehow untouchable; people seemed to stay away from her when they could. Her delicate beauty didn't even attract the boys' attention. They were obviously looking something different, stouter and more suited for these surroundings. In short, she was a loner and seemed to like it that way. I envied her. None of the filth from this cesspool of a village could cling to her or stain her. I sometimes thought that if she worked in a pigsty, she'd come out of it squeaky clean, her pearly-white dress immaculate.

I'd watched her from time to time in rapt fascination, as if she was the last of some extinct species, too delicate and beautiful to survive in this brutal world. Carla noticed.

"You like her, right?" she had asked, smirking.

"Yes, in some way I do," I replied, being too tired to explain that admiration didn't necessarily have to be sexual. Carla wouldn't understand anyway. She had already been absorbed by the village's vileness. For her, everything was already reduced to sex, power and necessity. She was practical.

Damn, she had seen me. Annette. I had hoped to avoid her, but she seemed determined not to let me get away. Sighing, I waited until she had reached me, but I sure wasn't about to meet her half way.

"Simon, it's good that I've met you. We need to talk."

I just nodded. There was nothing I wanted from her and nothing I liked about her. She had despised and rejected me when I was a vulnerable young boy and I wasn't about to forget that and make things easy for her.

"Simon," she said, unsuccessfully trying to sound pleading. I knew that she was a cold bitch and I was just a means to an end for her. Whenever she talked to me, the question was just what she wanted to use me for. "We all know that Gabriel had his flaws, but he was a born leader." I just raised my eyebrow, obviously doubting this. "Simon, we need a physically strong man. This is a rough place and it can't be led by a smallish weakling."

"You're talking about Felix?"

I hoped to make her squirm a little, but this was Annette. She didn't squirm.

"Exactly!" she exclaimed, obviously glad to have gotten her point across. "Gabriel was a freak of nature, physically. There won't be a new leader like him, obviously, but you come closest."

I just cocked my head, skeptically.

"Simon, I know that you've always fancied Leah."

I didn't feel the need to explain the nature of my admiration, mainly because it was a thought I tried to avoid.

"I just wanted to remind you that it would be fully within the new leader's rights to take her."

"Annette, I'm married, remember?"

"That doesn't need to stop you. Carla knows about this and agrees."

"Don't you think that this should be Leah's choice?" I asked, just to see how far she would go to pimp her own daughter.

"No, not really. She's been living in her ivory tower far too long. It's about time she grows up and does something useful," she stated as if this was just another stage in raising a daughter.

Shaking my head, I started to turn around and leave when she stopped me by grabbing my shoulder.

"Simon, think about what will happen if you don't do it. You know Felix and his sons. You know how much Leah despises them."

She used her own daughter as incentive and to blackmail me. Just when you thought the they couldn't sink any lower, they pulled a rabbit out of their hat.

Mindlessly, I stared at the horizon for a while, pretending to try to come a decision, but in reality, just out of inertia. After a while, I still wasn't any wiser and wouldn't be any time soon. It was clearly time to change my strategy.

Obviously, none of my fellow villagers had any interest in finding out who had killed Gabriel. Maybe this was something I'd have to do for myself, not for them. After all, I was still assuming that I was better than Gabriel had been. If I had already sunk to a level that allowed me to kill someone, I could just as well take over the whole damn village and become a second Gabriel.

Sighing, I slowly walked towards the crime scene. The place behind the common workshop looked just as it had when Gabriel had been lying there in the mud. The ground was just as muddy and the whole scene just as shabby and undignified.

I didn't even know what I was looking for when I saw the hammer. No one had even bothered to take the murder weapon away. I guessed no one knew what to do with it. Probably, no one had even wanted to touch the object that killed their leader, a man I had always assumed everyone hated. I wasn't so sure anymore. I took a closer look and saw that, even though it had been raining, Gabriel's blood was still clearly visible. I still felt nothing, but thought that I should have. After all, I was the son he never had, right?

I tried to remember the fateful night, but still came up with nothing. I almost never drank alcohol and rarely felt the necessity to be consoled by it anymore. By the time Gabriel died, I was almost completely unaffected by what Carla did with him. In my mind, we had been divorced for years; we just happened to live under the same roof. Why had I drunk that much in that night? Something big must have happened, something hurtful probably. What could have been more hurtful than the things my wife had done with my former step father?

I still had no idea. I didn't even know whether I was physically capable of killing someone with a hammer while being drunk enough to not remember it afterwards. I guessed there must have been a small window of time for that. Already drunk enough to lose my usual numbness, but still sober enough to kill the giant with the rather small object lying in the mud in front of me.

I took a closer look. It was clearly a carpenter's hammer, and I knew that it wasn't mine. It had two notches in the handle, meaning it was community property from the common workshop, accessible to everyone. I couldn't imagine selecting that hammer as my weapon of choice to kill a big bastard like Gabriel, but I had no idea what alternatives had been on offer or how desperate I'd been.

I took it, weighed it in my hand, unable to tear my eyes away from the dried blood, waiting for memories of that night to appear. Nothing. The scene roused no memories in me.

I thought about growing up in his house, being mostly ignored by Annette and used as a punching ball by him. The only silver lining on the darker days was Leah. I had always felt the need to protect her from her father's outbursts. More than once, when he was in a foul mood and just felt the need to randomly hurt someone, I had thrown myself into the line of fire.

It was just as well for him and he usually hit me until he lost interest. This was one of the few times I had seen Annette showing real emotion. She was looking genuinely pleased. I think it was not because I had just saved her daughter from a beating, but because she enjoyed seeing him hit me. I had no idea why she would enjoy that. Despite the physical pain, I always felt good afterwards, like a hero who had saved the pure maiden.

As soon as she was old enough to understand what was going on, Leah felt incredibly bad about it and tried to make it up to me by tending to my wounds. She also started to read books to me until we both fell asleep. When she started to write short stories and poems, they were always about things like brave warriors and the beautiful girls they saved from evil dragons.

This was long in the past, though. There were no dragons in sight; the only one I ever knew was already slain. I was still looking at a rather mundane crime scene without a clue. Not knowing what else to do and still trying to remember, I dropped the hammer and wandered aimlessly through the village, looking for something, not knowing what and ignoring anyone I met. Everyone seemed to respect that for some reason. After a while, I ended up behind Gabriel and Annette's house.

Mindlessly, I stared at their back door. It was just a back door, not noticeable in any way. Still, it somehow kept my attention. It was brown, needed a new paint job and it was always unlocked, like all doors in the village.

Suddenly, I remembered Annette standing right next to that door. She seemed proud, beaming even. I had just finished some chore for her or Gabriel. Yes, I had fixed the wheelbarrow that was still parked to my left. I remember Annette appearing with a cool drink after I had finished.

Yes, that was the night of the murder, and I suddenly remembered a lot.

"Simon, thank you so much for fixing this. You want something to drink?" she had asked.

I had done endless chores for them, but I couldn't remember a single time when anyone had thanked me or offered a drink. I was immediately suspicious. Such things came never for free in our village; she obviously wanted something.

"Ah, yes, that would be nice," I answered, trying to act as normal as possible. Annette being in a good mood never meant anything good.

"You know that Leah has turned 19," she gushed out. I was fully aware of that. I had given her a nice scarf, which had caused a few tears and left me with the feeling that I had been the only one who had cared about her big day.

"Yes, I know," I answered guardedly.

"She doesn't know about it yet, but we haven't forgotten her present. She's going to become a woman tonight."

"What?" I remember a feeling of deep despair. No, not Leah, please. Don't break her. Don't sully the only clean thing in this village. I remembered hearing her sing for hours, or watching her paint, thinking that she was too good for this cesspool, too clean to be there.

"Yes," she confirmed, genuinely happy. I suddenly felt sick.

"Please, Annette, you can't do that."

"Simon, wake up, this is real life. She can't walk around like a princess all day long, useless and pretty. It's time she starts to be useful, even if just as a companion for Gabriel."

"No! Please don't tell me that Gabriel is going to... Not with his own daughter..."

"Yes, Simon," she proudly confirmed.

"She's your daughter as well, Annette. Don't you even care?" I hated letting Annette see so much of my heart, but I had to do what I could for Leah, even though I was sure I would fail.

"Of course. That's why this will happen. She had no say in it, but I'm sure it's the best for her this way. Gabriel is a good lover, as your wife will confirm," she added, trying to be cruel.

She knew exactly what this would do to Leah. She also knew that I knew. It would break her into a thousand pieces, like a delicate glass figurine thrown onto a hard-tiled floor. Annette seemed proud of sacrificing her own daughter for her husband's pleasure and the sickness of everything happening overwhelmed me.

"Annette, you disgust me." She had expected this and seemed to revel in it. I was sure she saw herself as a strong woman, doing what needed to be done, benevolently explaining things to a naive, ignorant man.

"What are you going to do, Simon?" she taunted me. "She's not even your real sister. You need to grow up, this is how the real world works. You really want to fight Gabriel over this?"

"Yes, if I have to. This is too much. I don't care about him hurting me or anyone else. I certainly won't stand by as he rapes his own daughter."

"Well, Mr. White Knight, good luck finding them."

I stormed away from her while I felt her laughter burning on my back. I frantically searched every house, every place I could think of where two people could have sex. Not much was private in this village, but people were still stunned to see me storming into their houses, checking the bedrooms. No one objected openly, though.

Nothing. I ran back and forth through the village, meeting a laughing Annette from time to time. Other villagers I met seemed to avert their gazes, maybe aware what was going on, but unwilling to do anything about it. Damn.

Finally, I gave up. I went home, and under Carla's puzzled look, I began to plunder our alcohol reserves. The alternative would have been to imagine what was happening right then with clear mind, and that was unbearable. Soon, Carla left our house, probably to go to Gabriel again. She might not have been aware that he already had another woman to have sex with that night, even if she was less than willing.

After that, my memory got a bit fuzzy. There were images of me stumbling through the village, half drunk. The next thing I remember clearly is waking up that morning, suffering from my drinking the night before, making my way to the forest, then coming home to Carla telling me Gabriel was dead. The most likely course of events was that I had found Gabriel before I was too wasted, found the hammer and killed him with a lucky blow. The conclusion didn't make me feel any better or worse.

Leah. I needed to find her. I need to make sure she was all right, needed to know what had happened to her. I hadn't seen her much since Gabriel's death and I wondered why. Conveniently, I was still staring at Annette and Leah's back door while my memories had come back. I briefly tried to think of a justification for entering their house and checking up on her. Fuck this. They want me to rule this village? I can go wherever I want to, just like Gabriel had.

Annette was the first one I found. She was in the kitchen, cutting some small objects with an absurdly large knife. She turned around to face me and I immediately wished she hadn't. She looked at me with her usual fake thin smile and cold, calculating eyes. Looking at her had never been pleasant, the main difference this time was that she held this enormous knife and I clearly didn't.

The woman who had to assume that I had killed her husband changed her thin, lipless smile to a repulsive grin when she saw it was me. With a bang, the door behind me slammed shut, making me flinch.

Still grinning, she advanced on me, pointing the loosely held knife in the general direction of my belly. I can't say that I particularly liked that alignment. I was now certain that she'd try to murder me with that thing and tried to spot objects I could use in my defense without being too obvious. Shit, I had never even taken into account that Annette might just wait for her chance to have revenge on me. To some point, I could even understand her, but that didn't really make the idea more appealing.

"Oh, Simon, what a nice surprise," she gushed as much as she was capable of gushing. "You'd like to have some cake? It's delicious." That was probably one of the most surprising and weirdest statements that had ever reached my ears. I was relieved to see her putting the knife on the counter, but tried not to show it.

She didn't seem perturbed that I'd just entered her house uninvited. It was hard to tell from the emotionless mask she called a face, but she seemed pleased, maybe even honored by my presence. It was unlikely that she had forgotten our confrontation in her back yard right before Gabriel died, but there was no awkwardness. She had deferred to her husband, the old leader, had to assume that I had killed him, now she deferred to me, the new one. It seemed the most natural and ordinary thing for her and everybody else.

It seemed as if I was the only sane person among a bunch of lunatics and that thought is usually not a good sign. Most inmates in madhouses probably had the same impression.

"No, that's very kind, but thank you."

The cake looked delicious, but for some reason it seemed sullied, since it was made by her. It couldn't have been poisoned, as she hadn't expected me. The only thing wrong with it was how deeply I despised its maker.

"You're welcome, Simon. Anything else?"

She smiled invitingly while she started to unbutton her dress as if it was the most normal thing to do when a surprise visitor entered her house. I should have been pleased at the sight of a woman starting to take off her clothes in front of me, but I wasn't. The reason wasn't that I'd just gotten over being afraid she would kill me. The main problem was that I didn't really regard her as a human being anymore. Avoiding seeing her naked was suddenly supremely important. I suddenly envisioned tentacles or spider's legs appearing from beneath her clothes.