THE EDGE

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE EDGE

Leon didn’t remember making the decision to go home. His body just moved, one foot in front of the other, carried by instinct alone.

Who was he?

The question chased him the entire walk back. He turned it over and over, examining it from every angle, and every time he came up empty. He had mentally lined up every person he had ever spoken to at school and none of them fit. Nobody knew about his writing. Nobody knew his real name attached to that account. He had been so careful.

Or at least he thought he had.

The fever had dulled to a low throb behind his eyes. He just wanted his bed. He wanted to pull the covers over his head and disappear for approximately one week.

He pushed open the front door.

“Where were you last night?”

Leon’s hand froze on the door handle. His father stepped forward into the thin morning light, still fully dressed, as though he had sat up all night waiting exactly for this moment.

“Father.” Leon’s voice came out wrecked.

“Answer me.” His father took one slow step forward. Leon looked at him. Really looked at him. The rigid jaw. The pressed collar. The eyes that had never once looked at his son without measuring him against some impossible standard and finding him wanting. He thought about the “purification” baths his father had forced on him since he was fourteen.  He thought about kneeling on the floor while this man reached for his belt. About his mother moving through this house like a ghost, careful not to disturb anything.

Something shifted in his chest.

If his father hadn’t demanded impossible perfection, if he hadn’t made “purity” feel like a noose… maybe Leon wouldn’t have been so desperate to feel something real for once.

A sound came out of him. Short and sharp. Almost a laugh.

“What’s the matter, dear Pastor Dad? Ready to punish me again? Or did you already prepare the ice bath? I’d hate for you to have gone to the trouble for nothing.”

Silence.

For a split second, Leon felt a thrill of power. His father’s face didn’t change at first. Then, without warning, the man moved.

The slap caught him hard across the cheek. The force sent him sprawling sideways, shoulder slamming into the wall before he crumpled to the floor. White-hot pain exploded across his face.

“You dare speak to me that way?” His father’s tone remained low, and controlled.. “After everything I’ve done to save your soul from the devil’s grip. You sneak out like a whore in the night, come back smelling of sin, and then mock the very hand that tries to guide you?” 

Leon felt his blood on fire.

He pressed his palm flat against the tile and pushed himself upright. Slowly. His arms were shaking but he didn’t rush it. He got to his knees. Then his feet. He straightened up until he was standing.

His father stared at him. Something flickered in those cold eyes. Surprise, maybe. Or the first edge of uncertainty.

Leon said nothing. He didn’t trust his voice to stay steady and he refused to give the man anything else this morning. He simply held his father’s gaze for one long, quiet moment.

Then he turned and walked up the stairs to his room.

The roar followed him up the stairs.

“I told you — this is for your own good! Desire is a snare of the devil, and you are walking straight into hell!”

Leon stopped on the landing and turned.

“Hell?” He tasted blood on his tongue and spat it deliberately onto the floor. “I’ve been living in hell my whole life. Did I even come from you? Or did God make a mistake and put me in the wrong house?” He laughed, short and humorless. “You sanctimonious, hypocritical—”

“Leon!”

The shriek came from the kitchen doorway.

His mother stood there with both hands twisted into her apron. Leon looked at her and felt something crack open in his chest. Not anger. Something quieter and much sadder than anger.

“Go to your room.” His father ordered.

Leon didn’t argue. There was nothing left to argue with. He turned and climbed the rest of the stairs until he reached the attic. He pushed the door open. Stepped inside. Turned and closed it behind him with a quiet, final click that felt louder than a slam.

Below, muffled through the floor, his father’s voice continued its sermon to no one. His mother’s sobbing rose and fell in the gaps.

Leon stood in the middle of the room for a moment, listening to all of it.

Then his legs just gave.

He made it to the bed before they did. He curled onto his side, pulled his knees up, and pressed his face into the pillow.

He cried until his chest hurt.

He cried until there was nothing left.

He didn’t know how much time had passed when the knock came.

He sat up and dragged his sleeve across his face. “Come in.”

The door opened slowly. His mother slipped inside without fully entering, as though she might need to leave quickly. She was holding a towel bundled around ice. She crossed the room with her eyes fixed somewhere around his collarbone and held it out.

“Your father…” She paused. Swallowed. “He told me to bring this.”

She didn’t wait for a response. She turned and was gone before Leon could think of anything to say to her.

He sat holding the ice pack. Looked at the closed door before looking at the towel in his hands.

A mocking smirk tugged at the corner of my mouth.

 “As if that hateful bastard could ever be this kind…”.m

He pressed the ice against his swollen cheek anyway. The cold bit into the bruise and he held it there, jaw tight, staring at the water stain on the far wall.

He didn’t know who this man was yet. But he would. He was going to pull on every thread until the whole thing unraveled, and when he finally had a name and a face to put together…

He was going to make the despicable son of a bitch pay.