TWENTY-FOURSarah tripped over the threshold and fell into the living room. Her glasses were back in the bus, and the heavy crucifix slapped against the side of her face. Though her vision blurred, the mother and daughter could be clearly viewed in their embrace across the room. It was like something from the Francis Bacon paintings her children had studied at school, the ones that upset her so much she’d written to the principal requesting the artist be removed from the curriculum. What she saw now was a grotesque knit-work of meats, impassioned and ungodly.It made her sick.As Sarah crawled across the musty carpet, Michael entered behind her, hands still on his head. Like Jed, the first thing he noticed was the smell. As a child, he’d talked his mother into buying him two pet mice for his birthday. This room smelled like the cage his pets called home—musty newspapers and urine and captivity and blood. Because unknown to his poor mother, one of the mice was cannibal, and it ate th

TWENTY-TWOSarah nuzzled Michael’s neck.He smells like Bill. Perhaps the two men even shared the same taste in cologne. Was it Old Spice, she wondered, or maybe Imperial Leather?Something with a ship on the bottle, sails unfurled and billowing in a breeze. It didn’t matter either way in the end; this wasn’t an attractive evocation. If anything, the familiarity startled her—and then it dawned why. These matching colognes were artificialities masking the natural, a musk to hide almost dead things, to hide fear.Bill.Thirty-nine years of marriage. While the majority of that time had been well spent, the skeleton of their relationship weathered dislocations more than once. In 1960, Bill, for some reason, thought it was okay to indulge in his newfound penchant for younger women. Caught in the act, he said that regardless of the error, his heart was hers forever, but owning it came with a caveat: he demanded she acquiesce and accept his flaws. Only human. Humans made mistakes. Bill com

TWENTYJed heard everything happening downstairs from the bathroom. Cringing, he stepped into his jeans. They slipped over his jagged hipbones with ease. He didn’t bother with underwear or a shirt; they were in a wet, red pile in the corner. Water still ran from the showerhead. A single scarlet thread dribbled down the side of the tub.Fingers formed a net in front of his face, a lattice between him and the mirror. His heartbeat raced as though he’d gotten “wet”, but he was sure the drug was no longer in his system.Pain and bleeding cuts and images of people flying apart in slow motion. His sister running at him with open arms.He recalled how Liz came to him earlier that morning to say goodbye, as if she’d known these were her last hours. He’d seen a similar frightened and confused look on her face when they had gotten high together that one time in the shed, the day he’d lost control. He’d slammed her in the face with the heel of his foot. She didn’t bleed until after she hit th

EIGHTEEN:Jed Bleeds“Dad!”Wes swung towards the staircase and the gun swung with him.***“Dad!”Wes saw his eight-year-old son standing in the shadows of the hall, a line of paper dolls holding hands in a downward smile strung across the archway above. It seemed impossible that such a huge yell could issue from someone so tiny. Wes clutched the carving knife, watched Jed crouching low.Anger danced with disgrace. These bloody kids had him wrapped around their little fingers. That wouldn’t stand. A lesson had to be taught, and so a lesson they would receive—just as Wes’s own father had taught him. One day his children would understand. Character was carved.It paid to bleed out the bad if that was what it took.A father had a right to discipline his children.Liz sprawled on the ground at his feet. Shirt ripped open at the collar, one of the denim suspenders of her overalls unclipped.Jed began to cry.***“Stop crying,” Wes told his son, huddled at the top of the stairs

SIXTEENWes watched his attacker raise a bloodied fist. It lingered. Descended, bringing the blade down with it, razoring the air, whistling as it went. Blood like red stars falling and exploding against his face. Wes didn’t feel the square-ended knife slip inside his cheek, nor did he feel it snap against his gums. Almost casually, as though there was no such thing as agony, he reached past the splayed books for the shotgun. Fingers latched onto the barrel and wrapped around the trigger. He heaved it up, but the bastard on his stomach caught the blur of movement and halted his movement with a forearm block.An explosion of light and sound; a hole opened in the ceiling. A huge cloud of plaster dust wafted over them.The helix in-curve rim of Jack’s external ear disappeared, the wound cauterized by the heat of the blast. His hand shot to the side of his face to touch the part of him that remained, and he shrieked.Wes dropped the now useless, empty gun. Punches were all he had left.