3. Adam
Adam
Coming back to my shitty hometown—where nothing good ever happened—was the last place I wanted to be right now. I hadn’t seen my family in nearly a decade, and with good reason.
I’d finally made something of myself. My art wasn’t on gallery walls or changing the world, but I made a decent enough living. Of course, most of my income was subsidized through taking photography gigs, weddings paid tremendously, but it allowed me to do what I loved most, and that was to create.
A creativity that my family tried to beat out of me.
My father wanted me to be a strong man, one that could fulfill our family legacy.
He didn’t like that instead of joining the wrestling team I wanted to paint.
The most vivid memory of my father is when I wouldn’t kill our chicken, Joe, and he hit me so hard my mother almost took me to the ER.
She didn’t, but the fact she even considered it is why the memory stuck out in a slew of bad childhood memories.
It wasn’t even until adulthood that I received all my shots and had an actual physical by a physician. I’d never felt cared for in my life and I wasn’t sure I’d ever experience what love really meant.
My family was deplorable and our greatest legacy was how many times uncle Jim had been to prison. The idea of my father thinking we had a family legacy was a fucking joke.
But here I was, sitting at this coffee shop, waiting for my sister to meet me on neutral ground.
Mom was dying, and she wanted to make amends. I still didn’t know why exactly I agreed to come here. While my father was brutal and physically abusive, my mother was the opposite. She was always withdrawn from me in a way she wasn’t with my siblings.
I remember one night she had too much to drink, not that it was out of the norm, but she grabbed my cheeks and stared me in my eyes and said that she couldn’t love me, that I didn’t actually belong to her.
The decision to run away at sixteen was an easy one. Life on the street was hard, but I enrolled myself in school, graduated, and worked my ass off and I’m doing better than ever.
Yet, I still came when they called.
Last time I saw my sister Jenny, she was only ten. She’s now very clearly an adult, with the same dark hair and brown eyes as mine. She didn’t look unkempt per se, but she wasn’t put together either. Her hair is slightly frizzy and her shirt was nearly threadbare.
“Look at you,” she said, sitting across from me at the table.
Her accent was thick, something I’d slowly rid myself of when I moved to New Orleans.
“I ain’t here to ask you for money or nothing.
Momma’s sick, real sick.” My sister looks around the room anxiously.
“She said seein’ you was her last wish.”
I look at my sister suspiciously, wondering how I could feel so disconnected to her. It makes me feel like a fucking asshole, if I was being honest. While she’s been stuck in this hellhole, not knowing any better, I escaped and I got to see what life outside this shitty little town was like.
“I find it hard to believe she wants to see me,” I tell her honestly. If she had called directly, I don’t know that I would have come. But when Jenny called me crying, begging me to see Mom one last time, I’d given in.
“Hospice nurse said this happens with a lot of patients. Don’t want to go to their grave with regrets, I guess,” Jenny says with a nonchalant shrug and I tilt my head at her.
“Where’s dad?”
Jenny snorts. “Probably plastered while sitting in bed next to her.”
I squeeze my thigh under the table, trying to ease some of my anxiety over the idea of seeing them again.
I’d stayed away for ten years and they never came looking.
But I suppose some closure would be good on my end too.
This could be an official farewell, and then I could completely leave the past behind.
“Please, Adam. She ain’t got much time left,” Jenny says, her eyes devoid of tears.
“Alright, I’ll come. We can go now,” I say, ready to stand up and go.
“She’ll be, uh…sleeping right now. She does that a lot. She seems to get her energy late at night. Hospice nurse said it’s usual. Apparently, when you’re dying you sleep a lot and your body doesn’t keep a…can’t remember it was a weird word.”
My brows furrow. “I could come there and wait,” I suggest.
“Didn’t think you’d want to spend any more time around Dad than you needed to.”
I clear my throat and shift in my seat uncomfortably. I knew it would be awkward seeing my family again, but I didn’t realize just how off center I’d truly be.
“I’ll come tonight. What time?”
“Is midnight too late?” she asks and I arch a brow at her, but instead of arguing, I give her a sharp nod.
“I’ll be there,” I tell her, and it will be the last time I ever step in this place ever again.
The home hasn’t changed, though there’s more shit in the yard than there used to be. Dad couldn’t help himself if something was free, so he’d toss it into the truck and then put it on our lawn for it to rust and slowly decompose.
They haven’t mowed the grass in god knows how long; the shutters are falling off the side of the house. Yet it looks less threatening with my adult eyes. I’d feared this place all my childhood, but I’m a man now and I wouldn’t let this place get to me.
A warm glow flickers inside each of the windows, letting me know that everyone is awake. With a deep breath, I make my way up the dirt gravel drive and step on the worn front step and knock.
It’s my father who answers the door, and I realize that I’m larger than him. The man who’d inflicted me so much pain now had to look up to speak to me. This big evil man I saw in my memories wasn’t so big anymore. Maybe coming here was the closure I finally needed.
Maybe I could finally leave this place behind and try to move forward with my life. I haven’t been able to hold a relationship or a friendship in years and I knew in order for that to happen, I needed to work past this trauma.
“She’s in the bedroom,” he says simply, walking away from me without a second glance, grabbing a beer from the kitchen table and heading to the living room.
I wanted to rage, to remind him of all the hurt he caused, but I also didn’t want to give him anymore power over me. This was the last time I’d ever be here. I wouldn’t visit him on his deathbed. This was truly my final goodbye.
The floorboards protest with a creak with every one of my steps.
It’s an eerie feeling as I make it to their bedroom door.
It was odd that not even a decade away could make me forget the layout of the house.
I used some force to make the door budge, but when I opened it, my mother was lying on her side, facing the wall.
There was no television in here, just an old lamp, the shade browning with age on her nightstand.
“Mom,” I called, waiting for her to acknowledge me. “Fucking hell,” I whispered under my breath. If I came all this way and I was the one to find her dead in bed, I was going to be pissed. My plan was to not leave here more fucked up when I walked in. “Mom?”
“Come here, Adam,” she says in a rasp.
My breathing goes back to a normal pattern.
Thank fuck she’s not dead. I walk around the room, stepping on dirty clothes and old magazines, making my way to a vacant chair beside her.
The room still has the same stale smell I remember, but I push the old memories aside as I take a seat in the chair.
She pulls down the covers to her chin. She’s older, her skin more weathered, her eyes losing whatever brightness they once had, but she doesn’t look like she’s knocking on death’s door.
My confusion must be obvious as she looks at me with sadness?
“I’m sorry,” she says, as her hand cups my cheek and a sharp pinch hits my neck.
I blink at her wildly, my vision tunneling as I try to put the pieces together of what just happened. The woman who was supposed to be on her deathbed looks as spry as ever.
Every muscle in my body feels heavy, my neck lulling to the side as she approaches me.
“It’s my sacrifice too,” is the last thing I hear before I completely black out.
My throat aches, it’s hard to swallow and all I want is a glass of water. What was that nightmare? I blink open my eyes. They feel grainy like sand is under my lids, but as I do, flames and human figures come into frame.
There’s chanting and when I go to move, I can’t. They tied my wrists down. My heart rate is thumping into my chest as I go to tug the restraints, but it doesn’t do me any good. I’m tied to some old picnic table my father must have grabbed from a dumpster.
The chanting increases and a heavy wind picks up, giving me a chill. I realize then that my shirt is off, blackish-red paint is on my chest in some sort of pattern.
“Let me go. This isn’t fucking funny,” I growl out.
Why did I come back here?
None of them pay attention to me and I realize it’s all my family members circling me, chanting like some sort of cult.
Though I know it’s futile, I keep tugging on the ropes. They don’t even spare me a glance as I beg and writhe, the hardwood of the table digging into my back.
I can’t understand what they’re saying, and my body convulses. Despite myself, tears fall out of my eyes as I feel something inside me change.
A low grumble of pleasure is bouncing off the walls of my brain and suddenly everything fades away completely.
I think I’m dead.