Chapter 28
Silas- years ago
The apartment always smells worse at night.
During the day, the heat coming through the cracked window and the cigarette smoke from the neighbors upstairs blur it into something almost tolerable.
But at night, when everything settles and the air goes still, every bad smell in the place rises at once.
Old beer. Mold in the walls. Stale grease.
Mildew from the bathroom that never fully dries.
The sour, rotten scent of a life left too long in one room with no one coming to save it.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the television, I pretend not to notice any of it.
The TV is one of the few things in the apartment that still works more often than it doesn’t, though “works” is generous.
The picture ghosts in and out. Half the channels are static.
The volume knob only functions if I hold it at the right angle.
Tonight, I’ve got one of the clearer stations limping across the screen.
Some late-night rerun with canned laughter, bright kitchen sets, and people arguing in clean clothes, all of them looking like they live on a planet I was never meant to visit.
I keep it on low.
Not because I’m trying to be considerate.
Because if he comes home mean, I need to hear him before I see him.
The room behind me is mostly dark except for the weak blue light from the TV.
Our apartment isn’t really big enough to have rooms, not in the way other people mean it.
It’s more like one long, badly stitched-together mistake.
A living room that doubles as my bedroom.
A kitchen corner with a sink stained yellow around the drain.
A hallway so narrow you have to turn sideways to get around open doors.
His room at the very end, where the mattress sits on the floor and the ashtray on the crate beside it is always full.
The clock on the microwave says 11:43 p.m.
Too late for a good version of him.
Not that there are many good versions left.
My knees are pulled up close, chin resting on them, one sock half-slid off my heel.
I haven’t eaten since lunch at school, but there’s nothing in the fridge worth opening it for unless I want mustard, beer, and a jar of pickles floating in gray water.
Hunger has stopped feeling urgent anyway. Most things do after long enough.
The laughter from the sitcom rises again, too bright for the room. I almost don’t hear the first scrape at the door.
Then the knob rattles.
Every muscle in my body locks at once.
The key misses the lock twice before it finds it. Metal scrapes metal. Someone on the show is still laughing when the deadbolt finally gives way, the front door shoving inward hard enough to hit the wall.
He stumbles in like he’s being pushed by something only he can see.
My father is bigger in doorways than he is anywhere else.
Even drunk, even half-falling into the apartment, he fills the frame with too much body, the kind of danger you can smell before it speaks.
Tonight it’s whiskey first, then sweat, then rain.
His jacket is half-zipped wrong. One boot drags for a second before he catches himself.
His hair is wet at the temples, face red whatever fight he’s had with the world before bringing the leftovers home to me.
The door slams behind him.
I don’t move.
That’s the first rule.
Never move first.
His eyes find me immediately in the TV glow. That’s always the second-worst part. The second-worst part is the moment he sees me and remembers I exist. The worst part is whatever comes after.
“There you are,” he says.
The words slur slightly, but not enough. He’s drunk, not dead to language. Not yet.
I keep my face empty.
The sitcom mother on the television is smiling over a roast chicken. Somewhere in another universe, a family is sitting down to dinner under warm light. In this one, my father drops his keys on the counter and misses. They hit the floor, skidding under the table.
He doesn’t bother picking them up.
“School night,” he mutters, one corner of his mouth pulling into something that thinks it’s a smile. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
The question has no right answer. I know that. He knows I know that.
I shrug one shoulder carefully. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Snorting, starting toward the kitchen, his shoulders grazing the wall on the way. Cabinet doors open too hard. One slams shut. Then another. Glass clinks. He finds a bottle somewhere, though God knows from where, and pours what’s left into a stained coffee mug.
My eyes stay on the screen, but every part of me is tracking him.
His steps.
The sound of liquid.
The pause after the first swallow.
Tonight matters immediately.
I can feel it.
There’s something tighter in the air than usual, something stretched thin. I’ve learned over the years that some nights arrive already decided. Nights where all I’m doing is waiting for the version of him that came home to finish taking shape.
“You eat?” he asks suddenly.
The question catches me off guard because it almost sounds normal.
“Yeah,” I lie.
He laughs under his breath, not because he believes me.
Because he doesn’t.
The mug hits the counter harder than it should. Turning then, leaning one hip into the sink, he looks at me in that long, ugly way that makes my skin feel too small.
“You’re getting mouthy,” he says.
I hadn’t said anything.
That doesn’t matter either.
The room gets quieter.
Even the TV feels farther away now, all its bright fake people fading into background noise. My heart starts up hard enough that I can feel it in my throat. I know this part. This is the point where the night decides if it’s going to stay ugly or become unforgettable.
Pushing off the sink, he walks toward me slowly.
Barely a stumble now.
That’s worse.
Because sometimes the drunkest nights are the safest. Sometimes he falls asleep in his boots.
Sometimes he throws up in the bathroom and never makes it back out.
The dangerous nights are the ones where the alcohol sharpens him instead of dulling him.
Where it peels away the last of whatever kept his hands to himself.
He stops over me.
I can smell the whiskey on his breath before he speaks.
“Look at me.”
I do.
Because not looking is one kind of danger, and looking is another. At least this one gives me half a second warning.
The TV flickers blue over his face. He looks older tonight. Meaner too. Tired in the cruel way men get when they think the world owes them a softer life and decide to collect on whoever’s closest when it doesn’t.
“You got your mother’s eyes,” he says.
The sentence lands like a slap.
Not because it’s affectionate. Because it isn’t. In his mouth, nothing about her is clean.
I don’t answer.
His hand comes down faster than I expect, fingers hooking hard into my jaw, forcing my face up higher. Not enough to break anything. Enough to remind me he could.
“I said,” he murmurs, leaning in, “you got your mother’s eyes.”
My own breath goes shallow.
He uses that grip to study me for one long, unbearable second, and in that second, something in me shifts. Not courage. Not yet. Something colder. Something that has been building quietly for years under bruises, broken plates, and nights like this one.
Because I know this look.
I know what kind of night this is now.
For the first time, instead of feeling only fear, I feel the first clean edge of something else.
“And you’re a piece of shit-”
My jaw barely starts the last word before his palm slams across my face, cracking my head sideways so hard I see double. The TV’s busted corner flashes twice. Blood floods my mouth. Staggering, I spit, trying to lunge for the hallway.
He catches the back of my shirt and rips me off my feet, slamming me onto the busted coffee table.
Splinters bite my side. Clawing at the carpet, dragging myself toward the door, his boot crashes between my shoulders and pins me flat.
The weight knocks the air out of me. I choke, sucking in dust and stale beer.
“Don’t you talk to me like that, boy,” he snarls, breath hot with whiskey. The boot grinds harder.
I spit blood onto the shag rug. “Get off me, old man.”
Shifting, I hear the flick of his pocket knife opening, the sound snapping every nerve awake. Panic hits like a punch. Digging my nails into the floor, trying to crawl, he hooks a hand in my belt, yanking me back.
The first cut burns across my side. It isn’t a clean slice.
He drags the knife slow, letting the serrated edge grate over old scabs until they rip open.
I howl, twisting, but the boot forces me down again.
Blood runs hot along my stomach. The second cut crosses the first, deeper, angrier.
Biting down hard on a scream, I taste copper.
He mutters scripture while he cuts me, voice sickly calm.
“Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war…” The drawstring of his pants clicks between his fingers as he toys with it, twisting it around and around like a man working a rosary.
My whole body shaking, I stare at the broken knife glinting in his grip, terrified he’ll go lower, terrified he won’t stop.
Finally dropping the blade onto the coffee table, it clatters, spinning, landing within inches of my bleeding hip, the handle wobbling.
Locking onto it with tunnel vision, that knife is my whole world.
Trying to drag myself toward it, elbows slipping, muscles screaming, he plants his boot on the small of my back and shoves. Pain explodes. I gasp.
“Don’t you move.” His voice carries that nasty edge of piety, like this is God’s work and not just him getting off on control. Grabbing my wrist, yanking it above my head, he pins it to the carpet. My cuts smear blood over the floor.