5. Chapter 5
The walk home always smelled the same; dirt kicked up from the curb, a faint sweetness of cut grass, and the bitter, oily scent of the automotive shop down the street. It was a normal Tuesday. My knees were scraped from trying and failing to jump the bike rack at school, and I was starving.
Our house was always quiet in the afternoon. Dad should have been in the garage, tinkering with that busted-up Mustang he swore he’d finish before I turned sixteen so that I could learn to drive on it, yet there was no metallic ringing of tools on this day.
The front door was unlocked, which should have been the first sign that something was wrong.
Dad always locked the door. I drop my cheap nylon backpack, with a stain from an exploded soda can, onto the coat rack and shuffle into the kitchen.
All I could think about on the bus ride home was how badly I wanted a slice of the leftover cheesecake in the fridge.
My hand freezes on the fridge door handle as the low, urgent hiss of voices I don't recognize floats in from the dining room .
I press my back against the wall, trying to disappear into the peeling wallpaper.
I was supposed to be eleven, and yet in this moment I feel so small and shrunken in on myself, like some pathetic little kid.
Dad’s voice was strained tight, stripped of its usual booming confidence.
"Look, just–just give me until Friday. Please .
I can get the rest, I promise. The car's almost sold, I just need—"
A new voice, one that is deep and rough, cuts him off. "No more, Mr. Bakker. We told you last week. The clocks run out."
The clock . I knew about the clock. I knew about the late-night calls Dad took in the garage, the way he flinched whenever the doorbell rang.
I knew he liked the ponies and the cards, and I knew the difference between owing the bank and owing the kind of people who came to your house at 3 PM on a Tuesday wearing black leather gloves and looking like moving brick walls.
I creep forward, sliding along the wall, until my body is pressed against the edge of the archway.
The air coming from the dining room feels cold and metallic, stinking of fear.
Dad’s standing by the mahogany table, hands held out in a gesture of desperate pleading.
He looks pale and slick with sweat. He doesn't notice me hiding here.
Opposite him stands two angry looking men.
One was huge, blocking the window light.
The other, younger and wearing a black tie, held a thick envelope in one hand.
He was counting the money inside it with a look of disbelief .
"It was just bad luck, yeah? I only need one more spin," Dad whispered, "then I'll make it right."
The man in the tie sighed, a bored, weary sound.
"Your lucks run out, Barry. You don't get 'one more spin' when you owe the boss five figures and think that 15k will be enough to keep him from collecting what he’s owed.
This isn't a fuckin’ game," he snarls, tossing the envelope onto the table.
It slides across the polished wood and stops near Dad's hand.
Dad doesn’t even look at the envelope. His eyes are blown so wide and frantic, it makes a cold fear prickle up my spine. "I don't have it," he chokes out. "I spent it trying to—"
The bigger man steps forward, moving with a heavy, efficient silence that's terrifying. I see the glint of metal in his hand, something shiny and black, held loosely at his side.
“Jimmy,” the walking brick wall snarls in warning to his partner, or maybe it’s a plea to let him teach dad a lesson.
Dad’s eyes drop down to the gun and his face crumples the higher it lifts.
The desperate pleading was gone, replaced by a terrible, empty resignation.
He blows out a slow shaky breath as he stares at the small black hole that’s being aimed steadily at his face.
My chest constricts. I’m torn between wanting to scream, to run in there and shield my dad, or to drop to the floor and hide under the kitchen table.
Only, I can’t do anything because my body is consumed by a paralytic fear, my scratched knees are locked in place, and I’m unable to make a sound.
The tie-man—I guess his name’s Jimmy—nods at the bigger man, one sharp and final movement.
The sound that followed wasn't loud, not like in the movies.
It was a sharp, muffled, wet crack, like a rotten piece of wood snapping.
Dad’s head snapped back and a soundless scream clawed its way up my throat while thick hot tears streamed down my cheeks.
Dad didn't fall right away. For one suspended, horrifying moment, he just stood there, a terrible red flower blooming instantly across his forehead, his eyes wide and shocked.
The world slowed down as he dropped, hitting the mahogany table with a sickening thud before sliding onto the cheap nylon rug, which quickly pooled with his blood.
The big man lowered the gun, his face completely neutral to the worst moment of my life.
Tie-man-Jimmy glanced at the splatter of blood and brain matter on the wall where Dad once stood, sighed again, and wiped a speck of something from his cuff.
"C’mon. Let's go," he mutters, picking up the envelope off the table and slotting it into a hidden pocket inside his jacket.
They walk through the archway into the hallway, never slowing down, never looking back to where I was standing just shy of the kitchen.
Just two men in suits leaving an ordinary house on a quiet street.
Exiting through the front door, closing it softly behind them like nothing had happened.
I don’t know how long I stood there, surrounded by the ordinary sounds of traffic and birds chirping and dogs barking in the afternoon, staring through the archway where my dead father was now lying. The hot, coppery smell of blood was the only thing I could taste.
My body finally snaps out of it, fueled by a blind, desperate need to reverse time.
I stumble backward, away from the archway, choking on ragged, useless breaths.
My head trembles on my shoulders, everything is starting to blur at the edges.
I try to access the memory of what’s just happened but it’s swallowed by a blackened haze, like it’s covered in big fat redactions.
No, no no no no no . I have to get to him. He might still be breathing. There might still be time.
"Dad?"
I run forward in two large leaps, propelled by a desperate momentum, quickly hitting the threshold of the dining room.
My world tilts on its axis as my worn sneaker slides on the slick reddened liquid at my feet and I go down hard.
The impact of my knees and chest landing against the crappy rug covering our hardwood floors steals the rest of the air from my lungs in a sharp oof .
My hands fly out to catch myself, only they land directly into the thick, shocking warmth that is pooling around Dad’s shoulders, stemming from the gapping hole in the back of his head.
My fingers curl into the awful, sticky substance as I try and fail to lift myself. It’s everywhere. On my arms, my chest, splattered on my face. I can taste it when I breathe.
My stomach flips as a new wave of nausea washes over me and my brain fails to process the awful, visceral reality of what I’m experiencing .
I choke, a desperate, gargling sound that accelerates instantly into raw, uncontrollable hyperventilation. Darkness swarms my vision like a tidal wave.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
My chest seizes up, tight and suffocating. I’m only registering flashes of what’s going on around me.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
The darkness has taken over my hearing, reducing the world to nothing more than an aching hum and a piercing ringing in my ears.
I kick my legs and crawl backward, frantically dragging smears of the dark liquid across the clean hallway floor.
I’m backed against the wall, trapped, staring at my father’s blood covering my hands.
Get it off me. Get it off. Get it off. I frantically rub my hands on my school pants, smearing the blood further, making the stain bigger and more impossible to ignore.
Every gasp comes out in a hiccup, every inhale is a desperate rattle in my lungs. I'm trapped. Alone. Covered in the proof that everything in my life is ruined. He’s dead. My dad’s dead . What do I do? What the hell do I do?
Fear finally overpowers the paralysis and I know what I have to do, I have to move.
If those men came back, or if they knew I was here, they’d finish the job.
Men like that don’t willingly leave a witness.
I force my eyes open and push myself up, scrambling to my feet, using the wall for support.
My legs are shaky and weak, coated in bloody residue.
I didn't dare look back at the dining room.
I didn't look at the outline of the fallen figure.
I just looked at the front door, towards my freedom.
I stumble through the hallway, my heart drumming a frantic, painful rhythm beneath my ribs.
My fingers fumble over the coat rack, ignoring the sickening scrape of my fingers as they drag across my shirt and grab my discarded backpack, ripping it off the hook.
I should pack clothes, but all I can think about is gaining distance.
I take dad’s black denim jacket off the rack to cover up the blood stains littering my body. It feels like it’s made of lead and is several sizes too big but it also feels like the safety of being wrapped up in one of dad’s world famous hugs.
My shoulder pushes the front door open, before stepping into the late afternoon sunlight.
The air outside is cooling down, smelling of cut grass and dirt.
Out here was the exact same world, except behind me everything was broken.
My legs carried me forward, and I shoved my bloody hands into my pockets, feeling the damp, sticky warmth press against the lining.
Every second that passed I expected a black car to screech around the corner. Every shadow was one of those men coming back to erase me, like they'd erased my dad. I vowed in this moment that I would never tell a soul what I saw.
I kept walking. Past Mrs. Miller’s rose bushes, past the empty swingset at the corner park, past the mechanic where the smell of oil and sweetness was suddenly repulsive.
I walked until my scraped knees were burning and my breathing was finally evening out into sharp, controlled intakes.
I didn't stop until I reached the highway overpass, where the noise of the traffic was a welcome, deafening shield.
My body finally gives out as I collapse beneath the bridge, pulling my backpack close, my body humming with the strange, cold energy of survival. My father was dead. The debt was paid. And I was eleven, alone and terrified.
I rubbed my hands against my legs in my pockets, trying to scrub the feeling of the blood away, knowing the stain of this day was permanent.