28. Ash #3
It doesn’t take long tonight. Glass smashes and mums scream curdles my blood.
We are on the top level of the Club Apartments; the place I’ve called home my entire life.
You’d think one of the other members who live beneath us would come help, but of course they don’t.
They’d be dead the second they entered the apartment.
Dad runs this place.
My fingers press into my eye sockets, rubbing hard as I shake my head. When I stand, I’m trembling.
Dad’s right, I am weak.
Another scream followed by furniture crashing almost causes me to vomit right there on the floor. But I grit my teeth, clenching my fists.
I don’t want to be weak. I don’t want to be scared.
Slowly, I pry my door open and slink up the hall to my parents’ room. He has guns everywhere in this apartment, and I know how to use them. He’s had me practising since the day I could walk.
I’m not going to shoot him; I’m going to make him feel scared.
He deserves to know what it feels like to be weak.
My heart is racing as my fingers yank open his bedside drawer and wrap around the cold metal. I slide the safety off as he’s shown me many times before and grip it with both hands as I make my way to the commotion.
The kitchen is a mess when I walk out, blood and glass and furniture everywhere. Mum is on the floor, bloody and whimpering, slurring her pleas as Dad stands over her.
“Just tell me, Rose… Which one of my men have you been whoring your cunt out to, this time?” he roars, shoulders folding inwards as he heaves. “You’re a fucking disgrace, Rose. A man like me should have never settled for a cunt like you.”
The words make me sad. I’m a ball of nerve-wracking fear as I point the gun at Dad's back, the heavy object straining my arms.
“Leave her alone.”
Even my voice sounds weak, barely audible over Mum's cries.
He turns, a snarl on his harsh features, the tattoos on his face crinkling as his face contorts. He takes one look at the gun shaking in my hands before he throws his head back and lets out a cruel laugh.
“Oh, kid. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he sneers, face twisted into a cruel smirk. “Hand me the gun, Ash.”
My eyes dart to Mum, whose eyes are wide with shock and fear as she gapes at me from where she lies on the floor, and then back to my father, who takes another slow step towards me.
My finger twitches on the trigger; the weight of the gun in my trembling hands feels massive. I feel like I’m outside of my body, watching this strange boy pull a gun on his family.
But it’s me.
“Listen here, you little shit,” Dad barks, his callous amusement turning to vicious rage in seconds. “Give me the fucking gun, right now, or I’ll fuck you up with my bare hands.”
He steps forward again, and my legs automatically move, stepping backward. Cowering in fear of the man who has been my tormentor for as long as I can remember.
But fuck that.
“Step back,” I grit out, my sweaty hands clutching the object tightly. “Just leave us alone, or I swear to God…” My voice sounds confident and sure, and it spurs me on, and I take a step forward.
Not back… forward. Towards the monster.
“Or you’ll what? You’ll shoot me? You don’t have it in you, kid. You’re pathetic, just like your whore mother.”
The last words my father will ever say.
The trigger gives way under the pressure of my finger, as the deafening boom echoes throughout my ears, followed by the shrieks from Mum.
Gun powder and a coppery smell fills the air in an instant as my dad looks down at me, eyes wide with shock.
Raising his hand, trying to cover the blood spurting out of the hole in his throat, everything moves in slow motion.
I stand utterly still, my arms still outstretched, as a trickle of red dribbles down his gaping mouth and the floor is painted in gushing blood. It doesn’t take very long before his large body slumps to the ground, in the pool of his very own blood.
I stand utterly still, my arms still outstretched, as Mum rushes over to him and sobs hysterically over his body, her skin getting covered in his fluids.
I stand utterly still as my mum turns violent eyes on me, her face contorts in a way I’ve never seen, and she screams in a voice I’ve never heard. “You fucking monster! You killed him, Ash, you killed him! What the fuck is wrong with you, you sick monster?!”
I wanted to scream and beg, and cry. I did this for her. I did this for us!
He was the monster… him! Wasn’t he?
The blood hadn’t even been fully cleaned up by the time Mum swallowed all the pills in the medicine cabinet and decided to follow my father to whatever pit in hell he went to. And those words, those fucking words, have haunted me to this very day.
Monster, Monster, Monster.
I finally feel like those words when my angel’s tear-filled eyes fall shut as I point my gun directly at her face, the rest of the room shrieking and falling to the ground, trying to hide under the tables.
Not her, though.
She just stays facing me, readying herself for the inevitable. The world slows, just like it did that time in my kitchen, when I was just a kid.
Every breath, every movement, every sound. Stopping.
By the time she opens her eyes, I’m gone. And so is the rest of my withering humanity.