Sins of the Father

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The road ahead is empty as you accelerate, needle edging ever nearer the sixty line, but still you do nothing to drop your speed, a sardonic grin etched into features once considered distinguished, now reduced to a mask of hate. You think about ending it all, just keeping your foot on the pedal, coaxing yet more velocity from the engine, smashing into something, a tree, a pillar, a house, who fucking cares, as long as your heart stops beating. You think about Anna, how she betrayed you, how she took everything that meant something, everything that mattered, and snatched it away in that lustful moment, another man’s cock thrusting between her legs, encouraging him, eager that his length and girth fill her to bursting, eager for his seed to spill within her, to engulf her, to drown her from within, forcefully, forceful enough to bubble from her nostrils.
You slam the steering wheel with fists balled and close your eyes for two, three, four seconds, no idea what is in front of you, which direction you are travelling, where you are, caring less, knowing only the sensation of freedom, of liberty, hating it, wanting it gone and, when death fails to materialise, you open your eyes again, disappointment souring your mood even further, life clinging on, despite your best intentions.
You apply the brakes steadily, slowing the car, swinging into a lay-by, bringing the vehicle to a complete stand still, eyes awash with tears that refuse to spill, shame burning inside of you, the shame of loss, of failure, the shame infused with a despair so profound you want to reach into your chest and rip your heart clean out.
‘Uuuuiiirrriiigggaaaa,” you wail to nobody, the sound disgusting to your ears, a symptom of the sickness that courses through your veins and, this time, you slam your forehead against the plastic of the steering wheel, hard enough to draw blood, the sensation of your own fluid leaking down your brow a pleasant distraction from the tumult.
The engine continues to idle, the volume seeming to grow inside you, your head an echo chamber now, sound waves bouncing from boned wall to boned wall, no way to escape once ensnared, simply amplifying, accelerating, getting louder, shriller, more insistent, until a million million wasps are crammed within you, the anger at their captivity nought compared to your own fury.
‘Drink won’t solve anything,’ he had said, a familiar face, one who once meant something, but now his words were worthless, and you had spat at him, your sputum so surprising to him that he had reacted by laughing, initially, apparently unable to believe what you had done. Perhaps he had thought you incapable of such wickedness but, as the thick gloop of your mucus dribbled down his nose, his faulty reality was forced into a shift, to align more precisely with the actuality of your existence, for now you are a slave to no-one, a friend to fewer and, as he wiped away the offending matter, now his anger flared, and he came at you with fists raised, but too slow, and you beat him to the ground, this man who called you mate, and you kicked at him and stamped on him, his arms flapping uselessly against your savage limbs, unable to resist the onslaught, the death blow a certainty and, as you stamped a foot down hard, crushing his larynx, ending his life, inside you there was only void.
That was then.
How long ago?
Twenty minutes?
An hour?
Did it matter?
Still the engine roared.
You stamped again.
The car shot forward.

Time runs in cycles, repeating patterns surging again and again, until nothing seems real anymore, no matter the gravity of it all. Like a clock where the hand drags at six, trying to tick forward, trying to progress, the battery so low insufficient power runs to elevate the strip of plastic towards the seven, never mind beyond, so time drips more slowly as you stare through your windscreen, wondering what all of those shapes are streaming past; moving, chatting, skipping. So full of life. So happy. Seemingly oblivious to the crushing weight of time descending towards them, a gamma ray burst of insurmountable cruelty and suddenness, of viciousness and redemptive cleansing.
Beneath you, the car’s engine still idles, but now the sound has lost its potency, has become something altogether more pleasurable, a soothing accompaniment to acts of inevitability that will lead you to your ultimate salvation and, as you note the subtle alterations in sound as you engage and disengage the clutch whilst stationary, you begin to bite your nails, gnawing at them, really, a rabbit attacking a stalk of something green and fibrous, your teeth clacking together as sheer force saws them through the keratin and, before you are even aware, blood forms at the corner of your mouth as you tear at the digits savagely, ripping away cuticles and skin. Then you’re stamping again, as something beyond the windscreen seems familiar, somehow, yet indistinguishable from all else, and you drop the clutch, allow the engine to engage with the gears, the car jumping forward, bidden by your commanding feet, a non-corporeal device, unable to resist your instruction, slave to a master rent from life, a life sure to be cut short by the recklessness of your actions. As the car bursts forward, you notice fresh sounds, above and beyond that of the din of the engine, and something permeates your insanity, brings meaning to the madness you are creating, and you see as something fleshy and brittle and made of bone smacks against the bonnet of your car, but it does not stop you, if anything spurs you on, so you spin the wheels, both steering and rubber, and roar a joyful cry of triumph as something young and fresh and vibrant smashes against the glass before you, a child’s face at first, before becoming something else, hued red and ghastly, flattened by forces of physics but, surprisingly, the glass does not break. Again, wheels are turned, and more carnage occurs: limbs crush, screams bellow, and then you are away, tyres and metalwork soaked in blood , the school receding into the distance and, once more, within the confines of the vehicle, all is calm, all is right.

It takes a while for the delirium to diminish but slowly, as you veer from road to road to road, the pulsing within your head subsides, becomes calming, a massage of the mind that mollifies.
It’s not long before you are smiling, the wail of sirens in nearby streets of no concern.

‘Tez, come in.’
He smiles at you in a practiced way, attempting to hide the horror of your arrival.
‘Been a while,’ he continues, the mundanity coming naturally, seeming almost genuine.
‘Yeah,’ you reply, though without attempting to seem genuine, unashamed of your own distaste.
‘What brings you to these parts?’ he asks and, for all the world, anyone would think he actually cared.
‘I just killed your son.’
He laughs at that, briefly, then starts looking at you oddly.
‘Tez?’
Suddenly, the smile is gone, and he’s staring at you intently. His hands are upon you, rocking at your shoulders,, pushing at you, pulling at you, anything to coax the response from you that he wants.
‘He deserved to die for what you did,’ you say, ignorant to any of his words, ‘So I killed him. I smashed his fucking brains in against the bonnet of my car and now he’s dead.’
Knuckles, hard, punishing, smashing against the side of your head, meant to mean something – anger, perhaps, it is so hard to tell – but all you feel is the elation that you have chosen to introduce into your life, and no amount of man handling from the cuckolder before you will deny it.
‘Police……he’s here……..my son……..killed……’
All manner of words tumble from him into the mouthpiece and, funny thing, you know you should respond, know you should snatch the device from him, protect yourself, but what use hiding now?

They take you.
They are angrier than you expected and, once back at the station, one or two of them elect to punch you, hard, body blows, high impact, low evidence, and you bear the punishment in silence.
Mission accomplished, George Bush Jr. once said.
You know how he felt.

© Ian Stevens (2013)
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