Page 17 of Burn For Me

The back of the house was simple. It had a single door that was locked and a couple of windows. A smile crept across my face as I spotted a window that was a little higher up than my six-six frame, but it didn’t matter. It was open a few inches.

“Naughty mistake Jimbo, that will cost you.” I chuckled.

He had some old crates near the small tool shed, so I grabbed one and dropped it under the window. The little bit of extra height was all I needed to push open the window. With a heave, I managed to get myself up and into the space. Looking around, I had dropped into a dining room.

Rising to my feet like a demon from my night terrors, I moved around the small, darkened space and made my way through the kitchen and into the laundry room. After a very quick inspection, there were lots of toys I could play with, but I wanted to see what else this treasure trove of a house would reveal.

I slipped from room to room and dug through drawers, stuffing anything of value into my pockets—money, watches, and anything else small that I could pawn, I took. At the back of his sock drawer proved the most fruitful. There was a single stock stuffed full with a thick roll of cash.

“Fuck,” I whispered, my thumb running across the wad of bills. Smoothing out the contents in the drawer, I closed it and made my way to the garage.

A giddiness washed over me, and I laughed aloud as I lifted the three heavy gasoline cans. I sniffed it to make sure it wasn’t diesel and found it to be exactly what I needed. He also had a large toolbox, but it was full of fishing equipment. I started to close the lid when an idea occurred to me, and I dug around inside, pulling out what I needed.

I was about to step back into the house when a long crowbar hanging from a hook on the wall caught my attention. I slowly walked toward the curved-end piece of metal. Picking it up, I rolled it around in my hand, balancing the weight before I squeezed it tight. Now that brought back memories.

I opened the trunk of my father’s car and dug around in the mess until I found the crowbar I knew he kept in there. Picking it up, I stared at the piece, a snarl curling my lip. Tonight was the night. They would pay for what they did to me, for what they cost me.

There was no fear, no regret inside me as I marched for the front door of the house and yanked open the screen door and closed it softly behind me. As quiet as I had when I lived in this shit hole, I snuck down the short hallway, and peered into the living room. There he was in all his drunken glory, the man who claimed to be my dad. He was as I’d seen him a hundred times before—shirtless, with his standard navy work pants on and a beer in one hand and the remote in the other. He had the football game blaring and didn’t even notice that his death was standing in the doorway.

I marched across the dirty old carpet, and he didn’t look up until he could see my reflection in the television screen. Turning his head to look up at me, he frowned.

“What the fuck do you want,” he spat out as he started to stand.

Those were the only words that left his mouth as I brought the crowbar around with a devastating whack to the chest. He fell back into his chair with a thud, dropping the can of beer on the floor as he clutched at his chest. I twirled the bar around in my hand and changed position to stare into his eyes. I wanted to see him die, experience his soul being ripped from his body. Every fiber of my being craved to see the man in excruciating pain.

“How did you like that…dad?”

I brought the curved end of the metal around again like I was playing T-ball. The loud crack his jaw made and the way it shifted left no doubt that I’d broken it and almost ripped it off his face. The fear and pain in the muffled scream only fueled the darkness that had been cultivated in my soul like a little sapling that was now growing into a tree. A tree that could stand on its own with bark thicker than any other.

As the crowbar found its mark, again and again, blood flew across the room and pooled on the floor like a red oil slick. Even as my dad’s body went limp, I kept swinging even though I knew he was no longer breathing. But I wanted this feeling to continue for as long as I could milk it. Each blow represented every time his fist had touched me, hurt me and ruined me.

I heard a muffled scream and looked down the hall toward my mother. She stood there like a deer with wide and terrified eyes. The shock seemed to have rendered her motionless, but as my eyes found hers, she screamed and ran into the bedroom. No door was stopping me tonight.

The sound of gravel moving as a vehicle pulled up to the garage outside had me shaking off the old memory and darting into Jim’s house and flicking off the light. Taking the crowbar with me, I darted into the house and looked around as I made my way to the front hall. Comfortable that everything was as clean as when I first arrived, I opened the front hall closet and closed the door behind me.

It was a perfectly deep space with areas off to either side that Jim wasn’t using. Quietly, I pushed my way through the jackets to the far corner and sat my crowbar down. It was going to be difficult to build what I wanted inside the dark, small space, but I didn’t need to see to complete my creation. So many nights hiding in small dark spaces had given me the skills needed to see by touch.

Slowly, I pulled the heavy gauge fishing line from my pocket.

The front door opened and closed, and I could hear the keys drop in a glass-like dish before Jim pulled open the door to the closet I was in. My body tingled with his nearness and the anticipation of my kill. His hand reached in, grabbed a hanger, and put it back with a jacket hanging on it.

The front door opened again, and a woman’s voice yelled at Jim. “What the fuck? You leave me to carry all the shit in from the truck by myself and then can’t even hold the door open?”

“I brought in the case of beer. What more do you want from me,” Jim yelled back.

“You could’ve come back and helped me. I’m loaded down like a pack mule.”

“You always look like a mule. What’s the difference?” Jim laughed, an arrogant sound I’d heard so many times that I could picture his face. “Besides, you could handle it, and if I held open the door, it would just let in a shit ton of bugs. Shit, you left the window open from your fucking smoke earlier.”

“I told you I went into the garage,” the woman argued as the cupboards were opened and then banged closed.

“Bullshit, I could smell the shit as soon as I came in the house, and I never leave a window open.”

“Ah yes, how could I forget how fucking perfect you are? You’re such a goddam prince charming that you ended up getting fired for misconduct and roughing up a patient. Now we are living off my income only.”

So, Jim had been fired for what he’d done, but it didn’t sound like this woman, whoever she was, knew the whole truth of it.

“Don’t fucking give me side-eye, woman. I’ll smack that shit off your face.” My nose flared, and every muscle flexed as Jim yelled. The memory of that tone used on me stirring all my inner demons.