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Abandoning the tools, I close my hand around the door handle and… it clicks open.
“Hillbilly,” King mutters behind me.
I don’t disagree, but the small-town mentality of leaving your doors unlocked just saved us half a minute.
Moving with the door, I step into the house.
To my right, there’s a coat closet with the door missing, and on the left, there’s a half wall extending a few feet out into the room, separating the worn linoleum of the entryway from the matted gray carpet in the living room.
And in the center of the living room is Arthur. Asleep in a shit-brown recliner, facing an obnoxiously large TV playing an old football game just a few notches too loud.
It’s annoying, but I leave it on.
I take in the details of the room as I walk toward the man, flipping the corner of the curtain closed on my way.
Empty beer bottles. Empty whiskey bottles. Cigarettes piled on glass trays, the old tobacco smell thick and cloying.
It’s all too much like some of the houses I was passed between when I was without a real home.
My eyes pass over the small kitchen in the far corner of the space, with its empty fast-food wrappers on the counter and small dining table covered in junk.
The anger that’s been simmering inside my veins starts to bubble.
I look toward the stairs––the hard wooden stairs, with the dented banister––and I think of Payton. I think of my sweet girl growing up in this house. Being terrorized in this house.
A vision of her medical records flashes into my mind. The X-ray of her arm when she was 14. The accompanying statement by her parents, claiming she fell down the stairs.
Fell.I don’t think so.
I let my eyes close, settling into the darkness, allowing my true self to take over.
And when my eyes open, all I feel is rage.
My steps are measured when I circle around the front of the chair, brushing against Arthur’s extended feet.
Moving next to the recliner, I stop close enough to see the crumbs stuck in his scraggly beard.
He’s not as big as me, but he’s not a small man. A little soft with age and booze, but ten years ago… Ten years ago he would’ve been a formidable figure. No match at all for a teenage girl.
I bend down, inches from his face, and shout his name. “Arthur!”
And when his eyes fly open, I slam my fist into the center of his chest, hard enough to send the chair tipping backward.
Arthur lets out a grunt when the back of the chair hits the ground, his head bouncing against the padded headrest. The hit to his sternum seized his lungs. And he’s struggling to catch his breath when he should be struggling to get away.
He’s not scared enough.
Not yet.
Before he can roll out of his current splayed position, I step across to straddle him, then drop down—sitting heavily on his stomach, with my knees pinning his shoulders to the chair beneath him.
“What––” He finally chokes a word out.
And I slap him. Hard.
King snorts.
Arthur blinks against the sting in his cheek, then starts to struggle.
