Wayne-Alan Lamb
Truly The Mouse
“Shut up! Before I shut you up!” said the prick. He just came in and punched me in the mouth. It was like getting hit in the face with a brick. It was the first time that I had ever really mouthed off, but it was all part of the plan. I knew he would hit me, and I knew it would hurt, but I needed it to fuel the anger.
“Fuck you dad!” I screamed back.
I heard him grumble, “Oh you mother fucker,” as he started up the stairs. He came crashing in through the door. Drunk. His intent was to charge me, and hit me again, but that’s not how it went down. He crashed in, and knocked the door off of its hinges, but the moment he caught sight of me, he stopped and staggered backward. His eyes were wide, and his skin instantly turned ghostly white as my ghoul-like knuckles wrapped around the grip on my brand new forty-four Desert Eagle.
My lids sagged a little and blinked slowly without effort or rush, but the anger. . . Oh Fuck! The anger was hard to contain. My face changed from a blank stare into an indifferent smile.
Every plea fed my anger like wine to a mean drunk. It wasn’t hesitation that kept him alive, although he wanted to believe that moral wavering was the reason I stalled. Ha. The Fool! You thought I was hesitating? I was taking the time to appreciate the moment. The sweat glistened on my forehead, and the light shone on the stainless steel, but even brighter was the remorse in his eyes, and brighter yet was my joy at the expense of his weak, trembling fear. He was on his knees before me. Before me!
“The beauty of it all. Wow,” I said to myself as I stood above him.
The light coming in from the window and beaming onto this sacred ground is perfect. My personal battle field where so many battles have been lost and they have happened right here on this holy ground. The sun shines onto the glistening sweat of a warrior.
“You’re hesitating.” He laughed. I think he was trying to make himself believe the words that he had just spoken.
The gun went off, and the bullet shattered his kneecap. It seemed for an instant that I didn’t control the moment. The cold steel controlled me.
Now the moment was perfect. His inner anguish was coupled by physical agony. It was beautiful. He was like a mouse caught in the trap. He squirmed for a bit, but after a while, he accepted the comfort of my presence in his demise. He watched the world around him, and pondered the concept that it would continue without him.
I felt that he was beginning to be comfortable, killing the moment, so I told him to stand. He made his way to his feet, and when he was upright. He was in agony again.
Two bullets pierced his chest. He fell like a sopping blanket, and he lay there again. Truly like the mouse. Death’s final breath whispered, “Why,” as if he didn’t know that the night he caressed me didn’t still haunt my dreams like the reaper himself.
But, now I hold the Desert Eagle, death’s new scythe. I hold it. Dad killed me long ago, and I became the reaper; he just didn’t know it. I should have died in the car with mom and my older brother Greg when dad passed out at the wheel, but no… he saved his worst for me.
“Fuck!” I yelled ingenuously hoping that my burden would die with him, and be replaced by the sweet tingling sensation that I had imagined as I prevailed over him. I just stood there with my scythe shining from the sun that reflected from the window down upon it. I stood there. I just stood, because I didn’t want to move. It felt like moments, yet also it seemed like days. I contemplated the moment, and compared it to the dark colors with the stripe of yellow in Picasso’s “Blue Nude” that hung on my wall. I shot in and out of the daydream that I was living. I enjoyed the sweet nightmare like an exquisite musical. For hours until the sun fell behind the window and sashayed its way behind the mountains, I stood. I think it was sometime around eleven-thirty that I snapped out of my trance and realized that the task at hand was not complete.
I wrapped him in my blankets and then rolled the sheets around him, since they were all tainted by his “love.” I found the bedspread to be a fitting casket. I didn’t like that his face was covered, so I pulled the blankets down from over his head. I grabbed his unopened bottle of aged Cognac, and the keys to his old truck. I gracelessly carried my dad down the stairs, twice banging his head on the staircase rail. I opened the front door and used his bald head to press the screen door handle open. His feet scraped the gravel awkwardly, as I carried him to the truck. I carefully sat him in the cab of the rickety orange pickup, and then buckled him up.
“Ready dad?” I asked, as I climbed in behind the wheel. I looked at him, and he was hunched over. “Don’t slouch!” I screamed as I punched him in the mouth. I sat him upright, so he was propped against the window. He was leaning back in a relaxed fashion.
I fired up the engine, and we began our trip. I popped the Cognac, and asked him if he wanted a drink, but he wasn’t thirsty. “Are you sure,” I asked. “You are looking quite pale!” I laughed as I slapped the cracked vinyl seat. I drank alone.
After a couple hours of driving, we came to Hankerson Bridge. I was contemplating the whole way. I was thinking the plan was almost complete, as I veered off of the road with the intent of plunging us both into the depths of the Snake River. But, at the last second I had a faint thought, “No. The water is for Napoleon Bonaparte.” I couldn’t do it. Every warrior must have his own fitting grave. I swerved the old Ford back onto the road, and took another swig.
“Dad, why didn’t we take this trip before?”
“I don’t know,” he replied.
I took another gulp, and I felt something weird swelling up behind my eyes, but I didn’t cry.
“God damn it!” I took another swig, and by this point the bottle was half empty, and I was tipsy. I drifted into the other lane as I was rounding a corner, and all that I made out were headlights, a crash, and the breaking of glass as I struck the back end of a Honda coming from the other direction.
The only damage to the old truck was the shattered bottle and windshield splattered Cognac. I stepped out a little stunned, mostly due to the alcohol and the sight of the car wrapped sideways against an enormous Ponderosa Pine. I walked up to the demolished import unscathed. As I approached, I saw the lady in the passenger seat, and two kids in the back seat were dead. The father was motionless, but alive. He was bleeding from his eyes. “My family?” he asked me.
“Dead.” I replied.
He exhaled pure anguish.
I know he didn’t feel like there was an upside, but they did go without pain and all at the same time without the grief of loss. The best possible scenario for death is that a family goes together, never having to live a day without your parents, siblings.
I pulled the Desert Eagle from my waistline, and I said, “You can all be in heaven together tonight.”
He coughed and the crimson that spewed from his mouth was darker than the deep scarlet leaking from his eyes. One shot chimed off of the mountains as I stood next him for a moment, and I looked at the family until the ringing in my ears faded. I wasn’t thinking or admiring. I just stood there for a couple minutes. Free. The cold breeze that blew from the direction of the truck slung me back into thought. I put my head down and pushed through the freezing wind back to the Ford. I climbed in, and to my surprise it fired right up. I looked to the stars. And, then I looked at dad. “Where to next, pops?”
“That’s how I got here mom,” choking as salty tears roll into the corner of my mouth, and my eyes shift from the grave to the white picket gate and settle in a blur for a moment on the orange Ford but refocus, and I feel the ping. I feel the bright green florescent grass and the fog settled like a blanket across the headstones as if to protect them from the icy hand of the brisk fall morning.
I lay a rose on Greg’s granite, and I turn back to mom and lay one rose on her stone.
I pull it out one last time. One shot chimes off of the mountains as I lay with my family for a moment, until the ringing in my ears fade.