Wrestling the Kraken

Dante

Dante

Dante glared out the backseat window, watching his father get out of a taxi and into his hotel. He twirled the plastic ring Leroy had brought him. It was so long ago, but seeing Bridgett had brought everything to the present. In one night, nothing would ever again make sense.

He was happy, about to propose to someone he loved. His father sabotaged the moment before it could even happen, by turning Lily against him. Trying to pay her off hadn't worked, so he handed Dante the check to give to her. Never intending on giving it to her, he pocketed it in the moment, wanting to walk away from that whole conversation. He never did get the chance to set things right. To explain. She was gone.

Seeing Bridgett in the alley...he had to help...but he also had a lot of anger that found the perfect opportunity. Killing him- rolling that memory around in his mind again, feeling it all over- he wasn't sorry. Thinking about it now, though, he wondered whether he had let him off too easily. He was gone, but Dante was still here...remembering...reliving. All this torture is what he had wanted his father to feel, but it just kept getting worse for him. Dante squeezed the ring. He couldn't keep still any longer.

"Stay and keep an eye out. See what he does." He said to Morris.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going for a walk."

Dante got out of the car and started walking down the street. Enough trying to plant bodies and make his father face his sins. It was clear that he couldn't force him to see or feel anything. Maybe he kept doing it, hoping it would work, so that he wouldn't have to try anything worse than that already was. It was more than he could bear, each time suffocating him, closing reality in on him, but he would have to take the next step. He had been hugging the line where he felt the last piece of his soul hiding, hoping that at the end of all this he could have some humanity to go back to. To go further, to end this, he would need to let go and cross over that line.