To Keep You

Thirty-One: Malachi

With every breath I took I could feel my father's breath leaving his body. With every crack of my knuckles, I could feel his body break beneath me. And as blood trickled down my chin from my nose, I knew it could not be compared to the pool of blood outlining my father's body. The voice within his lungs had long since fled from him and even his eyes had sealed shut minutes ago. I knew he was on the edge of death, but I could not stop, I didn't want to stop. Even as my own body screamed in agony for me to stop, I didn't.

The imagines of his hands beating me, and my brothers flashed through my mind like neon lights. Then there were the imagines of him strangling Ma when she would 'step out of line'. These imagines were like fireworks, they were loud but could be forgotten within a moments time. They were not like the blood that tainted the white walls. However loud they were they could not wash away the red staining the white. The blood being from Candy, the memory of his hands around her neck was enough to turn me into anything, including a murderer.

Even a monster...

The stench of cat piss and musk had long been overpowered by the metallic scent of blood. I should hate it, distain it as some foreign thing but how I can I hate something I have smelt since the day I was born?

Heaving, my chest rose and fell like a crumbling mountain, and it was only when Pa's lips parted and like a ghost, his finale breath was taken to the afterlife, that my fists fell away from his mangled face. I should feel shame, sadness even but I didn't. All I felt was anger and even that was fleeing from me. Relief was the only emotion that steadily flowed through my body. I wondered if a lion feels this way when it is freed from its cage and set free to roam the earth as it pleases.

Climbing off his now dead body, I collapsed to the ground next to him. My hair was wet with sweat and hung closely to my face, my fists were bloody and raw. But it wasn't the physical pain that brought me to my knees, no, it was the emotional pain that waged war against my soul. There was a beast within me, shredding the walls of my body demanding to be set free. But why set a beast free when death has already stolen what was alive?

"Is he dead?"

A voice as soft as snow spoke into the musky air just as my knees became wet with Pa's spilled blood. Enoch's soft voice echoed around me, yet I could not find the strength to both raise my head to look at him and be surprised that he was in the barn, "Yes."

I wanted to be ashamed of my youngest brother witnessing the outcome of my sins, but I just couldn't feel shame. I was too exhausted, and far to tired to wither under shame.

"Is she dead?" Enoch's voice grew softer as if he knew she meant something to me. It was obvious to the others but to him, I doubted he understood what love even is.

His life has not been the greatest teacher in the subject of love...

Like the rolling tide, my eyes lazily drifted away from Pa's corpse and over to Candy who remain motionless on the ground. If it wasn't for the rise and fall of her chest, I would assume she was no longer upon this earth. A fate she desires, but a fate she will never touch as long as I live.

Lifting my head, I shoved my hair away from my face and stumbled to my feet. As wobbly as a newborn calf, my legs nearly buckled under my full weight and it was only as I fought to stay up-right, that I noticed all seven of my brothers standing only feet away from me.

My eyes to hazy to take in all their expressions, I could only nod to them before stumbling towards Candy. To numb to feel, my body was on autopilot, and it was being driven by the need to focus only on Candy. I did not care what my brothers thought in this moment, I would later come to care, but now all that I cared about was making sure my angel is okay.