The Boy and the Beast

26| half-pass

Keep an eye out for your dad," my mom says. I stop in my tracks to listen if she has anything else to add. "I haven't heard of him the entire afternoon and I'm starting to worry." Her gaze meets mine in slight panic, but she softens her worry none the less, trying to keep my environment as calm as she possibly could.

Just like the therapist asked.

I see the therapist lingering in the corner of the room, pulling strings to control my mother. She does exactly what the therapist maneuvers.

"And dinner is almost ready, so don't be too long," Charlie tells behind me. Robotically.

I follow the pooch to the door. She jumps up and down frantically, whining and screaming at me as if I'm stepping on her foot.

The farm is just dead. There's no plant life, no animal life, no life. The trees are deceased and decaying, the earth is black. Even the sky represents funeral weather and it's scaring me.

Peyton's nails scratch over the porch tiles loudly, heading straight down the path. She doesn't even stop at her usual pee spot, she goes straight to the fields. The dog has been acting peculiar the entire afternoon, and it's starting to freak me out.

I follow her none the less, afraid she might get lost or turn herself into a barbed wire kebab. She leads me down the main driveway all the way to the valley of the farm, hustling between twigs and fruit dying on the earth.

Peyton doesn't stop scrambling until we reach a peculiar feature in one of the aisles between the trees, somewhere far off the radar. A man is lying on the ground, his hand clutched over his chest, balling the material of his shirt. His eyes are shut and his body completely limp.

I noticed some crusted blood on his forehead as well, even though he was lying on his back. His milky skin is branded painfully crimson, shadows of pale flesh kept beneath his clothing.

Peyton jumps onto the man, licking the hat straight off his head.

"Dad?" I gasp, fastening my pace into a jog.

My heart's beating in my ears, every worst fear coming true.

"Dad?" I ask again, dropping to my knees next to his limp body. He's unconscious, but his face is pale and his lips are smeared in pale glaucous. I touch his neck, but I feel nothing.

There's no rhythmic pulse. Not even the slightest twitch of his artery. I touch his skin to feel for heat, but my fingertips are met with those of a freezer.

A piece of meat.

He's dead.

"Hey, Ally," my mother shakes my shoulder in attempt to bring attention back to me.

A waiting room couch isn't really that comfortable, especially not when you spent an entire night trying to sleep on it. I stretch from my fetal position, propping my legs up on the arm rest.