❝In which two people call up a helpline in order to find someone just as broken as they are. ❞
"Does...does it bother you that my dad's in prison for murder?"
"Well, judging by the fact that I moved away from America to get away from the memory of a...
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Elliot closed his eyes.
"I swear to God, if you lay a hand on them, I will kill you," dad seethed, voice as strong and as true as the gun aimed at his head. His whole body was shaking with some form of uncontrollable emotion that I couldn't decipher. It was a violent, terrified kind of shaking that held promises of all that his body held back. And, somehow I knew that once the promise was unleashed, it could not be broken. A shaking like that could only hold back the strongest impulse. And the strongest impulses were the most terrifying ones. And, as an impulsive teenager myself, this was something that I knew quite well.
The gunman smirked in response to my dad's threat, a dark line across his face that sent a chill down my spine. There was a sort of hate on his face that hinted at insanity, a lack of self-preservation that spoke through the venomous sneer on his face. It screamed of all the pain and destruction that had broken down to this one moment. And it made me think of all the things I felt right before I punched someone (which was more often than I cared to admit) and all of the motive and emotion that led up to the event. This guy was too far in to back out now, it was in the way his hand shook on the gun. He was dead set on causing destruction and he was going to achieve that, even if it meant him leaving here in a body bag.
"You know, old man, seeing as I'm the one with the gun, I'd say that I'm the one who should be making threats."
My dad stood in front of us, the dark room only illuminated by the flashing images on the television screen. Occasionally, a bright scene would flash up and brighten the room. For a second. Before the darkness returned as a cloak to hide all of our fear. Which was ridiculous, really. Because the fear shouldn't have to have been lit up to be obvious. It was everywhere, suffocating the room like a ginormous hand of injustice. Even the man with the gun. He had to be afraid, didn't he? I mean, I know I would be if I was him. I would be bloody terrified. To know I was about to take a life? That's pretty goddamn scary.
Silence.
Apart from the breathing.
Seven breaths. Me. Mum. Dad. Grace. Noah. Jacob. And the guy with the gun. The gun. I didn't even really want to know how the guy got a hold of it. But, in that moment, I was really hoping for it to disappear as abruptly as it had appeared. Because that thing was loaded. And that meant that those seven breaths were shortly going to become six. Maybe even less.
"You know," the man spoke again just as another flash of white shed light upon a shaky finger moving to the trigger, "I considered just killing you. But then I thought, no, he killed my brother. It's only right that I take someone he loves away too."
Dad remained in his position, standing in front of us like some kind of body shield. But we largely outnumbered him, and we bulged out behind him like a piece of clothing that didn't quite fit. His protection was a lovely gesture, it really was. But, in reality, it wasn't all too difficult for the gun guy to aim his gun at one of us instead. I supposed that it would be possible to run, maybe out the front window. But we wouldn't. We wouldn't leave dad. We weren't that kind of family. But, thinking about it, I don't think there's a 'kind of family'. It doesn't matter how corrupt or broken a family is. They wouldn't leave each other. Or, at least. We wouldn't.
"No one killed your brother, James. The building collapsed on top of him. There was nothing anyone could have done." My dad's voice was firm, rehearsed and collected. Which it was. Because I had heard him repeat it to himself in the mirror more times than I could count.
The gun guy, who I now knew as James, began to wave the gun around manically, body tense and trembling as he let out his words in a scream of fury. "You LIAR! You WANTED HIM DEAD! He was a criminal, so you just left him in that building to DIE!"
Dad had barely even begun shaking his head before the gun went off, a cry of pain following as a body collapsed to the ground.
