No One's Invincible

stuck

It was quiet in Wally's room now.
Except for the rush of the cars from the road outside and the ticking of the flash themed clock on his wall, there was nothing. Wally was alone and afraid.

Rudolph had left him some hours ago. Wally had woken up not long after because of a nightmare. In it, his mother's face taunted him. She whispered in his ear saying it was his fault, why wasn't he home in time?
When he woke, it was in a cold sweat.

From behind the closed blinds there was only darkness. Wally sighed.

He stood from where he had been curled against the wall and felt the achyness of his limbs. His stomach still felt tight from where he'd been punched and his hair felt slimy from the touch of that monster.

Unsurprisingly, Wally felt completely defeated. The overwhelming urge to cry made his nose sting, but Wally had promised himself that he was going to be strong.

Even so, when Wally picked up his duvet, he wrapped himself into a blanket cocoon and lay on his bed so that the whole of his body was underneath. He was so done. Everything was spiraling -- his dad most of all.

He didn't ask for this.
He didn't ask for a mess of a father.
He didn't ask for his mom to be dead!

He missed his mom. She couldn't be dead. She just couldn't. But that homemade grave in the back yard told another tale. But wait. That night was all fuzzy, maybe he imagined it! Yeah that's right. His father could be telling the truth! She might actually be missing!

Wally shot up with a start and peeked slyly through his blinds. Surprised, Wally saw his father outside. With a heavy feeling in his heart and all hopes crushed, Wally saw the grave was still there. The headstone was still small and crude and the earth still looked recently disturbed. Rudolph was kneeling on the soft earth, letting his trousers get dirty.

Wally had only seen him so vulnerable drunk. He looked very sober. In fact for the whole day he'd been surprisingly lucid. As Wally stared down at his father in the dark yard, he felt a deep sense of dread.

Suddenly, Rudolph stood. He stayed rooted before the grave for a few seconds, clenching his fists, before he descended upon it. He took the stone in his great beefy hands, hardly laboured by its small weight, before he walked away with it. Wally didn't see where he went other than away and so he simply stared at the rectangle of bare earth that was left.

Rudolph returned, strangely with planks of wood. In the low light Wally could just make out a toolbox in his hand.

Now thoroughly confused, Wally looked around the room for his old binoculars that he'd gotten as a birthday present a few years ago. The irony that they had been given to him by Rudolph didn't escape him.

Now Wally looked closer with them at his father.

By now he had laid everything down on the floor and seemed to be making a large cube out of the planks. It took him at least 20 minutes (in which every second was used by Wally to again question his father's flimsy sanity) and the end result was an almost perfect square frame of wood that was then placed on top of Wally's mom's final resting place. It completely hid the grave shadow. It looked like nothing had ever happened there.
Wally's father was a builder, and unfortunately, he was good at what he did.

It still didn't explain what it was going to be used for. Wally's confusion peaked when he spotted Rudolph dragging what looked like a sack over to his construction. By this time, the light of the sun had almost completely faded and the moon was already visible in the heavy black sky.

Wally's father seemed to hesitate for a second, before he opened the sack and poured what seemed to be earth into the wooden frame. Realization was dawning on Wally.

As Rudolph placed seeds into the dirt and took a full watering can and tipped it over them, Wally knew exactly what he was doing.

He was replacing his mother's fucking grave with a flower bed! The fucking nerve!

Wally threw the binoculars across the room in complete anger, seeing red. He watched as they shattered on the wall and fell to the floor with a bang and clatter. With a sudden realization with how much noise he just made, Wally quickly looked out the window in panic.

Rudolph was staring at his window in complete alertness. Wally's heart beat so fast that he felt like he was going to explode.

But then, as soon as he thought he might be caught, his father relaxed, probably already attributing the noise to the rough neighborhood they lived in. There were often noises of things breaking at night. That was the risk in living in such a place.

Rudolph a work seemed to be done and so he walked calmly inside, the only evidence of his time outside being a new flower bed that was hiding something very terrible.

When Wally didn't hear anyone come to his room and after waiting for a while, he let himself breathe. Anxiety coiled in his throat and stomach. Rudolph was never going to be caught.

Wally was the only innocent one who knew where his mom was. The only one who knew that in his garden his mom was decaying. But who could he possibly tell? Who the hell would believe him?

No one knew about Rudolph's alcoholism except Mary West and Wally West, and they had made sure to keep it that way. It was family business. So therefore, if he told anyone that caring, family man, loving husband Rudolph West killed his wife in a drunken rage, who would believe him?

Wally was stuck. There was no way that his father was going to let him out of his sight now, especially since he was supposed to be recovering. Since his mom had be reported as a missing person surely police would have to search the house? But how would he tell any of them? Rudolph would make sure he was on his best behaviour and supervised at all times. There was no way.

Wally was stuck.

Possibilities swirled around Wally's head all night, but when morning came, the only answers that he received was that he was tired and locked in his room with no way out.