You think you know your family. What they look like, how they speak, how it feels when they pat you on the back and say ‘welcome home’. None of us truly know any other person; not completely, often not in the ways that matter. I thought I knew my family, but I didn’t. I was a fool with wool over my eyes. I’d been living in a fantasy which was seconds away from crumbling down around me at every turn throughout my falsehood of a childhood. This is the story of how I learned what my family really was. What we really are. Maybe it can help you, too, or maybe I’m just looking to vent to the only corner of the internet who’ll really understand. Believe it or not, I don’t really care, I just need you to read. I need this after the weekend I just had.
It was this past Saturday that it started. The air was cold as I walked up the drive leading to my childhood home. I hadn’t visited in years; work in the city had kept me too busy. We lived out in the country, so I didn’t often get to come out and see my family. Mum always said that I was too absorbed in my work for my own good, and she was right. I finally got the chance to get away for the weekend, though, and got on the train as quickly as Mum could shout it at me on the phone. That afternoon, there I was, listening to the crunch and crackle of the gravel as I walked up the driveway with my pack of clothes slowly shifting at my back. I took in the sight for a moment and walked up to the front door to knock.
Seconds after I knocked, the door swung open with enough force to blow my hair back. Mum was there, holding the door open and looking at me with a wide smile. I felt a swell of emotion in my chest and brought her in for a hug. We stood in the doorway for a few moments, just holding one another, but voices from inside drew my attention further into the house, to where I saw my brother, Joshua, sticking his head out from behind a wall to see what was going on. He was younger than me, all bones and no meat, and he looked near-exactly the same as when I’d last seen him in person a number of years ago. He had longer hair, but it was the same boyish face under there, and I gave him a smile that he replied to with a middle-finger. As you can tell, we loved each other greatly.
I was brought into the house then. Stepping into the hallway felt like a dream; I suddenly felt ten years younger, like I was coming home from a long day at school rather than returning after years. It felt like I was waking up from a lengthy and restful nap. Making my way through the home was stranger than even that, as in each room I entered, I felt like I was simultaneously at home again, and also a stranger, an alien in my own life. Everything was precisely as it had been the last I saw of it, but it was so undeniably foreign to me now that I felt myself torn in two, part of me feeling joy at revisiting the memories of my childhood, and the other part of myself feeling a deep ache in my chest at those same memories. I was still so far away from this house, still trying to catch up to my own sense of nostalgia.
Next, I was brought into the living room where everybody currently at home was gathered for a few drinks. All of us kids were adults now, and Dad was always one to sort things out over a good drink, so I wasn’t surprised that everyone had already cracked open a few, even if it was still early afternoon. The room lit up when I entered, and it gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling in my chest to see it. I sat down and looked everyone over to familiarise myself with how they looked. My other brother, Daniel, also younger than me, was still the lanky runner he’d been in high school. My only sister, Rachel, was the only one to take after Mum, both in looks and in attitude, as she was chatting away with everyone on the couch as she waved at me across the room. I paused for a moment, and realised that my father wasn’t in the room. In fact, he was nowhere to be seen at all, even as I peered down the hall toward the bedrooms. We’d never been especially close, but I had been looking forward to seeing him after all this time away. He worked a lot when I was young, always travelling to different places, and so I was never really connected to him the way I was to my mum. It was a shame he didn’t come to see me that night, but I could live with that. I had before, and I probably would for the rest of my life. I tried a smile for my siblings, which was returned with much more enthusiasm than I truly felt. I took a deep breath in and stepped over to an unoccupied seat, feeling a sinking in my stomach, but ignored it and began to catch up with my siblings.
We spoke for hours. As it turned out, my father was sick in bed, and couldn’t come out to see everyone. He’d caught some illness that Mum couldn’t explain, but it was very contagious. The doctor she got to look at him had contracted it, too, and was bedridden also, so there wasn’t a chance she was letting any of us see him. She barely went in there, and every time she did, it apparently was with a nurse that she’d hired. I felt bad for my dad, but put my energy toward keeping up with the conversation taking place in front of me.
I wasn’t much of a drinker, but I had a few of my dad’s cheap beers, and was tipsy after a long while of sipping on it between long-winded explanations of what was going on with my work. We made dinner an hour or two after I arrived, everyone working together to make one of Mum’s stir fry dishes. Dinner was marvellous, and as the sun set and we became tired from our collective travels and efforts with dinner and the long stretch of conversation, it was time for some of us, especially those of us who weren’t so accustomed to alcohol, to sleep. I was among them, as I was the oldest yet the least used to drinking, and even my youngest sibling, Rachel, had more of a tolerance for it than I had at just nineteen years old. I was twenty-six, Daniel was twenty-four, and Joshua was twenty-one. I got some teasing from my siblings about this, but I brushed it off easily enough. Soon, everyone was going off to their separate rooms to sleep, and I was about to join them in rest, but a hand fell on my shoulder as I was about to enter the room I’d be sleeping in.
I turned to see my father, gently holding me in place and giving me a deadly serious look. I immediately took note of how he could barely stand by himself. It seemed to me that keeping me there was only half the reason he was grasping my shoulder, as he almost seemed to sway slightly in place as I waited for an explanation. In the silent moment that followed, I examined his face closely now. He was pale, far paler than I ever remembered him being. He was almost half his usual height with how far down he had to bend, seemingly for comfort. He was looking up at me, which had never happened before, and I questioned in that split-second of quiet if I was truly looking at the man who’d done half the job of raising me, or if I was looking at another person entirely, weak and feeble and old. That was really the thing that stood out to me the most, how old he looked. He’d never truly acted his age, always having get togethers and drinking sessions as if his middle-aged body could handle the same amount of alcohol as his twenty year old self could. He looked at me through sunken eyes and grimaced, an expression which forced me to do the same.
“Wait up,” he said, the first thing he’d said directly to me all night. His voice was hoarse, seemingly from disuse from the sound of it.
I didn’t say anything back. I found myself unable to say anything with how hard my heart was beating, so hard I thought it might leap up out of my throat and escape my body. He was supposed to be sick, bedridden, but here he was, touching and interacting with me as if he weren’t. Did this mean it was safe to see him? I had no clue, but I simply nodded and turned around to walk back over to the couches I’d spent the whole night sitting in, talking to everyone else. I sat down while wondering what this could be about. We hadn’t had a real conversation in years. Mum and I spoke often, every week or so, but the lengthiest conversation I’d ever had with my dad about what was going on in my life was when I was seven and joined the soccer team he’d pushed me to join and he just gave me a clap on the back and taken another swig of his drink. I had no way of knowing what he wanted to talk about; I was shocked that he wanted to talk at all! I sat down and waited for Dad to talk first, knowing at the least that he had something he wanted to say, and clearly it was important enough to get out of bed to say it to me, despite being supposedly ill.
He hobbled over to the couch and agonisingly plopped down into it. It seemed as though every little movement pained him. He sat on the couch for a moment before speaking, taking some time to simply breathe hard as he rested after the herculean effort of walking to the living room. I studied him during these few seconds, noticing that he looked even more different from my memory of him than I’d clocked from my previous close-up look at him mere moments ago. The hair on his head had almost entirely vanished, a few wisps at his temples the only remaining vestige of his youthful mane. He was nursing a drink in his hand, something other than his usual beer, which meant it was probably medicine. When he winced, the teeth that peeked through his lips were yellowed and rotted, as if he hadn’t brushed them in decades. That was strange, as he’d been the picture of health for his age when I’d last seen him but a few years ago. How could he deteriorate so fast? What had happened to him? At last, he seemed to gather the strength to speak.
“Hey,” he said simply.
“Hey. Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yes. No. Depends on the weather,” he joked. He was never too concerned about it, but being in this state ought to have made him a little bit more aware of his health, right? Apparently not. When he laughed, it sounded like a balloon being deflated as he hissed out a prolonged, pained giggle at his own unfunny joke.
“Be serious. Mum said you’re sick,” I said.
“Yeah, she would’a. I’m not picture perfect, but I never have been, so it’s nothing for her to worry about,” he said in a wheezing rasp that had me wincing in second-hand pain.
“She also said you got someone else sick with the same thing,” I admitted. “Must be a little bit worrisome.”
Dad looked at me with a grave expression on his face, which was paler than moonlight. He shifted in his seat a bit, and a loud pop came from his side of the room, accompanied by a strangled grunt of pain from him. I moved to stand, but he held a hand out to me and just trembled in place for a while as he came down from the pain. I saw the savage look in his eyes as they filled with hurt and pain that I couldn’t even begin to relate to. I don’t think I’d ever seen someone in quite as much agony as I was seeing my father in at that moment, and I don’t think I’ll ever see anything like it again, knowing what was to come.
“What’s wrong with you? No jokes, please,” I asked.
“Might as well. If it’ll be any of ya, it’ll be you,” he said, waving a lazy finger at me.
“What do you mean?” I asked again.
“Well, this’ll take some explaining,” Dad said. He lifted an arm up and out towards me. “Help me up.”
I stood, took a few steps, and I was upon him in no time. I grasped his hand in mine and pulled upwards, lifting him easily. He was thin as a rake under those baggy clothes, light as a feather; so thin I thought I’d snap his wrist if I pulled any harder. Jerkily, he got to his feet and groaned as pain seemingly flared up once again. Once he was settled on his feet, Dad began to walk, motioning for me to join him. We walked down the hall silently, not a word passing between us. We reached the back door soon enough, and we stepped out onto the patio where the clear, chill night air awaited us. Dad sat in a chair that had a lot of give, a chair that I didn’t remember. They must’ve gotten it for his comfort after he’d fallen ill. I sat opposite him, in a chair that had a small cup holder on the arm, still sporting a flat cola. I gave him a look that begged to explain, and he did.
“D’you remember how I used to travel?” he asked me.
“For work, yeah?” I asked in return, not seeing where he was going.
“Yeah, work, well you’re half right. It was for something, but it wasn’t work,” Dad said with another scowl.
“You lied?” I asked him. So it was going to be one of those talks, the kind where you sit down for a quick chat with your dad and have your entire childhood recontextualised by a single off-hand remark. Joyous joy.
“I did. Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he snapped, waving a hand at me. “Your mum knew what I was doing every day I wasn’t with her, and I didn’t enjoy it, but it worked.”
“What worked?”
“Right, right,” he said with a hazy quality about him. It seemed he was losing lucidity. “Well, boy, I guess you could say that my dad was unlucky. Ran into some big opportunities, but also big risks, and took ‘em all in stride. Even curses and consequences he took onto himself without a care in the world for how it’d impact him in the future; and curses he took. He’d run afoul of quite a bit of people in his youth, and one of them fancied herself a witch.”
“Wait, wait, wait … you’ve got to be kidding,” I said, laughing at the ridiculousness of where I thought he was going with this.
“Shut up and listen, boy. No jokes,” he said, parroting my own plea for serious consideration back at me. I looked at him and barked out a laugh again, but didn’t move to leave or talk against him any further.
“This witch, as she liked to call herself — my dad screwed her over, real bad. She lost her job because of him, though I’ll never know how. She thought she was owed, she wanted something from him, but he never gave her a single cent of reparations. She was left to get bitter and angry, and then she appeared one day, years later, and saw my dad with me, and said—” Dad continued, but he cut himself off.
My father lurched violently, spilling out from his chair and onto the cold pavement below him. I stood to catch him, but I was too late, as he fell on his face and sprawled on the tiled patio with a painful looking scrape of his face along the ground. I moved to help him up, but was kept back by a swipe from his hand, which caught me on the forearm and caused three lines of searing pain to erupt on my skin. I watched as his nails scratched across my forearm and sliced deep into the flesh, a gush of ruby red blood oozing out of the gouges in my skin and muscles. I pulled my arm back with a cry of pain, my voice breaking as I screamed. I stumbled back and tripped over myself, falling on my ass as my father laid helpless on the ground across from me.
The hand that cut me came down and pushed on the ground, and I got a good look at it for the first time since he’d put it on my shoulder those minutes ago. It had changed, with deep, inky black veins showing through the skin, bulging up and travelling up his arm until they disappeared under his shirt sleeve. The nails had transformed from regular, white keratin to faded yellow blades that protruded from his fingertips, as though he had sprouted the claws of a beast. The hot crimson blood poured from my arm and down onto my lower body as I was struck with a fear that paralysed me, ice cold fear gripping me and forcing me to give in to panic. My father looked up at me as he pushed himself up with that one deformed arm, and yellow eyes peered back at mine as I took in what had happened. The entire left side of his face was red and was dripping with thick, dark blood, darker than I could ever imagine blood being. It oozed out as if it were old and congealed, running down his face in coagulated globs rather than in hasty rivulets, like mine was flowing from my own injury. We sat and looked at each other as we were, both injured and bleeding on the ground and neither, seemingly, sure where to go from there.
“She said …” Dad said through the agony clear in his broken, raw voice, “… that the sins of the father shall be passed onto the son as if he himself were wicked.”
“What the fuck?” I half-whispered, too baffled to even scream.
“She cursed me, boy. She cursed me to live with the sins of my father on my shoulders, always bearing down on me so that we’d both know it was his fault I’m like this!” he explained.
“That can’t be true. Why are you telling me this?” I asked, trying to stop my injured arm from shaking.
“Sins of the father, boy! It’s a curse on the family!” Dad yelled quickly, no longer trying to be quiet.
I felt a sinking sensation in my chest as I realised what he must have meant. It was hereditary, that had to be what he was saying. Suddenly, the pain in my arm went numb in a cold way as my breathing picked up and I began to panic in earnest. I couldn’t deny what I was seeing anymore; my father was cursed and I was as well. The only question that remained in my mind was what the curse actually did, but I soon got a clue in the form of my father’s affliction accelerating, seemingly worsening before my very eyes.
Unless my eyes deceived me, the shoulder of Dad’s right arm, the arm that had been growing more and more monstrous this whole time, popped out of its socket and hung limply at his side. He howled in pain as his arm was further jerked upwards, seemingly against his will. He lifted his dislocated arm up and the same occurred to his elbow, the joint tearing itself as his arm elongated and stretched to inhuman proportions. The pitch black veins spread across his skin, consuming the entirety of his visible arm and beginning to crawl up his neck and face on the half opposite the one he’d skinned. His fingers then flexed themselves out of their sockets, displacing themselves with a series of dull cracks and pops of flesh and bone tearing themselves apart to warp this way. I simply watched with my jaw dropped as my father became something else before me, sprawled out on the patio and writhing in blinding agony. He called out weakly, pitifully, and looked me in the eyes with that yellow gaze he now possessed.
“It comes in waves! You can’t keep it from happening, but you can hide yourself, keep others from finding you when you’ve changed! I thought I’d have more time to explain it all, but now’s the time. You’ve got to kill me! Now, before I change completely!” Dad yelled, screaming bloody murder as his other arm began to twist, bend and pop its own joints out of place.
“I can’t!” I sobbed.
“You can! There’s a—AGH!” Dad tried to say, but couldn’t before he lurched again.
His leg jerked out, probably on instinct, as the curse began to spread to it. The reflexive kick was powerful enough to send the glass coffee table we’d talked over flying, and glass shards sprinkling over the both of us when it shattered against the brick wall of the house. I shielded my face from the volley of glass, and when I dropped my good arm and saw what had become of the formerly sturdy table, I understood what needed to happen. This thing my father was becoming would be a danger to our family if this curse was left to turn my father into some creature. None of us would be able to stop him from killing us if he turned completely. He was right, he needed to be ended now, before he became a real problem later.
I took a look at my injured arm. The bleeding had slowed down, but it was still pulsing with blood every few seconds. It didn’t hurt anymore, though, now that pain had given way to terror and panic. I was on an adrenaline rush that kept me from really feeling what was probably a devastating injury, which I could confirm for myself as I realised that I couldn’t actually move my arm below the elbow; it was paralysed as if by magic. I supposed it was magic that had done this to me.
Standing up was a mighty task. I felt a rush surge to my head and I became lightheaded as I rose to my feet. I looked down at my father and saw that all four of his limbs had become mangled, bloodied tangles of flesh, the joints bent out of shape and the skin ripped and torn so that they were all jagged, broken strips of flesh painted maroon by dark, thick red liquid. He was looking up at the sky, and although there was a roof over the patio, I doubted he saw it. He almost looked dead, but I knew he was still alive as I could hear his haggard, shallow, wet hacking and coughing as he took his last breaths. The death rattles rang out in the silent night air as I stumbled closer to his broken body, which would surely begin to move again soon. My arm hung at my side as I leaned towards him and took my own deep gulps of air to gain my breath back.
“How do I do it?” I asked, my voice eerily steady.
“I have a gun. Please,” he begged. His words were slurred as he coughed up blood.
I haltingly crept closer to his body, and found that the limbs did not stray out and strike me. This curse, whatever it truly did to my father, must have finally completely broken his body. I used my one good hand to search the pockets of my dad’s clothing, and eventually found a pistol stuffed down his baggy nightgown. I pulled it out and knew it was probably loaded and ready to go. He’d planned this. I took a deep, clear breath, and looked my father in the eye as I stood over him.
His yellowed eyes slowly drifted over and locked onto mine. I felt bile push up my throat, and I wanted to throw up, but I held it back and pointed the gun at my father’s head. I knelt down, not confident that I’d get it right from any distance, and pressed the barrel to Dad’s chin, angled so that it would tear right through his head. We met eyes once again, and he gave me a look that made me feel guilty. This wasn’t right, but this was his, our lot. I felt the need to say something, but whatever had been holding it back broke, and I began to sob and cry at the task set before me.
“Do it,” he said with his final bit of life.
I knew I had to do it, as I got startled when one of his legs jerked. He was starting to move again, and if he could cut me and flip that table with his frail body, then what could he do to the rest of our family? I let my feelings show on my face, openly weeping to my father as I held a gun to his head. I nodded as his arm twitched, his hand closing in a fist, and knew it was time. I put my finger on the trigger and looked back at my dad’s face.
He was entirely consumed by the curse. There wasn’t a patch of natural, pink skin in sight. My father was an inky black thing, a creature born to kill and maim, but I could put a stop to it if I just moved my finger a fraction of an inch towards myself. I took one last look into my father’s eyes as his yellow irises focused back on me, but it was different this time. He wasn’t looking up, at peace with himself, he wasn’t looking at me, regretting that it had come to this. No, he was looking at me with a need in his eyes, a hunger.
I closed my eyes.
BANG.
It was done.
I don’t know how long I sat there, eyes closed, fists clenched, crying so hard I thought I would faint. Eventually, whether it was seconds, minutes or hours, the noise of what had happened seemed to have woken the others up, and they emerged from the house and onto the patio to find me crouched over a mess of tangled flesh and bones with a gun in my hand, sobbing so loudly that I hadn’t heard them come.
Mum’s hand on my shoulders snapped me out of it, and I spun around in a panicked frenzy, so fast I slipped on the bloody patio floor and tumbled to the ground, dropping the gun. I looked up at them, and saw that all my siblings were looking horrified at Dad, crying and trying to keep the others from seeing what had become of his body. Mum, though, was at my side, as if I was the one that needed to be reassured. I’d been reassured, and I still didn’t feel any better. I spent that night silently, not saying a single word to a single person as Mum went on to explain things to my brothers and sister.
They understood quicker than I had, mostly because of the cursed corpse on the patio, but they were still shaken, and nobody said much over the next few days. I requested a week off work to stay around while my arm gets better and we figure out how to bury Dad and how to deal with my curse when it shows itself. I still don’t completely understand it, but I don’t think anyone does, and that gives me some solace in this time of confusion and doubt.
I’ve been feeling different these past few days. I know it’s the curse. It’s creeping up on me and I can feel it, day by day, getting stronger. I’ll have to make arrangements to hide myself away while it works its magic. I’m getting started on that after I write this all up.
As for why I’ve typed this all up, people need to know. I need to have it be known. The sins of the father shall be passed onto the son as if he himself were wicked, but that’s not true. I’m not wicked. My father wasn’t wicked. Those who punish the son for the father’s sins, they’re the wicked ones. People think they know how the world works, they think they’re right, and they think they know those around them, but they don’t know any of those things. They just hope they’re right and do the exact same thing they’d do if they knew they were wrong. That’s the way of the world.
I know better, and now you do, too.
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