"Daddy, are you ready?"
I hear the son's voice call out to me from up the stairs in his bedroom where I left him, probably still with his head in the corner counting like I had told him to.
"Not yet, count one more hundred and then come find me!" I call back, trying to manufacture as much glee and enthusiasm into my tired and emotionless voice as I can. The son has to think I'm having fun, he has to think I'm playing along for this to work.
But I'm not playing, and fun is the furthest thing from my mind as I cross the last few steps to the front door, squeezing between the wall and the couch that was put in front of it to serve as a barricade. The son had almost two more minutes before he would start to look for me, and having finally been given this chance to play hide and seek after days of asking the son, I couldn't waste this opportunity.
My trembling hand reaches into my pocket for the key I had stolen from his bedroom two nights ago, grabbing it from its hiding place under his stuffed bear while he slept soundly. My other hand tightens its grip on my father's old revolver that I had just loaded before coming downstairs, the one he had given to me as an old wedding present in a life that seemed so far distant from me now. As I bring the key up to the padlock, I quietly count down in my mind how much time I have left. Eighty one, eighty, seventy-nine… I could make it. I had to make it.
But the key doesn't fit. A flood of sudden panic makes my stomach churn as I fumble with the lock, trying desperately to get the small silver key to fit into the padlock that was the only thing separating my nightmare from the outside world, but it refuses to fit. It was the same key I had used to lock it for the last time all those months ago, I was sure of it, but he had done something to it. After all this time, all this effort, all this hope, it was all for nothing.
As my heart now races so fast I start to worry that it'll make a noise, I briefly wonder if shooting the lock could work. Could I get out in time before he hears and gets down here? Could I run fast enough that I could leave him behind? The room feels cold and my mouth goes dry as the counting in my head keeps going as all other thoughts spiral out of control. Fifty-six, fifty five, fifty four. I could do it. I had time, I could still blow that lock clean off the door and leave this whole fucking place behind me. But that still wouldn't get me out, would it? There was always only one way to escape, only one key to freedom, and it was in my other hand all along.
I try not to think about the things I'll be leaving behind as I bring the gun up to my head. I try not to think about the pain it will cause, the instant of suffering I'll experience before I'll finally be able to silence my regrets forever. There are so many that haunt me. Choices I should have made differently. People I should have loved far more. Other lives I could have lived, should have lived. And that one choice, that fateful choice that caused everything to burn as the son came into my life. Now, they're all about to be silenced by doing what I should have done months ago.
"Daddy?"
I hear the son's voice call out to me from my study's doorway, and my hand freezes midway to my temple. I can hear the metal parts rattling together as the gun shakes in my trembling hands, as the sickening warmth of the heater vent next to me causes a bead of sweat to drip down my forehead, as my eyes open to see the son standing in front of me, illuminated by the streetlights outside my window. The shadows play off his face, and in this light, he looks almost like some sort of twisted monster. It's like his real nature is being pulled through by the light.
"Daddy, what are you doing?" he asks again, his head tilted in a confused, almost scared expression. He could have never understood, could he? He wasn't capable of it. Not anymore. And I can't meet his eyes. I can't look at him anymore with that same fake love I had shown for months, and in that moment, I knew it couldn't go on like this.
"I'm sorry, son," I manage to whisper, fighting the angry tears welling up in my eyes. My father had always told me, 'Real men never cried', and I wouldn't now. No matter how much I felt rushing roar of anger,, no matter how much this would hurt, I wouldn't cry.
"I'm sorry."
I pull the trigger. The hammer clicks in response, but nothing happens. I try to swallow past the lump quickly forming in my throat as I frantically open the chamber, trying to see if something had jammed, trying to understand what the hell had gone wrong, but the chamber was completely empty. There were no bullets.
"You weren't trying to leave me, were you daddy?"
I don't want to, but I look up from the floor. I see the son standing over me now, his previous expression replaced now with one of a chillingly calm smile, his teeth caked with old blood. His eyes shine with that twisted glimmer of anger that he had when he killed her, and in his outstretched hand were the bullets I had loaded only minutes before while he was still counting down in his room. How the fuck could he do that?
"You weren't trying to leave me like mommy did, were you?" he asks again, but now, his voice is completely deadpan. There is no anger, no sadness, no emotion. I knew I had failed for good.
"No, son, no," I stammer, giving him the false smile that he wanted. "I'd never leave you, never! You should have stayed in the room counting down, I was almost ready for you to find me and-"
I break off as one of the bullets leaps from his hand at dizzying speed and rushes towards me, as if thrown, although his palm had remained outstretched. In a split second I think that he's finally going to grant me release, but the bullet stops at my neck, pushing into the skin just enough to draw blood and a wince.
"Are you sure, daddy?" he asks, his voice still calm, but holding a challenge. Daring me to tell him what he's afraid to hear.
"N.. never," I whisper, as I shut my eyes in humiliated, submitted defeat.
"Good! Now come read me a bedtime story, I've already said goodnight to mommy." The bullet dropped from my neck to the floor and he was smiling now, and I knew I should be thankful that I wasn't being tormented more, but that terrifying spark of something dark was still in his eyes. It was always shining, always hungry, and I didn't know how much longer I could outrun it.
I left the gun on the desk as I walked out behind him as he led me upstairs to his room. The hallway was dark, like it always was, but my wife's room was still lit up. I tried not to look as we walked past, but it was impossible not to notice. It was impossible for the stench not to clog up my lungs, so rotten and heavy I could almost taste it. It was impossible not to turn my head as we walked past. It was impossible not to notice her bloodied, rotten body stretched out on those once-white sheets, the body still swarming with insects and worms that were finishing what the son had started so long ago. It had been four months, and he still wouldn't let me bury her.
Every time I pass by her room, I'm haunted by the reminders that I caused this. Every time I catch a glimpse of her decomposing face, I'm reminded of her smile the day we went to pick our child to adopt. Every time I hear the haunting silence as I pass her room, I hear my own words from all those years ago playing over and over in my mind, burrowing their way through my brain and unable to escape me: "What about that boy, Anna?"
When we reached his room, with its pastel blue paint and warm nightlight glowing in the corner, I tried not to think too much about that regret, but it was impossible. It was impossible as I stepped over the half eaten corpse of the last old coworker who had stopped by to check on me and I had lured inside for the son, the one whose screams had kept me awake all night as he fed. It was impossible as I tucked the son in under his soft, warm covers. It was impossible as I looked at the face that I had welcomed into our family with open arms, and the monster that hid behind it. It was impossible as I sat down next to him, a captive to the evil that I had invited in, with no more chance of ever getting free. A pawn in its control, blood on his teeth like the blood on my hands for being his own fucking monster too.
"What story do you want tonight, son?" I asked him, my voice hollow.
"The same one, daddy," said the monster that hid itself as a child. "You know how much I like it."
'Real men don't cry', that's what my father told me all those years ago. But as I opened up that old storybook, as his eyes burrowed into my mind as I flipped through the pages, as I saw the story that I had written seven years ago when my son was first adopted as a baby, so small and innocent, I felt the warm trails of burning tears cutting their way down my cheeks. My breathing heaved, and I sobbed as I read out those familiar words, once my joy, now my curse.
"One day, there lived a father, and a mother, and their son. They had a perfect little life, and they knew they'd never want it any other way. They wished that their happy life could last forever, just the way it was."
"Don't worry, daddy," the son whispered back. "I'll make sure we last this way forever."
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