Another cough rasps from him as I sit there, frozen to the depths of my soul.“Life insurance on both of you.”The Reaper’s smile returns.“I never wanted kids.She refused to get an abortion and told everyone she was pregnant before I could make her do it.”
Pain in my free hand, the one not holding my phone, breaks through.Only then do I realize I’ve clenched my fist so hard my nails have gouged half-moons in my palm.
Shaking it open, I return his smile.“Last laugh’s on you then, isn’t it, you old fucker?”I sit back and swipe out of the picture.“No legacy, no grandchildren to carry on your name.Just a queer son who will literally piss all over your name and reputation the second you take your last breath.”
I savor his dark glare.“You’ll burn in Hell.”
Yes, I actually snort.“I’ll meet you there, then.See, I ditched the cult mentality back in high school.I’m not even sure there is a God.If there is, I suspect someone like yourself won’t make it to Heaven no matter how much money you’ve paid to the church.Your soul is dark and moldy, rotted clean through.Frankly, any Heaven that would take your soul is a place I’d rather not be, thank you very much.”
On that note, his breathing grows raspy and shallow, prompting me to grab the tube delivering oxygen to the cannula in his nose.I fold the tubing over, tightly pinching it.I also hold it up so he can see what I’ve done.
“Want me to pinch off the morphine drip, too, you old fuck?”
I lean in close again.“By the way, I never slept with Olivia.She ran a scam on you and on her parents.She never wanted kids, either.All she wanted was to escape her parents’ thumbs on her life.She wanted freedom and an education, which her sisters never got to enjoy.I told her before the wedding that I couldn’t ‘perform,’ blamed it on an injury I said you didn’t know about.She still went through with it.”I smile.“That means awomanand yourgayson played you and your shitty friend, motherfucker.Like goddamned violins.She’ll get her trust, and I’ll get yours.”
He licks his lips and tries to speak but only air and wordless sounds make it out.
Twenty minutes later, he’s finally gone.By the time the nurse softly knocks on the door and sticks her head in, I’ve pulled a reasonable facsimile of a grieving son’s expression into place.
Meaning I’ve managed to stop smiling.
She walks over to the silenced monitors and switches them off.Using her stethoscope, she listens for a heartbeat.
I slump back in my chair, barely able to contain my joy.
Before, that might have at least evoked a twinge of guilt within me, but not now.
Not after he confessed yet more sins to me.
I am glad I got to purge myself to him before he died.I’m glad the last thing he heard from me was how he got played.
No, I’m not sure anymore there is a Heaven or Hell.Maybe I’ve been living in Hell and now I have a chance to feel some semblance of if not Heaven, at least a more peaceful Purgatory where I don’t have to feel like I’m always looking over my shoulder.
I’m no longer accountable to his sinister and impossible standards.My personal demon is dead.
I can live my life for me, in complete freedom.
Relatively speaking.
An hour later I’m at my father’s house, which is now mine, and I’m pouring myself a large glass of JD’s apple over ice from a bottle I bought on my way there.I sit in what was once my father’s chair and stare out over the backyard.
I’ll be tossing the chair as soon as I can.I don’t want it.In fact, out of the entire house, I only want three pieces of furniture that were Mom’s, and some personal mementoes.I never told Dad I wanted them in hopes he wouldn’t get rid of them or destroy them.
Now, they’re finally mine.
Everything else I’ll sell or donate, and then sell the house.
I don’t even have Mom’s ashes, because he scattered them out there in the yard.Claimed to everyone that it was her favorite place in the world.
They all said how sweet it was.
I know it was a deliberate dig at me on his part, because I’d asked to keep her ashes.
Meaning of course he wasted no time scattering them.
Thoroughly burying his secrets and crimes.
She hated the backyard.He was the one who directed the landscaping.The only thing she liked about it was going outside and sitting in the shade to read so she could escape his wrath for a little while.He hated being outside, especially in summer.Meaning she found a little peace when out of his field of vision.
