“Honey…”
My phone buzzes and I look to the man standing nearby. “Can I answer that?”
I don’t want to answer. I want to place a call out. It might be pointless to help my dad but there’s still a chance I can phone someone to help me.
To my surprise, the man says, “Go ahead.” His voice is far deeper than his scrawny frame would indicate.
I reject the incoming line—probably a robot—swipe into contacts and press on Lachlan’s number while pretending to answer. “Hello?”
It goes to voicemail.
“Just checking in,” I say lightly, then shriek as the bat slams onto the table in front of me, the man grabbing my phone and laughing as he checks the display.
“Calling the cavalry, are you?” he asks just before an automated voice tells him the mailbox is full.
The resulting sneer doesn’t improve the man’s looks any.
“Guess no one’s coming to rescue you, Princess.” He tosses the phone onto the table and turns to my father. “What about you? Any rich friends you’d like to call?”
“Give him the jewellery, love. I’ll replace it. You know I’ll—”
I slam my palm on the table. “You sold them, and you didn’t even tell me.”
His face floods with guilt and the ultimate confirmation that my logic was sound fells me. I can’t speak. Can’t even look at him.
“This isn’t my debt,” I tell the intruder. “Can I go?”
“No, you can’t go.” His face screws into mockery as he answers. “No one’s leaving until I’ve got my money, or I’ve got your attention.”
“Give him the jewellery.”
“You want me to throw away Mum’s jewellery?” I fold my arms like I’m a three-year-old mid-squabble. “Take it.”
The bat hits me in the shoulder with such force that I can’t even cry. It feels like my bones are shattering in the joint, the flesh surrounding them battered and bruised.
“No!” Dad yells, jumping up to grapple for control of the bat. The second swing hits him instead of me, catching him on the back of the head with such a heavy crack that my heart splits open.
“Stop.” I try to pull the rings off but there’s so much pain in my shoulder that the command never makes it to my fingers.
The phone rings and the man smashes it with his bat until it’s a mess of shattered gorilla glass and shards of casing. I don’t want to add up the hours I worked to afford the device; the cheapest smartphone I could find but still worth more than I wanted to spend.
Dad has both hands cradling his skull, pressing hard as though it’s the only way the pieces hold together. As the assailant turns towards him, Dad holds a hand out to ward him off and bile rushes up my throat as I see the torrent of blood that’s drenched his fingers, his hand, the cuff of his shirt.
“I have some money saved,” I say, bitterly regretting my lameattempt to put my foot down. I should have handed over the jewellery when Dad asked me to instead of acting like a petulant child. “Please can’t you tell your boss that—”
“I’m my boss,” the man screams, slamming the bat into the nearby cupboards and dragging their entire contents onto the floor.
He smashes boxes of breakfast cereal and packets of noodles while I leave my chair and rush to my father, now slumping forward. Just as I reach him, his weight falls to the side and I tug him farther, shielding him from a direct landing on the hard floor and using the overturned chair as shelter while the collector continues his vendetta against our cabinet of dried foods.
I drop to my knees beside him, pulling him half onto my lap. The blood spilling from the back of his head is bad, the strange sounds coming from his throat are worst. I hear the crack of the bat against his skull, taste the sound, metallic, purple, a conglomeration of every one of my worst fears.
“Daddy?” My query devolves to the language of my childhood, fear driving any thought of being adult into a far-off future. “Daddy, are you okay?”
And he’s not. It’s my fault. I could have fallen into line and instead I rebelled at the worst possible time.
The blood pools at the neck of his shirt, staining its vibrant crimson halfway down his back.
I pull the chair closer as the madman turns, hefting the bat in his hand as though testing the weight, getting used to its power so he can wield it against us. A single flimsy chair. Barely a shield at all but it’s the best we have as the man stalks us, raising the bat ready to strike at us again.
