The novelty of such an act wore off before he’d revived himself and asked me to do it again.
I was no older than twelve when he first asked me to do it. To kill him, that is.
He’d woken me early, my analogue clock buzzing just shy of three o’clock in the morning. Sleepy-eyed, and still in the fringes of a dream, he’d taken my hand in his and guided me out of my bedroom. I remembered asking him what he was doing, but it was his silence that unnerved me, and the soft grace of his hand holding mine. Because I knew, in the moments of fatherly love, there would always be darkness that followed.
I was right to be anxious.
He took me out into our garden. It must’ve rained because the ground was a bog of mud and my bare feet kept slipping up. At the end of our garden was an apple tree, all gnarled branches that bore the ripest and sweetest fruits. Mother used to make apple crumble from them. “Cooking apples” she’d said, whilst picking them carefully and placing them in a wicker basket. “Sour and sweet… almostmagicalin flavour and perfect for pies.”
Since her murder, the tree had never bore fruit again.
“Here, my son, take this.” Father handed me a hunting rifle, the one a farmer used to scare off intruders or shoot foxes that threatened their livestock. Except I remembered thinking we didn’t have either—intruders or chickens. Only my father in his slippers and dressing gown, me with my mud-caked bare feet and striped pyjamas that barely kept the cold from invading my small bones.
I remembered the gun feeling heavy in my arms, so much that they trembled as I tried to hold it up. Father helped at first, grasping the barrel with his meaty hand and guiding it until the end pointed at his chest.
That was when he began to cry. I’d never seen my father cry before; that night was the first. I think, in hindsight, that watching tears fall down his usually resilient face was more unsettling than the command he gave me next.
“When I tell you,” he said, “I want you to pull that trigger here… do you see it? That’s it, thread your finger into the loop and hold it steady.”
Of course I’d tried to back away, but I feared the sharp slap of a hand that always followed in the wake of me refusing my father. This wasn’t the first time he’d wanted me to kill someone, but never had he asked me to do it to him.
I didn’t understand, my childish mind not being able to contemplate what he was asking of me to do. “I can’t do it. Please, Daddy. Don’t make me.”
I cried too, furious tears that cascaded down my face. With the weight of the rifle in my hands, I couldn’t feel the cold anymore. My toes were numb, and my muscles were as stiff as stone. The wind ripped around us, the moon heavy as it witnessed the oddity from the sky. All I remembered was that there seemed to be no stars that night.
“Youwilldo this, Arwyn.” My father winced at his own hateful tone, as if he regretted it, which I knew was not right. He never showed remorse, not after all the monstrous things he’d done. “Don’t you hate me, my son? Don’t you wish you could clear me from this hateful world and stop the suffering I put you through? Huh?”
I couldn’t answer. My teeth chattered so viciously it felt like my jaw was going to fall off.
“If you do this for me, you could stopsomany more people dying unnecessarily. You know this, don’t you? Your mother, the Briar family. I am giving you the opportunity to avenge them all.”
I’d tried to pull my hands from the rifle again, but Father forced the butt into my chest, bruising my ribs with the force.
“Do it, you pathetic little cunt! Shoot me. Shoot. Me!”
The next time he removed his hands, I kept mine steady.
My lungs burned as I inhaled the frigid air, my eyes refusing to blink and miss a moment. Father backed up until the tree was pressed against his spine, and then he extended his arms up to his sides as if embracing an unseen spirit, and smiled.
Perhaps he believed my further hesitation was weakness, but the truth was I didn’t want to shoot him until he opened his eyes again. I needed him to look into mine as I pulled the trigger.
Time slowed for a moment.
Bang.
Birds flocked from the branches of the trees at the first bullet. It tore through my father’s chest, wedging deep into a bone or organ, I couldn’t be sure. All I remembered was the blood. He smiled as more gore coated his teeth, and dribbled out his mouth.
“Good boy.” His praise cut deep, so I pulled the trigger again, and again. Three times, until the chamber was empty and the bullets littered his chest.
Father dropped to his knees, laughing to the dark sky as death claimed him.
Except, it didn’t. As I stood there, the calmest I’d ever been in my short life, I watched as life returned, wounds spat out bullets and healed up. Then he stood up, walked towards me, patted my shoulder and told me to take myself back to bed.
He didn’t even bother to take me.
That was only the beginning.
Very few of my father’s followers knew of his curse. I learned, in time, that he viewed it as a sign of weakness. Whereas the truth proved that my father was invincible. The greatest strength to anyone but the man plagued with it. The concept was so odd to me, considering most children would wish their parents would live forever and never die. Not me. After what he did to my mother, and to the many innocent victims who’d been unfortunate enough to enter his orbit, I wished him to die. But after being the one to try and murder him, as per his order, too many times to count, I knew now that freeing myself of him would take more than a bullet or noose.
