God, everything hurts so much. I should never have stayed with him. I should have run away the second I turned eighteen.
Maybe I could have found wherever Micah and his mom ended up when they fled my father’s influence. They might have taken me in, and then I’d be a normal person instead of a sweaty, bullet-ridden criminal about to die on a warehouse floor, cradled in the arms of the person I hate the most in this world.
My world has always been painful, but when I had Micah, I also had a purpose. Protecting him from Father kept me focused.It made me feel useful, and I think it was the thing that let me cling to my humanity for much longer than Father probably wanted.
If he’d had total control, I would have come out of the womb with a gun in each hand and no moral compass to drag me down.
Father’s disappointment was my fault, but protecting Micah from his wrath was my responsibility. It’s not like his mother was ever going to do it. She shocked us all by eventually sobering up, coming to her senses, and sneaking out of our lives in the middle of the night.
I can understand why she needed to get away fromhim. But the childish part of me will never not be angry about the fact that she took Micah with her. Without him, my life was suddenly meaningless. The only thing I had left was keeping Father happy.
Which I devoted myself to, and look how well that worked out for me.
I think I moan. I want to roll over on my side because the pain is climbing up my ribs like a monster trying to reach my throat. The floor is cold. Concrete. It feels like pure relief on my overheated skin, but Father keeps pushing me back whenever I roll over.
“Stay still, Tadhg. You’ll tear the wound worse. Those fuckers really got you.” He’s muttering to me, and I don’t think he knows if I can hear him or not. At some point, my eyes closed again. “Don’t worry, though. I’m going to tear their fucking world apart. I’ll show them what happens when you fuck with the Banna.”
I try to summon some kind of gratitude or fondness in response to his rage, but nothing happens. There’s nothing but hollowness.
I genuinely don’t give a fuck about the Aryan Brotherhood. I just want the pain to stop.
I just want to go back in time and slip out of my bedroom window so I can escape with Micah and his mom. I want to know what it’s like to be a normal twenty-five-year-old who has girlfriends and goes to college or has a job and plays flag football on the weekend.
Someone who doesn’t know the texture of a person’s insides. And who hasn’t missed their stepbrother like an amputated limb for twelve years.
Someone who isn’t dying on a warehouse floor.
I hope they ended up somewhere nice. At least someone in this world escaped my father’s reach.
My vision seems to thin and fray at the edges like worn-out film. Memories of my childhood superimpose themselves on top. I know it’s probably a sign that I have a fever, which is bad, but I don’t care. If I’m going to die, I’d rather die thinking about the past.
“Tadhg. Can you hear me, son?”
There’s something hot and tight around my hand. I thought my eyes were open, but I must have closed them at some point, because when I try to blink, they open and the light is offensively bright.
“How do you feel?”
“Da?” I try to put his face in focus, but everything is blurry. My head hurts too much, and I close my eyes again.
“I told you.” Colm’s calm voice pierces the veil of my semi-consciousness again. “He’s fucked up. He needs medical attention, and then we all need to get out of town until we can settle down this situation. Out of Oklahoma, if we can. You can’t stay here either. Not with all the other…”
I’m not sure if he trails off or if I stop caring. Whatever.
Let the Aryan Brotherhood show up and finish me off. I can go back to my dreams of being a kid again. This is the shit that seems like a nightmare.
When I wakeup the next time, I feel more conscious. But that also means the pain is sharper. My shoulder throbs, along with my side and one hip, and no part of my body wants to move. Which is why it sucks that a lot of hands are pulling at me.
I try to bat them away, but moving my arms only makes the pain worse, and someone quickly pins my arms to my sides.
Or maybe it’s a blanket? I’m rocking from side to side like I’m being carried. Which is making me nauseous. There’s no warning before I turn my head and vomit onto the floor, and someone near me shouts.
It’s dark wherever we are, but I can smell rain. That intense petrichor smell that comes with hot summer storms and means that water is probably falling from the sky right now in thick sheets. If I concentrate, maybe I can hear it.
When the sound starts to pull me back into a dream-memory, I’m more than happy to go.
The rain is comingdown in sheets that are so thick, you can hardly see through them. I’m soaked to the bone and shivering because the air conditioning is blasting, making my wet t-shirt feel like an icy cage. The air is still thick with summer heat despite the storm, which is why the A/C is on. It wasn’t accounting for the trash cans to get blown halfway down the block and for me to get soaked running after them.
Micah throws another blanket around my shoulders and rubs my arms while I shiver. He’s twelve, only a year younger than me, but he’s a full head shorter and his hands are small and delicate. Rubbing my arms isn’t warming me up at all, but it is making me feel better.
