He just sat there, stuck to the chair, his mouth wide open in a scream that seemed to go on forever, gingerly trying not to move. And then, without warning, Loui punched his fist into my father’s face. Or at least, that’s what I thought.
Instead of connecting with his face, Loui’s fist was directed downwards, into my father’s mouth and down his throat. The momentum alone took us up to the elbow. It cut off his scream, the prick coughing and choking, but it was too late.
If he tried to bite Loui’s arm, it would have done no good. He may have tried, but the pain must have been too intense, because he just continued to try and scream, something nearly impossible. Loui’s fingers were grabbing and tearing anything they could grasp. I could feel his heartbeat through the walls of meat down there and then realised, with each clawing rip, what Loui was doing.
He began to push his hand further forward, his other hand pushing my father’s chest back, scraping and slicing through more and more flesh. Then, after what seemed like minutes, I felt his hand, our hand, finally wrap tightly around the beating muscle. My father’s eyes rolled back into his head, a deep retching sound coming from deep within him. The hand squeezed tighter and tighter, my father beginning to thrash about on the chair. He was unable to stand as his legs frantically kicked this way and that, the table pushed away with a madly-waving arm.
Loui finally screamed, a loud and victorious yell of anger, hatred and pure bloodlust as he gave one last almighty heave and tore my father’s heart out through his mouth, stringy veins dangling between his fingers. My father’s eyes rolled back to normal one final time; spoke one last unintelligible word as Loui brought the still convulsing heart to his mouth and tore a huge chunk from it with his teeth. As he spat it into my father’s face, the body went limp, his head rolling back into the same position as it had been when we first came down the stairs. Loui dropped the heart into his lap and retreated back to whatever corner of my mind he lived in. As he disappeared from my mind again, I heard him speak softly.
“No one fucks with us, boys. No one.”
Chapter 4
1.
There was only one thing to do when it came to disposing my father’s body and that was burying him close to his friend, Royce. While it took me most of the night to carry out, I was throwing the last of the dirt back into the hole just as the sun began to rise.
There were a few trees around the spot and although some of the roots had made digging more difficult, it was easier to hide the freshly-dug mound with leaves and shrubbery.
After an hour of spreading vegetation over the grave, there was no way to tell that spot apart from anywhere else nearby. He’d been laid to rest face-down at the bottom of the pit, his good friend just a few metres beside him.
Once I was sure there was little chance of the grave being found, I cleaned the kitchen as best I could. There was quite a bit of blood, so I set about meticulously cleaning every inch of that floor better than ever before.
But after a few minutes, there was another issue that was growing with each wipe of the cloth. I was creating a clean spot, the floor not cleaned since my mother was around. This led me to scrubbing the entire room from top to bottom. It took well into the day, but I knew that no-one would be around to disturb me. My father wasn’t on the top of anyone’s visits list, hence why I cleaned with little interruption.
As I cleaned, I began to wonder how I would proceed. Without my father around, there were bound to be questions about why I was all alone. Although not exactly a popular fellow, there were still people around that would look for him, the first being the mill foreman, who my father worked for.
He’d taken me to the mill a couple of times, but each time was when the place was closed, my father showing me around while men cleaned their machines. I remember the boss, a man named John Sadler. His son Richard was also helping clean and he showed me around the place while my father did what he needed to.
There was another man who helped my father. Darren ‘Keg’ Fermaner was a huge man, his belly poking out from under his work shirt. He was completely bald and his thick arms were corded with worker’s muscles, the kind that bulged under his sleeves. He was a huge drinker and was one of the usual Tuesday-night poker crew my father drank with.
As I cleaned, a plan began to form in my mind, one that would hopefully see me avoid any suspicion in the disappearance of my father, Royce and the murder of a used-up whore.
2.
I waited to initiate my plan until the following morning. It was important for me to get the timing right, otherwise there might be questions to answer that I didn’t want to. My father wasn’t exactly one of the town’s most punctual, so it wasn’t uncommon for him to miss a day here or there. But I figured not showing up at work for a day and a half should be enough time.
At around 11 that Thursday morning, I walked to Jackson Street, making
