In one quick motion, Ethan kicked open the door. The chain snapped. Frank was knocked off his feet. Ethan stepped in, shouted for Martin to follow, to close the door. Then he kicked Frank in his stomach and, grabbing him by the shirt, dragged him back to his feet.
“Do you know who that is?” Ethan shouted at the old man.
Frank snarled and swung at Ethan’s head. But Ethan stepped out of the way and Frank stumbled into a swing that hit nothing. At the same time, Ethan opened his jacket and pulled out a gun that had been hidden underneath—tucked into his pants.
Martin watched the events unfold from several steps away. He was shocked by the sight of the weapon. He could hardly move. His head was pounding.
“That’s your son!” Ethan said once Frank had righted himself. “Martin. The one you abandoned. Remember him?”
“Uh, Ethan, where’d you get the gun?”
“Same place I got the BB gun. Now can we focus on what we’re here to do?”
“What are we here to do?”
“I don’t have a son,” Frank said, spittle flying from his lips as he hissed out the words.
Martin recognized Frank. He knew his father was lying, and that hurt. The anger he’d felt at Gunshot Pop’s boiled back up, became something deeper and darker and more powerful now that he was confronted with the man who had abandoned him.
“You fucking liar!” Ethan hit Frank’s jaw with the back of his fist, knocking the old man to his knees. “That’s for what you’ve done to him! Learn to take responsibility!” Then he hit him again. And, after one swift kick to the groin, Frank rolled into a ball and howled with pain.
Ethan turned the gun so that the barrel was facing toward him and offered it to Martin. “Here you go. The moment you’ve been waiting for.”
Martin looked from the gun to Ethan’s cold, calculating eyes. “You want me to shoot him?”
“This isn’t about what I want. It’s about what you want. It’s about revenge. Christ, Martin, it’s about everything we talked about.” Frank tried to stand while Ethan was speaking, and he kicked the old man again in the balls.
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not? It’s just like shooting the BB gun at strangers. Just aim and pull the trigger.”
“But –”
“But nothing! You have to do this. I didn’t put all this effort into you to watch you fail now.”
Martin looked at his father—sweating, moaning.
“He abandoned you!”
“I can’t.”
“He hurt you and your mom. He damaged your family in ways you’ll never know. And who knows how many people he’s hurt since then. Look at him! He hasn’t changed.” Not like Ma. Bitch. “You can’t let him get away with treating people like that.”
Trembling, Martin shook his head. But what was just as scary as the idea of killing this stranger was the anger deep inside, knotting his stomach, telling him to take the gun. “I don’t have it in me.”
“The hell you don’t.”
“I—”
“Take it!” Another kick to Frank’s balls.
Martin’s hand moved toward it, slowly, several inches, and then fell back to his side. He shook his head more fiercely. He was trying to convince himself he couldn’t as much as he was Ethan.
“If you don’t, things could get ugly.”
“What do you mean?”
Frank tried to move, and Ethan kicked him once more. “Stay down, you old fuck, or next time it ain’t gonna be my foot I use.” Then he redirected his attention to Martin. “Someone’s going to look for Diane eventually. When they get around to checking her apartment, they’re going to find that bitch’s cold, dead body on the living room floor.”
The murder had been easy to pull off, he explained. He’d visited Diane’s apartment several nights before and, much like he had done here, had forced his way in when she opened the door. She didn’t have a chance to scream before he sliced her throat, the blood spilling over his gloves as she fell to the floor.
“Nobody’s going to believe I killed her.”
“Why not? By now, everyone knows about how she betrayed your trust, about how you tried to strangle her. Listen, it was for your own good. In case you lost your nerve when we got here.” He took a step closer. “Take it. Do what we came here to do, and I’ll make sure nobody finds Diane’s body.”
Hesitation. Anger. Confusion. Fear. Then Martin’s fingers wrapped around the handle of the gun and the demons in Ethan’s head howled, clamoring with excitement.
This was his moment of justice. For all of the abuse Norma had put him through, he could now purge himself of the pain by living vicariously through Martin, by enjoying the delicious—however removed—taste of revenge.
Ethan let go of the barrel. “Now finish it.”
Martin placed both hands around the handle, one finger on the trigger. It was heavier than the BB gun but otherwise didn’t feel that much different.
“Think about all the injustice,” Ethan whispered.
Martin aimed, the barrel trembling.
Before he could fire, Frank leaped onto Ethan, much faster than Ethan would have expected he could. They rolled on the floor until Frank got one solid shot in on his nose, then pounded his fist into Ethan’s balls.
Martin kept a bead on his father the whole time but couldn’t fire. Not until Frank stood, facing him, stepping closer like he was going to reach out and take the gun away. Then what? Kill both of them? Turn them in to the police?
His finger snapped down on the trigger, moving as if independent of his hands. Three shots went off before he knew what he had done.
The old man slumped down the side of a chair, blood soaking his undershirt, leaking out of a hole in his forehead.
Killing his father was easier than he could have imagined. As smoke trickled from the gun, it took with it the pain of being abandoned, of feeling unwanted by his own flesh and blood, and, surprisingly, the throb of the hangover. He felt better than he thought he would, and Martin
