Tomas was still young, a boy, and could not work out what to say to get his father to stop. He stood there, completely frozen with fear, arms crossed.
“Come here, boy,” his father grumbled like some fiend. The man led him around the back of their house… back towards the area where Tomas never went.
The back of the house gave him nightmares. It terrified him so deeply that he began to shake.
“Quit your shaking! Time to man up, boy.”
Tomas’s father directed him into the small makeshift barn out back, lit only by torch and moonlight. Long shadows snaked around them like constricting demons. He had never gone inside.
The smell was what hit him first- the putrid stench of rotting flesh and animal blood. It made Tomas wretch so violently that he almost threw up.
“Get inside,” Tomas’s father ordered, shutting the rickety door behind them, before bolting it.
Tomas covered his face, attempting to escape the foul odours of his surroundings. Before them, two white lambs stood in the dark corner of the barn, wide-eyed and looking about as scared as Tomas felt.
The ground was covered with hay, dirt, and pools of blood, some thick and sticky, others fresher. Empty bottles of drink were strewn across the place.
The barn was dark, but Tomas caught a glimpse of something to the side. Hanging by metal hooks from the ceiling were the bodies of the lambs that Tomas’s father had already slaughtered.
Tomas instantly averted his gaze, feeling his heart jump into his throat. The hung there, dead, helpless, like the swinging bodies of the gallows.
The sound of the metal screeching as the lambs swayed was nightmarish.
Blood was still dripping from their slit throats and open abdomens.
Tomas’s father nudged him in the side with his dirty, gloved hands. “It’s your turn now, boy.”
He presented his cleaver to the boy in an outstretched hand. It was smeared with blood and rusted by the handle.
Tomas was utterly frozen. He eyed the two lambs hiding in the corner, seeing their fear, and feeling their panic. They stared back at him, huddled together and unblinking as if suspecting what was going to happen.
Tomas shook his head vehemently. “No.”
Tomas’s father eyed the boy, but Tomas did not look away from the helpless little animals before him.
“The fuck did you just say, boy?”
“I won’t do it.”
He nudged him harder, forcefully opening his small fingers to place the cleaver in his hand.
The lambs began to squeal upon seeing the weapon that had killed their kin. It was the most sickening noise Tomas had ever heard. He burst out crying.
“You will do it, or so help you!”
Tomas was paralysed between fighting or fleeing.
“DO IT! Kill them! They are nothing!”
Tomas wept, begging his father to stop.
The lambs screamed.
“Be a fucking man!”
Tomas wrapped his fingers around the handle of the cleaver, pulling it from his father’s grip and sinking it deep into the man’s thigh in one swift motion.
The blade sliced a clean gash into his father’s flesh, causing him to stagger and cry out.
Tomas did not waste a second. He ran for the barn door with all the speed he could muster.
“You son of a whore! Get back here!” his father screamed, ripping the cleaver out from his leg and lurching forwards.
Tomas fled around to the front of their house with the winds still screaming around him. The night was so dark, and snow was gusting all about to add to the confusing panic.
He heard the barn door smash open as his father limped after him with snarling teeth and violent threats.
Tomas ran down the path towards town, hoping someone would be awake to help. He cried for aid, but the gusting wind and time of night made it hard to be sufficiently loud enough to wake anyone.
Most of the townspeople in the small village were deep asleep, and their houses so spread out that it would be difficult to even catch his pleas for aid if they were awake.
Yet, Tomas still fled.
The stomping from behind grew louder as Tomas’s father caught up with him despite the heinous wound. He tackled the boy around his midsection, sending them both tumbling forwards.
Tomas tried fighting his father off, smacking, scratching, and punching with no success. His father rolled on top and placed his grizzly hands around the boy’s neck.
Tomas’s throat instantly tightened as the calloused fingers squeezed. The dark of the night forbade Tomas from getting a proper look at his father’s face as he choked his son. He only saw the whites of his wide, monstrous eyes.
Tomas gasped for air, hitting his father as hard as he could but losing strength by the second as his body screamed for a breath.
Kicking and struggling only served to make his father push more weight down upon him.
A finger to the eye? Tomas’s father smacked the smaller arm away with ease. Nothing was going to stop him.
Everything started to spin.
“Hey!” a voice shouted from down the path.
Tomas’s father promptly released his grip upon realising someone had seen them.
Tomas coughed and spat as he inhaled. He turned to see a silhouette standing several metres down the road of a person was clearly with a helmet atop their head. The dark of the night hid any discernible features, however.
“Get off him,” the person ordered directly in a gruff voice, but remaining at a distance.
Tomas’s father looked back down at Tomas, as if weighing his options. Would he dare to try to kill his son in plain view of a witness?
Tomas continued coughing as he wriggled out from underneath his father and staggered towards to the stranger.
His father got up,
