Page 70 of Starving Butterfly
Gabriella was the last straw. My heart ached for the child; she’d grown up being loved, and yet when it mattered the most, I couldn’t save her from the monsters. The monsters I allowed to stay in my life.
If Summer killed me after she killed him, I would accept it. I was never the best for her. I looked to Scott and Dustin, both looking sick at the scene before them but not saying anything. That’s how I knew they were the better men. These two still had a conscious. They weren’t morally corrupt like Summer and I had been. Towing the line between what was right and wrong. It never mattered if it was wrong, though. What mattered was if you survived long enough for the consequences to come back and haunt you.
I was thinking about the consequences for a little boy who stumbled on a girl trapped in a shed. The boy who became friends with his father’s plaything. The boy who grew up to be just like his father. Cold, detached, uncaring. That sounded worse than reality. I didn’t fuck kids like my piece of shit father. But I did have a hand in cleaning up.
Summer should have killed me. I wasn’t worth it.
Focusing back on the task at hand, Dustin rebound Jeff’s hands behind his back. My knee sank between his shoulders, holding him to the spot.
Summer uncorked the bottle, dumping the contents against his backside. The wine splashed against my leg, and I stared at the red as a memory uncurled from my mind.
“You weak little boy,” Dad’s voice hissed.
I tried to scream, but my head was underwater. My lungs burned as I held my breath, fighting against the side of thebarrel as if it were my dying wish. He forced my head to bend further as I choked down the water.
Dad yanked me out of the water. I had barely coughed before his fist slammed into the side of my head.
“Do it,” he yelled, thrusting the knife into my hand.
“Please dad— no.” I begged. The woman was sitting, bound and gagged, in front of me. Eyes shedding endless tears as my hand shook, dropping the blade.
I cried out when he forced my head under the water again, holding it down as I struggled against him. I couldn’t take much more of this; I wouldn’t. I would rather die.
When I stopped struggling against him and my body went limp with exhaustion, he pulled me out.
“Do it now or I’ll kill your little friend.”
My eyes shot to his, full of hate, but I coughed, picking up the knife.
The crying woman shook her head furiously, trying with every part of her body to scream. The knife sank into her heart, and I watched the life bleed from her eyes. My hands were coated in her blood. I killed her.
I dropped to my knees, crying out.
“See son, that’s why you can’t allow your emotions to rule your actions. Weak. Now clean this up.”
Her body fell sideways, and the pool of blood stained the concrete.
I blinked, banishing the memory. Summer had already cut a hole in his pants. The tip of the bottle shoved unceremoniously up his ass as he screamed and gurgled, probably choking on his own vomit.
His body jerked underneath me as I continued to hold him down.
See who’s weak now, Dad.
61
BOTTLES
January 23rd
It was poetic justice come back to haunt him. The bottle ripped into his shriveling asshole as he screamed in agony. The screams tore through the room in high-pitched, broken, useless sounds. I didn’t stop. His pleas turned into noise. Incoherentnonsense that meant nothing to me. He wouldn’t last much longer, but I didn’t care. The bottle crammed against his entrance as I forced it. My eyes unfocused as I watched him suffer beneath me.
When the sound finally stopped, I let go. Kicking his dead body over, I spat in his face.
Silence settled in after, not a relief or satisfaction, just silence.
His eyes froze in terror as blood pooled around him.
A numbness filled the void as the adrenaline died. His death didn’t bring my innocence back. Didn’t even begin to bring Gabriella back to me, but his death meant less evil in the world.
