The World Belongs to Him

The World may be an awful place. Anybody will tell you that. But what better place do we have to marinade in our history? To act out the play of life?
Maybe we’re all just washed-up actors and mistreated props. Is there another option? Is the choice for us to make?
This is a collection of short stories that depict both the loss and gain of something precious.
==Belongs to Him==
The door was locked tight. It wasn’t moving anytime soon without a key or a good kick. Towels and even toilet paper were stuffed in the bottom gap. Nevertheless, the stomach-churning stench of meat slipped through the cracks and assaulted The Child’s nostrils. My nostrils.
Everyday. Day in, day out. A daily occurrence.
It began manageable enough; just around six o’clock. A consistent, friendly reminder that The Father was roaring back to his abode in his shit-box truck. He always came back with both that stench and that promise.
“I’ll get you guys out of here. The company’s risen out of the dust like bread, I tell ya. I’m gonna hit it big tomorrow, I swear!”
His job was the reason he lived. The Family was merely a backdrop. He lived to see another day where he could hang up his old meat hook in satisfaction of what he did: making a meal out of a living, breathing thing. Neither of us fancied the thought of Our Rock being a butcher, but it sufficed. It kept us from licking dust off the old dirt road.
That promise ended soon enough when the economy collapsed. Coincidentally, so did the company he slaved for. Our income capsized and a deadline was placed on our peace, security, and memories-to-be-made.
The meat hook was his growing pride and anger. A snake whose lair was a small, wooden box shoved into the top shelf of the closet. The stench was the venom that seethed from its mouth. It had already poisoned The Father. Now, it was choking out even the weeds, and soiling the fresh spring breeze.
The breaking point was approaching.
I was holed up in my bedroom, my nostrils being raped by the repugnant waft. There was no schedule anymore, nor any friendly reminder. Just an incessant wave of slaughter; of cracking bones and tearing flesh, then lapping up the blood.
Nothing was friendly about this harbinger, and nothing good could arise from such a foul odor. Somehow, I know.
I didn’t bother attending school. After all, I’d just be subjected to the same smell over and over again upon returning. Who knows? Maybe the cursed wind had made its way to the school-grounds already. It was a plague; an epidemic whose origins were as esoteric as its reason to exist. But it was here, and it was now.
I take a step out this door, I’m smothered by smut. Take a step out the house, and my lungs are pulverized by scathing purity. The deadline wasn’t just on our house; it was on my life. The Child’s life. 
Like a cow to the slaughter, I have been branded and sentenced to die. Well aware of my new fate, it has become a physical affliction: a stigma drilling into my mind.
Only two paths are left for me: life and death. Both were out of my reach; out of my control. Both were placed into the hands of The Father, for a child’s life is not his own.
I was The Child, a miserable pile of flesh and blood on his left; the meat hook dangling from his plump right index finger. He crushed the pile in his hand and threw it to the ground, gripping the meat hook just as he had all those days before. And, just as a calf is separated from his doomed mother, I was left to pick up the scraps of tear-sodden memories. The Family may be forever, but the yearning for destruction is imprinted in man’s heart. We were a liability after all.
Something felt amiss. The snake had left its pit.
Through the wall, I could hear the TV blaring. The Father had barely seated himself. The raspy, laborious breathing accompanying his weak, racing heart was unlike him. Nor was his devilish gleam of satisfaction.
The Mother was resting by his side. She was eerily silent, and I knew why: How could she speak when she had a crimson grin from ear-to-ear? 
The rust-stained, blood-soaked metallic snake protruding from her mouth wasn’t her tongue. 
Somehow I knew. I knew when I heard the wedding ring slip from her finger and shatter on the floor, and I knew when I heard The Father rip the hook off The Mother’s jaw. My denial was cut short as soon as the door smashed open and The Father’s snake hissed at me.
It had once belonged to The Family. Now it belonged to The Husband.
==Belongs to Me==
The World is a wonderful place. Anybody but me will tell you that. Just the perfect place to sit down and recall yesterday’s breeze.
There may be an alternative, but who in their right mind would want that? My desire makes the choices for me.
Don’t take this from me. The world belongs to me.
Category:DFPC15
Category:Weird