Unlocking The Vision

Unlocking the Vision

By Travis Weston

Michael rested his elbow on the mop. It’d taken him over an hour to clean up all the blood. You’d think he’d be accustomed to the smell by now, but he wasn’t. He didn’t think he’d ever be. Truthfully he didn’t want to be. The smell reminded him of the reason he did this.

His young son, his wife, and his aging father needed his help. He cleaned this butcher shop as a night job to get a little extra on the side. By day he was a teacher, by night a janitor. He led a coin life. A double sided life that he wasn’t capable of controlling.

It was only 3 months before when he first started at the butcher shop. His father’s medical bills were putting Michael into debt, and his family could hardly get by on what they had to survive on. Candice, Michael’s wife, couldn’t get a job for medical reasons, and it was up to Michael to support his small, but needy, family.

Teacher by day, janitor by night—he sometimes joked to himself that he was like a super hero with a secret identity. Other days, when the stress was piling up, he contemplated locking himself into the meat locker and freezing to death. But then he thought of his young son. Tyler Bradley Parlove, who was only a year old, couldn’t take care of himself. With his mother sick he needed his father.

She needed her husband.

His father needed his son.

Michael didn’t need anyone. He ate very little, slept for an hour at most a night, and worked 12 to 16 hour days. He loved his family, but they were suffering. Every night he’d clean that butcher shop, smell that blood, and hope it would be the last time. But the next night it’s start all over again.

2 months after he started working at the butcher shop is when he first started having the dreams. He dreamt he was in his classroom, only there was beef sitting at the desks, and blood covered the floors. He’d mop the blood up, then wake up.

It was driving him mad. He smelled it everywhere—in his clothes, his hair, on his hands. He couldn’t get rid of it. Blood poured from the faucet when he turned it on. He showered in it, drank it in his coffee. It fell from the sky on rainy days, covering his car with a crimson paint job.

Then the visions stopped bothering him. He started enjoying his private horror movie. The visions came everyday, but only he could see them. It was something only he had; something that his wife’s illness, his father’s senility, and his son’s infantilism couldn’t steal from him.

Until the visions stopped coming.

He was crushed, the water was clear; his coffee tasted like coffee, his car was white. Roses didn’t smell like blood, everything was normal. He didn’t like it. Those were his and his alone. After he got home that night he fell into the chair he had in the living room to think. His wife sat across the room on the couch.

Then, from the darkness of his bedroom, Tyler began to cry. Candice looked at Michael, obviously begging him to get the baby. Without even thinking he stood and walked into the baby’s room. Tyler looked at him and smiled. Slowly his toothless mouth began filling with blood, air bubbles popping in it as he giggled. The blood poured from his lips.

Michael saw this and cringed. Damn it! That’s why he didn’t have his visions. Tyler stole them from him. They were Michael’s! Tyler couldn’t have them. Lightly, he grasped Tyler by the throat and watched as the air bubbles stopped coming to the top. Suddenly the blood began draining back into Tyler’s mouth. Michael wouldn’t allow it. He turned the baby over and watched as the last of the blood dripped onto the floor. Then suddenly it disappeared.

He hardly remembered what he had done. Other then the obvious lack of breathing and the blue tint creeping into Tyler’s face, you would think he was asleep. But, before his mind caught back up with him, he had an idea that the others had stolen his visions too. He quietly walked towards the living room, stopping only to grab a butcher knife from the kitchen.

“How’s Tyler?” Candice asked him.

Without a word he lashed the blade out and cut his wife’s throat. He laughed as he saw he was right. She’d obviously stolen part of his vision. Blood poured from her like it had been bottled inside for a long time.

Last was his father. The man pretended to be senile, but Michael knew he probably had the most of the vision. He’d always taken things away from Michael that he enjoyed.

His father was asleep as he entered the room. Michael shoved the knife into his stomach and ripped his intestines out. Michael had been right. More blood came from his father then the other two combined, but, it didn’t amount to his entire vision.

Then it struck him. The rest of the vision was locked inside him. Laughing hysterically he walked out to the garage. There, sitting on his workbench, was the key to unlocking the visions.

He laid his head on the table, and flipped the switch. Slowly he pulled it towards him, until he could feel the air on his neck. With one final tug the table saw dug into his throat. Then, before all went black, he saw it. Everything was red.

He’d unlocked the final vision. 1