Freedom

Oh God,No, Don’t let this be…..Please no.
But he knew it was too late. 1

Only a few moments before, he saw it all in his mind. He had watched, in a state of terror, as he had pulled the trigger. But now it was real. He never wanted to kill his father. The gun was just to scare him away, to make him stop.

He couldn’t remember the moment he pulled the trigger. The last memory he had before he saw his father’s limp body laying on the ground was his father screaming as a fist flew towards the side of his nose.2

The boy’s father had come home early from work. A strong odor of whiskey was on his breath and the son knew right away something was wrong. The father began to shout profanity and threats the moment he closed the door behind him.3

The boy stood frozen in place terrified of what he knew was coming. He had to get away. He had to find a place to hide until his father sobered up.
But it was too late. He felt a hot sting to the side of his face that knocked him over. 4

In a flash he was up, ducking his father’s next blow, and ran upstairs to his father’s room.5

He quickly slipped into the closet and tried desperately to crawl behind the clothes.
He thought his father would not think to look for him there. As he shrank into the back of the closet he knocked over a worn shoe box. 6

A small gun fell to the floor and the boy quickly picked it up. A picture quickly formed in his mind of killing his father. He felt numb.
“If he finds me I’ll make him leave me alone”.7

The closet door flung open and the father screamed at his son to come out. “Leave me alone”, the boy shouted. “I didn’t do anything”. As the words came out of the boy’s mouth his father ripped through the clothes that hung between them.

Terror gripped the boy. 8

He knew that his father had him now. He was trapped. The father grabbed the boy by the hair and lifted him out of the closet. He screamed in pain but this only seemed to enrage the father further.

"Stop acting like a girl you wimp". 9

The father raised his hand back to strike, and then it happened. His father slumped to the floor. A pool of blood quickly began to form around his head. The boy couldn’t remember pulling the trigger or even hearing the shot. All he knew was that his father was dead at his feet and he had done it.10

He mindlessly sat back onto the bed behind him. He needed to think. He was confused.
A feeling of despair coupled with freedom and joy filled him. He had to make some sense of what just happened. His father was gone. 11

He tried to think back. He could not remember a time that his father hadn’t beat him.12

He looked at his arm. It was deformed. Only a few years ago, his father, in a drunken rage, had broken it against the kitchen table. The table had not been cleaned cleaned right, his father had said, just before he felt the snap of his forearm and then passed out from the severe pain. His father did not take him to the hospital to have it set, so it never had a chance to mend.13

He sat on the bed for what seemed like an eternity watching his father’s motionless form on the floor.
Slowly he began to realize that it was over. 14

His father was gone and could never come back. He was finally free.15

He had not wanted to kill his father, but now that it was finished how could he feel anything but freedom? He filled with the excitement of the moment. He got up and went downstairs to the kitchen. He would need some trash bags. The dry concrete bags piled in the corner of the garage would be used next. It kept running through his mind as he went about his job,

I’m finally free…16