4545His last few hours on this earth entail cluster seizures
and the puking up of copious amounts of blood. As he
lay upon the worn red and white tiles of that kitchen
floor, screaming and bleeding from every orifice in
his body, I stare down at him until I see the realization
dawn in his perverted eyes.I grab hold of his blood-slicked face, dig my fingers
into his cheeks, and turn his piggy eyes to mine. “Look
at me, step-daddy! Look me in the eye. Tell your
step-daughter how much you love her.”When it’s over, I run up to my room. Sattina is there in
the apple tree waiting for me, just like I knew she’d be.“It’s done,” I whisper. “He’s dead.”“Wow,” she says. “That was a lot easier than I thought it
would be. Two for the price of one.”“What? What do you mean?”“Souls—the pig’s lying on the kitchen floor and yours.”Sattina opens her mouth, flicks her serpent’s tongue at
me, and howls. She creeps along that branch toward
my bedroom window with red eyes glowing and a
fountain of maggots erupting from one of those ador-
able dimples.Sattina talks and I listen. That’s when the back door
crashes open with such force, it smashes into the
house and shatters the window. He is drunk—very
drunk, and in one of his dark rages.
“Get away from my daughter!”
He pushes tiny Sattina to the ground. Without an inkling
of fear in her enormous eyes, she glares back at him
and warns, “If you ever do that again, I’ll kill you.” Her
cute little face dimples when she adds, “And nobody
will ever find your body!”
Fear eclipses his eyes for just an instant, but he quickly
recovers and pulls back his leg to kick her. Sattina
scrambles away and into the shadowed alley. He grabs
me by my arm and drags me back into the house
where he takes his fury out first on mom and then
on me.
He works me pretty hard in the restaurant and I often
lug liquor and supplies up from the basement. That’s
where I find exactly what I’m looking for.
Wild Turkey is my step-dad’s alcohol of choice and the
kitchen pantry is well stocked. Mom isn’t a drinker. If he
entertains friends, he parties in the restaurant. The rat
poison takes a little longer than a week, but patience is
the one virtue I still own.