Copyright © 2026 by Julien Gregg
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The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
INTRODUCTION: July 3, 2013
My head hurt, that was for sure. I opened my eyes on my fortieth birthday and sighed. The hangover was in full effect. Why did I get drunk? Well, because they’d erected a fifty-foot bronze statue of my abusive ex-stepfather in the middle of Merriment Park, where the mermaid fountain had been. Why did they do that? Well, because Hank Walsh won the lottery, the biggest payout in Illinois history in nineteen eighty-five. He used that money to help the town and improve parts of it. They called him the savior of the city. Well, the town called him that. I called him a monster. My sister and I knew exactly who and what he had been. He was dead now, and that was a small comfort in the scheme of things.
Also in nineteen eighty-five, I was in a car accident with my older brother, Richard, my identical twin, Kevin, and my little sister, April. We were struck by a drunk driver on our way home from the mall. He had hit us so hard that our beaten-up Buick had spun three times before careening across the street and slamming head-on into the light pole. The front seat was shoved into the back seat on the driver’s side. It crushed Kevin, and they say he died instantly. April broke her pelvis and nearly shattered her left hip when the dashboard was shoved into her midsection. Richard broke his neck and would become a paraplegic and die later at the age of twenty-three of pneumonia. Me? Well, I had no injuries but a long scrape down my left arm. That wasn’t serious. In one fell swoop, I had lost the most important person in the world to me. I was twelve in nineteen eighty-five and already knew the loss that devastated me.
Starting at thirteen, I wished on each birthday cake to go back in time and save us from that accident, to get Hank Walsh out of our lives, and essentially get our hateful mother out of our lives. I knew that time travel was impossible. It was a thing of science fiction novels, television shows, and movies. I wasn’t stupid, but still I wished on every cake to go back in time to save us. Who doesn’t want to go back in time at least once in their lives? I wasn’t so different. I just made the wish a lot more than others.
I got out of bed and stumbled to the shower. The pain in my head intensified when I stood up. The hot shower helped some, but the hot coffee and the pain and fever reliever I took did the trick. I started feeling more human as I ate the egg sandwich I’d prepared. When that was eaten, I looked around my kitchen and sighed. This wasn’t a high-end apartment. It was a one-bedroom apartment above a bar. The floors in most of the apartments were hardwood, and at some point, they were probably very nice. Now they had missing boards, were scuffed here and there, and scratched from moving furniture. The kitchen had linoleum on the floor that at one point had been yellow. Now it was dull and faded. It was cracked in places and coming up in one corner. The cabinets were wood, but it was so old that they looked like they would disintegrate at any time.
The table was a faded blue pressed plastic top with metal legs. They were rusted here and there. The two chairs that matched the table were blue on the seat and back, and metal on the frame. I sat in one, but the other might tip you onto the floor if you sat on it. The apartment had come furnished. A sofa in the living room had a spot where you might never have children if you sat on it. A spring might sever something that you needed. The loveseat was fine. They matched in that they used to be a floral pattern, but they were now so muted that you could barely tell that they had flowers on them. The coffee table was made of wood and is in great shape. This was one of the only things in the apartment that was mine. I had bought it at a second-hand store when I moved in.
The bed was the other thing in the apartment that was mine, and the only thing that had been bought new. I didn’t like the idea of sleeping where countless others had slept, had sex, masturbated, or whatever. So I bought a mattress and box springs from the furniture store on Vine. I even bought sheets, pillows, and a comforter set for it. Of course, I’d been working at Burger Time and making a fair amount of money. I’d been a manager. But Burger Time had closed its doors a month ago. I was between jobs at the moment. What paid the rent and utilities was the column that I wrote every week for the Janus Sun Press. Of course, the comments on my columns were negative because I railed against anything the city did involving Hank.
I suddenly remembered that I had agreed to have dinner with April, her husband Jesse Addon, and their two sons, Carl and Brad. I loved April, Carl, and Brad fiercely. I tolerated Jesse. He didn’t like me because I was gay. He had made that clear a long time ago. He rarely spoke to me but sneered and smirked at me occasionally. It would be a tense dinner party slash birthday celebration, but I would do anything for April. Even sit with a disapproving Jesse Addon at a dinner table to have dinner, and then cake and ice cream.
Jesse and April had been together since they were kids. They had a love that I envied but didn’t understand. Jesse used to be an all-right guy. Then his older brother, Jake, died in a motorcycle accident, and he changed. I didn’t know what was happening in his home life because I barely acknowledged him over the years. When he told me that he didn’t like me because I was gay, I wasn’t affected much. I had been living with Ryan Flynn, and he’d been verbally abusive for five years.
After the accident, we were living with my grandmother. My mother blamed me for breaking her and Hank up. Actually, it was the fact that he was sleeping with another woman that had destroyed her marriage. Still, she blamed me. She also blamed me for the accident as if I’d poured liquor down the driver’s throat and placed him in a car and somehow ensured that he’d hit us. My mother was a strange woman. She was full of hatred and money-hungry. Dealing with April’s injuries and Richard’s twenty-four-hour care was too much for her. She’d decided she was done with me and sent me to live with my father.
Ryan Flynn never wanted children. He wasn’t happy to suddenly have his thirteen-year-old son in the house with him either. He never laid a finger on me, but he constantly told me that I was shit and would amount to nothing. He said I was a Flynn and the Flynns were cursed. He also told me that I would be seen but not heard in his house. If I opened my mouth to say something that wasn’t important, he threatened to punch me in the mouth. I believed him. He was a drunk who said mean things and shoved me lower than low for five years.
I rarely saw April then because we went to different schools. Plus, she wasn’t in school at first because of her injuries. Our relationship suffered because of it. I didn’t know if she believed my mother's lies about me, but when I did see her, she was distant. That was my life for the five years after six years of physical abuse from my mother’s then-husband, Hank Walsh. When Hank won the lottery two weeks after the divorce was final, my mother sent me to live with my father. She said that I had robbed her of the chance to be rich. I didn’t understand that, but I was only twelve.
I turned thirteen with my father. My grandmother, Ella Flynn, baked me a birthday cake and put thirteen candles on it. She was decent to me but not warm. She didn’t know me. My mother had kept us away from the Flynn family all of our lives. I first wished to go back in time and fix all of this on that cake. She baked me a cake every year for five years. And for five years, I made my wish over the cakes she made when I blew out the candles.
Jason Osgood was the other constant in my life. He’d been the middle school social studies teacher, and then he moved to junior high school to teach history when I got there. He saw the change in me and started to invite me to his house from time to time. Ryan liked to make lewd comments about this, but I ignored him. Jason spent time with me, helped me with homework, and took an interest in my life. He became my surrogate father. I loved Jason like a father. He accepted me when I came out of the closet. Ryan was dead by then. He’d died of a brain tumor. My mother disowned me, and I had no idea what my grandparents on my mother’s side had to say about it.
At eighteen, I entered a relationship with someone I had lusted over in high school. His name was Rusty Tillman, and he was muscular from his time on the football field. He had shaggy dark blond hair and brown eyes. He always wore t-shirts with cut-off sleeves and carpenter shorts in various colors. I thought he was the hottest thing since fire. Our relationship wasn’t a normal one. He’d come around when he wanted to have sex with a guy. Most of the time, he was off doing his own thing. I was living in the apartment complex. Jason had helped me get the apartment. I had started my job at Burger Time and could just afford the apartment. Luckily, utilities were included in the rent.
Rusty eventually stopped coming around. I was sad about that, but not for long. I found another to whom I could show my affection. His name was Mike Kellerman. He was a few inches taller than me with dark hair and the greenest eyes I’d ever seen. He’d gone to high school with me, too. I just hadn’t seen much of him over the years. He was a baseball player, and though I was good at the game, I hadn’t joined the team. Ryan refused to pay for the extras that would come with it. I was sure that Jason would have gladly helped me, but I didn’t want to become a burden to him. So anyway, Mike moved in with me, and we were the picture of domesticity. My mother sneered at this and was hostile when I saw her. I was happy, though, for just a little while.
Then Mike began to tout the Hank Walsh Savior of the City bullshit. I put up with it for a year. Then I got drunk and told him exactly who Hank Walsh was and what he was. He’d called me a liar and left me a week later. That had broken my heart and told me I just didn’t have what it took to be in a relationship. So that began a series of one-night trysts and low-down thoughts about myself. April and I reconnected about the time that Mike and I got together. She didn’t like Mike, but then I didn’t like Jesse, so we agreed to disagree about the men in our lives. Of course, she was proven right when Mike left me. He also cleared out our joint checking account and left me penniless. Jason Osgood had to step in and save me so much for not becoming a burden.
I found the apartment over the bar. He had just helped me with the first month’s rent and deposit. I had been in this apartment for almost twenty years. I knew the landlord very well. He owned the bar downstairs, and I had given him buckets of money over the years for liquor and bar food. His name was Charlie Bennet. He was a heavyset man with a bald head and blue eyes. He was kind and friendly, so I was happy to know him. I haven’t spent much time in the bar these last few years. I drank alone in my apartment. I knew it was a bad thing, but I didn’t care.
Today, I needed a little something to lubricate the memories that would play out from this birthday party. I dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, stepped into my sandals, grabbed my wallet and keys, and left the apartment. I went to the little store down the block. It was one of the only two grocery stores in Janus. The other was on the highway, and it was a supermarket. I went there usually, but my car needed a new alternator and a master cylinder. I’d been saving money to pay for that, but I had about a hundred saved so far. It would take a lot more than that to get the car fixed. Jason had offered to help me, but I had already relied on him for too long.
I was thankful I didn’t have to cross Merriment Park to get to the store. It was on the same side of the park as my apartment. It was a two-story building with an apartment above it. The store itself wasn’t all that large, and the prices were high. It was within walking distance, which was helpful, so I went inside. The whole place was one long room with support posts here and there. They’d affixed strips to the posts that held little items you supposedly couldn’t live without. In truth, I had about six or seven of those things around the sink in the kitchen at home. Today I was after something different. The alcohol section of this store was small, like everything else. The booze was overpriced, but I grabbed a fifth of whiskey and a bottle of their best red wine. It happened to be April’s favorite, and I was buying it for her.
Kip Weston was behind the counter. He was a sixteen-year-old boy who looked so much like his father at his age. He had the same dark hair, squared features, prominent brow, and dark eyes as his father, Russ Weston. He had been one of the only guys in school who was decent to me. I took my items to the counter but had to scan them for Kip. He wasn’t old enough for that. It struck me as funny that I had to scan them, but he could put them in the bags and accept payment for them.
“Kip, how’s your dad?” I asked.
“In the doghouse with Mom right now, and it’s your fault,” he said with a smile. Clearly, he thought it was funny.
“What did I have to do with it?” I asked.
“Your column about the statue,” Kip said. “Dad said you made a lot of sense, but Mom gets mad at him when he disses the savior of the city.”
“Tell your dad I said hello,” I said. "It's best to wait until your mom isn’t in the room when you do, though.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Flynn,” he said.
“Kip, I’ve told you repeatedly to call me Killian,” I said with a smile.
“Yes, Mr. Flynn,” he said. “My boss would can my butt if I started using first names.”
“Got to keep up appearances, I suppose,” I said, taking my bags. “Take it easy, Kip.”
“Thank you, you do the same, Mr. Flynn,” he said with another smile. “And Happy Birthday.”
“Thank you,” I said, wondering if everyone knew it was my birthday.
My mother entered the store then, so I made a hasty exit. She didn’t see me, which was a good thing. She’d been known to cause a scene when she encountered me. I walked back to my apartment and made lunch. I put the wine in the fridge and the whiskey in the freezer. I made myself a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch with those little taco chips I liked. I had a glass of iced tea with my lunch. I wasn’t a total alcoholic. My phone rang as I put the bag of chips back on the fridge. I grabbed it.
“Hello,” I said.
“Kills, it’s April,” said my sister's voice when I answered.
“What’s up?” I asked, wondering why she’d used my childhood nickname.
“Just confirming that you’ll be here at six,” she said. “I know how you might forget to arrive.”
“No, I promised,” I said in my defense. “I’ll be there. I even got you a bottle of wine.”
“Aren’t you sweet?” she said. “We’ll have dinner and then cake and ice cream. The boys have presents for you, and so do I.”
“Jesse won’t mind?” I asked.
“Jesse will be on his best behavior, or he’ll sleep in the garage, where he spends most of his time,” she said hotly.
“Okay then,” I said with a smile.
“See you at six,” she said.
“All right,” I said. “Bye now.”
“Goodbye, Killian,” she said and hung up.
I sat and looked at the only pictures I had of April. They were all with Jesse. Some were with Brad and Carl. Some weren’t. I had only one photo of my brother Richard, and it was from when he was sixteen. I had no pictures of me and Kevin. My mother had gotten rid of them shortly after Kevin had died. I would have liked to have had some of them. I wasn’t going to dwell on the pictures, though. That brought with it memories that were best left buried.
Instead, I watched mindless television while I thought about what tonight would be like. Had she thought to invite Jason Osgood? I didn’t know, but I didn’t feel right inviting him to my sister’s house. The invitation would have to come from her. I thought about how much Jesse disliked me. And it was because I was gay. That was something I had no control over. I was born this way. Whatever. Jesse Addon was the least of my problems. I turned the television off and started on next week’s column. I talked about the potholes on Greer Street and the broken pavement all along Vine this time. I wrote that the city should handle these problems and cited other things they’d spent money on instead. I didn’t mention the statue. I proofed the column and then uploaded it. By the time I did that, it was four in the afternoon.
I took my second shower and put on my best clothes that weren’t reserved for my new job, which started Monday. I’d be a teller at the bank down the street. That is, if I hadn’t lost the job over the column about the statue. That would suck. I put on socks and black dress shoes, grabbed the bottle of wine, and headed to my sister’s. The walk was longer than I liked, but the night was mild so far. I got there without sweating too much. She answered the door with a radiant smile. Her blond hair was curled and hung loose over her shoulders. She looked younger this way. She accepted the bottle of wine and let me inside.
They were all at the table. Jesse sat at the far end. He didn’t look at me. His dark head was down as he looked at something on the table. Brad and Carl looked like him, but I loved them very much. They smiled when they saw me. I smiled back and took a seat at the table across from Jesse. He looked up and smirked at me. I ignored him. I just sat there and waited. The boys kept me up to date on what was happening in their lives. Brad was about to start his junior year at Janus Senior High School. Carl was about to begin his freshman year at Janus Middle School. I remembered that place with crystal clarity. I’d hated that school. The Senior High School hadn’t been much better for me.
“Jesse, would you help me in the kitchen?” April called from the other room.
Jesse was up and moving as soon as he heard her voice. I didn’t like Jesse, but he was head over heels in love with my sister. I couldn’t fault him for the way he loved her. They brought out the food. He carried the main dish, and she had the salad. Brad went into the kitchen and got glasses. He got wine glasses for me and his mother and regular glasses for the rest of them. April poured wine in my glass and hers while Carl put iced tea in the other glasses. We sat down and ate chicken Alfredo with garlic bread and salad. This was my favorite meal, and she knew it. I smiled at her after the first bite.
“So you start your new job on Monday?” she asked as we ate.
“At Fulsome Bank,” I said. “I’m going to be a teller.”
“Does it pay more than Burger Time?” she asked.
“Much,” I said. “It’s a good job for me. That is, if I still have it after last week’s column about the statue.”
“Why do you hate the statue so much?” Jesse asked, saying his first words to me since I arrived.
“Hank Walsh was our stepfather, which you know,” I said. “What you might not know is how abusive he was to us.”
“He kicked my left ankle and broke it when I was six,” April said. “He twisted my arm until it broke when I was eight.”
“He broke my nose when I was twelve, he broke my arm when I was nine, and he left welts and open wounds on mine and Kevin’s butts when we were eleven,” I said.
“He did worse to Richard because he was the oldest,” April said. “He chipped Killian’s tooth when he was ten for back-talking. He backhanded him.”
“Why didn’t your mom put a stop to it?” Jesse asked.
“She didn’t know,” April said, though I didn’t believe that for a second.
“How could she not know?” he asked.
“He did most of that when she wasn’t around to see it,” April said.
“That really sucks,” Jesse said. “I’m sorry that you two had to go through that.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s all in the past now, where it should stay.”
“Right,” April said.
We made it through dinner, and then Brad and Carl cleared the table and returned with saucers and forks. April and Jesse entered the kitchen to get the cake, and Carl dimmed the lights. April and Jesse came out with a big cake with forty candles. They set it in front of me, and I made my wish to go back and save all of us. Then I blew out the candles, and they sang, “Happy birthday” to me in off-key voices. The lights were brightened, and April cut the cake. She gave me a big piece with a dollop of vanilla ice cream. I sat and ate my cake as someone knocked on the front door. Jesse went to get it and came back with Jason Osgood.
“Jason,” April said. “I’m sorry you missed dinner.”
“I was having dinner with my half-brother, which is why I’m here so late,” he said.
“Nonsense, you’re not late,” she said. “You are just in time for cake and ice cream. We haven’t even started on presents yet. Have a seat.”
“Happy birthday, Killian,” Jason said as he sat beside me.
“Thanks, Jason,” I said. “How’s Max?”
“He’s good,” he said. “He’s renting an apartment in Quincy with two other guys. He’s working at a bar there.”
“Well, it’s good that he’s good,” I said. “I’ve never met the man, so I don’t know what to say about what he’s doing for work.”
“Max is a character,” Jason said with a smile. “You start that job Monday, right?”
“Yes,” I said with a smile. “Monday at eight-thirty.”
“Well then, you can finally make the money to have your car fixed,” he said. “It’s the alternator, right?”
“And the Master-Cylinder,” I said.
“Ah,” he said. “You know I would have helped you if you’d asked.”
“I know that,” I said. “But I rely on you far too much as it is. I didn’t want to put this on you, too.”
“Well, just know that I’m here if you need me,” he said as he accepted April's saucer of cake and ice cream. She then sat down with her own.
“April, you’re still at the hospital, right?” Jason asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m the charge nurse for the pediatric floor.”
“Very nice,” he said. “And Jesse, you’re still at the garage?”
“I’m the manager now,” he said with a smile. “Old Harvey retired, and they promoted me.”
“Congratulations,” Jason said. “It looks like things are looking up for the whole family.”
“You’re going to be one of my teachers this coming year,” Brad said. “History.”
“Yes,” he said. “Though I’m cutting back on my hours at the school. You might be one of the students I teach. It depends on which hour you have the class. I won’t be there after lunch.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I’m writing a novel about the Civil War,” he said. “I’m taking time off from teaching to work on it.”
“That’s awesome,” I said. “I hope it goes well for you.”
“Thanks, Killian,” he said with a grin.
“It’s time for presents,” April announced. She handed me two small boxes. “These are from Brad and Carl.”
I opened the first to find a five-by-seven picture of Brad and me at Wizard World. The letters affixed to the bottom of the frame read, “World’s Best Uncle.” I was touched. I smiled at him. He came over and hugged me. Jesse watched this with a scowl on his face. The second was a picture of me with Carl at the Zoo in St. Louis. He also had letters affixed to the bottom that said the same thing as the other photograph. I smiled at him, and he came to hug me. Jason gave me a smaller box. Inside was a duplicate of the watch that he wore. I’d told him on several occasions that I liked that watch. It was set to the correct time, so I took it out of the box and put it on my wrist. I smiled at Jason and gave him a one-armed hug.
Then April slid a larger box over to me. She had a worried expression on her pretty face. That made me hesitant to open the box, but I did. Inside were the missing pictures of me and Kevin. There were pictures of all four of us at this or that event. I looked at them in wonder. It was like she’d given Kevin back to me. She handed me an empty photo album to put the pictures in. I smiled at her, and she came and hugged me tight. She was sitting at the table when the front door opened, and our mother strolled in.
“I see you didn’t take my advice, April,” she said as she came to stand before us. “You had to throw him a party.”
“Mother, what are you doing here?” April asked.
“I’m visiting my daughter and her family,” she said. “I’m dismayed to find the scum of the Earth at your table.”
“Don’t talk about Killian that way,” April warned.
“He’s a fucking loser, April,” Mother said.
“Watch your tongue in front of my children,” Jesse said.
“It figures you’d take up for him,” she said with a sickening smile. “You’re just as much a disappointment as he was, Jesse Addon. And there's Jason Osgood. Tell me, did you finally get your dick in him? I know you've had this perverted thing for him since he was a teenager.”
“I’m going to ask you to leave,” Jesse said.
“Oh, I’ll leave when I’ve had my say,” she said. She looked at me. “I should have let Hank beat you to death.”
“You knew?” April gasped. “All this time you knew?”
“Of course I knew,” spat Mother. “I wasn’t going to leave him over it. You were just my kids. I needed the financial stability. Killian saw fit to take that away from me.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” I said. “You caught Hank cheating on you with Marla Stapleton.”
“I’d not have caught him if you hadn’t said what you said and set me to look for him,” she spat. “Then you caused the accident that killed Kevin.”
“A drunk driver hit us, Mother,” April said. “How dare you try to blame Killian for the accident. He was twelve years old. He wasn’t driving.”
“Oh, he caused it,” she said. “I’m sure of it. You just won’t let him go. You’re stuck on this family kick. You refused to see him for the filthy fucking pervert that he is.”
“That’s enough,” Jesse said. “I’m calling the police.”
“You sit your stupid ass down, Jesse Addon,” Mother snapped. “I’m not done.”
He didn’t listen. He got up and called the police. As luck would have it, a police car was patrolling near the house. They responded quickly. They were there just in time to hear my mother say, “I’ve thought about running you over in my car and solving all of my problems.”
“Ms. Walsh, I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave the premises,” said a blond-haired officer. "You will be arrested for trespassing if you don’t leave.”
“How can I trespass in my daughter’s house?” she demanded. “If you want to arrest someone, arrest Killian for being a fucking menace.”
“We’re going to place you under arrest,” said the dark-haired officer.
“If you touch me, I’ll make you sorry you’re a man,” she snapped.
“Threatening an officer isn’t a good idea,” said the blond as the dark-haired officer took out his cuffs and advanced on my mother. She slapped his face before he could put cuffs on her. Then the blond helped his partner. He subdued her while the other put handcuffs on her.
“You are under arrest for trespassing and assaulting an officer,” said the dark-haired officer. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand your rights?”
“Fuck you,” she said.
“Very good,” he said, walking her out of the house.
We all sat in stunned silence. I didn’t know what to say. Jason gave me a sad look and then patted my knee. April was crying, and Jesse was comforting her. “She knew the whole time,” April said into his shoulder. “She knew, and she let it happen. What kind of mother does that?”
“I don’t know,” Jesse said. “My mother was no better. She didn’t step in when my father was beating me.”
“We were all abused,” she said. “It’s just too much that she knew and did nothing to stop it.”
“She made it worse,” I said. “Don’t you remember how she was telling him when any of us stepped out of line while he was gone?”
“Sure, I remember that, but she went to work shortly after he came home,” she said. “She never saw what he did to us when she wasn’t there.”
“But she knew,” I said. “I’ve said it for years.”
“Killian, I’m sorry for all that I’ve said and done to you in the past,” Jesse said, looking at me. “If you get your car over here tomorrow, I’ll fix it. I have all of the parts in the garage from restoring Phillip’s car. It’s a Buick, too.”
“Thanks, Jesse,” I said. I was too upset to marvel over his change of heart.
“Why does Grandma hate Uncle Killian so much?” Carl asked his parents.
“Because she’s a hateful woman who wants nothing but money even at the expense of her children,” April said.
“Where does her money come from now?” Jesse asked.
“She has a job,” she said. “She works at the hospital in housekeeping. That is, if she still has a job after being arrested for assaulting an officer. The hospital takes that stuff seriously. She may lose her job.”
“Good,” Jesse said. “There was no call for how she talked to us. She really blames Killian for everything in her life that’s ever gone wrong?”
“You heard her,” April said. “She’s been saying that stuff since Killian was twelve. She sent him to live with our verbally abusive father. I don’t know what all went on over there. I had my own problems at the time.”
“I remember,” Jesse said.
I knew nothing about the problems that April had during that time. We’d been distant at the time. I wondered what she was talking about. It was clear that I wouldn’t get any information from her about it, though. I just sat there and stared at the table. At least Mother hadn’t noticed the box of pictures. I’d have come unglued if she’d done anything to the pictures. April looked at me with tear-filled eyes. I smiled weakly at her. She’d gone to a lot of trouble to make tonight nice for me. Mother had wrecked it all to hell.
“Look, I’m no longer in the mood for the festivities,” I said. “Jesse, I’ll get the car over here tomorrow. April, thanks for the food and gifts. Boys, I love you so much. I’m so sorry that your Grandmother chose tonight to show you who she really is. Jason, I’ve got to get out of here, so I’ll see you later.”
I stood, but so did Jason. “I’ll give you a ride,” he said.
I nodded and collected my presents. Then I followed him out the door after I’d kissed and hugged my sister. Jason said nothing as we drove across town. He was probably still fuming about what my mother had said. When we pulled alongside the bar, he turned to me and said, “I’m sorry that your mother ruined your night. You know what she said about me isn’t true, right?”
“Oh, Jason, I know,” I said. “She’s just a hateful person who has to try to make everyone as miserable as she is.”
“Well, as long as you know that my motives aren’t anything but pure where you’re concerned,” he said. “I saw your changes when you went to live with your father, and I stepped in to try to make your life better. Killian, if I had a son, I’d hope that he was at least a little like you.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” I said, smiling at him. “I feel the same way about you. He would have been like you if I could have had the perfect father. But I really need to get upstairs and purge tonight from my mind. I need some alone time. Please understand.”
“I do understand,” he said. “But Killian, there are people in this world who love you. Please don’t ever forget that.”
“I won’t,” I said as I exited the car and headed for my downstairs door.
He waited until I unlocked the door and took my boxes inside before leaving. I just wanted to be alone with my memories and drink my mother’s hateful words away. I got upstairs and turned on the lights. Then I went to the freezer and got the whiskey. I went for a glass and then thought differently. I went to the living room and spread the pictures of me and Kevin on the floor. I looked at two boys who loved to be with each other. I looked at the difference between them when Hank entered the picture. Gone were the smiles and the light in their eyes. It was replaced by fear. Before I knew it, I was crying as my mind went on an involuntary trip down memory lane.
I remembered the first night that Hank was in our lives. He was nice to us and treated us like the best kids in the world. We actually liked him so far. But all that changed when my mother married him and he moved in. He decided that the way we lived was wrong and he would change it. No more tea with dinner. No, we had to have milk. He said we’d drink milk with dinner, lunch, and breakfast. He said we’d sit at the table with everyone until the last person was finished eating. There would be no need to talk, and I got slapped across the face for the first time when I talked to Kevin about the food. That was when the dark side of Hank showed its face.
The next time anything happened was when April started yelling about not getting to watch her television show. Hank came into the room and picked her up by her pigtails. Then he slapped her across her face and turned off the television. He told us to read books and stormed out of the living room. We sat there in stunned silence. April was whimpering after having been lifted off the floor by her pigtails and slapped across the face. It was two days later that Hank had broken April’s ankle. He looked a bit sheepish when she came home with the cast on her foot and halfway up her leg. That didn’t stop him from slapping her when she cried because of the pain.
Then it was Kevin and me. He whacked our butts with his belt for talking at night. We had trouble sitting the next day, but he sent us to school. No one said anything, but I know that they noticed. No one wanted to get involved. Our grades suffered, and we got spankings for it. Our time at school was now spent in silence. The teachers tried to get us to talk, but we said very little all day long. Notes went home to my mother, but she threw them away without reading them. Hank continued to be a darkness in our lives.
It wasn’t long after the welting of our behinds that he broke Richard’s arm. I thought Mother would have something to say about this, but she didn’t. She just went to work like nothing had happened. Richard was in agony, but we’d all learned to suffer in silence from what had happened to April. Then it was Kevin who got in trouble for spilling his drink on the living room floor. Hank slapped him so hard that he fell down. I stepped in and got slapped for my trouble. Then I got shoved until I fell on top of my twin. We looked up at him in fear, and he smiled. He actually smiled.
It went on like that for years. We never knew when he would strike or why. We lived in constant fear of him. My mother lived her life without worrying a bit about her children. I knew she knew what was happening. Then she told Hank what we’d done while he was at work, and his belt would come off. We got welted again. It got to the point where we spent all of our time outside. There was a treehouse in the tree beside the house. Kevin and I spent a lot of time up there, but we didn’t talk much. Hank listened to what we said and punished us for it more times than not.
When school was in session, we had to sit at the kitchen table to do homework, and he’d stand by the sink to watch us and make sure that we didn’t talk. He’d check our homework and make us do it again if it was wrong. Be wrong again, and he will slap and call us stupid. I hated both of them by the time I was eleven years old. I wanted to get away from them. I wished someone would step in, but no one did. Then I was twelve and he broke my nose for back-talking. He’d backhanded me right across the nose. My mother had asked me if there was anything I wanted to tell her. I stupidly said yes and told her all about what Hank had been doing to us. I thought she would put a stop to it. She searched for him and found him in bed with another woman.
Of course, she divorced him for it. She told me it was my fault for telling her what Hank had been doing. That sent her in search of him and made her find him in bed with that woman. I was a twelve-year-old boy. I didn’t understand what she meant at that time. We moved in with my grandparents after that. She had no money to keep the house without Hank’s money. Then he won the lottery. Forty million dollars, the largest jackpot in the history of the Illinois Lottery. My mother was furious. She told me that it was my fault that she wasn’t rich. She stopped talking to me for a whole week. Then she told us to get out of the house and away from her. That was the night that we went to the mall. Richard hung out with his friends. Kevin, April, and I played video games in the video arcade. Richard came to get us when the mall closed at ten. We got in the Buick and headed down Main Street.
Then a car came screeching down the road behind us. It hit us once and knocked us around sideways. Then it hit us again! This time, it hit the driver’s side, and that’s when Richard’s neck was broken. The car spun three times and then, because Richard’s foot was lodged on the gas pedal, it shot straight into a telephone pole, shoving the front seat into the back seat and crushing Kevin. The dashboard was shoved into April’s midsection, breaking her pelvis and hip. We were screaming in fear, but suddenly it was deadly quiet in the car. The power lines had fallen, and the bar across the street lacked power. That’s what brought people out of the bar. When they saw the wreck, they called the authorities.
We were rushed to the hospital, and I kept trying to tell them that I was fine. I just had a cut on my right arm from the broken window. They sent me to X-ray anyway. Richard was rushed to surgery, and so was April. My twin was taken to the morgue. He was dead on arrival. My mother and Grandmother were in the waiting room. When I left the exam room, my mother gave me a cold look and said nothing. My grandmother hugged me. She told me that she was happy that I was all right. I asked about Richard and April. She said they were still in surgery. I was in shock over losing my twin. I didn’t yet know the depth of my mother’s hatred for me.
Richard was in the hospital for three months. Then he was moved to Grandma’s house. A hospital bed had been placed in the living room. I had no idea where the couch had gone. Richard was in it. April had a half-body cast, and her injuries were painful. My mother was hard-pressed to take care of Richard and deal with April. She told me to stay the fuck out of her way or I’d be sorry. I sat on the front porch and cried for the loss of my twin. It did no good to cry in front of her. She’d just tell me to dry it up and stop crying. She lost her son. That’s all she would say. We didn’t lose a brother. I didn’t lose a twin. She had lost a son.
Before I knew it, I was standing and headed for the door. I was still crying. I had the bottle of whiskey with me. I went down the stairs, out the door, and across the street to the park. I ended up in front of the statue of Hank. I stood there for a long moment before I said or did anything. Then I started yelling at the statue that I hated him and that I was glad he was dead. I screamed and screamed until my voice cracked. Then I shut up. I decided to urinate on the statue. That made me laugh. I was in such a state that I at first did not notice the lights in the sky or the fact that they shouldn’t be over the state of Illinois, much less Merriment Park. I told the statue to have a drink, and I splashed whiskey on it. Then I took a long pull, tilting my head back. That’s when I noticed the lights.
It was the Aurora Borealis. The Northern lights were in the sky above Janus, Illinois. I stood like a drunken idiot and stared up at the lights. I steadied myself by reaching out to the statue. Then I was standing in a puddle of my piss and whiskey. I looked up at the sky again and stupidly smiled at the lights. I was drunk and didn’t know what I was doing. When I saw the flash of light, I just thought it was part of the aurora. It wasn’t. It was lightning on a clear night with the Aurora Borealis in the sky. The lightning shot through the northern lights and straight to me. I was struck by lightning, and the world was ablaze with light for a moment. Then I felt like I was falling. It seemed such a long way to the ground. That was my last thought before blackness overtook my vision.
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