Or Else

by Joe Hart

Just another mystery of what was happening to him, another quirk of the disease slowly lowering blinds and turning off lights in the corridors of his mind.

How many of those did we have left? It’s what I’d taken to wondering whenever he called me son or said my name. How many more times would I be Andy? How long before I became a stranger with a familiar face? Then just a stranger.

Knowing a secret was good. At least I’d always seen it that way. A secret was safety. A secret was trust.

I pulled open the storm door. Something drifted down and landed at my feet. A note.

Do as I say or else.

David was a lot of things, but he wasn’t subtle.

Trust in the Lord, she’d say, and you’ll never want for anything.

She was too good for this world, and that’s why she was no longer in it.

She said when she was eight, her father had taken away her night-light. It was in the shape of Minnie Mouse, and the day her dad declared she was old enough to sleep without it was the first day she felt the beginnings of anxiety.

The abuse was verbal, emotional, only bruising on the inside.

No matter how much sensory input I registered, nothing felt real.

he made us a pot of coffee, even though I was sure if I had one more sip, I’d lift off like a rocket.

She’d taken to stopping in regularly after our mother’s life-ending stroke.

I was really going to miss her.

David Barren’s business partner was dead.

Two things registered as I stepped into the kitchen. One, I identified the sound not as the flump of laundry going around in the dryer but of my back door’s weather seal locking into place. And two, someone was sitting in a chair at the table. Their shadowed face turned slowly toward me, and there was the click of a hammer cocking. “Have a seat, Andy.”

Instead I thought of what Winston Churchill had supposedly once said. If you’re going through hell, keep going.

I clicked the mouse, and a warm breath brushed the back of my neck. Even as my stomach curdled, I registered the quiet hum of the furnace in the basement, the heating vent directly behind me.

What you love could kill you.

It wasn’t just subconscious mental alliteration. Somewhere, I’d known and had been screaming at myself to wake up and see. To think.

He squirmed, shoving himself closer to the wall, and at that moment if he’d tried standing, I would’ve beaten him to death. This man. This monster.

“No, it was me,” a soft voice said from my left.

My eyes went down to his waist, to the microphone pack he wore there for Mass, to the little green light glowing beneath his gown. It must’ve gotten turned on during our initial scuffle.

They always say what you’re trying to find is in the last place you look.

He could keep that secret if he wanted. We all hid one thing or another in the end.