Cuts
I close my eyes and lay my head back in the cool moss, feet in the water. Birds chirp in the distance, reminding me that there is actually life on the planet. The slow breeze rustles through the plants around me, mimicking newspaper being pages turned at the breakfast table. I don’t know where my parents are right now; and after last night, I don’t particularly care or want to know.
I’m just fed up with them, something that occurs quite often in our household. It’s always the same—Harrison, my dad, will come home somewhere between buzzed and hammered, which then makes my mom do the same and pick up the new bottle of Jack Daniel’s that she had bought earlier that morning. It’s how it has always been, and that doesn’t bother me. Whenever it gets to be too much, I either come here to my place of peace or stay at Erik’s house for the rest of the week.
I know his parents are starting to get tired of me taking up residence in their house, but they’re always nice to me—nicer than my parents ever are. Sometimes I sneak in his window late at night, and he wakes up to see me on his bedroom floor, curled up in the fetal position. If his parents actually found out how much I was over at their house, I would be out on the street in a heartbeat. And then where would I go besides the creek where I spend so much of my time?
I hate my home; and no, it is not because of my parents. I just don’t like living there. I can’t explain why, but I would much rather go to some preppy boarding school with neckties and fancy shoes, but I know my parents won’t go for it. It’s not that they don’t want to pay for it; they just talk about how they want me around the house or some s*** like that. I’ve learned a long time ago that to live with them I have to just live with bullshit.
I hear panting in the distance, and I listen as I hear it get closer and heavier. It’s my dad—he woke up before noon (a rarity) and, for once, noticed I wasn’t at home like a good son. I’ve been coming here in the mornings for three years, and it’s really a wonder that he hasn’t figured out I’ve been going out on my own at four in the morning every day.
“Jason, what in the hell are you doing out in this shithole this early in the morning?” Even though I can’t see him yet, I can tell it’s him from the long line of swears pouring out of his tobacco encrusted mouth.
Over in the far corner, I see the bushes being viciously torn apart, as if by a hungry bear searching to feed her cubs. Except this is no bear—it’s my drunken father early in the morning, which is no sight to laugh at.

He emerges from the shrubbery, face as red as the autumn leaves that I was using as a pillow just seconds ago. He’s seen me, and I know it’s too late to run. I don’t know how in the hell he was able to find me, but now I have to duck and cover as he spews bullshit arguments all over me.

“What are you doing here?” he asks in an obvious attempt to maintain his composure, but this charade will not last long.

“I had to come here before school so that I could make some observations for one of my classes.” I am lying, and despite his crippling drunkenness, he knows.

“You lying bastard!” he howls at the top of his lungs, “I’ve done everything I could to raise you, and you think you can pull that lying-ass bullshit on me.” He seizes my arm and drags me through the icy water, both of us tripping over the rocks that cover the floor of the creek. Blood is rushing through my chest and panic courses through my veins. My father has never held me like this, and I would have preferred it to have stayed that way. He reaches into the pocket of his ragged jeans and brings out a hunting knife covered in some dried red substance that sends a chill through my bones.

I try and jerk away, but his grip is like that of a professional athlete. My father grins, his teeth covered in residue from his last meal. My left arm is free, but it’s of no use to me as I try and escape his wrath.

I run, and he is still clinging to me. I don’t know why, but this crazed man is committed to hurting me right now. My father is running behind me, trying to slow me down, a task of which he is accomplishing as I tire of dragging him behind me. And that’s when I feel the first cut in my arm, and I am immediately taken back to last year when Jackson died.
I can’t believe this is happening. He’s gone. Why me—why does my brother have to die? Why can’t it be the guy at the grocery store’s brother? I feel the blood leaking out of my veins, and I press the blade deeper into my forearm, creating what will soon be yet another scar. I don’t have an option but to press harder—it’s what I deserve for not saving my brother. If only I had known. If only I had offered to help, maybe my little brother would still be alive.
It’s just as everyone else has abundantly made clear—it’s my fault Jackson is dead. Who was the person who got a chair thrown at them when my parents found the body? It’s my fault and I know it. And that’s why I press the blade deeper. If I don’t, I’ll just be guilty. And either way, I should be guilty. I could have saved my baby brother from taking his own life, if I had only known.
I open my eyes, tears welling up—too many to keep contained. Charged with a new sense of energy, I take hold of my father’s arm with my left hand and twist it around his back, making him cry in agony as I hear a bone crack somewhere in his body. I don’t know which bone or where in the body, but I hope it hurts just as much as he has hurt his family.
I clutch his knife in my right hand and hold it in front of his neck. I can tell my father sobers up considerably quicker when there is a knife to his throat, which is a good thing. I want him to know what’s going on as I kill him. I don’t want to kill my father, but he deserves it. This man is evil, and he deserves to go as painfully as possible. But I’m not cruel, so I do it quickly and let his body fall to the ground, blood seeping into the dirty creek water and washing downstream.
I lob the knife into the trees on the other side of the creek—the woods where nobody will go for fear of copperheads and the occasional rabid animal. I have no reason to dispose of my dead father’s body, so I decide to leave it there and not to worry. He’ll be dragged off by the coyotes long before he’s even reported missing.
I walk upstream a little and lay down in the water, allowing it to cleanse me of the sweat, dirt, and blood that cake my body. The cool autumn water rushes over me, and I rest my head on the rock behind me using the red leaves to cushion the back of my head from the jagged rock. My clothes are soaked, but it’s okay—if I end up going to school today, I’ll probably jog to the house first to change clothes anyway. For some reason, arriving at school covered in blood and dirt might happen to raise just a few questions, none of which I am prepared to answer.
But for now, I’m not worried. I’m more concerned with getting this blood out from under my fingernails. I don’t know exactly whose it is, but it’s still disconcerting knowing that my dead father’s blood could be under them. But then again, he did deserve what he got, and he had it coming for quite a long while.
Maybe I will go to school—I don’t exactly have an excuse not to.