The Third Parent

by Elias Witherow

  Tommy’s hands curled into fists. “Never.”

  “You weren’t meant for this earth,” Rez said, pointing at Tommy. As he moved, his form groaned beneath a symphony of whistles and horns. “You’re a mistake, a terrible, horrible mistake. A dream in a world that can no longer host you.”

  Tommy’s eyes flared in the night, a reflection of his creator’s. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “That’s not for you to decide, six-six-three-five-eight.”

  “STOP CALLING ME THAT!” Tommy roared suddenly, his body quivering with rage.

  “But that is your name. That is what you are. Just a number at the end of a long line of mistakes.”

  “Leave me!” Tommy yelled, “go back to your lonely wanderings, Rez! I belong here, I was MADE to be here!”

  “No,” Rez echoed, a chorus of creaking horns, “you don’t belong here. You don’t belong anywhere. It’s time for the dream to die.”

  Rez turned his head, a chirping of soft whistles and hums as he did so. “Are you ready, Jack?”

  The hand holding the knife was shaking uncontrollably, but I nodded.

  “Take your blade and slice open the casing on my back.”

  Tommy took a step forward, suddenly on edge. “What are you doing!?”

  “Jack! Do it now!” Rez yelled in my ears.

  Rain slapped my skin with cold fingers and I blinked back dripping moisture. My limbs felt frozen, impaled in place. I knew what I needed to do, screamed for my body to obey, but the sight of Rez shook me to the bone.

  “Don’t think, just do it!” Rez screamed.

  Tommy began to run toward Rez, understanding illuminating his face. His jaw was clenched and I saw a terrible anger in his eyes, a dark hatred.

  “JACK!”

  I jerked into a sprint, rediscovering my ability to move again. Rez was standing with his back to me and I honed in on the glowing tube of neon blue that ran up his spine. Thunder crashed overhead, my breath blew wet, and my lungs heaved with urgency. My feet splashed across the soaked earth and I brought my knife up. Rez towered before me.

  I reached him seconds before Tommy and as I plunged the blade down into Rez, I saw something like fear ripple across Tommy’s face, a blast of disbelieving shock.

  The knife punctured the long tube and electric blue liquid sprayed from the incision, coating my face. I screamed, terrified, shaking, and ran the blade down the length of Rez’s back, opening up the entirety of the casing. The glowing liquid gushed down his body and the night trembled as Rez howled, a cacophony of deafening horns and shrieking whistles. He fell to his knees and I saw the light from his eyes flutter and blink.

  Tommy skid to a halt before us, quivering beneath the rain. “NO!”

  I stepped away from Rez, dropping the knife. My hands were soaked in Rez’s fluids and I watched as the blue ooze poured out of him.

  Rez gasped in my headphones, his voice weak, “Finish this, Jack.”

  “I’m sorry,” I gasped and swayed. “I’m so sorry…”

  Rez sputtered violently, his body going into spasms, machinery failing, wires and cables smoking.

  “I’m going to miss you,” Rez whispered, fading. “I always considered you…a friend…my only…friend…in this whole universe…this cold…dark…cosmos…”

  “WHAT DID YOU DO!?” Tommy shrieked, losing himself as a burning, furious light entered his eyes.

  With the last of his strength, Rez looked up at Tommy and whispered, “Ending the dream…”

  And then the light vanished from his eyes and he slumped forward, dead.

  A sudden force of energy exploded around us, a cyclone of rain and wind, a torrential, unrelenting pulse that blinded me in a detonation of sound and insistent violence. The night trembled beneath the pressure, an expanding bubble of rising change.

  Tommy clutched his head and began to scream. My ears were momentarily deafened as a final horn erupted from Rez, the dying release of a desperate being. The world shook and I raised my hands to shield my eyes from the stinging rain and wind. Through the chaos I saw Tommy bent over, hands like claws around his skull, howling as his figure began to shimmer. I blinked and wiped my eyes, hair whipping across my face. This was it, the moment I had been waiting for. I stooped down and retrieved my knife, hardening myself.

  Kill him.

  As I approached, the storm raging around us, I saw Tommy’s image begin to blink and shift. Suddenly there were three of him, then seven, all screaming and holding their heads. In the same instant, they were gone, leaving just one, and I raised my knife into the sky, poised for the murderous blow.

  “You deserve so much worse,” I whispered, staring at the writhing figure before me, “but this will have to do, you malicious bastard.”

  I brought the blade down, a streak of cold steel in the blackness of night. A split second before the tip punctured Tommy’s head, everything changed.

  The wind died instantly.

  Silence swarmed my ears like the world had been put on mute.

  My arm froze, locked in place.

  And Tommy was looking directly at me, whole, unwavering and smiling.

  I struggled to free my arm from his grip, eyes going wide with horror, “No…”

  Tommy stood, his hand like iron around my wrist. “Hehehehe…”

  And then all sound rushed back down around me like a nuclear warhead. And with the noise came a towering, crushing, overwhelming fear. A dread birthed from the darkest hells. A mountain of impossibility and power that I knew would destroy me.

  And that mountain was Tommy Taffy.

  His eyes roared with life and he leaned into me, voice light but deadly. “Oh, Jack…you shouldn’t have done that.”

  Before I could respond, Tommy lifted and threw me through the air with tremendous force. I went soaring, a missile in the night, a scream caught in my throat. I slammed my eyes shut and covered my head just as I exploded through the front window of the house. A dozen teeth sliced me as glass shattered and rained across my body. In the next instant, my breath was crushed from my lungs as I slammed into the far wall. I dropped to the floor and gasped, my body spiking with shock and excruciating pain. I clawed at the ground, wheezing, eyes bulging as every point in my body howled with agony. Stars danced before my eyes and a dizziness coursed through my head like an angry wind.

  The first thought to puncture through the pain was, Oh shit…

  Rain blew into the living room; the window was a black hole filled with glistening fangs. I frantically tried to regain my senses, desperately tried to rebuild my broken, panicked mind. Moaning, I placed my hands under me and pushed myself up, turning to stare out into the night.

  I saw Tommy smiling from the field, his eyes two pinpricks of shining blue across a midnight canvas.

  He started to walk toward the house, a bolt of lightning illuminating his figure with haunting clarity.

  Get up, GET UP! My mind screamed. Blood oozed from between my tattered clothes as I managed to stand, slumping heavily against the wall. I shakily wiped my face, drool stringing from my lips. I sucked in thick lungfuls of air, my beaten body in sharp protest. I lazily searched the ground for my knife but the rain and darkness swallowed it from sight.

  Hide! HIDE!

  I turned and half fell, catching myself at the last second. Glass clinked beneath my feet and the dark house creaked beneath the storm. Thunder rolled overhead and I knew I had precious seconds before Tommy was upon me again.

  I limped into the hallway, heart racing, mind crippled with pain. Had Rez’s death meant nothing? Had Tommy even been affected?

  Gritting my teeth, I hobbled down the hallway and slid into the bathroom, pressing myself against the wall. I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath, lungs burning. The image…that image I had seen…the flash of multiple Tommies, all mirrored and in pain as Rez exhaled his final breath…that had to mean something…had he truly been reduced to a singularity? One final version clinging to this reality in a last dit
ch effort to reclaim his place among us?

  I heard the front door explode inward as Tommy booted it open. If he found me like this, weaponless and hurt, I was dead. I knew this. I needed something…anything…some kind of advantage or edge…

  I hugged the wall tighter and felt something digging into my back. Confused, delirious, I suddenly remembered the hammer. I quickly reached behind me and pulled it from my waistband, relieved it miraculously hadn’t been lost in the violence.

  I heard a floorboard creak and I held my breath. Tommy’s voice cooed to me from the hallway.

  “Come on out, Jack…” he whispered. “We need to make this right.”

  He was getting closer to the bathroom door and I gripped the hammer, knuckles white against the handle. I needed to cripple him somehow…I needed the shadows…I needed the darkness…

  Suddenly, Tommy’s footsteps ceased.

  I strained in the black, trying to pick up any sound at all, but all I heard was my pulse roaring in my ears. It blasted through my skull and I felt panic squirming through my chest. Where had he gone? Where the hell had he gone!?

  I pressed my ear against the wall, blood staining the wood, and closed my eyes. Faintly, ever so faintly, I could hear something…rubbing…against the other side. My eyes snapped open.

  He’s up against the wall, just like you are.

  Swallowing hard, I stepped back. I hefted the hammer in my hand and placed the other against the door frame.

  It’s now or never…DO IT!

  I clenched my teeth and swung my body out into the hallway, hammer rocketing toward where I suspected Tommy’s head was.

  As I rotated in the dark, Tommy came into view, like a predator caught in a beam of light. I saw his eyes go wide a split second before the hammer crunched into his forehead. The blow traveled up my arm and I stumbled back and was rewarded as Tommy screamed. He stumbled forward, one hand swatting blindly at me, the other pressed against his head.

  A fire howled through me.

  I could hurt him.

  I swung the hammer a second time and caught him underneath the jaw. He grunted in shocked pain and fell against the wall. His eyes rolled wildly in his head and I stepped into another attack. This time I took him in the stomach, the impact doubling him over as the wind was forced from his lungs. My own body shook in protest, but I had given in to the adrenaline.

  I slammed my knee into his face as hard as I could. He gasped in pain, his hands groping for me as I advanced. I grabbed him by the throat and stood him up against the wall. He was contorted with surprised, horrible pain. Our eyes met and I snarled, twisting the hammer in my hand.

  Surging with a sudden, boiling hatred, I swung at his face and buried the hammer’s teeth into his eye. Roaring, holding his head in place, I gutted his socket. His eyeball erupted and gushed from the cavity, a vomiting mess of white puss and squirting yellow.

  Tommy screamed so loudly it made my head hurt. He shoved me back hard and I thudded against the opposite wall. He clutched his ruined eye, hands shaking, desperately trying to stem the flow of searing agony.

  I burned with righteous fury as I watched him, readying myself for another assault.

  “That’s what pain feels like,” I growled, my voice like raging coals.

  I stepped forward raising the hammer again but froze as Tommy’s head whipped up, his good eye radiating light.

  And it blazed with the deepest, darkest rage I had ever seen.

  Before I knew it, Tommy had me by the throat, pinning me against the wall. He gripped one hand over mine, staying another blow from the hammer. Grunting, I tried to push him away but the hallway shook as Tommy brought his forehead smashing into my nose.

  I felt the remnants of his ruined eye splash into my face a split second before my nose broke. Blood exploded down my face and I cried out in sharp pain. A crippling dizziness took me and I tried to steady myself, images spinning.

  I turned my head away as Tommy headbutted me again, this time the impact ringing across my temple. My body sagged against the wall as I felt the strength leave me. I exhaled a blast of air in stinging pain as my legs gave out.

  But Tommy held me upright and I felt the grip around my hand tighten.

  “Oh, you’ve been bad, Jack,” Tommy snarled, his good eye blindingly bright.

  He wrapped his hand around my fingers and pried them off the hammer. I heard it clatter to the floor and knew I was losing. Tommy slammed my hand up against the wall next to my head and bent three of my fingers back.

  I screamed, a throat rattling cry, as he broke them, the snapping bones audible in my ears. Tommy leaned into me, breath hissing between his teeth, and then he twisted my broken fingers.

  I felt blood erupt from the broken skin as Tommy kept twisting.

  With a sickening, wet crunch he ripped my fingers off, a violent, cracking sound echoing through me in the form of a scream. Darkness pressed in on me as Tommy stepped back, tossing the torn fingers to the ground. I held my hand up to my face, howling, wavering, and saw a trio of gurgling stumps.

  Without giving me a moment to recover, Tommy grabbed me by the hair and slugged me in the stomach. I dropped to the floor, pain spiking through my body in waves of burning fire. Everything began to dim as I collapsed, my breath a wet heave of desperation.

  Tommy began to drag me down the hall and I felt myself being thrown again. I landed with a thud, head bouncing off the floor amid a pool of glass shards.

  I turned over on my back, the ceiling a spinning, a blurring sky of shadow. Tommy loomed over me; he was a nightmare, half his face soaked in his own gory fluids. His empty eye socket was a cavern of darkness that revolted what little sense I still possessed.

  “You don’t get to win,” Tommy panted, his fury electrifying the air. “Not back then…not now.”

  I coughed, a nail in my chest, voice a heaving dribble of air. “You don’t…deserve…us…Tommy…”

  Tommy knelt down on top of me, mouth twisted into a snarl. His good eye blazed with blue fire and I saw him sweep his hand across the floor, collecting shards of glass in his palm.

  “And you don’t deserve your son,” Tommy spat, raising his hand. I could do nothing but close my eyes as he slapped me across the face. A wall of pain plowed into me. The bits of glass he had been holding tore through my skin like churned earth. I felt the world go dark as my head was cracked sideways, the momentum from the blow stunning me into deep shock.

  I could feel pieces of glass sticking to my face as Tommy rolled my head back so I was forced to look up at him. Warmth slithered across my cheek and trickled into my mouth, tasting like copper.

  “My time here isn’t over,” Tommy growled, “not with so much still to fix.” He raised a hand and ran it across his empty socket, wincing. “You took this from me. Tell me, Jack, how am I supposed to watch your son grow up now?” He gripped my head between his hands, voice changing. “Say…how about you give me one of yours?”

  Realization shattered through the pain as Tommy reached for my left eye. I tried to bat him away, a sudden surge of energy and frantic horror at what was about to happen. Tommy’s face was grim and horribly dark as his thumb found my socket.

  I arched my back, trying to buck him off, but it was no use. I felt Tommy’s thumb sink into the side of my eye and then he was ripping it out in an explosion of mind-numbing pain that shook my entire body. I thrashed and screamed until my throat went raw, a howling, terrified tremor of disbelieving torment.

  Tommy held up my dislocated eye as lightning flashed from outside. Blood dripped from his fingers as he turned it over to examine it. He looked down at me as blood poured from my vacant socket and he smiled.

  “An eye for an eye, Jack. Not a lesson I encourage…but appropriate nonetheless.”

  And then he slid my stolen eye into his empty socket. It squished around the burping yellow ooze and settled horribly into place.

  Tommy cocked his head at me, the dead eye rolling to stare at nothing.


  “Hehehehe…”

  I rolled my head to the side, a broken, bleeding, fading mess of pain and torture. Every single fiber of my being screamed with searing anguish. The darkness pressed in closer and I begged to be enveloped by it. I couldn’t beat this monster before me. I couldn’t stop him. He was too strong…too relentlessly violent…what chance did I have? How could I kill something born from a nightmare?

  And then the image of Mason filled my head.

  I pictured how peaceful he looked while he slept. The gentle rise and fall of his chest. The untainted purity and innocence. An innocence that had been robbed from me, from my childhood. The same purity that had been ripped away from my family.

  From Mom…

  From Dad…

  …from Katie.

  And the same torment would befall Mason…

  No…my mind groaned, you can’t let Tommy have him. Not again. Not another one…

  I vainly groped along the ground, my ruined hand clinking over the glass. Tommy towered over me, a monster of impossible power. My cheek rolled across the floor as my head fell, my lips pressing against the shattered pieces of the window.

  In the darkness, I extended my tongue and bit down on a long shard, bringing it into my mouth. I closed my lips over it and pressed it against the inside of my cheek, ignoring the pain. I turned back to Tommy.

  Mason…

  With every beat of my heart.

  Mason…

  Mason…

  I moaned and Tommy turned his eye towards me, smiling, “What’s that, Jack? Something you’d like to say?”

  I muttered again, dimly summoning the deepest reserves of my strength.

  Tommy leaned down, “I didn’t quite catch that, champ,” he gloated.

  “Fuck you, Tommy,” I croaked, bringing the glass shard between my teeth like the tip of a knife.

  Surging with sudden ferocity, I jerked my head up and buried the sliver of glass into his remaining eye. I dug my mouth into his face and jammed the shard in as deep as I could.

  Tommy’s reaction was immediate and immensely gratifying. He flew backward and tumbled off of me, screaming in shocked pain. As he fell, I saw my own eye roll out of his head and plop to the floor.