Ander - Part 2: Subchapter 30
30
Sarah hugged her child closer, feeling his warmth against her cheek. She couldn't believe that anyone would ever want to hurt an innocent little baby, but the heavy sound of her father's footsteps pounding through the hall filled her with dread.
"Sarah!" he cried, jerking open doors and slamming them shut again at random. "Laura! Where are you two!? Answer me, dammit!"
"Listen to me, Sarah," Mother said. "No matter what happens, you have to stay strong, and you have to stay calm. I'll try and talk to him, but if... if things go wrong... I want you to -"
The bedroom door suddenly flew open and slammed against the wall hard enough to bounce all the way back again, but was stopped by the outstretched hand of her father, standing in the doorway like death personified, reeking of cheap wine and pipeweed.
"So it finally happened..." he muttered, his speech slurred. "You finally popped the bastard right out..."
"Markus," Mother said, approaching him with her hands clasped together as if in prayer. "Sarah's had a very difficult night. We should give her some time to -"
"Get out of my way."
"Wha-?"
Sarah watched in horror as her father cruelly pushed her mother aside with a clumsy, drunken blow to the head, sending her staggering against the far wall.
"Mother!"
She slowly sunk down to the floor, so much like Sarah did on the dark day she first felt her baby move inside her.
"My gods... There's blood everywhere..." Father said, looking down at the crimson lake on the bed. He didn't sound concerned, he sounded disgusted. "All over my sheets... all over my blankets... all over my floors!" He rounded on his daughter, cowering against the headboard with her cub in her arms. "Did it hurt, girl? I hope it did! That's what you get for shaming your family like this!" He stuck his hand into the pool of blood, letting it soak deep into his fur. He raised it, wet and dripping, and showed his bloody palm to her with his fingers splayed out. "Pain! And lots of it!"
Sarah watched as he came closer, holding his hand out, drenched in her own blood, listened as it dripped to the floor in a steady rhythm.
She could feel her baby push and squirm against her neck and chest, growing restless, as if he could sense what was going on. He mewled softly, his breath so sweet in contrast to the filthy miasma that hung around her father.
"Is that him? Is that the little bastard?"
"Father, please..."
"Give him to me. Now."
"No!" Sarah said.
"I said give him to me!" Father reached out for him, grabbing his poor little arm.
"Father, noo!" Sarah tried to hold on, but she was so weak, so tired... she just couldn't. Her father cruelly ripped her baby out of her arms with no concern, as if he was plucking a stubborn weed from the earth, the white blanket drifting down to the floor like a dead leaf.
He held the tiny babe up to his face, squinting at it with his glassy, drunken eyes while it wailed and jerked in his grasp.
Listening to her baby cry like that... by the gods, it sounded like he was screaming!
Father pulled his lips back in a sneer of disgust, looking from his daughter to his grandchild as if unable to decide which offended him more.
"This thing..." he said. "This isn't a Fox."
"Please don't hold him like that, Father! You're hurting him!"
"So that cock and bull story about a Wolf... it's true, isn't it?" He had started to sway slightly, whether out of shock or drunkenness was impossible to tell. If he fell while holding her baby like that...
"Please give him back, Father," Sarah said, holding out her arms. "I beg of you!"
"No!" Father growled, taking a step back. "Do you know what this is, Sarah!? This is a monster! This is bad blood! And I will not have bad blood in my house!"
"What are you -?" The words caught in her throat as she watched her father grab hold of her baby's neck, as if he was choking her along with her child.
"Bad blood will out!" he said, slowly tightening his fingers until her baby's cries shrunk down to a pathetic mewling.
"Father, noooo!"
"One day you will thank me for this, Sarah," he said, the flames from the candles reflected in his eyes like the fires of hell. "You will thank me for saving your way of life..."
Without warning, a loop of brown leather suddenly passed over his head and settled against his windpipe, the ends of the belt held in the hands of none other than Laura, his wife of twenty-four years.
"If you don't stop choking that infant right this second," she said, "then gods help me I will do the same to you!"
Father's grip loosened and the baby started to cry again, but his hand still rested upon his neck. "You forget your place, Laura," he said, a wicked smile forming on his face. He grabbed the infant by the ankle and flipped him upside-down, the baby's cries mirrored by Sarah's own scream of panic. "If I want to rid the world of this half-breed abomination, all I need to do is drop him on his head. Whether by choice or by your hand, it doesn't matter. What will you do then, Laura? Will you choke the life out of me anyway? Will you squeeze and squeeze until you hear my throat cave in? I don't think you will. I've known you almost a decade and a half, and you wouldn't kill a mouse."
Sarah watched this stalemate in horror; her mother threatening to kill her father, her father threatening to kill his grandchild, her son.
This isn't what family is supposed to be!
"Well, Laura? What will you do?"
This was bad. Mother was bluffing, and everyone knew it. Sarah, her father, even Laura herself. That much was obvious just from the pained expression on her face.
"I..."
"Yes?" That wicked, awful smile on her father's face, as if he knew he had already won.
"I..." Mother had her eyes shut tight, and she was biting down on her lip to keep it from trembling. That did nothing to steady her hands, though, and even though Father couldn't see what was going on behind him, there's no way he couldn't notice the belt shake and quiver against his throat. "I... I c-"
"I'll do it!" Sarah screamed before she even knew she intended to speak. The meaning of her words caught her by surprise almost as much as the ferocity with which she said it. Both her mother and her father stared at her, awestruck, their murderous dance of death frozen in time.
"Sarah?" Mother said, looking at her as if she had gone crazy. "What are you saying?"
"Please... I don't want to see you kill each other over my mistake..." she wept, the tears flowing from her eyes without restriction. "I just... I just want it all to end, but not this way. Please, Father, will you let me do it? So I can say goodbye? I'm so sorry for all this."
Sarah could see her father look at her through the blurry haze of her tears, mixed with the golden glow from the candles like shimmering blades across her vision. She wiped her eyes. Even the simple of act of lifting her arm sapped her of energy and awoke the pain in her muscles, but with her eyes momentarily clear she could see that her father was deep in thought, or at least as deep as the wine would allow.
"You want to do it, you say?" He still held her baby upside-down, indifferent to its cries, and every careless movement would cause her heart to jump in her chest. "You know what, girl? You're absolutely right. This is your mess! You should be the one to clean it up!"
Mother was shocked by the very idea. "Markus! You can't possibly expect her to do something like that? You can't possibly be so cruel!"
"It's her wish, Laura. I say we let her have it. It's just as you always say: what's done is done. But this time... it can be undone..."
"He's right, Mother." Sarah said. "One way or another, this life will be undone, and I would rather it be undone by my hand than that of someone who cares nothing for me or my child."
"But, Sarah!"
"Please, Mother. Release him."
She hesitated, no doubt wrestling with her internal moral compass, but in the end the wishes of her family and years of obedience to her husband proved too strong. She let go of the belt and it slithered over Markus's arms and down to the floor in useless coils.
"You and I are going to have a serious talk when this is all over," Father said over his shoulder. Mother backed away, looking down at the floor, her shoulders slumped in defeat.
"Now, give him back," Sarah said, holding her arms out once again.
Father approached her bedside one agonizingly slow step at a time, still holding her baby by the ankle, his wails of pain driving her mad. This display was so blatant, so deliberate, Sarah had to fight every natural instinct telling her to jump up and make a wild grab for her baby.
But, eventually, he did make it, and Sarah found herself looking up at the creature she once considered a father, holding the precious child he considered a monster.
"You were wrong about me not caring for you, Sarah," he said, handing the crying little Wolf over to his mother. "I love you more than anything in this house. That is why things have to be this way. If I let you destroy your life, what kind of a father would I be?"
Sarah eagerly took hold of her baby and quickly turned him right side up, cradling him in her arms, rocking him in her clumsy, new mother's way. She wanted nothing more than to hug him close, to tell him that everything would be all right, that she wouldn't let anything bad happen to him, but she couldn't, not with her father looming over them like that.
"Well?" he said. "What are you waiting for? Do it! Let's have done with this!"
"I want to say goodbye to him first," she said, hoping to the gods that her face showed a pained, yet resolved expression, hoping to the gods that it would be convincing.
"So say your goodbye. I won't stop you."
"She wants to be alone, Markus," Mother said.
"No! I want to see her do it! We all know nothing good ever comes of this girl when left to her own devices!"
"Markus, please!"
"You listen to me, Sarah," Father said, leaning in close. She could smell every glass of wine and every pouch of pipeweed on his breath, threatening to make her gag. "You either smother the little freak or you break his neck. I don't care which, but either way I'm not leaving this spot until I watch you do it, and make sure you do it right!"
Over his shoulder, Sarah could see her Mother turn her back on the whole sordid affair, burying her face in her handkerchief. A part of her wanted to do just that, imitate her mother and break down completely in the face of such horror, but now was not the time to show weakness of any kind. If she wanted her baby to live long enough to see his first sunrise, she would have to do the exact opposite. It's just like her mother warned her. She had to stay strong, and she had to stay calm.
"Father," she said, looking him dead in the eye, "if you spoke the truth about loving me more than anything in this house, you will grant me this time with my son. As much as you claim to love me, your daughter, that is how much I have come to love my baby, even though I have been with him less than an hour. Please, all I want is five minutes alone with him, to tell him I love him, and to tell him I'm sorry. Is that really so much to ask?"
"Hmm..." Father was considering it, she could practically see the gears whirring behind his bleary eyes. "I've trusted you before, Sarah. And look where it's gotten us. I don't think I can trust you again."
"For gods' sake Markus!" Mother yelled. "Look at her! Just look at her! Unless the gods themselves decide to spirit them away, they're not going anywhere!"
Father looked back at the red mess seeping into the blankets, growing thick and tacky. This seemed to convince him. He stood up straight, swayed slightly, and nodded his head. "Fine, but we'll be right outside the door. And five minutes is all you'll get. If the babe is still crying after that, I'm coming in to do the deed myself. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Father," Sarah said, and even though it pained her more than the birth, she added, "thank you."
Mother stood by the door, holding it open. "Come on, Markus. Let's leave them be. I want no more part in this."
"Five minutes, girl," Father reminded her as he backed out through the doorway. "Five minutes. Be grateful."
As Sarah watched her mother close the door, their eyes met for the briefest of moments, and in that moment, the slightest motion, barely perceptible...
A nod.
The door closed with a soft thud and a click, but with no footsteps to follow.
Her parents were standing perfectly still, just outside the door, listening... waiting...
Waiting for her to kill her newborn child.
Sarah looked down at the baby crying in her arms, so innocent.
She has never felt more alone in her entire life.
If you enjoy my story, please help keep my face un-mauled by irritable ostriches by dropping me a donation. Thank you! ^_^
Paypal: [email protected]
Donation Progress $24.34 / $100 (Unlock Sunday update)
First: https://www.sofurry.com/view/517235
Previous: https://www.sofurry.com/view/573392
Next: https://www.sofurry.com/view/575396
How and Why: The Story behind "Ander" (Journal): https://www.sofurry.com/view/517234
Special thanks go out to the following furs for helping me keep this project afloat with their generous donations. I couldn't do it without your support.
- Some random guy whose fursona name I don't know.
- PyrePup
- And PyrePup again! :)
Thank you! You guys are the best! ^_^