Scáth Powers

All day I sit drinking and with the all too familiar numbness of my body comes the all too familiar memories of my mind. Kelly. I did care for Kelly. She was a b***h like her mother, too stubborn and willful; but as she grew older the hard-headed ways I hated in her also made me almost love her. Maybe I did love her. Can you hate and love someone at once? I never thought I could sincerely care about anybody like I did Éadrom, but she was a part of him and maybe that's the part I loved. I never showed her I did though. I knew it wouldn't do anyone any good. She was always with the little beast and Isaiah, too busy to care for me. So I never bothered to show her. I used to slap her around, sure, I had to.

After Éadrom died and she started tending to the house, I felt like she was mine. Not my child, no, she wasn't a child any longer; neither of us thought of her as such anymore. She would sass me with her stubborn ways and I had to try and beat it out of her. She made me. She started looking more and more like a woman as she grew, so eventually after slapping her around a bit, I'd have my way with her. Sometimes she'd fight it, sometimes she'd initiate it and want it. Furthermore, sometimes she'd run off to town for a few days, the little s**t. But she would always, always come back. When she did, I'd have to teach her a lesson. And that's how our life went; she tended my house while I tended the farm, I'd come home to her dinner, get drunk and then we'd start yelling about one thing or another and end up in the bedroom. Then she'd disappear a few days, come back and it'd start all over. I was a young man in my twenties and she a girl in her teen years, I didn't see much wrong with it. Until the little beast was born. She wouldn't let me touch her after that, and frankly I didn't want to; who knows whose spawn the beast was.

Then some years went by, the girl about five, Kelly now in her twenties and me my thirties and things started up again. It was strange for me because I didn't even feel much like slapping her around during our sessions anymore. It was still rough, but not as angry. We wouldn't talk much during the day; she spent her time in the cafe while I was in the field, but at night she'd have dinner for me and more often than not she'd sleep in my room. The next day, I was ignored until dinner time again. Maybe we were both lonely, or maybe just horny-

I'm sure I don't know. Whatever it was, it was ours. That all ended with the Volstead Act.

It was only obvious how profitable my plan would be. We argued constantly about it, but her stubborn ways wouldn't give in. I'd try to beat the stubbornness out of her like I tried so many years before, with about the same results... nothing. This time though, she would fight back. She threw things, plates, cups or one time grabbing an old crowbar and lashing me good. These fights got progressively worse, until the night she died. Since she was fighting back with me, I resolved to scare-tactics. I'd threaten her, terrify her with the shotgun. We were in the basement storage of the cafe, I told her she ought to listen to me or she was going to be a grieving mother. It was the worst thing I could have said.

She came me like a lioness. She began clawing at my face, punched me in the ribs a couple times, then went for the gun. We stood there struggling and even though I was so much stronger than her, her hysteria and adrenaline made her strength incredible. Her fingers laced mine, which were next to the trigger, and she squeezed my thumb to pry my hand off. Right as she did so, my index finger was pushed to the side into the deadly lever. Our eyes were securely locked to each others, I stood staring into her grey eyes when the blast threw her back in to the wall. Bits of her were everywhere, floor, ceiling and walls. She was on my clothes, my hair, all over me. I looked at her, leaned against the wall just as my brother had been years ago. I stood there stunned for a few minutes before my stomach guided me to the corner to be sick. I realized that I must act quickly. I didn't kill her, she forced my finger, she did it... a suicide. So a suicide it would be then. I threw the gun down beside her and happened to see a newspaper on the table. Using a pen from my pocket, I simply wrote 'sorry'. And I meant it. Then, I cried. I haven't cried since and don't remember ever crying before, not even when Éadrom died.

The little beast was all that was left. Face like her mother, eyes of my brother, yet she wasn't either of them. I hate her but I need her, I need that face and I need those eyes. But now she's done something unforgivable and I have to get rid of her. I grab the bottle of whiskey and chug the half bottle that's left and finally the memories disappear, along with my consciousness.