Another Sunday

  ”I wanna sleep with you and Daddy. Can I sleep with you please? It’s Sunday, Mommy they always come when it’s Sunday,” Brady pleaded to his Mom, holding his week-old birthday-present tightly at the same time. His Grandmother had given him a big, blue teddy bear this year. Brady had a thing for stuffed toy animals, and his father joked about it at the party, wishing that the innocent playing wouldn’t turn into something disgusting when Brady hit his teens. None of the kids got the joke, which was probably for the best. The mother thought it was inappropriate but kept it to herself. She knew better.

  His mother tucked the little 5-year-old in, and gave him a loving kiss on the forehead.
  “Oh, honey,” she sighed and gently stroked his soft hair, “Don’t you remember what we talked about the other day?”

  “Yes, Mommy,” Brady said and scratched his head to stop the sudden itch, waving the big teddy bear wildly in the air.

  “So why didn’t you keep your promise? Maybe I should take Mr. Bloobloo with me, how about that?” she teased, slowly reaching towards the teddy. Brady’s little sister came up with the name and Brady had approved of it to everybody’s surprise. It was a relief for the parents. When Joy was born two years ago, Brady had immediately shown resentment towards her. The parents thought this to be normal, that he was just being jealous of her. But later Brady’s dislike escalated to the point where the parents couldn’t keep the two in the same room together. Or at least couldn’t leave Brady alone with the baby. Not after the pillow-incident. That time the Father was lucky enough to walk into the room just in time to stop his daughter from suffocating. It was also then that he lost control for the first time. Brady’s bruising was explained by a bad biking accident.

  “No, don’t take him, no!” Brady whimpered and turned over so that the teddy was caught under him.

  Mother frowned and stroke the little boy’s back to comfort him. He was so fragile and sensitive that it kept her awake at nights. But there was nothing she could do. Sometimes it felt like the sense of hopelessness was killing her.

  “It’s okay, Brady, everything’s alright, I was just... Don’t worry honey,” she calmed him down with a hug. The hugging position wasn’t easy to master, but she hoped that her touch would comfort him. She could hear Brady sobbing something, but couldn’t make anything out of it. A lone tear fell down the mother’s cheek, as she tried her best to understand. But like all the times before, she couldn’t find a reason behind it all, no comforting answer to the question why. She hated this moment, this intolerable pause when she yet again realized that there’s nothing she could do. You can wish and beg the hands of time to slow down, or even to stop, but you can never escape from the inevitable.

  “Time to go to sleep now honey, Mommy loves you very much,” she said and kissed him again.

  As she quietly walked across the room to flick the switch, she could hear her son sobbing in the dark. Tears started to burn her eyes as well. She closed the door behind her. Leaving her son alone, crying was always the hardest part of any Sunday. She glanced at her husband sitting in the living room. He sat there, a gun at his lap, a bottle of J.D. in his hand, a lonely tear falling down his cheek. She wept.

  “Lock the door and go to sleep. I’ll stand guard. Nothing gets through,” he said and waved her away. She didn’t move at first, but after regaining her composure she whispered something to herself, locked the door and left the key and then hesitantly made her way into the bathroom. He could hear her throwing up as usual, puke-sounds accompanied with desperate prayers to a God that just wouldn’t listen.

  Brady turned over and watched the light fade away as the door closed. He had wet the pillow with tears. He turned it around to have the dry side against him. He could feel his heart beating, getting faster by the second. Only a dim light from the outside gave the room some shape, some life. As Brady carefully looked around the room for any anomalies, he wished the dim light would stop reviving the room. Shadows seemed to stand still, but when he looked away he could see something move from the corner of his eye. Upon looking, they stood still again, just to move a little bit when he turned his gaze away from them.

  Best thing to do, Brady thought, was to close his eyes. He didn’t want to be afraid of the shadows when something far worse was coming. One boogieman is enough. Brady realised he was holding his breath, and exhaled loudly. Cold sweat covered him, and he felt like he was melting under the covers. But he couldn’t throw them away, it was his only protection. The clock on the wall started to sound ominous, demanding attention.

  Tic toc, tic toc. The silent gaps after every tic and toc seemed to last longer.
  Tic. Toc. Eyes still closed, Brady started counting the length of the gaps.
  Tic. “One-Mississippi, two-Mississip..” Toc.
  Tic. “One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi,” Toc.
  Tic… After that tic he could count all the way to ten without a toc.

“They are close,” Brady thought, “This always happens before they come.” Brady knew he shouldn’t open his eyes, but he couldn’t help it. He gasped and jumped back in his bed, his back hitting the headboard. The window to his room was bulging inside, and soon he noticed that the walls were too. The ceiling look like it was coming down on him, and some of his smaller toys were floating, like hanging in the air. Brady’s sheets floated too, pointing at the center of the room. His bed was tilted to the center as well, adjusting to the floor underneath it. Suddenly the tics and tocs were all clustered together in one tictoctictoctictoc-sound, like the tics and tocs lost in the emptiness found their way back out all at once. Walls and windows snapped back to their normal shape, the toys and bed fell on the floor and the sheets provided much needed cover for Brady once again. A low, growling rumble followed.

  “They’re here,” Brady sobbed and held on to Mr. Bloobloo as hard as he could.

  After the rumble the walls, the floor, everything started shaking. Brady felt like he was inside a drill of humongous magnitude. He heard a glass of water smashing against the floor. The drink his Mom always brought with her, in case he ever got thirsty at night. “No reason to wake up Mommy to get a drink.” After that thought Brady screamed for her, for Mommy. He was sure she would hear it and come to his rescue. But at the same time he knew better. She never came. Neither did Daddy.

The shaking, the noise, it all stopped as abruptly as it had started. But it wasn’t over, hadn’t even started. “Purple light is next.” And here it came. In the center of the room, a tiny bright white hole appeared. And from that hole, a tendril-like purple entity of light crawled into the room, stretching the white hole bigger and bigger as it slowly filled the room with itself.
 
  Was it alive or not, Brady didn’t care to think about. Like a snake of light it slowly came closer and closer. It illuminated the entire room like a miniature-Sun, and as the head hovered over Brady, it shifted to a pulsing orange light. Threatening as it was, Brady didn’t try to fight it, not anymore. He hold on to his teddy and whispered to the light, “Please don’t hurt me anymore.”

  After the bright rectangle of light coming from Brady’s room faded and the second wave of quakes and noise turned into a calm, Daddy stood up. For a while he just stared at the door. Every Sunday when his son shrieks out for help, he wants to go in and save him. But after all this time, months that felt like years, maybe because that’s what they were, he had given up. He can’t fight the unknown when he’s got his hands full with the familiar. Joy, Kate, Brady… Joy was perfect, so flawless that he sometimes wondered if she was his.

“Could Kate have fooled around? She’s a stranger in bed now, but was she cold back then?” He couldn’t remember. The pills, the alcohol… From the blur of memories only the painful ones stand out. He used to think he’d make a great Dad. Reality had shown otherwise. Joy’s the only one not afraid of him in the family. Not yet anyway. He shivered at the thought of standing at her door, thinking about things no good man should be thinking.

Brady surely is his and not in a good way. He is the blame for all of this misery they’re going through. The thought hit him and he fell back on the couch. Was he? Would they leave his family alone if Brady was gone? Or would they go after Joy? Why would they? When did things start to fall apart? Before or after Joy was born? He damned his memory to hell. But would ending the horror be his only shot at redemption? He finished his J.D. and threw the empty bottle in the corner. There’s no redemption from his sins. But Kate and Joy deserve better. They always did.

For hours he sat on the couch, waiting. Another bottle had gone down, accompanied with a few painkillers. But he still felt like his mind was clearer than ever. He knew what he had to do, and he could only pray that Kate understood why. Then, finally the moment arrived. The bulging walls, the quakes, the light came and went. Brady’s back.

The silent night surrounding the farm ended when two gunshots pierced through the night.