by Brandon Applegate
(400 words)
Gunsmoke smell. His failures written on the wall in blood and brain matter.
Jesus Christ.
The shotgun still propped in his bleeding mouth. His eyes are white, glassy.
What is she supposed to tell the kids? Daddy got fed up? Couldn’t handle his life so he ended it? She’d tried to be patient while he worked through—whatever it was. He was distant, locked in his office more often than not. She thought he’d leave. A mid-life crisis. This is messier.
She tries to feel it. Tries to push out tears. Sobs that feel like lies. She isn’t sad he’s dead; she’s pissed. Of course he’d make some dramatic decision, leave her to clean it up.
“Fuck you.”
The gore-soaked note lays on the carpet. She picks it up and skims. Doesn’t feel loved, the weight of responsibility is too much. Same old shit. Tell the kids this is their fault.
Just like him to blame his inadequacy on the ones it’ll hurt most.
What is she going to tell them?
Nothing.
Police ask questions, snap photos, strut importantly. They cart him off on a stretcher like there’s still some chance, leave her with sheets of paper that don’t help. The silence in their wake is oppressive.
She locks the door to his office. If she can’t see the stains, she can pretend they’re not there.
The front door bangs open. Running footsteps gallop on the entryway tile.
“Mom, we’re home!” The big one announces. Then they clatter off to their rooms to play.
They’ll notice when he doesn’t come home.
She pours wine and sits, listens to the children shouting, thumping, sprinting. Are they pirates? Knights? Cops? She can’t tell, but they’re loud enough to shake the windows.
She loses herself in the racket of her thoughts.
The door is open again. This time, the footsteps are slow, heavy.
She knows those boots, that weight. He’s right on time.
Then she remembers.
Tell the kids this is their fault.
The footsteps lumber toward their rooms.
“Daddy’s home!” One of them shouts through the commotion.
God, no. It’s him. It can’t be. But she can hear him breathing.
She’s up, sprinting. But she’s much too far away. She only sees the ruined back of his skull as the door shuts him in with their babies.
She expects screams. Silence is so much worse.
END
Brandon Applegate lives and writes in a parched suburban hellscape near Austin, Texas, with his wife and two daughters who have so far failed to eat him. His debut collection, “Those We Left Behind: And Other Sacrifices” is available now on Amazon and bapplegate.com. More work appears in “Shredded” (Cursed Morsels Press), “Theater Phantasmagoria” (Night Terror Novels), and Dark Recesses Press. He is the EIC at Hungry Shadow Press, where he edits whatever weird anthologies he can think of.