The Man

"You whore, how dare you speak to other men!" he cried when he got home.
His wife tried stuttering an excuse, trying to get her husband to see the truth. That she was getting him a new suit as a surprise. He wouldn't listen. So what if the clerk was a man? She shouldn't talk, or even look at, anyone but him. He had started hitting her and she shrieked in pain. He enjoyed seeing the hand shaped bruises that he left on her skin. He didn't like hearing her screams, they made him jumpy that their neighbours would hear.
"Shut up woman!" he bellowed, fetching the crowbar that he kept in his tool-shed. He wanted to hit her harder, he wanted more pain to flow through her body. He wanted to make her bleed. He wanted to make her scream. He wanted to make her cry.
"I said stop screaming!" he roared and he smashed her head with the bar. This made her fall silent and he felt less paranoid. She stopped making noise, she stopped thrashing about, she stopped squirming. She lay still on the floor, looking peaceful although her limbs were splayed in an uncomfortable fashion. He caught the end of the crowbar on her collarbone and ripped open the skin, squirming with pleasure when he saw the amount of damage this had caused her. He heard a muffled cry as he did this and he turned. He saw his second born. He saw his daughter. She had tears of fear streaming down her face at the sight of her mother on the verge of death. Mothers are the greatest power in the world to a six-year-old girl and seeing hers powerless felt like the whole world had turned upside down for her. Her father had a crazed look in his eyes as he started advancing on her. She could smell the alcohol on his breath as he put his face right up close to hers. She winced at the familiar painful closeness of him.
"You tell anyone," he spat "and I'll come after you and kill you too so you can be with your bitch of a mother"
She flinched. Anger glittered in his eyes.
"You dare act that way in the presence of your father? I'll teach you," he raged as he brought up the crowbar in level with his shoulder. Time went slowly then for the daughter. She knew what was going to happen before it actually happened. This was not the first time this had happened to her. She closed her eyes and willed herself not to scream like last time. She knew it would be worse for her if she did. But she try as she might, she couldn't stop a small gasp of pain escape her lips. He only stopped when he looked bored and angrily stomped out into the mist, muttering bitterly.
She crawled to her mother, leaving a trail of blood pooling behind her. Her mother let out a series of sobs that was most likely an apology. She held her dying mother in her arms and wept. Both of their blood spilled onto the floor and melded into one another.
Outside, her father had stormed out into the mist and kicked their good for nothing dog. It whimpered and retreated into the safety of its kennel. He ventured deeper into the mist, not knowing where he was going.
Suddenly he stopped and looked around. What is he doing here? He doesn't know. He sighed and looked around. He hadn't been down this way since his boy died all those years ago.
The man glanced at his hands that were encrusted with blood, already drying in flakes. He could still hear her faint screams as he beat them out of her. He smiled at the memory. Oh how he hated his wife.
He realised that the last time he had come here was when he took his first child, his only son, fishing that one time. They both ended up falling in the lake and coming home grinning like mad men, fishless but happy. He smiled grimly at the memory remembering the disease that had snatched his son away not long after that day. The most important thing in the world for him had been his son and now he had nothing. He hated his wife because it turned out that she was a carrier for this disease. She was the reason for his boy's death so he had to make her suffer for it. And as for his daughter, well, she didn't have the signs or symptoms of the disease. He was jealous that she had been able to live whilst his favourite child had not.
He looked up and saw that he was knee deep in the river. He had nothing to live for now. The police would be on the way, he could hear faint sirens in the distance, coming closer. The neighbours would have heard his wife's screams and dialed 000.
He looked into the deep murky depths of the river and almost immediately they transformed into the sparkling clear waters of the joyous day of fishing. He could see a younger looking, happier version of himself and a young, healthy, bubbly boy. His breath caught in his throat and he yearned to be closer. He saw his son laugh at something his father did, fumbling in mock-disgust with the maggots they used as bait. He subconsciously took more steps toward his hallucinations.
On one level he was aware that he was going deeper into the riptide filled river full of danger, but in reality, he was too transfixed with his apparitions of the joyous summer scene that was playing out for him.
He was almost at the boat now and he reached out to touch it, as if it would bring him back to those wonderful carefree days. His eyes flicked from glassy to confused as his fingers went through the seemingly solid wood of the boat. In that instant he realised it was yet another hallucination he created. He realised this, moments too late as he felt a sharp nibble on his leg. Before he could process this, he was snatched under the water and his head disappeared, leaving nothing but small ripples.
When the police and paramedics arrived at the house, the small woman had long since taken her last breath and the child was refusing to let her go. She would not leave her mother, despite the obvious pain she suffered as she hugged her mother tighter. She has gone through more than any six-year-old should agonize. Her mother was her only source of comfort, and she did not want to let her comfort go.
Nobody ventured into the river. Nobody explored it well enough to find the broken skeleton at the bottom of the river, picked clean of its flesh.