Winston laid his head on the car window, allowing it to slam repeatedly against the car door. It brought him a strange ease as if the window were an old friend shuddering with him.
“Stop laughing,” his father barked.
His father smelled like alcohol, odor, and human waste. Winston could smell his breath from the distance between them, each breath sloppy and wet, the humidity of each slow air lapse increasing as they continued to drive. The nighttime darkness obscured his father’s face, the smell stinging Winston’s eyes.
So, Winston stopped laughing.
It was an effort to stop making noise, bracing himself for every leap the car made down the rocky path. He listened to the car hum and thud every time it hit the path. His father was curious, demanding so much harshly without specifying what he wanted.
Jamie started fussing in her baby seat, her face contorting as if she were about to cry. Winston prepared for her to screech, expecting an ear-piercing scream that would enrage their father further. He wanted to hit her like his father did to him when he was imperfect, yet his mother said it wasn’t good to hit babies—too fragile and squishy, like an overripe fruit.
He settled beside her, clumsily patting her head as she hiccuped and drooled.
“There, there,” he whispered as soundlessly as he could.
He remembered how his mother would do this, how it would calm the baby. Yet, she didn’t settle; instead, she began to cry as if she’d expected to get hit.
Thankfully, it hadn’t escalated into a scream yet, but Winston couldn’t help but look in his father’s direction to evaluate his response. He couldn’t glimpse his father’s eyes in the car mirror. In the darkness, his features couldn’t be seen, obscured by the nighttime. Only the lower half of his face remained as if it were a mask atop the darkness in the driver’s seat. He looked funny like that, his lips set in a deep frown, crinkled and sour.
“Shut her up!”
Jamie started screeching. It was like nails on a chalkboard, a vivid and disruptive noise cutting through the air, even above Father’s yelling. The car sped up. She screamed as if she thought they would die, which didn’t help anything, Jamie thought.
So, amidst the whining and the baby’s thrashing cries, Jamie sat up as good as he could be, sitting complacently with his hands on his knees. The car rumbles became louder, the engine coughing as if it were about to combust. At another time, he would’ve been exhilarated by the chance to fly, yet Winston felt like a football waiting to hit the ground instead.
Father didn’t seem to care; rarely did he ever. His eyes, still obscured, emanated an almost supernatural air as if he were more than a man.
It was not Winston’s place to challenge him; he was a good boy and remained quiet, listening patiently to the little fits of rage he mumbled and cursed as the car plunged down the path. The smell of booze gave Winston a headache, watering his eyes, as the motion and odor in the vehicle caused bile to bubble up in his throat.
Father never liked it when inconvenienced by Winston’s needs, so Winston remained mute.
Father was not silent like he was; Father rambled.
It was all he seemed to do; Father rambled about his mother, he rambled about Jamie, and he rambled about Winston. Father didn’t comprehend that Winston couldn’t understand a word he meant, but it seemed to make him less irate, so he nodded along, awaiting him to finish, to tire himself from his long talks about whores and bitches, and finally allow them both some quiet. But, it seemed like Father wanted to ramble all day today because no matter how much he spoke, there was always more to be mad about.
“Stop fucking crying,” he hissed. Only then did Winston realize it was directed at him.
“Okay.”
He didn’t realize it; he would’ve apologized for troubling him if he could manage the words. He tried to stop; he did his best, yet his eyes refused to cooperate. He felt like he was leaking, the water dripping down and piling at his chin, always more when he tried to wash it away. Then, as if it were inevitable, he began to hiccup. He took breaths much like desperate gasps of air as if trying to swallow a breath before falling below water level, struggling to keep his head from bobbing down. He didn’t know why he was crying.
He wasn’t like Jamie; he wasn’t a bad kid like her.
He tried his best, keeping his hiccuped breaths muffled by the palm of his hand.
Father didn’t love him anymore; Winston knew that. He was a useless, stupid kid. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever loved him at all.
Winston tried to hide his face in the darkness, ducking his face behind the chair in front of him in hopes the light wouldn’t reflect the shininess of his tears, keeping his eyes hidden to prevent his father from seeing. He was ashamed. Good kids weren’t supposed to cry.
The road was dark and winding, the car in the middle of a barren wood with twisting branches and an unpaved path. Winston couldn’t help feeling that he was going down a snake’s stomach. Dread hung in the air like Winston was waiting for a fist to come down. It was a feeling in his gut that churned his insides. This wasn’t right; something wasn’t right. The car wobbled on its wheels as Father drove faster on the rugged, narrow road, the trees out of the windows like paintings. He felt a bitter, acerbic taste in his mouth. He felt like he was going to throw up.
“…Where are we going?” he asked quietly through the tears.
Somehow, he’d managed to stabilize himself, even when the car flung him from side to side. Father looked annoyed, irritated, and burdened. He knew it was wrong of him to talk, but fear overrode his common sense.
“Why do you need to know?” Father bellowed.
The car swerved to the left, causing Winston to slam into the window full-force. He let out a yelp, the impact sending pain shooting up his shoulder. Winston felt like Mama when he’d seen her talking back to him. He’d catch peeks of their private arguments, arguments so loud that the neighbors would get concerned. He’d seen the look in her eye when he’d get upset; she’d fawn and console him, trying to deescalate his rage. Winston saw a primal, desperate emotion in her eyes, carefully stifled and repressed behind a guise of sympathy and admiration. Rarely did it ever stop her from getting hit. It was the fear of God, Father told him. She was scared to die because she knew the sins she’d committed. Winston thought that was silly. Mama was just afraid to die, like how Winston was afraid to die.
“It’s because I’m scared,” Winston admitted.
He could feel his blood run cold as Father turned to look at him, the car still running full speed as they tumbled down the road. He looked feral, in a wild rage, his eyes bugged, nearly popping out of his face. “You’re scared?” Father repeated mockingly. Winston wanted to ask him to look back at the road, but he couldn’t muster the words. “You’re such a whiny bitch. You’re just like your mother.”
Faster, now. They were going quicker. Winston could feel his back pressed into the car seat from the car’s momentum. Finally, Father looked back at the road. He never appreciated how Father talked about her like she was disposable. But he never liked being likened to her, either. She was a bad example; it was dreadful to follow in her footsteps.
“I know, I’m sorry.”
He didn’t know why he kept apologizing. He wasn’t sorry for saying he was scared. Maybe it was because he was still crying, albeit quieter now. Winston didn’t know.
“A real man is never scared,” he barked. “You’re not a real man, are you, kid?”
It was better to agree with him, to get him to calm down. “No, I’m not.”
Jamie kept wailing.
That should’ve been the end of it, yet Father continued. He loved to ramble. “A real man has balls. He has the guts to stick it to the man!” he yelled, pressing harder on the gas pedal. Winston could feel the car shudder and shake. Then, and only then, Winston realized, by the glint of the headlights, that Father was weeping. Hot, infuriated tears, not desperate or miserable, like Mama’s, but furious and fierce. “A real man can tell others what to do! A real man is always in control and calls people out when they’re a real piece of shit,” he spat.
Winston didn’t know whether being silent or talking would upset him.
Father was examining him now through the mirror, staring with a scalding look as if he were going to reach over and strangle him. “What do you fucking want? Why are you crying?!” he roared.
“I want to go to Mama!”
He’d barely realized he said it until he heard the words leave his mouth. It was as if the entire car was noiseless, a vacuum sucking up the sound. He’d expected a slurry of cusswords to spit out Father’s mouth, yet he only stared, his stiff and sharp expression relaxing into something disappointed and resentful.
“You’re leaving me too,” he mumbled drunkenly as if he weren’t surprised. “You’re just like your mother.”
The car was at full speed now. Winston didn’t know how they were alive. Maybe it was an act of God, but no kind God would allow him to have this man as a father.
“Please, stop!”
Father chuckled, the sound unstable and almost inhuman. He’d never heard him laugh like that before; hearing it from his mouth was strange. Winston watched his expression in the mirror—a face unlike anything he’d ever seen before—something so quietly manic and unhinged that Winston knew that this car ride would not end peacefully. It only then occurred to him that his expression was his way of showing desperation. Like Mama, like Winston, except he was damaging, angry, and lethal. Father was aching, and he was hurting everyone else around him. “We’ve come all this way. Do you want me to turn this car around?”
Winston was gasping for breaths of air as he cried. “No! I just want it to stop!”
Somehow, Father was suddenly enraged, and only then was he smiling, a broad smile unfit for his face, spread to his ears. Father wasn’t human. He was a monster. “I’ll turn this fucking car around—”
He spun the wheel, causing the entire car to jerk to the right. Winston couldn’t tell if it was him or Jamie screaming, yet it didn’t matter. Both of them were bad kids. There was just a moment before the crunch, like all the air came back into the car in dizzying amounts, a moment that lasted too long in his memory than in actuality. The first thing he heard was a thud, then glass breaking everywhere. He flew forward, held in place by his seatbelt, his head jerking forward and his forehead slamming into the back of the seat in front of him. Jamie’s juice bottle flew and punched him in the side, the juice getting everywhere. The only thing he could think was that Father would be mad he made a mess of himself. Then, he saw the blood. It was splattered on the windshield, spread across it. Winston shut his eyes tight, curling up, but even if he couldn’t see, he could smell the scent of copper in the air.
The car finally stopped, the alarm blaring, yet Winston couldn’t hear it all too well; the silence was too loud.
Jamie stopped screaming, and Father was finally quiet.
