Jack saw him first. His eyes grew wide and terrified as he tore his mouth away from Layla’s. She protested the loss of his touch until she saw the fear etched into his eyes. With great trepidation, she craned to look behind her.
Henry stood there silently. His ruddy cheeks flushed red. His nostrils flared out as his eyes darted between his daughter and Jack.
With jerky movements, Jack scrambled to his feet. With an apologetic look towards Layla, he turned and fled into the surrounding trees. He didn’t have the heart to stand there and endure the wrath of Layla’s father. He had not yet grown into the type of young man to face his fears with grace.
Layla stood up on shaky legs and turned to face her father. With two long strides he stood before her, yelling. Spit formed at the corners of his mouth. She saw the veins in his forehead pulsate underneath the skin.
In a blur, Layla wound her hand back and struck her palm across her father’s face. He craned his neck with the momentum of her blow, but his feet remained where they were. Her slap had been weak, and unplanned. He didn’t even have a mark on his face to show for it.
Layla watched her father’s face warp into a snarl of sheer rage. With both hands, he lashed out, shoving his daughter away from him with surprising force. She watched herself stumble backwards, until she saw nothing but sky above her as her body careened toward the ground. As her body succumbed to gravity, the back of her head whacked against a tree stump—the very spot she had liked to sit at and read when she was quite little.
Layla watched in horror as her living self crashed into that stump. Its edge struck against the base of her skull, and her head bent back with the impact. The dull edge of the tree stump snapped her spinal cord with one swift movement. By the time her body lay still, she was already dead.
Her green eyes were open, and faced the sky.
When the water clouded over, and the pond returned to normal, Layla gasped for air she no longer actually needed. Had she needed to eat to sustain herself, the contents of her lunch would have been evacuated onto the grass around her. She pictured her dead, open eyes over and over again as anger seeped into her body.
Her father—the man she cherished above all others—killed her. He robbed her of a thousand more kisses, of love, and happiness and countless afternoons spent anticipating the next chapter of her life.
He deprived her of a million heartbeats.
Layla blinked and found herself standing in front of the large wooden door of the faded red barn. She hadn’t been conscious of the fact she walked there.
But the moment she stood in front of that large, red building, she knew why she was there.
With gritted teeth, Layla used both hands to pull the large door along its metal track. The sweet smell of hay came up to meet her nostrils as she walked into the barn and made for the left hand side wall.
Placed in thick metal holders were her father’s various tools. Her hand reached out and stroked the cool, brown handle of a hatchet, dangling from a hook on the wall. Slowly, she unhooked it from the wall, and felt the weight of the weapon in her hand. It was light enough where she could carry it in one hand with relative ease.
Layla turned and made her way across the sloping green lawn. She saw her father crouched in the dirt of the lettuce patch, examining one of the plants. She gripped the handle of the hatchet and drew the weapon up behind her back.
With a steady stride, she made her way across the fields, her milky white eyes never wavering from where her father was. When she was ten feet away she began to run.
She channeled all of her fury first into her legs, and then into her arms as she swung the hatchet back behind her. Henry turned to see what the commotion was. With a deep-throated growl, Layla swung her right arm wide, and the hatchet cut its way through many layers of skin and tissue into her father’s chest, jarring her body from the force.
Her chest heaved as they stood staring at each other and she released the handle. Her pale face was fixed in a scowl. Henry’s eyes were wide with shock.
“Layla,” he whispered. He bent his head to look at the hatchet jutting out from his chest and into the space between them. Red soaked through his thick woolen sweater, dying it the color of his blood as his life drained away.
When Henry continued to stare at the weapon, Layla’s anger fizzled out, as if it had been a match dropped in a goblet of water. Maybe it was the way her father’s hands shook from the trauma. Maybe it was the way he looked at her without an ounce of malice in his eyes.
With a soft groan, Henry slowly inched towards the ground. Layla followed suit, and found herself adjust his head until it rested in her lap.
“I… I…” her father whispered. All the color drained from his face.
“Ssshh,” Layla found herself saying. “Ssshhh, it’s okay… it’s all going to be okay.”
Henry’s mouth gaped open then closed again, as though he were a fish out of water. He stared up into the white pupils of his daughter and knew she discovered the truth without his needing to ask.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” Henry gasped out. His legs grew numb. His breath came out ragged and shallow, as blood pooled and poured into his lungs.
Layla stroked her father’s hair as she smiled down at him. “It’s all okay now, don’t you see? It’s all going to be okay,” she murmured.
She continued to stroke Henry’s hair as his life’s blood seeped deeper into his clothes. Layla held her father’s body firm as he twitched in place.
Nature continued on its natural cycle as Layla held her father while he died. A silky black crow cawed as it glided in circles overhead. Cumulus clouds morphed and drifted from one corner of the sky to the other as she sat there, kindly shushing her father every time he tried to speak.
“It’s alright now,” she whispered into his ear. “You took my life and now I have taken yours. Everything is going to be okay now, Daddy.”
Henry stared up at his daughter and slowly nodded his head. Tears gathered and spilled over his pale white cheeks, and Layla took the pad of her thumb and gently brushed them away.
She wasn’t sure how long they remained like that. Even after Henry’s body grew lifeless, she continued to hold him and rock him in place, until the sun dipped low on the horizon.
It took Henry Hayward approximately one week, five hours and forty-seven minutes to arrive back on his doorstep after he had died.
TEMPTRESS
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I muttered.
“I wasn’t aware I was looking at you any particular way,” Victorio replied calmly.
“Yeah, you are. You’re studying me… analyzing me… giving me that Victorio Santana once-over scrutiny. You’re wondering — is Leo in his right mind or not?”
“Not true. I think what you see on my face is concern for an old friend. I’m not judging. I’m only listening. Although, it might help if you kept your voice down.” He glanced towards the open doorway, worried probably about upsetting me too much and bringing my doc in to yell at him.
“Why? You afraid somebody might overhear us?” I voiced even louder, glaring at the nurse with her patronizing smile as she reached for my barely eaten tray of food. She whisked past us.
Victorio stroked his graying goatee while he waited for the nurse to close the door. His dark hair was shaved on the sides, with a Mohawk on top and a ponytail falling below his shoulders. He pulled off his buckskin leather jacket with a let’s get down to business attitude and laid it across one of the chairs. He grabbed another chair and pulled it up close to my bedside. He leaned forward, his dark brown eyes more troubled than when he first walked into my private hospital room.