The Bonnie To My Clyde

Azrael was giddy as he walked to Kalma’s home. She had called telling him she has a surprise for him and to come quickly. As he pranced to her place he couldn’t help but speculate what the surprise could be. Kalma had always been different from everyone he had courted. Azrael felt a deep connection with her; she was his Eureka moment he often thought. He showed her his skeletons and she danced with them. He couldn’t help the grin that grew as he thought of what she had in store.

As Azrael entered through her door, he caught a whiff of something that stopped him dead in his tracks emotions bubbled inside of him, rising above to cloud his vision and judgment until all of a sudden he wasn’t there anymore.

He was 17 years old and back in his room in his father’s house. Everything the same as he left it, from His white bare room to his ever neatly dressed bed. He heard his father shouting, his booming voice echoing through the walls. His father had come back home drunk gain and was assaulting his mum with word-shaped daggers which would soon morph into slaps and punches. Tonight was different; he could feel the anger seeping into his bloodstream as he walked downstairs to the scene of the ongoing crime scene. He was chanting “I am the change”, with each time spoke it added more purpose to his step until he was behind him.

“You good for nothing bitch” his father sneered at his mum. She was backed into the corner; eyes open but yet unseeing, like she was safely away in the corner of her mind. She called it her Eden, filled with everything she loved. “There”, I remember her once telling me as a way to reassure me, “I feel no pain”. It didn’t help though but he had let her go ahead thinking that it did, until now. His helplessness mocked him and his cowardice praised him. With those two combined his temerity arose. He stalked towards his father, whose back was to him, and had no knowledge of what was to proceed. His mum saw though, she locked eyes with his in a plea. He looked away, and with eyes fixed on this bull of a father. He gave him a very huge shove. His father was a large man who often drunk his weight, he went down like in a plomp.

Puberty had treated Azrael pretty well - he was no longer the scrawny little kid. He packed some muscles and was taller than his dad. It was his duty to protect his mum he thought, as he looked at his dad on the floor, still drunk. Pathetic he refused to believe this was the man supposed to be the provider, his role model.

  He swallowed the bile rose to his throat, his natural reaction whenever he saw the failure of a man. He watched his struggle to get up, attempting mind-muscle coordination. Funny how that was never a problem when he decided to throw closed or open fists at her drained form. Azrael walked to his father’s fallen figure. He felt a surge of power and supremacy standing over his father, he couldn’t help but think this was how it was always supposed to be — he in charge. 

With his slender leg on his dad’s back, he pushed him back into the ground and squatted to look into the face of his father. He looked nothing like his father, which he often thanked the Greater One for. His dad loved to say that he was once handsome until he got tricked by a witch, his mum, who then continued to suck the joy out of his life and only feed him regrets. 

“What do you think you are doing boy?”, he asked with his speech slurred.

Azrael tried but failed at muffling his laughter. Was he still trying to act like he was the one in charge? What a comedy. Behind his look of confusion stood bewilderment and a hint of panic? Whatever it was it made Azrael bolder. Time to end all this, with that thought he reached behind his pants and pulled out the surprise ending. And from his father’s gasp, he inferred that the surprise worked. 

        “Where did you get that boy?”, his father whispered no longer looking at him but at the powerful decider in his son’s hand.

Azrael rolled his eyes and clenched his jaw, lips bending into a frown. Boy? That was no way to talk to someone whose life was in your hands. Maybe he didn’t understand who was running the show. He uncorked his gun and used the barrel to raise his father’s chin. And with an evil glint in his eye, he asked “Wanna give this another try boy?".

        “Please, please don’t do this son. I love you and I’m sorry for everything”, his father wailed. The sight of a gun had slapped him sober.

        “Try again” Azrael seethed.

        “It was the devil” his father lamented, desperate to find common ground for reasoning with his son. He was struggling to understand the situation and his body was not cooperating, between the trembling, dizziness, and the fact that he could not hear anything past the rapid beating of his heart. Somewhere inside he hoped that this was all a dream, a side effect of excessive alcohol consumption maybe? All he 100% knew was that he wanted this situation to be over.

Azrael however loved this. He didn’t understand why he felt this way —like he had a golden ticket—it was a high he had never fathomed. He felt alive! That was the day Azrael realized fear had a smell: a mixture of urine, sweat, tears, and slight vomit. Oddly enough he fed off of it but this was taking too long and frankly, he was getting hungry and he would be leaving soon. Thus, reluctantly he stood back up, aimed the gun at father dearest, just like how he practiced. 

“Ditto. Save a seat for me” he cried out to his father’s whimpering form as he released the trigger. Then there was silence as he stood back to admire his handiwork.

He gave out a huge sigh; he should have drawn it out instead of going for the kill. He already missed his father’s cries. He purposed in his heart to do better and prolong it the next time he rids the world of an incompetent father. The sound of a horn from outside broke his review. It was time to go. Without sparing a glance at his mum he walked out and never bothering to look back at his mother, and the silent tears that rolled down her sunken cheeks as she mourned the departure of her two loves. She, to cope, retreated to her Eden and never came out.

So, currently, as Azrael stood by Kalma’s side, in her home, one arm wrapped around her waist and another around the grip of the gun, staring down at yet another urine-stained, sweat-drenched, and vomit dripping excuse of a father whom his love had gotten for him as a surprise, he couldn’t help but affirm she was the Bonnie to his Clyde.