Headlights

(This story contains allusions to/instances of suicidality, child abuse, and mental illness)

There they were, still, hours later. 

Headlights, pouring into the living room through the shut blinds. Strips of high beams that illuminated select sections of the wall, scattered and dispersed by the slits they ran through, but lined up as though they wished to catch someone passing through their aim. I was still frozen in the passway between the living room and the stairs, staring at the front door. The area I lived in was seedy, but not quite so bold. No one would just pull up to the house, stay out there plotting something for so long. They had to be here for a reason. But still, nothing. No doors opening. The engine was still on. It was just… running. Running in my driveway. 

I couldn’t even remember how long I’d been standing there. Watching. Waiting. For something, anything.

Incessantly. If someone were to walk into my home, they would learn the hard way that they should greet before entry. I… sometimes I left the door unlocked, I think. Sometimes I lock it, usually when I go to bed, but otherwise, it’s open. I have too many people come into or out of the house for me to really deal with all that shuttering every time someone leaves.

My grandkids, coming to do chores that I couldn’t really do anymore. Dishes were hard on my hands. The water was too hot to run too long while still being able to actually clean. And all the motion- forget it. I’d throw out all the china I had and get paper plates if I didn’t think my kids would want it. 

My son would come over once every few days, help me read my mail. My daughter would come less frequently, but she just had less to do. Clean the gutters, trim the lawn, the dirty work around that I just couldn’t hack anymore. She still came by the house, but she hadn’t done any work in a few months. It had been my son. I was glad he finally learned how to do it, but I’ll be the first to admit, I was more than a little peeved at the fact that she didn’t tell me she needed to stop.

My son. I should call him, let him know what’s going on. Maybe he’d come by. Stop for a chat that wasn’t just complaining about not being able to buy a damn house. He could deal with the mortgage I was about to take on if he needed one that bad.

I lowered the rifle from the door. A Remington, a gun from my father. This baby had splattered enough Nazis to fill a swimming pool, and came back without a scuff on her. He had snuck it with him when he returned home and from there, it was ours. I’d used this gun so much that it was basically a third arm. Never had an issue, and even if it did, I’d torn her apart and put her back together so many times I knew her better than the manufacturers did. 

I had both my kids do the same. They learned how to shoot when they learned how to walk, and they learned gun safety when they learned how to crawl. Through mud, through hell, through high water, through three divorces and 7 children, she was as much a member of this family as I was.

She had seen quite some use, too. She wasn’t just for show. Even after her and my old man retired, and long after he took a dirt nap under the oak tree in the backyard, she knew she had to pull her weight. She’d brought home enough dinner to start a restaurant, and saved me enough on insurance to boot. It ain’t matter who was pokin’ around the windows at night. They weren’t too fond of Remy pointed right at ‘em through the glass.

Jacob knew his way around her like a bed buddy, but he wasn’t keen on keeping her too close. Miriam, though? Now there was someone born and bred to be a straight shooter. The motto when I took Rem out the gun safe was two-fold:

“Never put your finger on the trigger unless you’re going to shoot.”

“If you aim down the barrel, there’d better be a target.”

And she damn straight followed. She could put Rem back together with her eyes closed. She only lifted her up when she had something she had in mind. And once she put it down, there wasn’t enough of it left to have in mind anymore. Targets, dinner, and once, when she was here at night, a home invader- but after that, her and Rem were never as close. 

I understood, though. I got it. I still get it. Something like that is terrifying, and if you’re not made of the stuff for it, it’ll put out any fire you could’ve ever had for arms. 

But she was never the same for herself either. She still came over, still helped clean, still helped me do what I had to do. But she never spoke to me anymore. Only ever responded. Sometimes you had to touch her to get her attention, but when you did, she jumped like a ghost ran through her, and recently, she started to just leave when I pushed. I was gonna give it to her when the time was right. But now, I guess I’ll give it to…

I stopped for a moment at the top of the stairs.

Why am I up here?

…I don’t remember.

But I heard the engine stop.

The lights were off, now. I hobbled down the steps as best I could, and posted just shy of the wall. If the door opened, they wouldn’t see me, but unfortunately, I couldn’t see them either. But the second they stepped out from the door, that would change.

___________________________________________

“Yeah, no, I’m aware. You think you gotta tell me about sundowning, Ariel? I’ve been dealing with him for three years, and he refuses to let me get him help. A damn nursing home is out of the question. I can’t afford it anyway! I’d have to sell the house. And if I did that, I’d be down a home and a father, cause he’d have a conniption strong enough to lock his heart out.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know, Doc. I’m working on it. I heard the socializing helps, so I’m over here as much as I can be. I send the kids here after school to help out and talk to him, but Ayla has been… ugh.”

He sighed, rubbing his face. He could taste the frustration sour his mouth just at the thought.

“I think he thinks she’s Miriam. He’s fucking losing it, Ariel. She doesn’t wanna go over there any more. He keeps pressuring her with the gun.”

The gun. 

Rem, the old man called it.

He hated that gun. 

It was always there. Somewhere in the house, in every room they were in. 

Dinner, it sat propped up against his father’s chair, leaning on the arm rest. When they went out, it was always in the trunk. Backyard, they would be shooting. Targets, cans, bottles, glass, poor animals that were unfortunate enough to wander into one of his traps and needed to be put out of their misery. Family time at the table used to just be him and Miriam, lit by an oil lantern, disassembling the gun, then reassembling, then starting again, over, and over, and over, and over again. Eventually, he got sick of it. Told the old man that if he saw the gun again, he’d use it on whoever he felt like the next time he picked it up, and that he wasn’t sure who it would be between the two of them.

So that left Miriam saddled with it. 

She dealt with it. She dealt with it for a long time. A decade longer, living with him, practically worshipping the rifle by the fireplace. Yet still, it was too much. 

He remembered visiting one day a few years ago, only to find that Miriam had… he wasn’t sure. Based on a conversation they’d had a few nights before, it was a coin toss as to whether she had slipped off the roof while re-shingling, or had simply said a prayer and stepped right off. But there she was, on the cold dirt. And when his father came out, it wasn’t Miriam’s name that came out. It was his grand-daughter’s.

During the panic, they were both inside the living room, waiting for an ambulance, for police, paramedics, the fire department, anyone, anything who could deal with what had transpired. And there, laying right in front of a burning log, still shaded like it was about to be swallowed up into the pits of Sheol, was Rem.

“Yeah, I’m still here. Listen, Ari, I gotta go. But I’m gonna try to talk to him about it today. We’re supposed to work something out with the mortgage tonight, but he talks about it like he’s planning on buying the house.”

“No, not a second mortgage. He said something a few weeks ago about thinking of turning it into a home. And I know he’s the only person who lived here that felt comfortable, so it’s not that.”

“Alright. I’m gonna let you go. I’ve been out here for a few minutes, and I don’t wanna leave my car on. I’ve been having battery issues. I was gonna get a replacement on the way here, but I figured I’d just do it on the way back. I’ve got the time.”

He closed the car door, staring up at his father’s room. The light was on, and so was the light to the bathroom. His father wouldn’t be caught dead leaving on a light he didn’t need up until a few years ago. Nowadays, though? He could walk with his eyes closed through every room with the amount of lanterns, candles, lights, whatever he could turn on and off in the house that were active at any given moment. There was no room for the dark in there. 

Everywhere except the closet where he put Rem.

Total, pitch-black darkness. 

When he used to misbehave, his father would lock him in that closet. In the beginning, when he first refused to shoot the rifle, he would trap him in there, and tell him stories. Stories from his own father, and his father before him. Stories about being trapped in the dark. Stories of being in tunnels or trenches so tight you couldn’t move your arms. Stories from their family abroad, about children who used to have to hide in crawlspaces or attics or between walls and insulation, that if they so much as exhaled too hard they would give themselves away. He would usually be drunk, sometimes high, ranting and raving. And inevitably, after their mother left, the rants would turn to Rem.

“Rem was a liberator,” he would say, the words slurring out of his mouth like melted slush, cold and liquid, seeping into the air in the closet, making it hard to breathe, making him shiver as they crawled up his spine and into his head. “Rem was freedom.” 

But he knew. Rem was a prison.

He walked up to the porch.

___________________________________________

The door opened, and I lowered the rifle.

A few seconds later, a face I didn’t recognize stepped through the door. They looked angry as all hell, though.

So I pulled the trigger.