The Undoing

Content warning: domestic abuse, violence

   Which of us, laying in bed at night searching the ceiling for answers, haven’t wished we could go back in time and make wrongs right? Angus Darkwood spent his life wondering what would have happened if he had not killed his father. Courts, family, strangers, everyone agreed that it was self defense as if their conclusions could absolve him.  As if they could take away the guilt.

   He sat in the center of a long concrete hall with his back against the wall so that he could see a black door at each end. He had been told that if he opened the door to the left he could change the past. Go back to that day and not pull the trigger. If he opened the door to his right he would exit the hall and everything would remain the same. 

   Angus had no wife, no child, no measure of success. Nothing to hold onto in the here and now. The decision had been made the moment it had been offered. 

   He opened the left door and stepped into the front yard of his family home moments before he was to pull the trigger. He was young again. His movements were so easy. Nothing ached from years of use. The summer sun bore down on him, stinging his skin. Sweat dripped from his forehead. The gun was in his hand. It felt familiar, as though fifty years hadn’t passed and he had always been that terrified, seventeen year old boy, standing there in the yard waiting to shoot his dad. 

   Muffled screams, shouting, and a baby’s cry filtered out of the house into the day. He dropped his arm, put the gun into the back waistband of his levis and walked to the front door. That familiar sound of his own heavy footsteps, hollow across the front porch and the creek in the screen door told him he was home again. 

  His dad was beating his mother about the head while she clutched her baby to her chest. Angus pulled him off of her, fell to his knees and buried deep sobs into his father’s soft, flannel shirt. Confused, he stopped swinging his fists. “What the hell you doin’, boy?” 

  “I’m...so... sorry…. daddy!” He forced his words through choking tears. A stunned silence possessed the room. “I can’t do it mama, I just can’t.” 

  “The hell’s he talkin’ ‘bout, Mara?” Clay grabbed Angus’ heaving shoulders and pushed him away. 

   “I don’t know…” Mara stood and backed away from her husband. Angus, still on his knees looked up at his dad with red, blue eyes. 

  “I love you, daddy.”  Clay took a step back, looked into his son’s eyes and turned and walked out the front door. Weak, Angus stumbled to the kitchen table and dropped into a chair. 

  “The hell’s wrong with you, Angus?” Mara came at him from the kitchen like a swarm of bees. “I told you to shoot him down if he ever went off again! I put the gun in your hands! All you had to do was pull the damn trigger.” She slapped his face and returned to the kitchen. 

  It was undone. Angus went to bed that night and slept in peace for the first time in fifty years. When the new day arrived the sun reached through the curtains and gently coaxed his eyes open.  Mama was making hotcakes and bacon in the kitchen. Humble food, a routine breakfast from his past. Things he had yearned for. He threw on clothes and dashed to the table hungry and young. His brothers and sisters sat around the table quietly eating. The scratch of forks on plates and a well known tension filled the room. 

  When Clay sat down in his chair everyone stopped eating. Everyone stopped breathing. He looked up from his plate and chaos poured from him. Wounded, victims retreated while he shoveled food into his mouth. He was a force and he had no other calling. The kids went to school but Angus sat on the couch, holding the baby. 

  In years to come that baby would grow to be a good man. A good man that would die young. He cried over him and he prayed over him until he was weak and dry. He found himself struggling to take a deep breath. Heavy thoughts took up all of his oxygen. He laid the baby down and stepped out the front door into the fresh air. 

  One step and then another and before he’d even looked up he was a mile away near the old mill. He walked all over that town reminiscing to himself. Some times he cried, some times he laughed like a fool. He walked until the sky turned purple and the street lights came on and then he headed for home. 

  The lights in the house were bright and yellow, cutting sunny squares into the evening darkness. As he approached, his younger sister burst out of the house screaming. He rushed to the door. He could hear his mother pleading through primal tears. As he stepped into the entry he could see his father holding the baby by the leg. His mother was on her knees begging him to stop. The baby had screamed so hard that he’d run out of air. A dry  screeching drained from his blue lips. 

  Angus’ mother was bleeding from a gash in her forehead. She was shaking and swaying, barely able to hold herself up. 

 He ran to his room and pulled the gun from under his mattress. By the time he returned to the living room his father was shaking the baby, screaming for him to shut up. 

  “Stop it! Stop it now!” He pointed the gun at his father, his hand trembling. When Clay saw the gun, he handed the baby to his mother who quickly ran out of the house. 

 “Gonna shoot your old man? Huh?! I’m the only reason you’re alive in the first place.” Angus wiped tears away with his sleeve. 

 “You...you just keep hurting us. You’re going to kill one of us if I don’t stop you” 

 “Yeah, you’re a real man now huh? Think you have it in you to kill your kin? Your blood?” He asked smirking. “I don’t think so.” He took three assertive steps toward his son when the first bullet struck him in the chest. He turned to run when the second and third hit him in the back. Clay crumpled to the floor, air rattled in his throat as he struggled to take a few shallow breaths.

  He looked up at his son with stunned eyes. Angus watched as life left him for the second time.  In that moment, Angus found himself back in the hall with the two doors.  He was old again. His back hurt and his heart hurt and he was bone tired. He took a deep breath and then turned and walked out of the door to the right.