Family Hill

Family Hill

I am sitting with my father. He is furious. We’re at a small coffee table by the side of a wide street. It’s not a highway, but the kind of boulevard where cars pass quietly, not in a rush. His eyes are sharp, piercing, tracking every move I make. His tension fills the air, suffocating me as if it’s another entity sitting between us.

He confronts me about my messages. He reads them out loud, repeating my words like accusations. I don’t know how he got access to them—my texts, my phone calls with Luca—but here they are, thrown back in my face. His voice grows hostile, rising into a scream.

“You should die,” he roars, his face contorted with hatred.

My mind races: How does he know all of this? How did he read my conversations? I feel the walls of my privacy collapse around me. I’m too stunned to react fully. I feel exposed, violated.

We start walking down a small hill. His shouting doesn’t stop; it grows more vicious, more personal. At the bottom of the hill, there are two men standing near a small kiosk. I think they’re drunk—one of them, at least. They mimic my father, shouting back at him mockingly. It’s a cruel echo.

The shouting doesn’t end. It follows us to a playground at the foot of a snow-covered hill. He’s angrier than ever now, furious beyond reason. I don’t even know what set him off this time. His words are knives, each one meant to cut. He tells me I am worthless, that I am not the kind of son he wanted.

I climb the snow hill, desperate to get away. Higher, farther from him. He follows, his anger driving him despite his slow, heavy movements. My mother stands below, watching everything unfold, saying little. She doesn’t intervene, not really. Occasionally, she throws in a word here or there, but it’s not enough to calm him. Not enough to save me.

I kick at him as he grabs my leg, and he tumbles down the hill. He lies there for a moment, unmoving. For a brief second, I think he might be hurt, or even dead—but no, he’s faking it. I know him too well.

He gets back up. His fury burns hotter now, his hate directed solely at me. He climbs after me again. I keep moving higher, not looking back. I know I can’t let him catch me. His rage is endless, and I know if he gets his hands on me, he will hurt me.

He starts shouting to the people below, screaming that someone should come and grab me, that I deserve to die. But no one moves. No one sides with him.

I slide back down the hill, trying to escape. He follows. I know that every time I push him back, every time I defend myself, it only fuels his hatred. He is relentless, slow but unstoppable, like a machine built only to destroy.

He reaches for me again, but I shove him, harder this time. His body sinks halfway into the snow. His head is buried in it. He struggles, thrashing like a trapped animal. And for the first time, I think, Maybe it would be better if he just died.

I don’t help him. I push him deeper into the snow. His movements slow. From the bottom of the hill, no one can see him anymore. He’s hidden, swallowed by the snow.

I walk away. My steps cut diagonally across the playground. My heart pounds, not from exertion, but from what I’ve done—or maybe from what I’ve finally allowed myself to think.

After some time, I return to the playground. My mother is there. She asks me where he is. Her voice is casual, almost detached. She doesn’t seem to know. Neither do I, I claim.

Underneath a small structure in the playground, I see someone—a child, maybe 14 years old. He looks like me when I was younger, but something is wrong. He walks strangely, as if his legs are twisted. He moves awkwardly, unsteadily, like someone recovering from a stroke.

As he passes above me, I see his face clearly. It’s malformed, his upper lip split in the middle like a harelip. There’s blood, fresh and raw, like from a recent surgery.

And then I know.

It’s him. It’s my father.

He doesn’t recognize me. He doesn’t seem angry anymore, just… lost. His gaze wanders as if he’s searching for something he can’t name. He walks like a ghost of himself, detached from the world, no longer whole.

My mother is beside me, crying softly. She doesn’t need to say anything. I feel it in the air: grief, despair, and something darker. I don’t feel relief or satisfaction. Just a heavy, crushing emptiness.

The dream shifts.

I’m standing with five boys, one of them visibly deformed, just like my father. A man, someone who looks like a teacher, stands in front of us, explaining something about the boy’s condition. He tells us that the boy is actually an adult, trapped in the body of a deformed, sickly child.

The boy has shoulder-length hair, unkempt and thin. He doesn’t speak. The group begins to leave, walking toward a door draped in fabric.

I wake up.

I’m drenched in sweat, my body trembling. The dream lingers, heavy and oppressive. It feels real, too real.

I haven’t seen my father in two weeks. He’s an unstable man, prone to anger, but he’s not the violent monster he was in my dream—not anymore. Or maybe he was, and I’ve just buried those memories, just like I buried him in the snow.

The paranoia grips me. My mind spirals, wondering if something terrible might happen today, something echoing the dream. But I remind myself it’s just a dream. Just a dream.

And yet, as I sit in the dark, writing it down, it feels like more than that. It feels like a truth I’ve been running from, a reflection of the scars I carry from him, from my family. A truth I can’t escape.