dog in a well

In the green-bellied dusk of that August evening, the world tilted ever so slightly, like a chandelier unhooked from god’s ceiling. We were sitting cross-legged on the attic carpet, threadbare and freckled with ash stains. The fan above us groaned like an old man remembering the war. Dust waltzed in the air with such joyless elegance I thought, briefly, that it looked like us.

He looked between us once more and said, “it’s either her or me…”

Oh, but the way he said it. Not in the cracked timbre of desperation, no, he said it like someone ordering a drink. A tone sharpened by certainty. His lip curled like he’d already watched me die once in a dream and hadn’t been all that upset.

She blinked, and her lashes brushed her cheek like the wings of a moth meeting glass. I remembered when she used to bite her knuckles in secret, during thunderstorms. We were twins, technically. But not really. She was born second, yes, but with teeth. I came first, bleeding and blind. She chewed through the cord. Mama said that’s how she knew she’d be trouble.

That’s what mama called her, trouble, like it was a name passed down, like it came stitched into her gums. But there was nothing inherited about her. She grew inward, like a nail turned on itself. She didn’t cry when daddy left, she laughed. And when I slapped her for it, she bled and smiled and said, “finally.”

So when he said it- it’s either her or me- I didn’t flinch. She did. Barely. A flicker, like a bad frame in a film reel. His eyes were still on me, waiting. Heavy. Like bricks in a sack. She tilted her head, that little twitch she did when she was deciding whether to lie or not.

“He hits me,” she said. A lie. Maybe. She always lied like she wanted you to know it, which made it even harder to realize when she was telling the truth. He didn’t deny it. Didn’t even look surprised. But now he wanted me to choose. As if I hadn't been choosing my whole life.

I looked at the pills on the windowsill and wondered who I'd give it to. The translucent orange container on the sill caught the last bruise of sunlight, a quiet invitation.

She watched me like she always did, chin tilted, eyes half-lidded, the way a cat watches a dying thing , and he just stood there, breathing too loud, fingers twitching near his belt like some desperate sheriff about to draw; the room smelled like mildew and betrayal, and the silence was thick with all the things none of us had said for years. Her bruises that vanished too quickly, the dead dog in the well, the time he made me hold the gun while he pissed in the sink

The dead dog in the well- I think about it more than I should. It was a mutt, all ribs and wet eyes, showed up one winter with frostbitten ears and a limp that made mama wince every time she looked at it. We fed it scraps, named it Elvis because she said it sang when it howled. It followed her everywhere, even sleeping at the foot of her bed. And maybe, to something dumb and wounded, she was. But he hated it. Said it stank. Said it was diseased. Said one day he’d take it out back and “handle it.” and one morning, it was gone. She said it ran off. Swore she saw it bolt through the orchard chasing a crow. But two weeks later, the well started to stink. Sweet and slow, like something fermenting in god’s mouth. We crept out one night, flashlights shaking, and there it was- bloated and floating, its paws curled like it had tried to climb out.

My throat felt like gravel. Not metaphorical gravel, either. Real, sharp sediment choking the words back down into my gut like prisoners in solitary. And still, neither of them moved. The light has gone blue now, that sickly hour between dusk and night when everything looks like it’s been dunked underwater. The pills continued to glow on the sill. Six of them. Maybe seven. Small, circular promises. I thought of mama’s rosary beads.

He cleared his throat, a sound like a blade scraping tile. She didn’t blink. Her eyes gleamed in the dark, not with tears but with something colder, inventory.

"Well?" he said.

My hand twitched toward the window. Not toward the pills. Toward the latch. On shaky legs I rose. The window had not been opened for years it seemed, the hinge was so rusted it looked as if the frame was made of copper. In my head I grunted as I shimmied the window open. In my head I threw them both out. I grabbed my twin, light as a bird, she has hollow bones, but marrow of anger, and gave her to gravity. As she fell from the window, I knew she wouldn't even scream. He would be much more difficult. His shoulders are much too wide to fit through the window, his weight much too heavy for me to tolerate. I gave up on the plan. I turned back to look at them, still sitting cross legged on the floor.

I placed the bottle in her open palm like we used to pass dead fireflies in the dark, careful, reverent, pretending we hadn’t crushed them ourselves, her fingers curled around it without looking down, and for a second it felt like a game again, like we were seven carving gravestones from popsicle sticks while daddy howled scripture in the kitchen.

He didn’t die all at once- no, it came in pieces, like plaster peeling from a ceiling, slow and humiliating; first his hands, twitching like fish on the deck, those same hands that once held a shotgun to mama’s ribs and fed us canned peaches in July, now useless, clawing at the wallpaper like he thought the house might forgive him; his mouth went next, foaming faintly, lips twitching with half-formed curses, teeth stained from decades of whiskey and rotgut coffee, now chattering like wind-blown shutters; he tried to stand, chest heaving like an old bellows, but his knees buckled with a sickening crack, and he hit the floor hard, eyes wide, wild, looking at me- through me- with a betrayal so vast it almost looked like grief; his face turned a color I’d never seen on a person before, somewhere between bruised plum and drowning sky, and still he kept gasping, as if breath were a thing you could steal back with enough desperation; the piss came last, hot and slow, a shameful puddle spreading beneath him, and that’s when she knelt beside him- not to comfort, but to watch, eyes glowing like stained glass in the gloom, and whispered, “say hi to the dog.”