Momma's Axe

This story contains references to violence and mental health issues, and mentions of blood.

I take my mother's axe from beside the door.

It's heavy in my hands, the wood smoothed from use and yet still rough enough to cause blisters. The blade is dulled, like my reason. We’re about the same age, this axe and I. It makes sense that we would be a little worse for wear. 

I'm not used to the idea of weapons, especially in my own hands. It's not a thought that's crossed my mind until recently.

Momma would not have categorized this as a weapon. It was for chopping wood, that was all. In a fight, she would have preferred a gun.

My empty hand flies to my pocket. I find the cigarette packet in my overalls and breathe a tiny sigh of relief. I don't use them–never have–but even if I did, I wasn't going to be the one smoking tonight.

It was Momma who used to smoke.

She'd sit in that old plastic porch chair, in her overalls like mine, huffing and puffing away. Entertaining visitors with exaggerated stories narrated by a husky voice that only years of huffing and puffing on cigarettes can bring about.

I can hear it now as I stand in the driveway. Not audible words, or even individual ones. Just the sound of her voice. The cracks and creaks of it.

No one can stop me from what I am about to do. 

There is no one left.

It's sort of comforting. Mostly, though, it makes me ache in a hollow place, and when I start to feel that ache I give the ax a little toss and catch it again in my hand.

It almost falls to the ground, but I do catch it.

The leaves whisper as I shuffle over the gravel driveway. Because it is summer, they are soft and green. I can move fairly quietly.

Not that I need to. There is no one around for miles.

Momma would have stopped me from leaving. Would have made me do the dishes, probably, and then told me to get gas whenever I took the old truck to town.

Gasoline. Why didn't I think before? Here I am with a lighter and some cigarettes when I can really start a blaze with gasoline. I stand still for a minute, contemplating whether or not to grab the full can, which I know is sitting in the shed.

That's when I realize how quiet my brain is.

I listen closer, lean forward a little even though that makes no sense because my thoughts are inside my own head and not out in the woods.

Silence.

May's voice is not there to reproach me. Maybe the echoes of her tangents have finally died out forever.

Just because I can–just because they don’t come on their own, and I have the power to summon the words–I imagine what she would say if she were here.

Sammy? Where are you going?

Immediately I regret it. Now the memories of her will come flooding back. I had known it would happen. Playing with fire will get you burnt.

May, with long chestnut hair and deep dark eyes. Clacking away at her typewriter–the one she bought from a thrift store–sweeping the floor to soothe Momma's bad moods, nervously bringing up getting a boyfriend for the first time at dinner one night.

Momma's fork had clattered to the plate.

Where are you going?

Rich, I thought to myself, and I might have said it out loud, too. I had said the exact same thing the night she left– “Where are you going, May?”

“Not really sure right now. Don’t worry about me,” she had said, pulling my forehead towards herself to plant a kiss on my hair. For once, I let her, and didn’t fight.

May left.

Momma left.

I am alone.

I decide against bringing the gas. Don't really need it. When I reach the road, the darkness has grown heavier, and the stars are peeping out of the sky. A clear night.

No cars pass me by as I go along. No one drives along these roads at midnight for no reason, unless maybe they’re characters in a horror movie. A flash of headlights would be an anomaly right now.

For some reason I don't feel chilly in the evening air, and the idea of wild animals never crosses my mind. Even if it did, I doubt I would care, now that I have the axe.

Their house isn't far. Only a mile, maybe a mile and a half down the road.

Don't do this, Sammy.

As if May could ever understand anger. That must be what this is–anger. It does not light me on fire the way it used to. It courses coolly through my blood, as though it has been with me so long it is now part of me, inseparable from my existence. I don’t even notice it’s there until I identify it for what it is.

Momma wouldn't want this.

As if May could ever understand loneliness. Momma understood that, at least.

Did she die lonely? I was by her side, but was I enough?

Maybe Momma would want it. I don't know what she would have wanted. May doesn't know. 

She has no right to talk.

Doesn't matter, May. This is what I want.

You don't mean that.

You left. You don't get a say in this.

I was going to leave anyway. You don't have to do this, Sammy.

I'm doing it for you!

My impatience leaps up and I repeat it, whisper-shouting out loud. "I'm doing it for you!"

I can see it now, May's ashen face at the news of Sarah's death. The tears that fell behind closed doors. She was always afraid to cry in front of people, even Momma. Probably the one thing we had in common.

I can see it now, the police knocking on our door.

May, interrogated, because some blonde girl at school reported seeing her with Sarah that night and the news had spread like wildfire.

In a small town, people talk.

May was innocent, of course. I knew it, Momma knew it, the police knew it. The blonde had lied.

Jealousy, I think.

Lying Dahlia. Monstrous Dahlia. The gossip flew out of control and May was left to deal with the consequences of it, until finally she couldn't anymore and she left town.

As I walk in the darkness, surrounded by the looming shadows of trees and the hum of the crickets, I watch her pack the car.

I watch her kiss Momma goodbye.

I feel her lips against my hair.

I watch her disappear down the road in the station wagon, kicking up dirt as she goes.

Innocent, but exiled.

Finally I arrive at my destination. Here stands Dahlia's house, at the end of a much shorter driveway than ours, one made of real blacktop, pavement, whatever it’s called. Not gravel.

No car there, but that's the way I planned it. The Beaufords are away, visiting their oldest daughter somewhere in another state. The house is empty, its windows dark, its whitewashed porch gleaming in the moonlight.

My footsteps don’t crackle over the gravel pathway like they do at my house. I stop once I have reached the top of the porch steps, which don't creak under my weight like the ones at my house.

Figures. Everything here is new, expensive, well-kept.

The lighter flashes to life, and I watch as the little flame dances in the breeze, casting shadows across the siding of the house.

Now is the time.

I light a cigarette and resist the urge to put it to my lips, just to see what it's like. Arson is not beneath me, but for some reason I draw the line at smoking. Probably because growing up the smell made me feel sick.

Sammy.

I groan. She's back.

Please don't do this.

I drop the cigarette. All I have to do is light another, and another, and another, till the pack is empty and the wood begins to burn. I can plant them inside, too. The axe will help with that.

Sammy! No!

It is her fault. It is her fault the porch is beginning to smoke. Dahlia's fault. Momma's fault, for leaving me alone like she did.

It rises in the air, quicker than I expected. I should have started inside.

I hear Sammy screaming at me as I crash through the front door, and pieces of wood and plastic and glass go flying. 

Then, real screaming.

Audible screaming, coming from upstairs. Momma’s axe drops to the floor.

"Mom! Dad!"

No. They're not home. I planned it that way–

Smoke stings my eyes. My arms smart from splinters and bits of glass, and in the flickering light of the fire outside I can see little drops of blood trickling down my legs.

Dahlia screams again, and that is when the worst fear comes to mind, the one that makes me seize up like a statue.

I will become what May never was.

I scream, too. "No!"

The tears are falling in rivers, all of a sudden, all down my face. I race up the staircase, fumbling around looking for her. There–an open door. It’s hers. Into Dahlia's room, where she cradles herself on the floor beside her bed, dead cell phone in hand. The smoke has driven her downward. 

It spread so fast, much faster than I had ever imagined.

"Dahlia, come on. Let's get out of here!"

Her eyes are wide. She does not know who I am. 

For a moment I stare at her. This is the girl who drove May away, who caged me in an empty house. Every bitterness I held against her disintegrates and flies away like the ashes past the windows.

What have I done?

"Help me!" she begs. "Help me!"

I grab her arms and pull her off the floor. Clutching one another, we fly down the staircase, sobbing into each other's hair. Down the stairs, out the back door, around to the front again where we can see the massive wall of fire that is Dahlia's house.

I fall to my knees, burying my face in the grass. Snot mixes with dirt and I try to hide it from Dahlia, but she only stands with tear-streaked cheeks as she watches her home go up in flames.

"I'm sorry," I choke, over and over.

To May.

To Momma.

To Dahlia.

Everything blurs. Eventually red lights flash and I know the police are here, the firefighters, the ambulances. I sob to them as they patch up the cuts running down my limbs. Dahlia is silent.

And then, as the sobs have finally begun to cease and every tear has been racked from my body, there is May in the old station wagon.

She takes me in her arms and for a moment, I see myself again, like I used to be before everyone disappeared. I smell the autumn scent of her perfume, the cinnamon spice of it. She whispers in my ear, comforting words, apologies, when really I should be apologizing to her.

The anger is gone. The fire flared and died. 

I am truly empty now.

She leaves me–only briefly, just for a second–to wrap Dahlia in her embrace.

And Dahlia clings to her, just like I did.

I don't dare hope for forgiveness from her, the blonde, the one who lied. She is crying, calling her parents, explaining to them what happened without knowing how it happened.

“It was me,” I tell her. My voice is raspy.

She stares at me, blinks, and then turns away to say something to her family on the other end of the phone.

No, I don’t dare hope for forgiveness from her.

I will forgive her, though.  

I know May did a long time ago.