[ FF ] - 250 Words ; 2 months Reddit Gold prize

I am awakened by a diaphragm-oppressing boom from the main house, twenty yards across the lawn. It is a sensation rather than a sound—my ears a press floor gumshoe too late with the news, biting off of the AP story—and my body clenches to keep my sanity from leaking. Also, pee. The silence that follows is iron, infallible, epochal. I recover myself, but the protestations of the floorboards over my head are not imaginary; there are shuffling footfalls seeking silence, then sharp little reports, like dak-dak-dak, quick ligneous impacts that I perceive in my mind ’ s eye as attack, riposte, parry, advantage, can almost stare up through the floor as my father maneuvers his assailant for the killing blow. I will his steady hand to victory, imbue it with every inch of my love. 
 
 Be strong, father. I am lost without you. 
 
 Yet, where the telling strike ought to land is nothing, and I can hear my father ’ s stolid grunt, the signifier of his glazing eyes demanding answers of the blade newly baptized in his blood. And now the shovels, raking aside the carefully cast-about sod. 
 
 My blood leaps in my veins. 
 
 And now the pickaxe and the hatchet, the splinter-rain, the sliver of lantern light. 
 
 And now the face, the hateful contorted face, the joyous firebrand eyes, the sought after prize attained; rough hands extend an orgy of rapacious violation, wanton abuse—I am discovered. This is the end. 
 
 My blood will tell this tale.
