I had never thought that blood would make me think of my old man.
And I had never thought on him like today.
Never had thought enough in this house, either.
On the years that it took for my family to settled into a place for more than fleeting months.
The house had space enough for our four members crew. But the terrain it was sat on was many times bigger. You could pass the kitchen and get out to the backyard—a raw concrete floor supporting a zinc ceiling with rustic iron columns, with no walls to delight your eyes with the actual backyard—the rest of our little land, stretched out into a sprawled, irregular, and infinite wild grass rug. Amidst it all, a single massive avocado tree, standing almost mythical, like you could find a door to Wonderland down there, or friend a pixie. So it was easy to ignore the gray-bricks walls bordering the land and separating us from the neighbours.
In those early days after moving in, the backyard—the small one—resembled a graveyard of discarded treasures; junk, spare vehicle parts, and remnants of unfinished construction projects.
I was eight years old. Too tall and overweighted for my age, and maybe for making friends as well. Turning that chaos into my own makeshift playground.
Right in the middle of my games—after mama kicked him out the kitchen by trying to bite something before the dinner got ready—my father used to set on a lone, unmounted wheel, amidst the clutter. Reading a newspaper or sport magazine to distract himself from the hunger, and indirectly make me company.
One day, I had caught him pretending to read, but having his eyes fixed on me instead. His subtle smile and the caressing arch of his eyebrow were warm, gentle, and became a silent language of assurance. That he were watching out for me in case I fell out of a pile of bricks, or failed climbing up a door.
As time passed, that solitary wheel turned into a makeshift chair, then replaced by a comforting hammock—a constant within the ever-changing landscape of our backyard since then.
Together, we transformed the once cluttered space into a clear floor for almost everything—For parking his car, for making a big soup on a fireplace on Sundays, to make beds to shelter our dogs. We had toil under the sun helping mom with our harvest out in the evergreen raw land, seeding company for the avocado tree.
And finally—despite some little piles of concrete brick over here and some unused construction material over there—, we made the perfect place to sit down and receive a breeze all over the spirit.
I grew a little older. He was kicked out the kitchen. I was there waiting with a snack. We shared the apéritif and a quiet moment of warmth assurance before the evening’s freeze. And repeat next day.
In those slipped moments, even when things turned bitter, and we all have our backs to the wall, and there was no enough food for dinner nor for snacks; we exchanged glances of a silent pact, an unheard whisper saying “Everything will be alright.” And whether in the swinging hammock or just sitting at the corner of the greyish, tough concrete floor, we just watch the sky’s time-lapse until dusk with an avocado or a mango in hand.
I grew even older. Left home after high school. In my absence, the house’s paint fell off, the wild glass got tall, the avocado’s tree withered, and dad’s routine remained unchanged. Maybe a beacon of stability after a had a divorce and his children far from the motherland. Those events seem to had marked deeper the routine hour for my old man.
After a whole year, I returned home with my mother. I am 18 years old now. And I witnessed by myself my father’s mastered synchronization—punctual at 18:00, with practised ease, he had nibble on a light snack while retreating to the backyard and settling into the swaying hammock, where he had lost himself in the pages of the newspaper, relishing in the dwindling sunlight. Then, like clockwork, he stands ready for dinner or a fruit.
This fateful November 20th, the scene unfolded differently.
There he was, in the backyard at precisely 18:00, but instead of the usual fare, he was tearing into fresh meat with his own teeth—meat sourced from my mother's body.
His actions seemed automatic, as if under some obscure spell, his body drenched in sweat, his gaze vacant, devoid of his usual spark.
Mom, in the other hand, was an inert mannequin only moved in response to the clumsy force applied by him. While he was down on his knees, making the required pressure into mom’s opened neck in order to get a good bite. The skin that was not covered by blood were as pale as the whitish veil over her unlighted eyes, and bright red bordered her pupil.
The sounds that accompanied his grisly feast should have been jarring, you could think—the tearing of flesh, the drip of blood—but instead, they blended seamlessly into the background, as ordinary as the chirping of birds returning to their nests, or the distant barks of neighbourhood dogs.
Barks that were turning into sharp howls passing through all over the air, glazing it, while I was feeling my pulse inside my throat and dad, as usual, was having his pre-dinner meal.
They were both death, I knew.
You could imagine something like that would overcome yourself with emotions. But I felt empty. Cold. My eyes filled themselves with tears, raising a liquid wall to blur my sight. A strange way to get ripped off the picture when I was unable to move. Same sounds. That rusty smell from blood, intense, hurting my nose.
I was immersed into a horrific version of sleep paralysis till I woke up out of my senses. Picking up one of the concretes bricks, smashing my old man’s head over and over, shattering the eerie calm of that twilight hour eclipsed by blood.
One hit.
Takedown.
He is in the grass, trying to reach me.
Another hit.
Felt something cracking.
Another.
Another. Another. Another. Another. Another…
My hand was numb by all the strength I putted into holding a brick three time wider than my palm. Tears made my eyes burn, and I kept it that way. So I was blind of what just happened, of what I just did.
The blood on my hands was cold.
The surrenders remained the sounds of the wind, the sound of the birds, the sound of leaves falling… but the howls in the distance were a lugubrious symphony. They felt like a warning, a painful warning. Maybe they were the apocalypse trumpets announcing this hell. Maybe that is the reason I just poured all tears closing my eyes tight, and screamed out loud over and over, joining the howls, succumbing to pain.
But as the sun fell, I heard more screams.
People howling along the dogs.
People falling down straight into the same nightmare.