Zombiekill by Russ Watts

almost wanted him to say the words, those four little words that he longed to express yet lacked the courage to say out loud.
    Kyler looked down at the crowbar in his hand like it was an alien object. “I’ll tell you where it went wrong: your last year you got involved with that Jackson boy. He let you think you would be happy here. He let you settle, let you think this was it, that you had achieved what you needed to; I think you fell in love with your first fuck and let him convince you that the outside world was your enemy. Stay in Peterborough, right? Settle down and have lots of babies? That about right?”
    “Jesus, Dad, just quit talking like that. Jackson wasn’t the problem.” Charlie was still crying, and all the while her father kept talking she was aware that her mother was behind her. As usual she was stuck between them, unable to break free of the shackles they had thrown around her since she was a child. Why did it have to be this way? Why did everything have to be so hard?
    “No, of course not,” said Kyler. “You never could see anything wrong with him, could you? But he got into your head. Somehow he took away all that ambition, all that energy and drive you had, and turned you into this wet lettuce, devoid of any drive or character.”
    Charlie sighed and wiped her tears with the back of her hand. It was hard listening to him when he got like this. As much as she put it down to the drink, sometimes the truth came out, she knew that. And he hadn’t started drinking today—yet—so she couldn’t blame what he said on the liquor. She looked at him unable to recognize the loving father he had been when she was growing up. He was older and slower, but he was also bitter and angry. Why did he have to take it out on her? If she hadn’t stuck around, he would probably have drunk himself into an early grave. She helped out around the house and looked after him, so why did he despise her so much? She had no response to his diatribe and vitriol. He could spout it all day long, it made no difference. It didn’t change the fact that her mother was dead. Charlie had tried reasoning with him before, yet anything she said only seemed to make him angrier.
    “Look at you. Even now when I’m insulting you you’ve got nothing to say. It’s pathetic, Charlie.” Kyler glanced at the fence, at his dead wife, and then back to Charlie with a startling clarity. He straightened his back as he looked at her. “Do you know what? Do you know what I think?”
    Here it comes. Those four magic words every daughter wants to hear from her father. Charlie stared at him, her hands curled up into tight balls as if she was about to enter a boxing ring, her hands gripping the pockets of her jeans as if she was clinging onto the edge of the world.
    “Do you want to know?” he asked.
    Charlie knew she was going to hear it whether she wanted to or not.
    “You’re not the girl who I brought up. Where’s the fighter I raised? Do you want to die, is that it? Where’s all your fight gone? You’re not your mother’s daughter anymore. I don’t know where our Charlie went. Maybe she’s buried deep inside of you. Maybe you can find the key to the chains you put her in and get her out again one day, I don’t know. But I can tell you this, Charlie. If your mother was with us now, she would say the same as me. You’re a disappointment. Truly, you’ve not just let me down, but her too. That’s what gets me. You would be such a disappointment to her.”
    So there it was. Finally, he managed to get it out. Charlie knew it was coming, yet when he finally said it out loud it felt like her heart was going to burst. All the time he had been talking she had been ignoring what he’d been saying. She had heard most of it before. At least once a week he would open a bottle of whiskey and get into something with her. It was a form of entertainment she supposed. Without TV or sports anymore, without anyone else to talk to, then what else