MicroHorror

On her sixteenth birthday Debbie Hanks climbed the hill behind her house in the dark just before sunrise. The morning was chilly but not cold. She walked easily up the modest hill despite the high grass gone to seed that clawed at her pants. At the top she spread a blanket, its dark pattern a gift from her departed grandmother, under a large black oak tree. Then she sat, cross-legged, a fifth of Wild Turkey whiskey in her hand, and waited for the sun to rise.

“How dare you,” she said. She could barely make out the shape of her house far below in the dark. “How dare you touch your daughter that way.”

He’d taken her the day before. He’d gotten drunk and raped his own daughter in the same bed he slept with her mother. He’d raped her then threatened to kill her if she ever told. She’d showered three times but still felt dirty, then stayed in bed and pretended to be sick, her vision haunted by visions of his hair, his grey hair. She hid her face when her mother came into the room. She couldn’t face her mother after that. Not then, not all night.

The sky began to lighten. Debbie unscrewed the bottle and smelled the whiskey inside. It smelled like her dad’s breath but different, sweeter. But under it she could still smell gasoline. She smelled her hands. Yes. Gasoline. She recapped the bottle and tried to clean the smell from her hands using dirt and the blanket.

She smelled her hands again. Dirt smell. A good smell. A clean smell. She uncapped the bottle again and drank a swallow. It burned. It burned and cleansed, burned and cleansed. She took another swallow, another cleansing swallow. The distant sky began to turn orange, began to glow.

Below, the first wisps of smoke rose from her house, his house.

“Die,” she said and held the bottle out like a toast. “Die badly.”

Flames began to lick out from the edge of the roof. Flames red-orange like the sunrise. Flames red-orange like the whiskey. Flames that cleansed.

Debbie stood. She drank the whiskey again. It didn’t burn her throat as much this time. A little spilled across her sleeve.

Below she saw her mother run out the front of the house. Her mother was in her night clothes. Her brother appeared next. Together they stood outside the house and pointed and screamed. Her brother screamed for his dad. Her mother screamed for the man who beat her. Screamed and wailed for the life of that evil man.

Debbie drank again. She remembered grinding her mother’s sleeping pills into her dad’s nightcap. She remembered him drinking it. She remembered wanting him dead. Debbie held the whiskey bottle up again. The sun just broke the horizon. Blinding. Bright. She used the bottle to shade her eyes.

Sirens sounded in the distance.

Debbie smiled. “Cleansed,” she said. She toasted the dawn. “To a new day.” She drank again then let the bottle hang in her left hand. She watched the house burn. Her house, their house, his house, him. She watched and after a while muttered bitterly, “Happy birthday.”