“Look sharp,” hisses Cash, nudging me as the screen door on the white house opposite swings open. “Incoming.”
“Joey! I need you to make a delivery to Bill’s place.”
Ma’s voice carries clear and strong across the yard. She’s wearing a brown dress, and her blonde hair trails flat and lifeless to her shoulders. If I looked down any further I’d see her feet rooted to this place as deep as mine.
"Sure thing, Ma," I yell back.
Bill’s our nearest neighbor who lives about half a mile away. Ma has a side hustle going on, but Cash and me ain’t allowed to ask questions about it. We deliver the shit, and we keep our mouths shut.
I peeked once. I couldn’t help myself ‘cos it stank to high heaven. Green and sticky and more precious than gold, judging by the look on Bill’s face when I handed it over to him.
Taking the package, I make it all the way to the end of the track, and then something nameless is driving my toes into the ground and spinning me back around. That same nameless lifts my hand in a wave to a watching Cash.
He lifts one in return, extending his middle finger at me with a cackle of a laugh that sends Ma’s stupid-ass chickens clucking and running again.
“So long, Shadow!” he yells.
“So long, Sun,” I murmur, my words lost to an absent Texas breeze. There’s a twister coming today for sure, but it’s coming by another name. I don’t know it yet, but I can already feel it turning in my bones.
It’s the last time I ever see Cash alive.
It’s gone seven by the time I make the drop. I follow the tumbling sun all the way home, with the dark from the cornfields casting long and skinny across the track dividing our two properties. It gets me thinking about math class last week, and how our teacher, Miss B, told us to go find shapes and angles in everything.
There's gonna be a prize for the kid with the longest list. It's got my name all over it, ‘cos me and Cash have found loads:
The alphabet letters on my bedroom wall.
The coat hangers in my closet.
The spokes on my bike wheels.
The shape of the boxes inside my heart that hurt the most.
Turning into the driveway, I count the slanting roof on the feed barn as one, and then the incline of Pa’s Ford jutting out from the porch like a stuck blade as another.
Why is he home so early? Closing time ain’t for another couple of hours.
Angles. Angles. Angles. I’m gonna win that prize for sure. My footsteps sound like applause on the loose stones as I celebrate my future victory.
Why is everything so silent?
The screen door is wide open.
Sharp angle.
There’s a crimson stain throwing shadows across the doorway.
Scary angle.
I stop for a second and stare at it. I can feel the dark from the cornfields creeping slow and steady across my body.
“Ma?” I call out tentatively, heading toward the front steps. “Cash? Where are you guys?”
More silence.
More steps.
I pass by Pa’s sawn-off shotgun. It’s lying, discarded, next to the open screen door. Spare shells cover the ground next to it, like seed scattered for a steel bird.
There’s a body lying just inside. My breath catches on an inhale, and it don't release so easy.
Facedown.
Brown dress.
Elbow bent to form a perfect triangle with a blonde head soaked in red paint.
“Ma?” I whisper again.
No answer.
My gaze jerks left. The pool of paint around Cash’s body catches in the fading light, giving it edges. Angles...
There’s an explosion in my chest. It steals my balance away from me. Stumbling backward, I collide with another body. Hunkered down, knees drawn up to his chest; his eyes all wild and crazy like that mustang Cash broke last summer. The same red paint covers his hands and arms.
Not paint.
“Pa?”
He glances up, but I know he’s not seeing me. I’m just another ghost to him already.
“My twister made me do it, Joey,” he says, all mournful. “The voices. The damn voices.” His lips won’t stop moving as he rocks, back and forth, like a wounded animal.
No no no!
The pain train’s gathering speed inside of me, and its destination is a town called agony. This is the storm I’ve been waiting for. The madness in Pa’s fists has finally moved to his brain.
Run, Joey. Run.
The bastard won't stop moaning and crying.
The pain train smashes a hole through the walls of my heart and anger starts pouring out.
Run, Joey. Run.
Cash’s voice slams into my mind again, but my father’s crazy is too busy overtaking my own mouth. “You’re a thief, Pa!” I scream at him, my scrawny twelve-year-old body towering over his crumpled six-two. “You’re a dirty, bastardy thief! It was Cash’s twister to ride outta here, not yours, and you stole it from him! You stole it from him!”
Pa blinks twice, and then his chanting stops. That’s when I find I ain’t so angry anymore.
“My twister’s coming for you too now, boy.” His thin lips curl into a snarl. “Better hide from it while you still can.”
He lunges for my foot and I go down like a sack of shit. The back of my head smacks into the floor, and everything goes fuzzy.
“Stop, Pa!” Steel fingers close around my ankle, dragging me out onto the porch after him. He pulls so hard and fast, my T-shirt catches on the doorframe, ripping it up and leaving my belly exposed.
“Those damn voices,” I hear him muttering again, and with his other hand he reaches down for his shotgun.
Terror explodes in my veins—not the same fear that I keep locked away inside of myself, but one that’s real and present. Those holes in my heart are letting everything out.
Rocking sideways, I feel his grip on me loosen. Kicking out, I manage to drive him backward away from me and onto his knees.
Flying from the porch, I smack my hip on the broken railing at the bottom of the steps, and then I'm cannoning off the hood of his dirty Ford. The pain drags at me all over, but I don’t stop running. The open door of the barn is beckoning to me like Ma’s embrace. Don't think about Ma’s head.
Behind me, I can hear the clink clink as Pa reloads his shotgun with a couple of the loose shells from the porch floor.
“You can't hide from me, boy! I’m the motherfucking twister, remember?”
I hurl myself into the darkness, the sweet scent of straw blasting into my senses as his first shot splinters the wood next to me. Crying out Cash’s name, I lose my footing again, throwing myself down behind the same stack of bales we were sitting on earlier. My shaking fingers find his cigarette butt, and I hold it close to me like a talisman.
Don’t think about the red pool leaking out from underneath him.
Clink clink.
Pa’s in the doorway. He’s staggering around, drunk on something far worse than whiskey. He fires two more shots above my hiding place, blowing holes in the back wall and inviting the rest of the world into my horror.
I whimper into the floor.
Time stretches and sags.
Wax drips.
His footsteps shuffle closer.
“I can feel my twister turning on me now, Joey,” I hear him say with a chuckle, like he’s sharing one of Cash’s secrets. “You’ll serve the Devil from hereon in. You hear that, boy?”