My first name was the only thing I got to keep from my old life. The last remnant of a mother I never knew. From what small scraps I’ve been fed about my past, she split the scene when I was a baby, and my real father never spoke of her. Of course, none of that matters now. Since having left that life, I’ve been forced to use Russ’s last name, in order to uphold the facade that he’s my father.
He isn’t.
He’s a drunk, a womanizer, and a shitty gambler.
Never my father, even if he’s the man who raised me for the last nine years. A trusted friend of my real dad, who’s now dead. Murdered, actually, in our Louisiana home when I was just going on twelve years old. Russ swiped me up and fled north, to this place, half-heartedly raising me under the guise of a parent.
Hand to his chest, he bends forward on a deep raspy cough that he’s had for as long as I’ve known him. Only, as of late, it’s been tinged with the red blood that flies past his lips on a spray of spittle, coating the white snow below.
“I have to bury my dog.” I don’t even bother to glance back as I keep on toward where my dog lays in a mangled lump of blood and fur a few hundred yards off.
“Well, be sure to keep the shovel handy.” His comment brings me skidding to a halt, and I turn to see him rubbing his hands together, as if the cold suddenly bothers him.
The man isn’t above using his ailing body as a means of sympathy, but I’m not like the women he brings home who want to take care of him. Baby him. I know better than to fall trap to his manipulative crap. Except, a few months back, he did something out of character, by going to have his cough and some headaches and dizziness he was having checked by Doc Reece. That’s when he found out about a nodule in his lungs.
“It’s spread, then?” I refuse to let the worry exploding inside of me touch my voice.
With a sniff, he looks around the forest and nods. “Ride’s about to get a little bumpy, kid.”
Russ and I have this game, one where we pretend like we don’t give a damn about each other. He tells me the nightmares I suffer every night are my own fault for watching those crime show documentaries, all while holding my hand, and I tell him I don’t care that he’s dying, all while holding back tears.
The cold in between keeps us from feeling any pain, but today, it isn’t working so brilliantly as before. Could be that losing my dog has rattled loose emotions that I typically keep in check.
Or maybe I’m just really fucking scared of being alone.
Flames lick the edge of the burner when I light the old, outdated stove, and set a pot of broth and meat on top. Just one of the many antiquated appliances in the cabin Russ and I have called home for the last few years. Miles out from the downtown area, it sits smack in the woods. Not a single neighbor within walking distance.
Mind lost to the cataclysm of thoughts in my head, I slice through a carrot, nearly adding the tip of my finger to the pile. “You could beat it, you know. This cancer. If we lived closer to civilization. A hospital.”
“Doc says it’s stage four. I’d sooner have them cut every one of my limbs off with a butter knife than sit in some hospital bed all day long and go through their treatments.”
At the sound of his lighter, I twist around to find him lighting up a cigarette, and I swear it takes sheer willpower not to stab him right now. See, Russ believes that his exposure to agent orange during the Vietnam War is what led to the diagnosis of small cell carcinoma, and not the millions of cigarettes he’s smoked over the last four decades since then. “Really?” It’s a miracle I haven’t chopped my fingers off, as forceful as I’m cutting the vegetables for the stew. “Why do you have to be so goddamn stubborn?”
“What do you care, Angeltude?”
Angeltude. ‘Face of an angel with a fuckton of attitude,’ he used to say, when I was younger. My name literally means celestial, or heavenly in French, which has become a mocking contrast to the last near decade, during which I’ve been somewhat hellish, bitter and angry. About everything, really. Where we live. How we live. He’s been bitter, too. But it seems the nickname has become more of an endearment for him in the last few months.
Teeth grinding in frustration, I stir the vegetables I’ve chopped into the pot of broth and meat.
“So, how long is it? A year? Six months?”
“Doc says I’ll be lucky to make it to spring.”
“That’s … that’s like … four months away!” Heat pulsing behind my eyes and in my nose tells me it’s only a matter of time before the dam breaks and all these real feelings come pouring out of me.
“I know. We got a lot of shit to do before then, kid. Lot of affairs to settle.”
Keeping my back to him is all I can do from breaking down. “I don’t want anything to do with your affairs.”
“I’m not talkin’ ‘bout women. Just tyin’ up loose ends.” A long pause follows, and he’s picking at his fingers when I shoot a glance over my shoulder. “I don’t want to leave you alone by yourself.”
“I’ll be fine.” Somehow, hearing him say it aloud, though, sends a shudder of fear through me. “Don’t you … worry about me. Just … worry about yourself. Maybe stop smoking those things, while you’re at it.”
“I know you’ll be okay. You’re strong. Always been strong. A survivor.” He isn’t talking about the fact that I can hunt a wolf down, or gut a rabbit with my bare hands, even if reluctantly. I’m the lone survivor of one of the most heinous murders in the state of Louisiana, where I’m originally from. A life I had to leave in order to survive. One he had to leave, as well, for reasons that still don’t quite add up for me.
“And what about your family? Shouldn’t you tell them?” Once, about four years ago, Russ left the cabin to set some traps in the woods, and desperate for answers, I rummaged through his stuff. Tucked away in an old, worn-down looking wallet, was a driver’s license, alongside a picture of a beautiful blonde and a young boy, maybe ten years old. When Russ caught me, he swiped the wallet out of my hand and sentenced me to two nights without supper. The worst punishment he’s ever issued in the all the time we’ve been here.
“They don’t need to know anything. Better for them, better for me.”
“You wouldn’t know what was better for you if it slapped you upside the head.”
He snorts a laugh that sends him into a coughing fit. Bending over, he holds a white kerchief to his mouth, and I glimpse the red saturating the cloth when he pulls it away.
The sight of him sends a nervous thrumming inside my veins, and I turn away, mentally searching for something else to think about. Something less terrifying than how utterly empty this place will be when he’s gone. And without Noya.
“Shit,” he rasps. “This …. This is my penance. All the bad shit I’ve done.”
“You don’t believe in all that religious crap, remember?”
“Ain’t religion. It’s karma. Bitin’ me in the ass.”
It’s futile asking him to elaborate on what he could’ve possibly done in his life, what horrific events in his past would warrant this shit hand, so I don’t bother to respond to that.