“Dinner’s ready!” Aunt Em calls, and the moment is broken.
But if a cyclone is coming: bring it on.
I’m ready.
Uncle Henry never laughs. Yeah, he works, but he starts drinking in the morning and goes till night, and he most definitely doesn’t know the meaning of joy. He’s as gray as everything else in this forsaken county, from his long beard to his rough boots. He’s stern and solemn, rarely speaks.
I’d say I hated him, but hate isn’t a strong enough word.
When he comes in from the barn—just in time for a hot dinner, god forbid if Aunt Em is late—I’m sitting on the smaller sofa, phone in my hand, scrolling through Instagram posts of places far, far away from here. Toto lifts his head up and growls, lip curling over his teeth.
“Shut that mutt up or I’ll shut him up myself,” Henry grumbles, but he knows better than to get close to Toto. Last time, the dog made him bleed. I curl an arm around Toto’s thick neck and dig my fingers into his ebon fur.
“He’s not a mutt; he’s papered,” I say, which makes Henry’s shit brown eyes widen. That’s about as much sass as I can get away with, without starting a full-blown war between him and Aunt Em. Unfortunately for her, when Henry gets mad at me, he takes it out on his wife, either by hitting or fucking her so hard that the sound of the headboard hitting the wall gives me nightmares.
Dinner is served at the table, no electronics, no music, no background TV noise, just the clatter of hail on the tin roof, and the sound of the whistling wind from outside the old front door.
“Looks like we’re gearing up for a cyclone,” Aunt Em murmurs, rubbing at her sore shoulder and looking up toward the rattling windowpanes. “Might not be a bad idea to turn the radio on for the weather.”
Henry grunts, scooping up a spoonful of casserole and shoving it into his mouth. My toes curl into Toto’s fur, and I have to resist the urge to put in my two cents. Only an idiot forgoes media when there’s a possible storm warning coming. Luckily, I know my cell will go off if we need to take cover.
When Uncle Henry’s finished eating, he just gets up and goes to plop in front of the TV, not bothering to help Aunt Em clean up or put away leftovers. Instead, I get to help her out while we listen to the news blasting in the background—news, that, I might mention is the opposite of all my political views.
“I fucking hate it here, Toto,” I whisper when we’re safely ensconced in the bed upstairs, my gaze focused on the window and the storm beyond. Part of me hopes the cyclone really does come and tear the farmhouse to pieces. Then maybe I could leave sooner, rather than later, and still get access to my trust fund.
The dog looks back at me the way he always does, like he’s somehow more than he seems, an endless well of patience, love, and understanding. He’d give his life for me, I know that for a fact. When the boat started sinking, and the ice-cold water came rushing in, Toto was there for me.
But I was the only member of my family that he could save.
Kicking the wall with my boot, I roll over and grab my sketchpad, intending on drawing for the rest of the night, when I hear Uncle Henry’s booming voice calling my name downstairs.
“What the actual fuck does he want now?” I snap as I push my sketchbook aside and head down the stairs with Toto on my heels. There’s Uncle Henry with my backpack in his hand, holding a baggy of weed in the other.
Oh, crap.
That’s right, marijuana is, like, illegal here or something.
“That’s Yori’s,” I say with a loose shrug of my shoulders, my baggy sweater falling down one shoulder. Uncle Henry drops the backpack and turns toward me as Aunt Em stands stoically to one side, her eyes flashing with fear.
“Henry, don’t,” she starts, but Henry’s eyes are bloodshot, and he’s swaying from the empty bottle of whiskey on the floor near the sofa.
“You bring drugs into my house, and you think I don’t got anything to say about it?” he slurs, stumbling toward me and gesturing with the bag like it’s proof of the darkness inside of me that he’s always known about. He’s hated me from day one. Day one. He never even gave me a chance.
“It’s not drugs,” I say, shrugging my shoulders again, one hand on Toto’s collar to keep him from lunging. “It’s pot. No big deal. I’ll give it back to Yori tomorrow.”
Henry stumbles toward me, eyes widening in anger, but the sounds from Toto’s curled lips keep him back. Without warning, he just turns and backhands my aunt across the mouth, making her bleed.
“Don’t touch her!” I scream, but Henry moves in again, grabbing Aunt Em by the throat and throwing her into the wall next to the fireplace. The news reporter on the TV is cut off suddenly by the sound of an alarm, blaring as the ticker across the bottom warns us to take shelter.
The storm is coming.
“This is my house!” Henry is screaming, pressing on Aunt Em’s neck, making her face turn blue as she claws at his arm. “And I demand some goddamn respect.”
I release Toto, who wastes no time in going after my uncle, leaping at his back and biting hard on his neck. With a scream, Henry releases Aunt Em, leaving her to collapse to the floor, choking and coughing.
Man and dog tussle on the floor while I race over to the drawer nearest the door and yank it open, searching for the revolver that Uncle Henry keeps there, always loaded and ready to go.
But it’s missing.
Instead, the sound of the blaring alarm from the TV mixes with the awful popping sound of a gun being fired. My ears ring as I spin around, just in time to see Toto take a hit to the shoulder, blood splattering across the floor. He stumbles, but he doesn’t go down.
There’s no time to react as Henry turns the gun on me, pulling back the hammer, his eyes fogged over with alcohol.
“Good for nothing, drug dealing little bitch,” he snarls.
Time seems to slow around us as Toto stumbles, slipping in his own blood, headed straight for my uncle. But he can’t move faster than a speeding bullet, now can he? Not even Toto is that powerful, no matter how much I wish he was.
My fingers curl into fists as I wish with every beat of my heart that this storm comes and kills the evil man standing in front of me, razes this shitty house to the ground, forces some color into this gray-on-gray landscape.
The storm shutters come loose from the windows, whisked away by the howling winds of the storm. It shatters the glass, spraying the room with shards that spin and swirl, slicing my skin.
The gun in Henry’s hand is ripped away as Auntie Em screams, and a dark howl splits the air around us. Even as the furniture tips over and the wind grabs my clothes, whipping them against my body like sheets in the wind, I can see that something’s happening to Toto.
He contorts his body backward, like he’s having a seizure, bending at the spine in a way no dog should. His dark hair ripples in the wind, and suddenly I can see patches of skin where there shouldn’t be any. Ears sink in, tail disappears, and in less than twenty seconds, there’s a man kneeling on the floor where my dog should be.
He lifts his head up, ebon dark hair fluttering around his face, those brown eyes that I know so well burning with anger.
I sit down hard on the floor, even though I know that logically, I should be grabbing my aunt’s hand and dragging her to the cellar. But would we even make it? Is it too late? Am I going to die in a place I hate, surrounded by people who don’t give a crap whether I live or die?