Jacob More (cont.)

"Eliane," he manages, though not without difficulty. "When it comes to such beauty, pain and pleasure are hard to distinguish."

She smiles, somehow unable to help herself. She doesn't know how to explain the hot jolt of panic that explodes in the forge of her heart when he bleeds ... when she speaks. It is so tied to her tongue that she feels inaudibly guilty. She has never so much as laid a hand on anyone else, and now she has made one man spurt blood thrice in the space of an hour. It is hard to camouflage the sensation of power she feels, though it is tempered intensely by wariness, by curiosity, and lastly, a sympathy that she has never experienced.

"I have spent a great deal of my life seeking true, complete silence." The old man spoke blandly of it, distancing himself comfortably from the story. "I have travelled the world, tried every technology, and I have come to the conclusion that it does not exist."

She knows this. She nods.

"The very hum of the sun itself disprove it. Sound is ubiquitous. There is no escaping it." A desperate lie hovered in his voice & she heard it - but did not acknowledge it. The old man was becoming agitated, his sadness visible on his face, shining like a new coat of paint. "My father was wrong. All of us, wrong. Perhaps we should suffer, bleed! Perhaps buried in our genesis is some old sin, unique to us, that we must pay penance for!" He seemed paralyzed with this new agony, flourishing his rage like a sword or a gun, waving it wildly in front him. He had turned into a demagogue before her, thundering, apoplectic - and yet there still seemed something specious to it, something hidden, deeper, the notice of which still kept to herself.

She reached across the table for his hand & grasped it in her own, running her fingers over the map of raised veins, pushing herself out of her fingertips, through the whorls of her fingerprints, exhorting herself out of herself.

The old man looked up, spent, drained, but startled, hurled into sudden quiet as if via catapult. "Yes," he whispered, brimming with tears. "Please."

Eliane smiled, withdrew, and took a sip of his iced tea. The heat was returning, the shrieking sun burning through the clouds like a molten harpy. She nodded, and bade him to continue.

The evening beat at the windowpanes like a horde of moths. It was the first thing Adolfo noticed as his father dragged him from the kitchen, leaving both their plates to cool. He was deposited on a chair with only the smallest bit of ceremony, and Jacob More turned to follow his son's stare to the window. The panes seemed to bow in with the pressure of the night outside, pockmarked with the white boil of the moon and the measles of the stars. "Please," said his father, grappling with the words like a tiger in the circus ring. "Understand." He seemed to be collapsing in on himself, rebuilding, collapsing again, and mustering the strength to tower, like a thundercloud struggling to reach anvil-head. "Love. Emily. Mother."

Adolfo didn't speak, unsure if his tongue could do what he needed it to do, unsure if he could use the words he'd learned so carefully, so reverently. "No," he said. "No."

"YES." his father said, turning around with the force of his own shout. It seemed laboured, as though the word had percolated in his gut for years. He expelled it from him like a missile which failed.

"Please," said Adolfo. "Why?"

From the kitchen, the sad clink of dishes being scraped, the gush of water in the sink. The scrape of chairs and the rustle of napkins. His father was silent again, rounded in his silence, more himself now that the words had left him. He strained still, in the dark hollows of his eyes, tempted by the taste of those three small words in his mouth. He gave in, capitulated, and said them again, ghosts of what they had been. "Love. Emily. Mother."

It wasn't enough. Adolfo stood up and vengefully stared at his father. "Apotheosis," he said, as challenge. His father shrank, a miasma of misery, shrouding himself. "Dandelion." He took a step forward. "Melancholy."

Jacob More wheeled on his son with a ferocious backhand, knocking Adolfo to the floor. It was like an explosion in the room, as though that missile had finally reached its target. The air vibrated with the force of the blow. Slowly, Adolfo picked himself up, shakily wiping away the sticky blood which leaked from his nose.

"NO" - then, from the doorway, and both men reeled back, Jacob lumbering like a shot beast, heavy against the wall, and his son, stumbling in the same direction, woozily collapsing against his father's bulk. Jacob wrapped his arms instinctively around his son, bloody hands slamming on either side of his head. The room went dim, and Adolfo fixed his eyes on the shape of his mother, trembling like a reed in the doorway. She wore a white dress of fury, stained with the sauce of their dinner. Her mouth opened, closed, and then opened again as she advanced on her husband. Adolfo felt it in the stomach of his father, seizing, spasming, against the small of his back. His mother, continuing to advance, striking blow after blow against his father like a tornado, hurling, hurling, spitting, snarling, though voicelessly.

Jacob More slumped, taking his son with him, crashing to the floor in a black heap. His hands held the side of his son's head like a steel vise. Adolfo squirmed in the hazy hum, the deadly sound of his mother's voice blossoming inside of his skull like an embolism. He felt it press against his brain like a fist into putty, the ache of it like an ice-pick, drawing warmth out of his ear, trickling down his jaw. He felt his father quake, and then, finally, go still, like a sigh which has reached its end. He felt his father die, and he saw his mother, terrible & huge, glowing in front of him. He watched her stand, motionless, as if all of this had happened before and would happen again, as if she had found herself inhabiting the climax of a dream and was now, only now, finding herself comfortable there. He saw her fists, unclenching at her sides, saw something inside of her shatter, saw the shards of it prick her behind the eyes, and yet still, remain motionless. Then the haze, the pain, and the blackness consumed him and he fell willingly into its maw.