Burning Desire

13

"Worthless!"

Tristan tried to open his eyes, but he felt disoriented and couldn't see anything. His head was pounding, his body frozen into place.

"You should've tried harder!" Tia's broken voice screamed, making Tristan suddenly open his eyes and see his mother sobbing on the floor. "You gave up! You ran away and let me stay behind and allowed your father to let him take everything out on me!"

She was bruised and bloody, walking down a fogged hallway toward Tristan, her nails yellow as she reached out for him.

"You worthless child!" she screamed, reaching out for him, but before she could touch him, she vanished into the floor.

Tristan's heart was racing as he stumbled down the hall, something telling him to follow the sound of TV channels switching from down the hall. He entered the room to his dad's old rocking chair and a beer bottle in his hand which was laying over the armrest of the chair. The channels kept changing on the TV, but there were never any shows; just colors.

"Get me another beer," his dad's gruff voice said.

"No, you've had enough to drink," Tristan heard himself saying, though he didn't remember planning out the words or making the choice to say them. "Dad, stop drinking."

The man in the chair squeezed his bottle so tightly that it burst, making glass fly everywhere, but the pieces vanished as soon as they hit the ground.

He stood up, the man holding the face of Tristan's father. Reaching out, he grabbed onto Tristan's shirt, his disgusting alcoholic breath making Tristan nauseous.

"You will do as I say, boy!" the man bellowed, throwing Tristan to the dirty floor and kicking his gut.

Brahms towered over Tristan, jamming his foot into his gut. It hurt, but not in the physical way that Tristan expected; no, his head was pounding, his gut churning.

He left home.

He left his mother to deal with this monster and never looked back.

He deserved this beating.

Tristan looked back up at the man beating him, and his heart nearly stopped when his father's face shifted to Winston.

"You thought you could escape?" Brahms' voice came from Winston's mouth, laughing cruelly as Tristan's vision went dark around the edges, his emotional pain too much to handle.

"You can never escape," Brahms-Winston said, kneeling down. "Even now, you may be far from where you were born, but it's only a matter of time."

Tristan heard his mother screaming, and he wanted to go to her, but the screaming made his pain even worse and he couldn't move.

"Don't worry, you won't last long," the man above him said. "You worthless whore, sleeping around just to feel. No one cares if you live or die."

"Th-They care," Tristan cried, his vision getting darker. "H-He cares!"

The father-demon combo laughed once again.

"Die, you worthless human. Just die and save everyone some time."

Tristan's mother's screaming got even louder.

"Just go die."

More screams echoed, and amongst his mother's, Tristan heard his own.

"Die!"

The overlap of Winston and Brahms' voice came through, both of them screaming for Tristan to give up and die.