Numinous

Prologue

Avery heard a car door slam shut—cutting through the thick silence that covered her like a dark cloud. For some reason, she found she was grateful for it. She had been almost too afraid to break the silence herself, waiting for the inevitable consequences of her own horrifying actions. But she also felt serene, in a strange way. It had been forever since she could just relax and breathe a sigh of relief that she had just sat on the floor in shock. Her butt had long since gone numb on the carpet and the drywall was digging into her shoulder blades painfully. 

She had been in silent retrospection, her vision going white as she realized what she had done. Avery didn’t know how she had gotten here, and she knew what she did was wrong. It’s just that it hadn’t mattered to her at the moment. She had just wanted everything to stop. She didn’t care if it was wrong before; but now? Now that she had time to think about it and let it soak into her brain, she felt panic rising inside of her. She felt bile trying to climb its way out of her stomach through her esophagus, but she would just push it down, bury the feeling deep in her gut. 

Now that she was lucid again, and had been tugged back into reality, her vision clear, she stared up at the ceiling, purposefully averting her gaze from the center of the room—although the events of earlier still loomed over her. There were splashes of blood on the ceiling. Avery realized with dread in her heart that there was no erasing what went on in this house anymore. All the nights she spent wishing for something like this to happen amounted to this—a gigantic, ugly mess. This was permanent. 

Avery heard the front door slam. 

She quickly stood from where she sat, slumped against the wall and took her finger off the trigger, tears falling as she shut her eyes and tried to brace herself. She wished, not for the first time, that she could stop time from lapsing so she could get a handle on her emotions, but that was a stupid wish. She just didn’t want to see who it was coming through that door. If it was the police, she would probably s**t herself. If it was her uncle, she couldn’t promise what she would do. 

She backed up until she was against the far wall, across from the bedroom door as she heard footsteps reverberate through the house. Then, she heard her mother’s voice call out apprehensively. “Avery? What’s going on?” Her mother sounded worried, her voice drifting closer and closer to the bedroom. Avery hadn’t expected this outcome. Her mother was supposed to be pulling a double today. She wasn’t due back home until midnight. It made things worse for Avery. She didn’t want her mother to see what she had done. She didn’t know how she would react, but Avery definitely didn’t think it would be a very warm reaction. She whimpered and sunk back down onto the floor, curling into herself like she could make herself disappear. Like she could pretend she wasn’t trapped in a cage like an animal. 

Avery heard the doorknob jiggle as her mother turned it, a creak as the door was pushed open, and then a gasp as her mother happened upon the sight before her. Avery heard a soft thud as her purse dropped to the carpet. Her blood ran cold as she heard her mother let out a scream. It was loud; it was strained. Avery had never seen her mother look so frightened before. She didn’t blame her for the way she reacted. Avery thought that her mother would back out of the room, but instead she pushed herself forward. 

“Oh my god, what have you done?” She screamed. Avery finally opened her eyes to see her mother holding her hands to her face in shock, tears streaming down her cheeks, eyes wide. She looked at her daughter for a moment, and then back to her husband, who lay spread eagle on the bed, naked. 

There was blood spattered on the sheets and the walls, along with pieces of hair and skin. She could still smell the sulfur in the air from the gun, mixed with the pungent metallic aroma of his blood. Her mother’s eyes flicked to the gun that Avery had in her hands with her grip tight, putting the pieces together, the wheels in her head turning. This was a mess and Avery didn’t think any amount of thinking could fix this or bring her father back from the dead. 

She had murdered him. 

Her mother stepped closer to the bed, noticing a large portion of her husband’s head was missing, mostly scattered all around the room in a grotesque fashion. There were two more wounds on his abdomen where it looked like he was hit with another shotgun blast at closer range, like he had been shot once he had died just to make absolutely sure he was gone. He didn’t even look like a person she knew anymore, and her stomach turned. 

She was used to seeing wounds while being a nurse for over half of her life, but she had never seen anything quite like this. Not with a patient or anyone else in her personal life. It was shocking that her daughter could even stand to look at the man laying across the bed, but her eyes were glued to him, like she couldn’t believe she had done it either. She wanted it not to be true, she wanted there to be something she was missing, like the real killer, but the way Avery looked made it all so clear. There was no other killer. It had been her daughter. 

She turned to her daughter slowly, who cowered in the corner, shaking, clutching her husband’s shotgun to her chest protectively. Avery’s eyes were stuck on her father, pupils blown wide. She was in shock. Her T-shirt was torn, her pajama pants missing, her underwear bloody. She had blood covering the right side of her face, sprayed against her white t-shirt, torn at the collar. There were bruises forming along her neck and around her arms in the shape of large fingers. In the shape of her husband’s fingers. It wasn’t hard to tell what had happened. 

Her husband had done it again. After promising his wife he was done. After swearing that he hadn’t touched Avery in months. She should have known that man was going to go on and do whatever he wanted. She felt guilt flood through her when she thought about the amount of anguish it took to shoot him. She felt guilt coursing through her veins when she thought about the way Avery had looked at her this morning before she had left for work—begging for her to stay so that her father wouldn’t try anything with her. But she had ignored it, thinking that her husband would somehow grow out of being a pedophile because she had asked him to. He had never listened to her before and she was foolish for thinking that he suddenly would just start. 

Her own daughter was the victim of his abuse and she had let him do it out of fear that he would hurt her too, and all that it took to stop it was that damn sawed-off shotgun that he loved so dearly. That was what it took to stop him. He was never going to stop on his own. He was never going to realize that he was hurting an innocent little girl in all of his greed. In all of his deviations. 

She felt guilty for being glad he was dead. She felt guilty for how not sad she was. She was overwhelmingly glad he was finally dead, and she realized she owed that all to Avery. Avery had the courage to do something that her mother had only ever dreamed about doing. Avery had accomplished a deed that probably made the world a better place, despite the fact that Avery had committed a crime. 

Whether they both wanted to believe it or not, Avery had shot her father. She had shot her father dead.

Her mother watched as Avery lowered the gun to the ground and then stood back up, wrapping her arms around herself, looking to the floor in shame, humiliation, and guilt. “I—I’m so-sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” She began to cry. “I didn’t want to, momma, I didn’t want to.” 

It was hard enough that her mother was the one to find her husband like this. Avery was in her underwear, completely exposed, and she knew exactly what had happened—how could she not? Avery thought she was upset with her. By the way her mother looked at her. She looked at her as if she was seeing through her. She looked at her as if she didn’t know what she was going to do with her now that her daughter had murdered her husband in cold blood. 

Perhaps she was debating what would happen if she called the police. Avery thought it was strange they weren’t already here. She had shot her father three times. She knew that her neighbors had heard the blasts. She didn’t think that the cops just weren’t coming. She knew that there was only a matter of time before they came to take her away for what she had done. She had no idea what the expression was on her mother’s face as she stared at her, and it frightened her. More than the realization of what she had done to her father. She had no idea what was about to happen, but she had no doubt it would be bad. She was going to have to go away, right? They would throw her in prison, right? 

Avery had murdered her father. She didn’t think there was any getting out of this. 

Suddenly her mother was advancing toward her. “Get some clothes on and pack up what you can. Now.” Avery stood, shaking as she frowned at her mother. “What?” She asked, confused. Was her mother going to try to hide her away? How was she going to do that? Avery knew for a fact that the neighbors heard the blasts. How many times had the cops been called on her parents for their loud arguments and fighting? The walls in this place were super thin; and she had shot him three times to make absolutely sure he was dead. 

It was no accident. 

“Avery, go! Go, now! Hurry up, I hear sirens.” After her mother said that, Avery realized that she could hear them too. Her heart felt like it was going to explode. Avery sprinted out of the bedroom and to hers, grabbing a suitcase that was underneath her bed and unzipping it, dumping out all of the stuffed animals she had long forgotten onto her bed and dumping her clothing into it, grabbing her favorite stuffed bear, her journal, and quickly changing out of her clothes and into jeans and a sweatshirt, wiping the blood from her skin the best she could.

Her door opened and her mother was beckoning her forward, digging into the front pocket of her work apron. “Here, take this. That's all that I have.” She pushed a wad of bills into her palm and Avery frowned again, clasping it in her hand. 

“Mom, what’s going on? What’s going to happen to me? What about you?” Her mother kneeled down and took her face in both her hands to steady her gaze. “I want you to run, Avery. Get as far from here as you can, and don’t let anybody see you. I can’t save you from this, you killed him. He’s dead, and I…I have to cover for you. I’ll tell them I did it and I don’t know where you are. I’ll tell them you ran when I caught him and I shot him because he hurt you.” 

“What does that mean?” She asked, panicked. Avery had been the one to kill him. Her mother had never stood up for her against her father, and she had no idea why she would choose right now to start. After Avery had killed him. After Avery had suffered this long. She had no idea what mothers were supposed to do when things like this happened, but she had been under the impression that her mother was supposed to protect her from this. In her mind, her mother was just as bad as her husband. She just held onto hope that maybe one day, her mother would start to love her and take her away from all of this. 

Was this that day? 

“I’m going to take the fall for you. Everything is going to be okay, Avery, we’re going to be alright. I love you and I’m so, so sorry. This—this should have never happened. You need to go now, out the back door. Take the backroads out of town. You know the way I’m talking about?” 

Avery didn’t, but nodded her head out of fear. Her mother gave her one last sad look before letting her arms drop to her sides as she stood up straight. “Go. Now! And don’t ever come back, you hear me? You’d better just stay gone, now!” She whispered. The sirens had stopped and Avery could hear voices and footsteps. Her mother rushed back into the bedroom and Avery began backing up towards the back of the house. She had to go, even though she didn’t want to.

She didn’t want her mother to take the fall for her, but she also didn’t want to get locked up and treated like a criminal. She wasn’t a criminal. She had been fed up and angry and tired of not being listened to. She told him she didn’t like his games, but he kept playing them with her anyways, and even her mother disregarded her when she tried to tell her what was going on. Her mother deserved to get locked up, right? She wasn’t innocent; she had known what her husband was doing and had just tried her best to ignore it. But Avery couldn’t ignore it, not when it was happening to her. Not when she was so fed up, she felt like she had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. 

She stared at the door her mother had entered, shocked, frozen from fear. She didn’t want to leave, no matter how much she thought her mother was to blame. She realized that this was going to probably be the last time she ever saw her and didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what to do. Besides one thing, that is. She ran through the house and to the back door, throwing it open and swinging it shut behind her as her mother emerged once more from the bedroom, locked the back door behind her, gun now in her hand, blood smeared all over her face and clothing. 

She booked it down the dirt road, never looking back, letting that be the last memory she had of her mother. 

She wished she didn’t have to run, but she knew the only other choice was going back and being locked up for the crime she committed. Her father had hurt her too many times. She couldn’t have stopped him any other way. Even her mother was too afraid of him to do anything about it. Avery had known for a fact that her mother heard her crying every time her father slipped from their bed and into hers. She had told her mother countless times that he had touched her, and she brushed her off and told her to quit complaining. She had felt guilty for telling her, like perhaps it had been normal. 

But she knew her friends never talked about their father touching them in their sleep. She had asked a friend once what kind of games she and her father liked to play in the dark together, and had been embarrassed when she had told her they never played games in the dark together. That’s when she began to feel something was off about how he treated her. 

The thing that set off the events of earlier? 

He made a phone call to her uncle—on her mother’s side. She always liked to listen in on his phone calls using the phone in the kitchen, so she did. She always covered the end of the phone with a washrag to make sure he wouldn’t hear her breathing. That’s when she heard him inviting him over while her mother was supposed to be working a double. She remembered feeling sick as he mentioned that Avery was home, and he could finally get his chance to ‘f**k’ her. That was when her blood ran cold and anger filled her entire being. She would be damned if she let that man touch her. 

Her father had been one thing. 

She had been forced into thinking it was normal daddy-daughter behavior. But one thing she didn’t understand was why he would invite someone else over to hurt her. He had also promised the last time he snuck into her room was the last time he did so. Why was everything out of his mouth a lie? And why did she believe all of his lies so willingly? Was it because she was terrified of him? Was it because she thought it was love? Was it because she had nowhere to go and no way of escaping? What is because she deserved to be treated like this? Whatever it was, she knew it had to stop. It had to end. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t have to live like this. What she wanted and what she needed didn’t matter to him or her mother. Nothing Avery did mattered to her father, nothing Avery did got her mother’s attention enough to make her make it all stop. He would continue hurting her until she was dead, and her mother would act shocked at the funeral. No one was going to do a damn thing about it if she didn’t act right then. 

It had to come to an end. 

It was his fault she felt compelled to hang up the phone and sneak down into the basement to steal his shotgun from his safe. 

Her father had taken her hunting with him more than a few times. It was one of those rare good memories she held in her head. The memories were always darkened when she remembered the way he held her at night in the many hotel rooms they stayed in instead of going home the same day. He had liked to touch her even then, and Avery had thought it was normal. It was always normal to her until he began to ignore her when she told him to stop. But Avery could still remember how he had always let her watch him as he cleaned his guns, even letting her type in the password to his gun safe when they returned in the early hours of the morning, before her mother was off of work. He had taught her how to shoot a gun when she was just six years old. It had been a pistol and they had been in the middle of the woods, but Avery still remembered how he taught her how to load a gun. Had told her he kept the bullets underneath the stairs in a box labeled ‘Christmas’. 

She began loading bullets into the barrel as silently as she could, her mind overrun with anxiety at being caught down in the basement. She knew that if he caught her in the act, that he could overpower her and hurt her. Maybe even kill her. That only motivated her further.

It was his fault she sneaked back upstairs and tiptoed back to her bedroom to hide the shotgun underneath her blanket on her bed. It was his fault he hung up with her uncle and barged into her room, and it was his fault he chased her when she ran from him, dragging her to his bed and pinning her down and hurting her again. 

It was his fault she shot him.