09:01 01/06/2587 –(8734/701/13/24)

Perhaps doing this in the morning was not the best idea; it could sour the rest of the day. However, Gabriel was afraid that the more he delayed, the more likely he would chicken out.

Nish and Pista sat in his penthouse suite, patiently waiting as Gabriel stared out the window. He had never understood why people did this in the media he watched and read, but if how he felt now was any revelation, it was in a pathetic attempt to delay as long as possible.

Taking one last deep breath, Gabriel said, “I have never told anyone this before, and I feel I should have years ago, or at the very least, while Risoti and Erilur were still with us.”

The Tufanda once more held their silence, and Gabriel did so too, as he took the time to focus his attention on what he wanted to say. After a not inconsiderable pause, he found the beginning of his tale. With barely contained contempt rising in each word, he said, “my father was a loser, a worthless, incompetent oxygen thief.”

“And he knew it,” he added. Nish felt a gnawing pit in her stomach; she had never heard Gabriel talk like this before; it would not be pleasant. Pista could tell too, and she held onto her mother tightly.

“Every night, he would become intoxicated, trying to bury his sense of self-loathing, it always failed, and he would stumble home and beat me,” Gabriel explained. “That’s why my skeleton was reinforced as a child, to compensate for what my father did.”

“What about social services? Why didn’t they intervene?” Nish asked; she had promised herself that she would not interrupt, but this was too big of a revelation to hold her tongue.

“Someone has to fall through the cracks; no system can be perfect,” Gabriel explained. “But perhaps the fault lies with me as well; I never told anyone, not until much later,” he added.

“Why?” asked Nish.

Gabriel turned to look at Nish; despite the anger in his words, his posture and face were a picture of serenity. Nish then realised just how good Gabriel was at hiding his true feelings. Pausing for a moment, Gabriel removed his locket and opened the clatch.

Walking toward Nish, he handed it to her. Her new arm had bonded well, with no rejection, and while she still needed to be careful, in a couple of months, she would be able to do everything she could before.

Nish saw the image of a human child; though she could make out little more than that, her brain was simply not programmed to notice the subtle differences between sexes.

“That’s Jariel, my sister. I kept quiet because my father non to subtlety hinted that he would hurt her if I spoke,” Gabriel explained.

“Your mother?” asked Nish, wondering where she was during all this.

“Mother had no maternal instinct whatsoever. Whenever my father beat me, she sat in her room, listening to her hymns and bible verses. In fact, I’m fairly certain she was a psychopath, someone who cares only about themselves,” Gabriel answered.

“You said she was Christian; isn’t Christianity all about charity, mercy and love,” Nish replied, from little Gabriel had mentioned she was an extreme believer. She wondered how someone could believe one thing so fervently and then act in a contradictory manner.

Gabriel went silent, clearly thinking. Pista took the lull in the conversation to look at the image; Jariel looked cute; she had lovely black hair and big green eyes.

“I recall a quote from some man name George Bernard Shaw that stuck with me all these years, “Christianity, possibly a good idea, if somebody tried it,” he said.

Nish understood what he meant, that despite claiming to follow the beliefs, no one had ever actually succeeded.

“Why you? Why not attack your sister?” inquired Nish.

“Because I would always aggravate him; if he was beating me, he wasn’t beating Jariel,” Gabriel explained. “Every night, I’d put Jariel to bed, wait downstairs for Father to stumble hope and then lay into him.”

“He was pathetic, always going after the weakest person he could find. If I stayed quiet, he would beat her,” Gabriel added, turning back to the window though he still stood beside Nish.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Gabriel said nothing more, and it took a few moments for Nish to realise he was waiting for a prompt. “What happened?” she asked.

“It was a couple of days after my fourteenth birthday, we did not eat well, and I quickly learned to look for food in the wild, berries and the like; blackberries were her favourite,” Gabriel continued.

“Father often let up on the beatings around our birthdays. No doubt if you asked him, he would say he was not about to attack someone on their special day,” Gabriel said. “I think the real reason was some worthless attempt to save what little shred of dignity he had left, not that it mattered; he was still a monster that hurt his own children.”

“17th August 2574, two days after my birthday, it was time for my first beating after turning fourteen,” Gabriel said.

“It started much like the others had. Father stumbled home, swearing, blaming his misfortune on everyone else, not that circumstances had gone his way; from what little I know, he did have a hard life,” Gabriel explained, acting and feeling remarkably calm. The strongest emotion he felt at the moment was the surprise at how little it all affected him. Maybe that was because he knew how this chapter of his life ended.

“I never just stood there and took it; I had always fought back, partly because if I did, his anger would remain on me, but also because I do not like being anyone's punching bag,” he added. “This time was different though; this time, when I hit him back, he flinched, whether in real pain for just the shock that he felt it, I don’t know, and don’t care.”

“That moment of weakness was all my years of pent-up aggression needed, and for the first and last time in my life, I delivered a beating,” Gabriel said, finally looking back at Nish.

“Didn’t he fight back?” Nish asked, carefully stroking the locket Gabriel had given her.

“He was a loser; he never picked a fight with someone who could fight back, and the moment I did, he froze like a rabbit caught in the headlights,” Gabriel replied. “I was not forgiving, and I was not merciful, even as he begged me to stop.”

Gabriel looked at Nish before clarifying, “I did not kill him; he lived, even made a full recovery.” Taking a deep breath, Gabriel sat down and retrieved the locket from Nish. He stared at his sister.

“Then what?” asked Nish, feeling Gabriel was waiting for another prompt.

“After I realised what I had done, I was worried, not so much for him, so I went to Jariel and told her what happened,” Gabriel explained. “At first, she was just grateful that I was not hurt, but once we realised the seriousness of what had occurred, we decided to call the police and an ambulance.”

“Good,” Nish said.

“Not really; the police wanted to prosecute me,” Gabriel retorted.

Nish stared at him, astounded that anyone could blame someone so young. Gabriel picked up on this, the wide eyes, the flared wings, the flexing fingers and replied, “I beat my father badly, and he was pathetic, he also lied his head off, and they felt it easier to believe that I was some violent thug, who beat up his saintly father than the truth.”

“Spent a few days in lock up, this them constantly trying to get me to confess,” he added. "I think they just wanted to get the whole thing wrapped up early and take the rest of the day."

“How did you get out?” Nish asked, deducing that he must have as he was not currently serving a sentence for unaggravated assault.

“I’d watched enough crime shows to know to keep asking for a lawyer, and while I hate the man, he did teach me to hold my ground through all his abuse,” Gabriel said. “The lawyer got me off, and I was even able to sue the investigators for harassment,” he added with a smile.

“Two years after that, my father got sent to prison, where he remains to this day, and me and Jariel got sent to social housing, and for the first time in our lives, life was good,” Gabriel added. “We started to do well in school, began putting on weight, even began to make a few friends or the start of friends at the very least.”

Pista had moved and was leaning on Gabriel’s back, peering over his shoulder, there was something about the image that did not make sense, and she had finally realised what it was.

“Jariel’s a baby in this photo. Why isn’t she a grown-up like you?” Pista asked. Baby was a strong word; Jariel had been nine when this photo was taken. Then again, considering how Tufanda aged, she would only be a toddler to Pista’s sensibilities.

Gabriel's grey face vanished, and he began to look at the floor with a haunted expression.

The room went silent; Nish knew what happened, not how it happened but what was evident for all. Gabriel was trying his hardest to manage his emotions; he had thought he was more stable than this; that wound was well healed. Erilur had been right, the damn lizard. He was not well; he had just been coping.

Gabriel took in a long, staggered breath. “Jariel was fifteen when she passed,” Gabriel said, his voice cracking.

Nish said nothing in response, but Gabriel knew what she wanted to know. “Creuztfeldt-Jakob disease,” Gabriel explained, wiping a tear from his eye.

Nish did not know what that was, and Gabriel assumed this, though even if she had, he would have told her anyway. Part of him just needed to tell someone, even as the other screamed at him to keep his mouth shut, not to bring the memory back.

“It is caused by prions, malformed proteins, the simplest infectious agent in the universe, so simple they are not even alive,” Gabriel said, rubbing his face, trying to force himself not to cry.

Nish had heard of them; not the word, even in galactic basic that was new to her. In Ketrok, they were called Jayan. They were not the guaranteed death sentence they had been if you could get treatment before symptoms appeared. The problem was that it was so rare that most doctors never even considered it until symptoms appeared.

“Do you know what the odds are for a child to develop spontaneous CJD?” Gabriel asked, looking at Nish with a joyless smile, tears welling up. “One in one hundred million,” Gabriel answered his own question.

Pista hugged Gabriel as tightly as she could. “I stayed with her every day in hospital, in her last month… she had no idea who I was,” Gabriel said, his final wall crumbling, and he burst into tears.

Nish held him close, and if she and Pista had been able, would have cried too.