The night insects sang their droning song at full volume as Logan closed in on the familiar row of houses. Moments later, he dismounted and leaned his bike against the yard's fence. No lights were on, but he knew this fence with all of the cultivated memory of years of latching it and unlatching it in the dark. His hands found the metal in moments, and then he swung the gate open.
As the gate carried forward on its own momentum, Logan grabbed his bike and wheeled it into the yard. The gate swung back shut behind him.
With his bike now leaned against the tree, Logan crept in silence towards his bedroom window. His parents would be asleep by now—or so he hoped—so slipping back inside stealthily was probably his best call. Dad couldn't be angry if he didn't know what time Logan got back home…
Logan placed his hands on the window and pulled it upwards. It didn't budge. He tried again, wedging his fingers underneath the window's cross frame… still, it didn't move. Locked, even though he hadn't left it that way.
Shaking his head, he instead made his way towards the back door, reaching instinctively for the potted plant hanging overhead that held the spare key. After a few moments of struggling with the keyslot in the dark, he unlocked the door and pushed it open. The interior was dark, quiet, asleep. Logan breathed a trembling sigh of relief.
He stepped into the house and pulled the door gingerly shut behind him, locking it as quietly as the rusted lock would permit. He then wheeled back towards his room and—
"I could've shot you," said Dad.
Logan jumped, heart nearly lurching into his throat. He turned towards the source of the voice: the darkened dining room deeper into the house. If seeing by moonlight outdoors had been difficult, seeing inside the shady home was next to impossible. A sliver of moonlight spilled in from the window to illuminate half of the table, and, though Logan couldn't see Dad sitting beyond that island of light, he could see Dad's silver revolver sitting there, glittering in the moonlight.
"Gates swinging in the dark, a bedroom window rattling… then fiddling with the keys, like a creeping thief with a lockpick… what's a homeowner to think?"
Logan swallowed, hearing the soft slurring behind the older man's words. Dad rose to his feet, and Logan thought he could see his silhouette now. At five foot four, Dad was a short man, and he always had his revolver nearby when he felt his most small… Logan suspected he liked the way it made others respect him, or fear him—if there was even a real difference between the two. The revolver was a war trophy, as Mom had called it, something he brought home instead of the pieces of him that never left Cambodia. He kept it meticulously oiled, brushed, and cleaned, even while the rest of his house sagged into disrepair. Now he picked it up, placing it into the holster he wore, shaking his head.
"No son of mine should be creeping home this late… come here, boy."
His words brokered no argument, and so Logan did, crossing his arms in tight to his body. He felt powerless—with Dad, he always felt powerless—but the holder of the revolver held all the power in the world. So Logan approached the table, and there he stood, chin raised, staring eye-to-eye with the man he hated most. From this close, the reek of alcohol was unmistakable. His muscles tensed up, both ready for and dreading the first punch Dad would surely throw.
"You startled me is all," Dad said, pulling Logan in for a hug. Logan let himself be hugged stiffly, surprised to find that perhaps tonight was melancholic drunk rather than the angry drunk they saw far more often. Logan thought of darker reasons his father might have been sitting with his revolver in the dark, but he wouldn't dare vocalize them… once the hug was through, Logan would scurry off to his bedroom, and he would lock the door and not open it until sobriety was—
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Dad breathed in sharply. "Is that smoke I smell?" The dynamic of the hug suddenly shifted. Logan released Dad, but Dad didn't release Logan. Instead, Dad breathed in again, and mere inches from his face, Logan could see his eyes widen.
"Snooping around in the dark, creeping back into the house stinking of smoke," Dad said. "Not my boy, no sir."
"It was a campfire," Logan said meekly, but Dad hardly heard him. The older man's arms locked around Logan, no longer holding him so much as restraining him. His eyes continued to bulge with barely-restrained rage; it never stayed restrained for long.
"Already they talk about that queer Kessler boy, 'real quiet-like,' they say. Folks at the bar are always asking 'what's wrong with him?' Do you have any idea how embarassin' that sort of question is? How that makes me look as a father?"
Logan tried to pry Dad's arms off of him, but the man was as strong as iron, rusted or not.
"And now Reefer? Think of what everyone'll say. My boy, a drug addict?" Dad balked, arms latching even tighter to Logan. He felt Dad's nails start to dig into the skin on his sides.
"It was the warehouse fire—now let me go," Logan protested, still trying to lever his father's arms away. Dad's eyes flickered left and right, stumbling through drunken leaps of logic.
"It's that Trent boy," he declared, hot beer breath making Logan's eyes water. "A no good sort, making my boy turn sour."
Logan finally had an idea—desperate, but last resorts always were.
"A whole family of degenerates," Dad seethed. "That crippled no-work father, that two-faced half-smile mother… I oughta go get some boys from the bar, and we teach 'em the—"
There was a brief flash of light, and Dad slumped, his angry look suddenly washed away. Furious grappling had turned into a drunken smothering, and so Dad quickly stepped back, feeling strange in the sudden flight of his fury. There they stood, a few paces apart, each still panting and looking closely at the other.
"Huh," Dad stumbled, "I lost my train—"
"You're tired," Logan said, offering a reassuring smile.
Dad sighed. Words like that might have ordinarily set him off—would have definitely set him off—but there was no fight left in him. "That I am," he agreed uncertainly. "The warehouse fire?"
"Yes sir," Logan said.
Dad appraised him, still skeptical. He'd heard of the warehouse burning down—by now, most of the town had—and he supposed that that maybe explained the strange chemical smell on Logan's clothes. The Trent boy surely made more sense, bad influence that he was, but he couldn't be sure, and the anger, the urgency, had somehow already passed.
"Tomorrow, you're explaining everything to me—why my boy was at a burning warehouse and lied about it. If I'm not satisfied, or if any details aren't crystal clear, there'll be hell to pay," Dad said. He then stalked from the room, cradling his head in his hands, clearly confused.
Logan returned to his own bedroom and finally removed the device from his pocket, staring gratefully at the battery that almost seemed to swirl with purple and red. There had been a momentary flash of light when Logan used it on the older man's back, but the light had been brief, behind him, and at the exact same instant that Dad experienced an instant quelling of so much rage and sadness… small wonder he'd hardly registered the light.
Logan remembered the revolver in the holster having been so close to his reach, but he couldn't bring himself to grab it… what might have happened if he did? It was a foolish thought, conjured only because of Logan's own feelings… proof that he was emotionally compromised. Logan reloaded and pressed the device to his own side, pulling out a red battery—likely the loathing he felt for his father, pathetic and drunk coward that he was. With his mind emptied of distracting emotion, clear thought prevailed. He set himself down on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He watched the way the popcorn pattern shifted as he tossed the red battery from hand to hand, the beginnings of an idea solidifying in his mind. What if I… but no, of course not. He shrugged off his idea. Foolish, impossible, and yet equal parts terrifying and thrilling.
And yet… terror? That was an emotion, and those judgment-clouding biases didn't belong in a time like this. He used the device on his side again, pulling away a battery of yellow, and then a third of blue. Now, head truly clear, was the time for careful, neutral analysis… as a totally hypothetical thought experiment, and only with the right, detailed planning, might it even be possible?
Logan got to thinking, and think he surely did, until sleep finally found him nearing 4:00 in the morning. Though he had been playing scenes of violence in his mind, calculating—no, perhaps nearly fantasizing about—the ways his next encounter with his father might be different, he passed into sleep with a mask of perfect neutrality still placid on his face.