NOBODY OWNS LIFE, yet anyone wielding a weapon can own death. Santiago did not need the weapon. His fists were enough.

Santiago knew eventually his stepfather would darken their doorstep again. Oscar always did. Like any stray, you give them once and they will always come back. Guadalupe, no matter how horrible the man was to her, always let him back into their life. Years ago he gave up trying to convince her to be done with him. There were always more excuses lined up.

It’ll be different this time.

He says he’s really sorry and won’t do it again.

Being in prison scared him into being a better man.

Santiago never understood why his mother did what she did. Not sure if he really wanted to. If it wasn’t excuses, it was bullshit reasons that truly boiled down to her fear of being alone.

He's a good man deep down.

He’s funny when he’s sober.

It’s just the alcohol. Once he gets right, everything will be how it was.

He makes me feel safe.

We can’t afford the house without him.

At least there was some truth to the last one.

All Santiago needed to know was that the man was back.

Clenching his fists until his knuckles turned white as Santiago glowered through a nearby window with its screen crudely cut out. The beige stucco on the craftsman-styled home desperately needed a power wash to clear the years of grime that trailed down to the dying overgrown weeds. Cigarette butts littered the battered concrete porch. Flimsy, now four times replaced by the landlord, the beige door hung loosely from its hinges. It matched everything else on the interior painted in the same flat tone from the baseboards to the popcorn ceilings.

Garbage littered the yard: The plastic bags were torn to shreds, in it several shattered bottles ranging from cheap beer to bottom-shelf tequila. Santiago grimaced at the used condoms and discarded pregnancy tests. From the porch he could hear his mother and Oscar arguing. Definitely over something meaningless. Santiago wondered if this time, it would be about who should take out the trash or whose turn it was to do the dishes.

This time it would not matter how much his mother begged him. He was ending this.

Santiago was no longer a scared child at the mercy of a man with no soul.

His mother screamed as Oscar and Santiago slammed into a wall, sending photographs cascading down onto cracked floor tiles in a sprawl of broken glass. The sour stench of copper, tequila, and animal urine clung to frayed carpets. The pungent scents flooded Santiago’s nostrils.

“SANTIAGO! STOP!” Lupe threw herself on top of the husky man stooped against the top of the stained sofa. “GO, JUST GO!”

“No.” He seethed. “You let this piece of shit back into the house?”

“Stop, please. Just go!” She wailed. “Get out of my house, now!”

Her words and cries echoed in his skull, failing to reach his consciousness. His deep hazel gaze fixated on Oscar, while he struggled to catch his breath. No matter what happened tonight, one of them was leaving in a body bag.

It didn’t matter who.

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“Get up!” Santiago boomed, kicking bits of glass towards Oscar, waving his hands mockingly. “Real big man, huh? Big bad thug, repping the barrio. Bitch you ain’t about shit!”

The older man cursed, throwing Lupe to the floor. In one motion he lunged at Santiago and gripped the boy by his waist with thick arms wrapped in tattoos.

The full force of the gangbanger’s weight rocketed Santiago into the nearest wall.

His back cracked against one of many patches along the wall. A sunbleached plasma TV wobbled on an equally outdated box-store entertainment center moments before crashing into the stained carpet.

Lupe’s desperate sobs disappeared under the white noise of muffled laugh tracks.

Oscar had a hundred pounds on Santiago and at least six inches.

Oscar also had kidneys that barely functioned. Santiago decided to put the poor organs out of their misery. Solid and muscular, the teen locked his arm around the man’s neck and brought his elbow down with everything in him onto Oscar’s lower back to buckle him.

Oscar was not a weak man. Too many times now had Santiago been on the receiving end of those calloused meaty hands. Even days later, the bruises strained his muscles and left him fumbling and limping. Whenever the drunken deadbeat strolled down the street, anyone with any sense turned about-face and jogged off.

There was a time when even Santiago feared the man.

Until he learned the truth: Oscar was nothing more than a bottom rung thug slanging drugs for a gang that was not even the same emblazoned on his skin. He ran away long before haunting Santiago’s doorstep from the people he once swore loyalty to after snitching for a plea deal. To top it off Oscar couldn’t even get decades long addicts to buy.

Santiago caught him by the chain around his neck and knocked him straight in the teeth. Several cracked knuckles split, sending shockwaves up his arm. Blinded by rage, adrenaline pumped through his veins as he pushed through it.

Lupe latched onto his arm, pulling him away.

Somehow the parasite had wormed his way into his mother’s heart. Maybe it was the supply of substances or some delusion that Oscar was somehow redeemable.

“Mom, stop!” He pulled her close, both of them gasping for breath. “Get out of the damn way.”

She wrapped her arms around him. “It’s over, okay. It’s over. Please, let it go. It’s enough. He’s had enough.”

They always ended up here. With Santiago kicking the leech to the curb after he used up everything they had then vanished for a few blissful months. Then Oscar would find his way back to the small two-bedroom home that perpetually stunk of animals and smoke.

Santiago stiffened. his jaw clenched tight as she hung on to him. Faded pink clung to lifeless, matted ends from a cheap dye job. Even past the tangle of blonde hair falling over his mothers shoulders he could see yellowing bruises trailing up from her clavicle along her pale neck and stopping below her jawline.

“I ain’t done yet, you fucking little bastard.” Oscar fished out a small blade from the pockets of his worn denim, flicking open the switchblade with a muted click. Its honed edge gleamed menacingly in the lamplight.

Lupe screamed, standing between him and her son. “Baby please, he’s sorry. He’s going to leave, please.” Defensively she outstretched her frail hands in front of her in a pitiful attempt to hold the man back. Compared to his rounded barrel-chest she almost looked like a doll.

“Get the fuck out the way.” Oscar backhanded the woman, sending her to the floor, brandishing the pawnshop switchblade at his side in the opposite hand.

Santiago lunged, caught Oscar’s hand by the wrist and locked his other arm with his own. He head-butted Oscar.

Oscar’s bulbous nose buckled with a sickening crack. Blood gushed from his face. Somehow his rounded face and beady eyes managed to swell more. Dark bruises and cuts along his cheeks hid the deep flush from tequila coursing through him.

The knife clattered to the floor. The men went right along with it.

Santiago rained blows down on the fallen man.

Pain shot up his arms with every strike. He did not stop.

When all he could see was red, he did not stop.

When the cops kicked the door in and screamed for him to get down on the floor, Santiago did not stop. The bellowed commands, warnings, and countdowns failed to reach him.

When they fired on him, he stopped.

One grazed his shoulder. He could not tell the difference between the first bullet and Oscar’s fists pummeling into him.

Second, hit him in the back. It exploded inside him as though someone had forced their fist through his back and out through his belly button. The teen did not even have time to process what felt like a balloon expanding in him, pressing his organs painfully against his spine and pelvis.

Third straight to the head.

Santiago died, but he didn’t stay dead.