Page 164 - TheRedSon_PrintInterior_430pp_5.5x8.5_9-22-2019_v1

vanishing mother. But she was gone, and my sadness knelt
beside the sobbing memory of Marvin’s misery.
I needed to know more. I had to find another memory
somewhere in the dream. I entered the ruined RV, searching.
I flung a cupboard door open and watched as the space
beyond stretched out and became a dark hole, leading
somewhere deeper. Tearing away the old dream to get to the
newer one beneath, I clamored into the hole, struggling over
the corpses I suddenly realized were all but choking the small
space. I heard something crashing behind me. Desperately, I
scrambled through the narrow, earthy passage.
Again, the tunnel yielded a room, this time a closet. I was
looking down into it from a small heating vent, where I heard
the whimpering of a child. It was Marvin again, and this
time, he spoke to me. “You think she’s your mother, don’t
you?” said the miniature Marvin, standing on his tiptoes,
whispering into the vent. “In that case, I should tell you— “
Something exploded into the tunnel behind me.
Child-Marvin giggled at the monstrous interruption,
whispering, “You’re going to have to bleed for this one, I
think.”
A titan hand wrapped around my ankles and pulled me
from the tunnel. The transition from crawling to dangling
was almost instantaneous as the hand quickly moved from
my ankle to my throat. The grip was unbelievably strong.
Again, my father held me in his hand. “Where are you
crawling away to, whelp?” He was a specter of blood and
fire. The previous dream-memory had ignited beneath his
rage, and only the closet door remained, smoldering, covered
in scratches made by the tiniest of fingernails.
“Release me, Father,” I said, despite the pressure applied
to my neck. He held me up to the fires of his eyes. It had been
some time since I had cause to look upon him for so long,
and with such scrutiny. I searched his nearly indecipherable
expression for some sign of an underlying motive. What
was it I was not to know? My request was met with greater
The Red Son | 167