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deliver them from wickedness incarnate. I had never been
thought of as such, so I decided to indulge the fantasy, if
only for the opportunity to be part of their nightmares to
come.
I could feel a lingering animosity as I gripped my father.
Yet it was not the time for griping, and so he yielded to my
strength and allowed me to lift him into the air. But before
I brought him down upon another wall, which would have
likely freed my small bevy of well-wishers, I decided to grant
him a boon, for reconciliation’s sake. I handed my father to
one of the custodians, and the uniformed man smiled as if I
had done him a favor.
My father’s strength was a poor fit for the man’s body.
The eager custodian’s muscles began to rip and tear, for
my benefactor exercised a willpower that ordinary flesh
and blood could not contain—at least not without great and
horrific expense. Unfortunately for my small gathering of
followers, my father did not relish the role of savior and
quickly annihilated them, howling and laughing all the
while. Together, my father and I tore through the sanitarium,
decimating the shapes that madness made, closing on room
349.
As quickly as I might have regained my father’s approval,
I just as quickly and foolishly decided to stoke fires best left
to die. “Why won’t you stand aside, Father? I must know.”
The hallway we walked was empty save for the echo of
battle. My father, still wearing the wrecked body of the now-
dead custodian, paused briefly. He did not speak, but only let
his silent reproach attempt the extinction of my curiosity. At
least that’s what I believed he was doing.
He struck out, his axe destroying the wall behind me in an
eruption of smoke and fire. I barely escaped—the attack was
not a warning, it was a killing blow.
“And what, pray tell, do you want to know, exactly?” It
wasn’t my father’s voice. At first, I didn’t understand. Then
I knew myself for a complete fool. “He may be your father,
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