“Stand up.” The command was guttural and dripped with hatred. Lance stood and took an uneasy step toward the thin man, who shook with anger. As quick as lightning, Anthony crossed the few feet that separated them and had Lance’s throat grasped in one gnarled, bony hand. He pressed his thumb into the soft skin of his son’s neck and a choked cough racked Lance. Spittle flew from his mouth and his vision dimmed before the hand released its grip somewhat and the world swam back into view. Anthony stood staring down at Lance’s small face, the snarl Lance had imagined earlier now right at home where it normally was. They stood that way for a few moments, the second hand tick-ticking a quiet solo on the wall, before Anthony broke the silence.
“Give it to me.” Lance fumbled at his pocket until his fingers finally brushed the thin edge of the sheriff’s business card. One moment the card was in his hand, and the next it was gone, magically appearing in his father’s fist. Anthony folded the card and deposited it out of sight in his own front pocket. “You ever talk to that fucker again and I’ll kill you, you understand me?” Lance nodded as far as the hand that gripped his neck would allow him, then his father continued. “I think he might like little boys like you. I think he’d like to touch you. Maybe you’d like that, you sick little fucker. Just know that I’ll kill him too if you talk to him again. There’s no place you can go that I can’t find you, and there’s nothing that sheriff can do to keep me from you. No matter what you tell them, I’ll get you back here somehow, and when I do, I’ll drown you in the river and let you float away. You’d float all the way to New Orleans before they’d find you, you know that? Fish’d pick at you, sure, but you’d make it there. Might even float off into the ocean and you’d just disappear.”
Lance began to cry, and the hot tears brought on by fear ran in rivulets down his face, onto his father’s hand. Anthony stared at Lance’s wet face for another moment before snorting in disgust and shoving him backward into the front of his dresser. Lance cried out in pain as a drawer handle bit into his spine, but remained standing. Anthony studied him for several long seconds, turned half away, and stopped. The light from the windows that had been warm minutes before was now gray and lifeless like dead skin. It coated the side of Anthony’s face and gave Lance the impression that his father was already deceased, killed from the poison that flowed through his veins.
“The sweetest thing is, you don’t know where she went. I think about that sometimes at night and it’s just poetic. You sit and wonder, while I know.” A smile pulled at the corners of Anthony’s mouth. It looked like an upside-down grimace.
Without another word, Anthony left the room and shut the door behind him, leaving Lance in the silence interrupted only by the clock’s heartbeat.