"Drop your hips a little more. You're coming down on it too high."

I widened my stance and swung the maul down over my head, striking the log dead in the center in its weakest spot. The wood split with an earthshattering crack and bounced against the old rubber tires bolted together on top of the tree stump. 

"So, you actually do know how to listen." Uncle Charlie laughed behind me from his VIP seat on the bed of his truck. 

As soon as we pulled down the dirt road and parked, Uncle Charlie jumped out of the truck and hopped up on the back.  He grabbed a cloth folding chair and the care package my mom forced on us to set up for his long day of sitting on his ass, critiquing me on my wood chopping skills.

I tossed the wood onto the growing pile next to me and grabbed another untouched piece. I bent down and placed the lumber in the odd, makeshift contraption, steadying it up on its end. Sweat dripped off the loose ends of my hair and into my eyes.  I wiped it away using my hoodie sleeve before it blinded me.

We were three hours into my torture session and I had already become a walking corpse. I had even vomited my whole bite of breakfast out after the first ten swings. 

I was spent.

My muscles ached from the abuse I was putting them through and my head was throbbing as I started coming down for the first time in months.  The Oxy in my bloodstream had burned too fast out of my system.  I was barely strong enough to swing the blunt ax to do the job and Uncle Charlie wasn't offering to help at all.  He had no reason even to be out here if the only finger he was going to lift was the one inside the small metal cup from the top of the stainless steel thermos. 

I stood back up and grabbed my right side, which had begun spasming and seizing up from the workout. My muscles had withered away and atrophied from the months I spent in bed doing absolutely nothing.  It was disturbing how weak I had become in such a short period of time. A year ago, a little work like this wouldn't even have fazed me.

But a lot of things had changed since then.

I had changed and not for the better.

"Feeling the burn?" Uncle Charlie asked.

"You know you could get off your ass and help me." I spun around and glared at him.

"What do you think I'm doing right now?" He sipped his coffee slowly as the steam poured off it. 

"If you wanted to help me so much, you would give me my pills back," I growled at him and tightened my grip on the maul's handle, turning back to the tree stump.

"I already told you. You can have them after we are finished here. I'm not spending the whole day at the emergency room because you got all doped-up and chopped your leg off." The old man answered.

I lifted up the heavy, blunt splitter and swung it down against the wood to take my frustration with him out on something. As I came down, everything weighing down on me swelled up into a thunderous roar.

The strike wasn't just for him by the time it landed.

It was for my grief over Riley and the baby we lost—the collapse of the only friendships I ever really had—everything.

Mostly it was for the hatred I had for myself.

The log split easily in one crack—and so did the solid oak handle holding the dulled steel head. 

"Fuck!" I screamed and slung the splintered wood like a boomerang across the empty field.  It landed in a snow drift about fifty yards away and disappeared, buried deep underneath.

"Oh no, not my Betty," Uncle Charlie shook his head at me and frowned. "Poor girl. She was my favorite.  May she rest in pieces."

I kicked the stump and tire apparatus repeatedly until I felt the bone in my big toe crack. A sharp pain shot up my calf to add to the list of ailments deteriorating my body.

"FUCK!" I screamed from the depths of the agony and emptiness inside.

My voice echoed across the snow-covered ground and hit the icicles hanging ominously in the trees. One large one cracked off the tree branch and came plummeting down to the ground at breakneck speed.  It landed straight up on the ground. I wanted to run over, lay under the largest one I could find, and scream at the sky until it broke free to end me.

"Ezra, come over here and sit down. You need a break."

"I don't need a fucking break!" I lashed out at him. I winced in pain when my foot landed on the ground unevenly and I almost toppled over.

"Sit down now." Uncle Charlie laid down the law to end the argument.

I limped over to the back of the truck and lowered the bed door to sit down.  Uncle Charlie refilled the small metal cup and leaned over to hand it to me.  I took it and gulped down the scorching liquid, not caring what damage it was doing to my insides.

Nothing could make me feel any worse than I had since the accident. I was missing the blond girl more and more each second that passed, while mourning a baby I never really wanted in the first place. 

I was angry, sad, lonely, and everything in between. There wasn't even a name for the tidal waves of emotions rocking my sinking ship.

Uncle Charlie and I sat in silence as I looked down at the cup and the dirty tan gloves covering my hands. I ran my thumb over a smudge on the side of the shiny metal surface. My reflection was warped and distorted as it stared back at me expectantly for some sort of direction—wanting me to find something in my life still worth fighting for.

But, there was nothing there. I had lost my only reason to keep trying. 

"I'm not going to make you tell me why you came back." Uncle Charlie broke the silence first.

I kept staring down, pretending to ignore him but hanging onto every word as an anchor.

"Look, Ezra, I'm going to cut the do-si-do bullshit with you."  He stated matter-of-factly.

Something light hit my shoulder and pinged against the truck bed. Uncle Charlie had hurled the bag of pills at me.  I picked them up off the black bed liner and turned the bag in my hand to count them to make sure they were all still there. 

One. Two. Three. Four. Five— I still had five. 

There wasn't enough to make it all go away. It would never be enough to make me forget what I did. 

I stashed the bag in the hoodie pocket for when I returned to the house. 

"Get the pills back out and take them."  Uncle Charlie leaned back in his chair and bore a hole into my back. 

"Later," I whispered, hanging my head lower in shame. I didn't want him to watch me fail again.

"Go ahead. Don't be shy now—no reason to try to hide it. You wanted them so badly before. Grab that damn bag out of your pocket, open your mouth, and swallow them. If you're going to do it, you might as well do it right. Show the world how much you don't care. If you want, I can even take a picture to send to your Momma. It would look fantastic hanging over her fireplace. She would be so proud." Charlie's voice jumped in pitch as he pushed me harder.

"No." I breathed out harshly and turned around to face him.

He had no right to bring my mom into the convoluted conversation.  It wasn't about her. My fist was clenched, fighting down the urge to hit something. My vision began fading in and out as my pulse raced in my own ears.

"Put that away. We both know you ain't gonna use it." Charlie looked down at my hand. 

"Don't fucking test me." I shook in anger as the adrenaline surged through my veins.

"Go for it. No one's stopping you."  Charlie challenged.

I stood back up and hobbled over to the pile of cut wood to rearrange the stack, slinging the wood around to let some of the built-up pressure out so I didn't hurt my Uncle in a fit of uncontrolled rage.

Uncle Charlie jumped down from the truck and walked over by my side. He started picking up the wood and cross-stacked it on top of mine. For every piece I slammed down, he was right behind me.

"Look, Ezra. I wasn't born yesterday. I know something horrible went down in Ohio." His voice softened as he laid his next set of logs down onto the pile.

"Nothing happened. Drop it. I don't want to talk about it." I barked back and slammed another piece of wood down on the top of his.

"Calm down. I told you that I'm not going to force you to tell me about it, but I need you to open your ears and listen. I need you to hear this loud and clear." He demanded.

"Go on them, tell me how just how messed up I really am." I snapped.

"That's not what I was going to say." Charlie frowned.

"Then say what you are going to say and then you can go fuck yourself."

Uncle Charlie sighed and straightened out his beard before opening his mouth to speak.

"Bug, you can't keep bottling up all the dark shit you have been through inside you.  One way or another, it is going to come out eventually. I'm not your Momma or Daddy and will never try to be, but I care about you like you are my own. Sometimes more than my own. I'm worried about you. Not just because you're my blood, but because of the person I know you are deep down inside. This—what is happening right here, right now, is not you—not the real you anyway."  He placed his hand on my back and patted it. 

"It is." I snorted and pushed him off.

That was the most amusing thing I had heard in my whole entire life. I was who I was meant to be, the carbon copy of the sick, wicked junkie that I called my dad—the guy who hurt my mom and never came back.

I did exactly the same thing to Riley.

No matter how hard I tried to run or hide myself away, I was always going to be him.

Fuck, I was even better at being him than he was.  He tried to kill me and couldn't even finish the job.  The night of the accident, I had succeeded where he had failed. I slaughtered what I had created.

"Ezra, I already know what you are thinking and I'm here to tell you it's not true. You are not like that piece of shit at all. Your dad was selfish. He only ever cared about two things—himself and his drugs. Nothing else ever mattered to him. If he had to choose between either one of those things and doing the right thing, he wouldn't have hesitated to choose himself—no matter what." Charlie answered.

"What makes you think I am any different?" My voice jumped out of my body, wanting desperately for his words to be reality.

Tears began forming in the corner of Uncle Charlie's light blue eyes as he looked at me like I should have already known the answer.

"Tell me, Charlie. Tell me what makes me so god-damned different." I pleaded with him. 

"Mandy is still breathing."