GODDAMN GOD AND HIS FILTHY CREATION

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It had been several hours since the servants had left for the night, every window had the curtains drawn to a close, and in the hallways the flaring gaslights bathed the rooms in a low and lazy amber light.

The house was so quiet it was as though the very walls were holding their breath as they watched me run throughout the house and dart between rooms. Even the grandfather clock, whose relentless ticking was the source of many sleepless nights, had shifted its hands to the twelfth hour and hadn't moved since. Every few moments I would call out, "Auden?" just to reassure myself that I had not gone deaf. But there was never a reply: no footsteps, no breaths and no sound. Not even the patterning of a passing mouse to suggest any other living thing existed.

I could feel time being used up like oxygen as I pounded up flight after flight, and flung open every passing door. But the Bridgelow mansion had endless rooms, Auden could be anywhere. He could be grasping onto his last moments of life, calling out to me desperately, as I was to him, but our voices were both absorbed by the depthless night.

Suddenly a faint wail echoed from the distance.

"Auden!" I cried and in my excitement I couldn't judge the right place to put my limbs. When I stubbed my toe on the top stair or hit my elbow against a wall I didn't feel anything except a faint impact, as if something had happened a long way away. All I could focus on were the cries that continued to sound from the end of the hall, Auden's parents room. The door was flung open and as I reached the opening I skidded to a sudden halt.

Harold, Auden's father,  was in there, sprawled on the floor by the foot of a grand bed. Slumped on his lap was a body, or rather what was once a body and now a tangled mess of blood and innards. The open flesh reminded me of a hunting trip I took as a child, where the rabbits we caught were skinned and turned inside out, then left out in the afternoon heat where their organs melted together in a wet pudding of meat. All I could make out was a head of matted hair that Harold buried his face into. He rocked backwards and forwards and cried out in one continuous howl, as blood soaked into his clothing like wine into bread.

My chest seized for a moment when I considered whether the body was Auden, but as I glanced around the room I saw him alive, standing behind Harold near the unlit fireplace. In the moonlight he was white-skinned and smooth, like a marble statue carved from the finest parisian stone. But Auden was no statue, I could see his chest heave, and the blood moving through a pulsing vein on his neck. He saw me too as I stood at the doorway, I was sure of it, and he held my gaze for several moments, his expression cool, amused even.

Seeing he was all right I nearly cried out in relief- perhaps I did. I don't remember. I wanted to run to him but Harold had looked up, and his stare stopped me cold, as if under his gaze my very muscles ossified in an instant .

"You," I watched as Harrold's face contorted. His features twisted so violently and so quickly from grief to hatred, that he looked for a moment, inhuman. Something hardened in his red face as he screamed, "You did this, you son of a bitch! You fucking-".

"I didn't," I stepped back slowly as Harold wobbled to his knees. "I didn't, I swear!"

 Auden reached for something and I watched, almost in slow motion, as  he picked up the iron hatchet that rested against the sidewall. He held it loosely, it's head pressing into the wooden floorboards while Harold raged on. So unassuming was his stance that I didn't think anything sinister of it, until I saw his gaze shift to the back of Harold's bare head.

"No", I gasped, suddenly understanding. I stumbled through the doorway shouting, "Oh God, don't do it! Don't do it, Auden!"

Auden raised the hatchet over his head. The light of a passing car seeped through the window, glinted off the metal and sent shards of white light flicking through the room.

In one swift motion Auden brought the head of the hatchet down like an executioner, and buried it into his father's head. Harrold's eyes, haemorrhaged with red, were still locked on me as they bulged from their sockets. 

Harold's skin paled so suddenly that in the darkness his head seemed to be severed from his body and hovering in the air, luminously white. I watched his thick lips twist into a horrified "O" and he fell, first to his knees, then toppling forwards over the body.

I was too shocked to move, my mouth hung agape in a silent scream as Harold's blood ran in small rivets along the floor and lapped at the toes of my shoes. Auden looked at me again, still grasping the handle of the hatchet with both hands. His blood-splattered chest rose and fell with each frantic breath, and as we looked at each other, neither uttering a sound, his mouth twisted into a smile.

The memory is a foggy blood-red haze and when asked to recall the details of the night, my mind swims. I don't remember what sound Harold made as he fell. I'm not sure whether he ever saw that it was his only son who struck his skull with an axe. But l never forget how Auden smiled as he watched his father die.

It haunts me. Even in sleep, even in death.

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