Strong to Deliver (A Short Story)

My father’s footsteps, always the dreaded clomping rhythm, belong only to him. He owns his weight, carries it with the strained grace of a fallen newborn giraffe. He is never too far to not be heard, and always he is close enough to remind me of the menace of his boiling anger.

Tonight he will come to me again of his own accord; he will descend like the mighty black winged stalker in my dreams, lusting after a blameless prey to confer the free rein of his wrath upon- an innocent apple to divide with his pointed arrow. Hate in the flesh.

He will plunge downward with a stench of revulsion dangling on his breath like a hazy mist hovering over a mountain, eyes lined with crimson streaks east and west broken only by two solitary marbles full of blackness.

I press my plastic rosary beads to my chest, the silver crucifix resting warm between my youth and enjoying a security that eludes me.

I pray, “Our Father who art in heaven …deliver us from evil now …”

I pause. It is at the hour of death my deliverer must come.

My prayers, are they not fervent, Lord?

Do I sin by not wanting “…thy will be done ?”

My wounded cries for deliverance, for vengeance, do they go unheeded because there is some displeasing weakness within me that I have yet mastered?

Do you save only those who are strong enough to save themselves, and in their deliverance, you, Holy Father, Strong to Deliver, are extolled on high for what is their doing?

Lover of the Innocent, Protector of Children and Champion of the Poor, deliver me!

My room is dark but for the streak of light that has strained its way through a crack in the window. In my solitude I pray yet again, but know that my angel of death will arrive at my door soon. I can hear the clock mocking me, my heart racing against its steady ticking, always ahead, always winning, preeminently victorious. Outside I hear the steady droning of cars in motion but I hear only one door slam, and the final death rattle of mistaken keys in a lock and the predictable angry crash of a burly shoulder against the front door.

“Open! … open it goddamnit … you little whore … open it or I’m gonna bust yer head!”

“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name …”