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The day had felt like a dream - no, it was a nightmare. The kind where you’re trapped, watching everything fall apart but powerless to change it, numb and moving through the world like a zombie, hardly processing anything.
His mother was dead.
Max had been drifting since the funeral, barely aware of the cold wind biting his skin or the murmurs of fake sympathies whispered around him. Everyone said the same things, empty words and lies to appease who they saw as only a dumb kid who lost his mother.
His mother. She was dead.
He didn’t believe any of it, their false promises that it would get better, that he would get through this.
How could it get better now that his mother was gone?
Now that Max was left with him?
Max trudged up the front steps of their house, his fists clenched so hard his knuckles were white. The black suit he wore felt too tight, too stifling, like it was choking him. As he opened the door, he wanted nothing less than to go inside.
Inside, the house was dark.
Quiet.
Wrong.
The smell of whiskey hung in the air, bitter and sharp. His father was home.
He hadn't even gone to the fucking funeral.
Max stepped through the front door, his muscles tensing the moment he crossed the threshold. The house was colder now, emptier, like something vital had been ripped away. Maybe it had. His mother’s funeral had been only hours ago, and already her absence felt like a heavy weight pressing down on his chest, suffocating him in a silence that reeked of alcohol and loss.
He shut the door carefully behind him, making sure not to let the latch click too loudly. His father had always hated loud noises. Max's mother had been always sure to take the blame whenever he slammed a door or shut a cabinet too hard on accident.
Since before he even knew why, Max had learned how to move quietly, to make himself small when his father was drinking. How to slip through the shadows on the edges of the room in order to avoid being seen.
He hated him.
He hated living this way.
Max swallowed against the tightness in his throat and started toward his room, eyes straight ahead, determined to avoid any interaction. The floorboards creaked softly beneath his sneakers as he moved through the narrow hallway, the walls closing in like they were alive, like they were part of the same weight that threatened to crush him from all sides.
He was almost at the door to his room when he heard voices, coming from the kitchen. His father’s, low and slurred, unmistakable in its lazy drawl. And someone else’s - higher, lighter. A woman.
He hadn’t met her, this new woman, but he didn’t need to. He knew what she was here for. He knew the kind of women his father brought around when he was like this. His mother hadn’t even been gone a full day, and already someone new had slithered into their home, making herself comfortable.
Max’s fingers twitched, nails digging into his palms as he stood frozen in place, listening to the faint murmur of their conversation. The clink of a glass. His father’s hoarse laughter, thick with alcohol. The giggling of whatever woman his father had somehow convinced to find him attractive.
Just like that, something inside him snapped.
He didn’t even think about it as he slipped into his room and made a beeline for the nightstand. His breath came faster, hands shaking as he yanked the drawer open. Buried beneath old notebooks and forgotten junk, he found it.
The cold metal felt heavy, solid, as his fingers closed around the grip.
The gun.
His heart pounded in his chest as he pulled it from the drawer. Holding it out in front of him to look at. The weight of it in his hand felt... right.
Max stared at the gun, the smooth barrel, the cold steel. He could feel his pulse in his fingertips, the blood rushing through him with a force that made his head spin.
He had the gun.
All Max had to do was step out of his room, walk down the hall, and point it at the source of all this misery.
At the man who had torn their family apart.
His father.
His hands were still trembling as he walked towards the voices, the gun at his side, his mind racing.
He didn’t know what he was going to say, if he was going to say anything at all. But he knew what he wanted to do.
He could picture it already - the moment his father turned to face him, the confusion in his eyes, maybe a flicker of recognition. He could feel it, the sensation of pulling the trigger, the kickback as the bullet discharged, the cry of fear that would escape his father's lips.
And then, nothing.
Max stepped into the hallway, his footsteps silent as he approached the voices. His father’s laugh grated on his nerves, twisting the knot of anger tighter inside him. He heard the woman's voice again, soft and sweet, like she was trying to make herself at home. Trying to erase everything his mother had been.
Max’s grip tightened on the gun as he pushed the door to the kitchen open.
His father was sprawled in his chair, half a glass of whiskey in one hand, the bottle in the other. The woman, some stranger, was perched on the edge of the chair beside him, leaning fully against him while her fingers brushed through his father’s greying hair like they had known each other for years.
He hadn’t even waited. Not a day, not an hour, he hadn't waited at all to bring someone else into their house.
Her house. His mother’s house.
Max hated them. Max hated him.
Max stood there, frozen, his heart thudding loudly in his chest. They hadn’t even noticed him yet.
"Hey, I loved my wife as best I could. Max... Max, where are you?" his father slurred and then smiled when he finally looked up, waving his glass as if this was some kind of celebration. "Come say hi to Cheryl."
Cheryl.
The name was like poison in Max’s veins. He didn’t need to know anything else about her. She was already a problem.
He could feel the weight of the gun in his hand. The metal dug into his palm, grounding him, giving him something to hold onto in the flood of emotions threatening to drown him. The edges of his vision blurred, narrowing until all he could see was his father, drunk and smiling like nothing was wrong.
Like they hadn’t buried his wife today.
His thumb brushed the trigger as he held the gun at his side.
"What’s that you got there, Max?" His father chuckled, clumsily raising his glass to drink, sending whiskey spilling down his chest. "Playing cowboy?"
The words grated on him. Like it was all a joke. Like his mother’s death didn’t even matter.
Max wanted him to be gone. Max wanted his mom back, and his father buried six feet under. Max wanted him dead.
Max raised the gun, his hands shaking.
The room was eerily quiet now, save for the faint ticking of the clock on the wall and the clink of ice in his father’s glass as he swirled it absentmindedly.
"Max..." His father’s voice had a warning edge to it now, but it was weak, undercut by the alcohol. "Put that down. It’s not funny. You're scaring Cheryl."
Max’s eyes narrowed. He wanted to see it happen - to see the fear flash in his father’s eyes, to watch him flinch like Max had every time the yelling started, every time his father’s temper flared. He wanted him to feel it. To understand, even for a second, the weight that sat on Max’s chest every day.
Max wanted to see his father scared.
The woman - Cheryl - looked at Max, her smile faltering. Good. Let her be scared, too. She didn’t belong here.
Max stared down the barrel of the gun, his breath shallow, heart pounding like a drum in his ears. His father’s face came into sharp focus, the rest of the room fading into a haze. His father, with the whiskey, with the woman who wasn’t his mother, with his empty promises and careless smiles.
All the anger, the pain, the grief boiled over.
Max’s finger tightened on the trigger.
There was a click.
Nothing happened.
Max blinked, disoriented, the sound jarring him back to reality.
The gun was still in his hand, still pointed at his father, but it was just a toy. Just a stupid, plastic toy. 'Replica gun' was emblazoned on the side. A toy. A display. Nothing more than plastic that could never do what he wished it could.
But for a second - just a second - it had been real. Max had thought it to be real.
In his head, he saw how it was supposed to be play out in vivid, brutal detail. The deafening crack of the gunshot echoed through the room. His father’s eyes widened in shock, the laughter freezing on his lips, replaced by a look of pure horror. Blood sprayed from the exit wound, splattering the wall behind him in thick, dark streaks as Cheryl screamed from her spot at his side. The whiskey glass slipped from his father’s hand, shattering on the floor, amber liquid pooling across the cracked tiles.
Max could smell the gunpowder, acrid and heavy in the air. His father’s body slumped in the chair, lifeless, his eyes dull, bloodshot, and staring at nothing. Max imagined the way his father’s head would snap back, the force of the bullet tearing through skin and bone, leaving a gaping, bloody hole. The chair would tip back, unsteady, his father’s body falling limply to the floor with a dull, sickening thud.
There would be no more slurred words, no more whiskey-soaked grins. No more pretending. Just silence - thick and final.
That was all Max wanted.
For the first time, Max would have control.
He could picture the aftermath - the way the blood would pool around his father’s head, seeping into the cracks of the old wooden floor, spreading slowly, like the decay that had infected their lives. His father would lie there, motionless, glassy-eyed, the alcohol still clinging to his breath even in death.
But unlike in life, he couldn't be able to hurt anyone anymore.
The regret wouldn’t have time to set in. His father wouldn’t even know what hit him.
There would be just one moment of clarity - of terror - before it was over.
It would have been quicker than he deserved.
Max’s breath came faster, his chest heaving as the fantasy played out in his mind, so vivid it felt real. So real that he almost couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
But none of that had happened.
The gun in Max’s hand was still a toy.
The room was silent, the only sound the low hum of the old refrigerator in the kitchen. His father blinked, confused, before bursting into laughter, loud and grating, tearing through the stillness like glass breaking.
Max hated him. He fucking hated him. He hated him so, so much. He wanted him to die. He wanted his mother back.
Max just wanted this to end.
"Christ, kid, you almost gave me a heart attack." His father’s chuckle was bitter, mocking, as if he hadn’t just stared down the barrel of a gun, even a toy. Cheryl shifted in her seat, her nervous giggle following his lead as she looked at Max with wide eyes. "Now put that thing down before you hurt yourself."
Max's finger still held the trigger down, the useless gun still pointed at his father.
Max’s arm lowered slowly, the gun slipping from his hand, clattering uselessly to the floor. His chest felt tight, like he couldn’t breathe, like the weight of everything was crushing him from the inside out.
He stood there for a moment longer, staring at his father - at the man who had failed him, failed his mother. The man who was already moving on.
He could still see it in his mind - the blood, the impact, the finality of it all. What could have been. What might have been.
What should have been.
Max turned and walked out of the room, leaving them both behind. He heard the soft murmur of voices resume as he made his way to the stairs, but it didn’t matter.
It never had.