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The air was cold and full of sickening understanding. The room Michael sat on the floor of was a small studio apartment with cobwebs and peeling paint. None of the physical circumstances of this night was what made his stomach churn. No, the thing that made him struggle to breathe was that Michael couldn’t stop himself from relating to the man who wrote the book in his hands.
Michael knew that he was the spitting image of his father, in a physical sense. They had the same everything, hair, smile, and eyes that Michael knew felt too cold.
This was one of his father’s journals, one of the relics of the past and Michael understood so vividly what his father was going through. The text was manic, it was scribbled onto the page in an almost cursive-like script where the writer’s thoughts went too fast to pull the pen off the page. The words spoke of fear and the need to escape and the sheer pain that erupted when he was out of the home he grew up in.
A young William once wrote in a small apartment in an American college town. A version of Michael’s father, years before the tragedy, before the death, wrote about the feeling in his stomach of being so far from home and free but the utter fear that came with it. The feeling of being so far from home and knowing that you will never allow yourself to be treated that way again, but longing for the pain so you have something familiar.
Michael felt a tightness in his chest and a peppery feeling in his sinuses when he looked down at a line that was written decades ago, a promise that was never kept, that a young William had written down, “I will never let my children feel the way that demon forced me to feel.”
He could laugh.
His face was suddenly wet with a tear that plopped down on the page, making a blotch of the ink.
William broke this vow. Michael felt a tide of tears he had been trying to hold in fall from his face. He pushed the journal away from himself.
There was a time when Michael was no older than fourteen, he had two younger siblings and although he said he hated it all he secretly wanted to be a father someday. He could recall a time where he wrote almost that exact sentence give or take the religious imagery.
Michael forced himself off of the floor of his apartment and laughed, manically.
“I’m not going to be like you.” Michael hissed out the words at the journal on the ground. His heart thumped in his chest. “You can’t make me do what you want in your fucking game of chess!”
He clenched his hands before unclenching them. The room was empty. Michael was yelling at a book. He had neighbors! Michael hit his own head frustrated at himself for getting angry at a god damn book.
This wasn’t a fucking plot by his father. This thing had yellowed pages and was a shitty notebook. There was no way his father decades ago decided to write in a journal just to manipulate his future son. “C’mon Mikey use your fuckin’ head.” Michael whispered to himself trying to calm himself down.
He even had his father’s anger.
That only frustrated him more.
He sat himself down on the floor again. He was surrounded by these journals trying to read everything to see if there was anything important left in them.
This book seemed to be the oldest, so it was the first one Michael picked up.
It had started with a young William on a train excited about traveling to his new university and writing about how he had picked this new journal up as a treat for himself. The first thing he bought in America! Then it had some notes of where William needed to go and small doodles of maps and directions. William had made it to university and was given a tour before he followed up on a lead for an apartment in the area that William had started to rent out.
William’s first night in his apartment alone was where Michael had stopped to have his fit.
Michael wanted to burn it all.
He hated being like that man.
Michael reached down and pulled the journal back into his lap pulling the page open to where he had stopped. The worst part, it was almost comforting. His father had been through everything Michael had. In a disgusting way, Michael wasn’t alone.
How can someone detest and need another as much as Michael knew he needed his father?
The revelation that Michael was never alone set so much else in his brain into place. The way his father could barely look at him when Evan had… of course his father wasn’t looking at Michael then. Michael was a mirror since that day. Michael was no longer his father’s son but just another in the line of Aftons who would bloody the world.
Could Michael defy fate in such a way? It was plainly written, not only was William like him but what little he knew of his paternal grandfather lined up with the narrative that these Afton boys were just a blight on the world.
Michael was doomed to a life as nothing better than his own father. The businessman and famous inventor, Mr. Afton, was his future title. He had already done the whole running away to university in order to start a new life away from his father. What’s to say he can’t start his own successful chain of restaurants?
That was absurd. Michael hated the culinary industry, if he was going to be a businessman, he should go into making something like knives, at least then he wouldn’t be denying who he was.
Michael laughed, his grim sense of humor getting to him.
No, not knives, they didn’t have the fun robotics that he and his father both adored. Michael could go into making toys, then he could have his own chain of toy stores all with new colorful characters based on animals. See, now that was an idea!
Michael rolled his eyes. If fate was such a thing then he has a decade or so before tragedy strikes. That would be enough time to go in and make prototypes and get investors. He could be quite wealthy before he started killing more people.
He wiped his face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. The sweatshirt had a big logo of his university. He had of course gone to his parent’s alma mater. Being a legacy was way cheaper and with his decent savings it wasn’t hard to get into the engineering undergrad with business as a minor. Just like his father.
There really was no escaping him. Michael had thought he had, Michael had made some semblance of friends and had even tried to branch out romantically for the past four years. He had been having a good life and then just as he is about to graduate he gets a call from his father. The man who was now apparently on the run. He tried to ignore that, and it did him no good.
The call came. He delayed doing anything about it until graduation, got his diploma and declined job offers. Then, he found a bus that could take him back home. Michael was far from surprised to see his family home was abandoned.
Michael had rented out this apartment and dumped all the journals as well as his belongings that he had from college into the small room that was his life. Two suitcases and a bag full of his father’s books was the extent of the things he owned. He laughed realizing that his father first came to America with two suitcases.
There really was no denying him.
Michael wondered if he would be better off just ending it now. The long line of Aftons could just end with him with something as simple as a crash, a stab, or even a shot! Oh, the many ways one could end it all.
Michael pondered the price of rope. With the current economy he might even splurge and go for something as ancient as poison. Downing bleach or overdosing on something like pain medication seemed easy, but Michael really considered it and honestly he preferred something more flashy. If all he was good for was bloodying the world he could at least go out with a bang.
Michael was never really a fan of guns. His Uncle Henry had taken him out hunting once as a way to try and bond or something, Michael was never really sure, but he did not enjoy the experience. It was less the gun part that made him uncomfortable and more the part that came with processing your kill. They had gotten a rabbit. Michael didn’t hate the gutting and skinning the more he thought about it. The way different tissues connected to each other and cutting it all away had been something that he actually found enjoyable… Michael smiled grimly at the memory, he wasn’t normal.
Was human something he could be classified as?
He had a heart and lungs, as far as he knew. Michael walked upright and could talk and smile and do all of the things that classified someone as human. It just didn’t feel right to call himself human morally. No, Michael was an Afton and Aftons had a curse, they all had a fate of blood.
Maybe he should just do what his father wanted him to do. He had instructions and he knew where to go. There was no point in denying fate. If Michael was lucky he might even see the only other person out there who understood him.
Michael knew that deep down, his father hated himself most of the time. It was obvious, that's why his father hated him. That's why Michael hated himself. Still, the man that was so awful was also the man who gently held his hand when he was a child, the man who taught him to ride a bike, to swim.
Michael loved his father, which is why he stood up.
He put on his tennis shoes and a hat, grabbed his apartment keys, and pocketed his wallet before leaving.
Michael had somewhere to be; he needed to go see his family.