Page 24 of Like Fathers, Like Son
DAD CHECKED ON ME after he let Anneka go home, and told me that the babies weren’t quite ready to come out yet, but that daddy Gray was staying with mum.
It was weird, because daddy Gray was the one who normally drove mum up the wall most of the time, but for some reason I think he annoyed her less than daddy Dory when she was pregnant. He tended to run around trying to stop her doing things. I’d never seen him around her when she was actually having babies, but I could only imagine he got worse then.
“I’ll grab a few hours here, and then we’ll all go and wait at the hospital, okay? I wanted you kids to all get some sleep so you don’t mind waiting around there. Everything okay tonight?”
I nodded, wanting to get back to mum’s diary entry, which was all about when I was born. It was weird reading about it like this, but it made me feel closer to my parents to see this side of their life. It was also giving me some great ideas for how to show Anneka how important she is to me.
“Okay, lights out in a minute, yeah?”
I nodded, watching dad leave my room, but just before he pulled the door closed, I called out.
“Dad?” He paused, poking his head through the gap in the doorway.
“Yeah?”
“Mum will be okay, right?”
He smiled, nodding his head at the same time.
“Yeah, son. She’ll be just fine. She’s getting pretty experienced at this stuff. I think we might just aim for triplets next time.”
“Next time?”
“Funny, you sound just like your mother.” He winked at me and closed the door, walking to their room to get some sleep.
I dug out mum’s diary and went back to reading about my birth, and then the next few entries, which talked about how they coped with a baby.
I even found a really interesting part later, which left me wondering just how much I didn’t know about my family.
Wilma’s Diary
Tonight was intense and scary, but it also meant a lot to all of us. It was like the culmination of our bond as a family, plus of course, it was as Gray kept saying; ‘Blaze’s first blaze’.
My neighbour, the bitch who hit me the night they took me, the one who kept assuming I was sleeping with her creepy ass limp dick husband… well she got hers and the weirdest thing was that we walked in just after she accidentally killed the limp dick! What were the chances?
Dory and Gray really wanted to punish her for the way she’d treated me, and for the things she said about me to Dory the other night. Like Gray said, only they can call me a whore.
After Dory killed her, Gray set the house on fire again, and then we watched it burn for a few minutes. We had to leave when people started coming out of their own houses to check it out.
It was more exciting than I’d expected, and yet… should I really be bothered that we killed someone tonight? I know it didn’t bother Dory, I mean… the guy’s practically a serial killer at this point. I’m pretty sure they say three kills is serial killer territory, even though there’s no signature or similarity between the murders.
Anyway, the really weird part though? We were back where it all started, my old house. The place I was kidnapped from. I never even bothered to look at the house. All that mattered was the four of us being there together, taking our revenge, and then going home to our little world.
Were we three psychos creating a new generation of nutjobs? Maybe, but at least our kids would have the love and support that none of us had. Nature versus nurture? We’ll see.
They killed someone, and she said it. She said daddy Dory had killed other people, so that meant my parents were all murderers. Killers.
It should have freaked me out, and I guess if I were a normal kid, who… what was it that counsellor lady said? Oh… if I processed emotions like a normal child, it should bother me. Instead I was proud. My family didn’t take any crap from anyone, and neither would I.
15
Blaze
Somesaytherearedefining moments in a person’s life, moments that shape who they become. I know this because I sometimes watchCriminal Mindswith my parents. Apparently it’s not the best thing for a ‘kid my age’ to be watching, but you know what? It’s really good.
Anyway, the twins were born and really small, and wrinkly and noisy, just like Ash had been, and Ember. Honestly, I didn’t really care about that. They were family and that was all that mattered. They were both boys, so I had two more brothers, and daddy Gray had named them, so of course they had weird names too; Phoenix and Cole. Mum said she’d finally drawn a line when he tried to spell it ‘Coal’, but anyway, that’s actually not the defining moment I mean.
Almost a week after they were born, Anneka and her mum were away, staying with her grandmother, and I only knew because she came to tell mum she couldn’t babysit for my family for a few days. That was fine because with mum being home with the babies, they were all busy enough looking after them, and going out wasn’t exactly happening.
