The End of Summer

Chapter 34- 'What do you think, is this enough for us?'

“Oh isn’t this fucking touching.” Bradley let out a breath of annoyance.

“If it makes you feel any better, I thought the day he died everything would get better. I thought once he was gone everything would go back to normal. I thought about ending that slimy little prick’s life so many times over in my head, and each time I thought about it I felt happy.” Alex explained to Bradley, but as he said the next thing he looked far from happy “Actually doing it though wasn’t anywhere near as satisfying as I dreamed it would be.”

“Because you know you had no f*cking reason to.” Bradley spat, and Alex shook his head calmly.

“No, he deserved everything and more. The reason I felt bad was because I thought I had sunk to his level. Just like he had over the years, I sat there and watched someone else slowly die.”

My stomach sank as I heard his words. Alex’s wasn’t dead physically, but mentally I think we all knew he passed away a long time ago.

“Over the years it got worse and worse. He would be everywhere, at school, at home. Every time I heard someone wake up in the middle of the night for a piss I thought he had come back for me. We went on holiday once and they were playing songs by the bar in the hotel and that one came on. His song.” Alex remembered, and my mouth fell open as I did also.

That holiday we all went to when Archie and I were eleven years old. Alex was fifteen and by this point he would have already killed Roger. The day he went missing and our dad’s found him in the middle of a shop having a full on breakdown. As I remembered the one he had before he confessed what he had done to Roger, it suddenly fitted very well and I had a pretty good idea why my dad was so disturbed after finding him like that.

Alex stared into space; God knows what thoughts running through his head.

“You never know what people are capable of. You never know what you’re capable of until it comes down to it.” He uttered the words that he had already said tonight when he was talking about our parent’s affair.

It dawned on me that he was not only talking about them, or Roger. He was talking about himself.

“I found him.” Bradley hissed through gritted teeth “I found him the next morning.”

Alex tilted his head as he looked at Bradley “You saw didn’t you?”

Bradley looked on, running his tongue over his top teeth before nodding.

“Yeah, I saw what happened that night. I heard people shouting in the hallway and got up. I opened my bedroom door slightly and saw you and my dad arguing about something. I saw you push him, and then I saw you sit at the top of the stairs to admire your work.” Bradley admitted bitterly “As I said before though, with that brilliant back story of how you were pushed to the extreme it really puts you in a good light.”

Bradley had obviously missed the beginning of Alex and Roger’s encounter that night. Of course all he would see was Alex pushing his father down a flight of stairs. Maybe if he had opened his door a few minutes earlier, we would not have been sat there having this conversation.

“If you knew all this time, why didn’t you tell the police?” Archie finally spoke.

I noticed Miss Vines and Kevin turn their heads to look at Bradley; I think both of them curious as to the answer of this question.

“I was thirteen years old. I had just watched one of my friends push my father down a flight of stairs. I had no idea what to say to them, I didn’t know whether what I saw was just a fucking dream for the first few months.” Bradley admitted, before letting out a laugh “Either that or I knew on some level I wanted to make you pay for what you did in my own way.”

“Is this enough for you?” Alex asked Bradley, and I wondered the same thing. Was this enough of a punishment in his eyes.

Bradley’s mouth turned up into a grin, before he made a thinking face and placed his index finger and thumb onto his chin as he thought it over.

“Hmm, I don’t really know to be honest…” He turned his head to the right and looked up “What do you think is this enough for us?”

My eyes drifted to where he was looking, as did everyone else’s in the room.

Miss Vines looked down at him, a smirk rising at her lips.

All fear fell from her face. She was no longer crying, and I realised I was too wrapped up in Alex’s story to notice she hadn’t been crying for a while.

“Personally?” Miss Vines smiled at Bradley. She lifted the hem of her top up to reveal her stomach, before reaching behind her. She made a pained face as she pulled the Cellotape off of her back “I don’t think we’re even close to done here.”

Bradley raised his brows and held his hands up in defence “Whatever you say.”

Once she had peeled off the rest of the Cellotape, she grabbed the wire that was stuck to her stomach and held it up for us to see “These things are extremely itchy after a while.”

She tossed the wire onto the ground, and it landed almost next to the one that Bradley had ripped off of Kevin’s chest earlier. Miss Vines let out a breath of air, rubbing her hands together before she walked to Bradley and took the knife out of his hand. She turned to look at our dumfounded expressions with the faintest hint of a smirk at her lips.

“He killed our dad. We are far from fucking finished.”

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