Radioactive - Book 1: Birth 🪼

Forty-Eight

"Dad?" I say, even though it's barely over a whisper.

Matt looks around me and I can feel his hands cover his mouth.

"Oh my god..." he says.

I walk in further towards Dad and kneel in front of him.

"Dad, can you hear me?"

I put my hand on his knee and Dad lifts his head up slightly to look at me. His eyes are swollen from being punched in the face, his cheek swollen as well with bruises and stuff and bad blood bruises developing. He moves his eyes a little and then sees me.

"Ra... mey...?" he says softly.

"Yeah, it's me."

Matt suddenly screams into his hands. I look over at him and get up, grabbing him by the shoulders.

"What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you screaming? Are you trying to get us killed?"

He just trembles under my grasp and then finally points with one finger behind me. I turn to look at what he is pointing at and find myself yelling as well, clamping my hands over my mouth to block the sound. My mother's corpse is tied to a chair in front of my dad where he can look at it all the time. She's dead and disfigured, a permanent look of horror on her face. Her skin is swollen with gaseous juices and her skin is taut with bloating. Her wrists are tied to the chair arms while her ankles are tied to the chair legs, one of her feet fallen off because it swelled up too much and the rope detached it. I turn away, unable to keep looking and throw my hands over Matt's eyes because he keeps looking.

"Hey, you can't look at that anymore." I say, trying to keep from vomiting at the sigh and the smell.

"How can I not?!" Matt screams, hyperventilating.

"Out..."

I turn to Dad and pull Matt with me.

"What?"

"Get out... Take Matt and get out as fast as you can."

"I'm not leaving you like this. I won't let what happened to Mom happen to you." I growl.

Dad lifts his head up to properly look at us and spits out blood on the floor. He looks back at me and leans his head back all the way on the chair.

"This is our punishment... for keeping you..."

"No one deserves to be punished like this! Dad, I'm getting you out of here and we'll go-"

"Where, son? Seriously," He coughed a little and spit again. "Where would we go? Naives already informed me about you being wanted for murder. I can protect you and Matt but I can't protect me. With your face being monitored everywhere, Matt being a flux, and me slowing you down, you'd never be able to get back to the Badlands."

"But we have to do something! This is just cruel and unusual punishment!"

Dad smiles, blood on his teeth and one missing.

"I know. We were prepared for it, your mother and I."

"How can you stand it?" Matt asks softly, finally looking up at Dad. "How can you..."

"I have no choice, son. I'm tied to this chair and beaten half to death, no strength to try and move. I would given anything to see your mother put in a proper grave, buried peacefully in the ground rather than what her body has become, decaying in front of me."

"Then I'll move her-"

"You'll do no such thing!" Dad growls, his grey eyes boring into mine. "Don't you dare do something like that. I would never wish it upon you to have to do anything with that corpse. I know it used to be your mother, but she's gone now, and I would never ask you to do such a thing."