PART TWO: CHAPTER 55

Alex

I shake the sweat from my face and try to dislodge the pictures coursing through my mind. I woke up this morning with them clicking one after the other. Hours later, I’m giving my penance full reign. With each strike of my fist, the next picture generates like an old slideshow.

My mother peering at me in chastisement. Moon’s father shaking his head when I told him I would make my own way. Another strike of my fist and another grunt from my victim. Moon’s mother smiling at me in tenderness and then screaming as she was raped and murdered. My sister crying when I sent her away. Madison’s face when she put three bullets into a piece of scum and became one of us.

My next jab is well-calculated and his ribs give way. I receive a scream this time, and it conjures the perfect image of my father’s head delivered in a box. Not just the image, though. Oh no—the smell, the flesh dripping from his skull, and the liquid evidence of what remained of the man who raised me. That image is the w