The Killing Vision - By Will Overby Page 0,7

waist. “I said stop that!” The belt came cutting through the air with a whistle, striking the side of Joel’s head. He screamed and fell to the floor. He lay on the hard floor like a slug, his mind spinning toward a circle of black. Mama had not moved an inch, had not uttered a word of protest.

When Clifton found work, the tension over money subsided, but Clifton’s violence remained. Wade and Joel were often whipped with the belt, sometimes so hard that whelps were left on their skin for days.

Joel began to put on weight in his teens; he’d never understood why, since he was active and healthy. In any event, Clifton’s random punishments grew more frequent, more violent. Clifton seemed to hate the sight of him.

Not long after his sixteenth birthday, Joel was heading through the house toward his room when Clifton grabbed his arm. It had been almost a year since he’d discovered his strange ability, and Joel had learned to steel himself against the torrent of sensation, both physical and mental. Most of his encounters were the result of accidentally brushing into someone, catching a fleeting thought like a short blast from a passing radio. This was different.

The sensations rushing through him from Clifton were black and brutal, a wave of hatred so strong it nearly knocked Joel to the floor. A roar flooded his head, a mixture of screams both male and female that morphed into one agonizing wail that was asexual and almost harmonic, terrifying yet strangely beautiful. Images streaked past his vision—blood and naked limbs, Mama’s face twisted in agony. Then, somewhere in the midst of the seizure, a tiny spark of pain ignited and began to grow. It loomed before him, drowning out all his other senses, a pain so intense, so sickening that it penetrated every fiber of his being. And then the words exploded into his head, Clifton’s voice yet not Clifton’s voice but the voice of the devil (YOU FILTHY STINKIN’ PIG FUCKIN’ QUEER BASTARD SHOW YOU HOW FAT QUEERS LIKE IT) and the pain! The pain was excruciating. And then he realized that Clifton was gripping his testicles, crushing his balls in his filthy, nicotine-stained fingers and Joel was screaming and crying but there was no one there. Mama was gone. Wade was gone. They were alone in the house.

And then, miraculously, Clifton let go, leaving Joel to writhe on the floor in pain, clutching his bruised testicles as wave after wave of nausea washed over him. He fought against the urge to vomit. Clifton was looming over him, his voice drawn out and slow as he said, “The next time you play with yourself, I’ll cut the goddamn thing off.” He stomped out of the room, his worn leather workboots scuffing the wood floor.

Joel did not know what to think. It was the one incident he had never spoken to anyone about.

Throughout all of this time, through all of Clifton’s violent and unexpected outbursts, Mama seemed to ignore everything. Joel had hugged her once after he attained his ability and saw that she was deathly afraid of Clifton. She was terrified of what he might do to the boys, but she was more fearful of what he would do to her. He had seen everything—unspeakable acts of perversion in the solace of their bedroom, sudden eruptions of anger and humiliation—all directed at her. He had been simultaneously outraged and sickened. Though at first he couldn’t understand why their mother refused to take up for them, he finally understood. It was all there in her head. She was afraid he would kill her, knew he would kill her if she dared take a stand against him.

He had wondered countless times how different things would have been had their real father not died, if Clifton had never shown up to tear their lives to shreds. But it was pointless to think about that. The past was the past, and there was nothing about it that could be changed.

Now, as the lightning flashed and the thunder grew distant, Joel lit a cigarette and let it smolder in the blackness, dangling from his fingers, his feet drawn up in the chair. He was not surprised that his cheeks were wet with tears. He rarely thought of Clifton without crying.

He sucked on the cigarette and stared at the blackness outside the windows. The rain had stopped, but the lightning continued to flash, brilliant bursts of light that showed the sky to be