Rupert

Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer

Rupert’s father blubbered uncontrollably as he took his son’s hand and led him away from the car and into the forest. Son? Was he really? Maybe if he kept thinking that way this might become somehow easier. Yes, he just needed to keep reminding himself. The boy may have sprung forth from his beloved Mary’s womb, but he wasn’t natural. No sir, not in the least.

Bob cried aloud as the revolver fell from his waistband to the wet leaves. Dropping to his knees his body was wracked with sobs as he stuffed the gun back into his pants, all the while Rupert stood expressionless, waiting for him to get up and continue leading the way.

“I’m s-s-sorry son. There’s nothing else to do now.” He wiped snot on his sleeve and composing himself momentarily he grabbed Rupert firmly by the hand again and said, “Come on.”

And further into the woods they went. Rupert always silent, allowing himself to be led, as per usual, wherever his parents took him, just like he had allowed them to lead him to school for the first time. But it wasn’t long before the Williams girl had turned up dead on the playground. No one could explain it. One moment she had been apparently talking to Rupert, and the next she was lying there with blood pouring from her ears and eyes.

Then there was the old man at the park. Rupert’s parents had only turned their backs for a minute, but when they had suddenly discovered that their son was missing, it didn’t take much frantic searching before they located him in some nearby bushes, standing quietly over the elderly fellow’s corpse, again complete with all too familiar bloody orifices.

And so they had moved to another town, to get away from all the pointing fingers and accusations. But it wasn’t long before their new neighbor’s dog was felled by a mysterious ailment that had caused it to bleed from its ears and eyes as well.

And Bob had endured it all, but there was now this, the final straw. He had come home that afternoon to find his worst nightmare realized, his beloved Mary on the floor, blood surrounding her. Why it had happened was just as much a mystery as any of them, but it was the last time it would ever happen. And the hell-spawned demon would now pay for taking her from him.

They came to a small clearing and Bob let go of his son’s hand. He took two steps away and turned to face him. “It was that lab your mother used to work at, wasn’t it? They did things there… things that she was sworn to never discuss, not even with her own damn husband!”

Rupert stood as wordless as ever, his blank stare giving no hint of thought or emotion.

His father yelled at him. “They exposed her to something! They did… something! And you’re the bastard result!”

Rupert’s expression never once changed, but deep inside the center of his chemically enhanced mind he calculated. And he remembered everything. They all had it coming. From the bullying, pinching girl, to the disgusting pervert who had made ready to take his sex organ out, to the stupid biting beast, and worst of all, his pillow-smothering bitch of a mother.

And now here stood his blithering idiot of a father, making ready to dispatch him with that crude weapon.

Suddenly Bob’s sniffling and crying stopped abruptly, and as the revolver tumbled uselessly from his fingers he began to bleed steadily from his eyes and ears.