Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

DIRK RICHARDS

Irene went around the table to sit next to Mr Berlique. Jonah wiped away tears and stopped his bawling. Elane sat upright, parting from comforting Jonah.

Fear. It is a discipline that I do not wish to instill, especially in my own family. Fear. It is a constant terror that I do not wish to instill, especially in my own family. Fear. My own family fears me for they think that I have brought death. Death wrought with fear. Who doesn't fear death? I used to fear death, but to my family, they think I am the personification of both. So I cannot fear death if I am Fear and Death, so I fear for my family's deaths. If they die, what will become of me? I will no longer be Fear because there will be no one to fear me. I will no longer be Death because there will be no one who remembers my actions. I will be forgotten, and that is what I truly fear. It has disciplined and terrified me into keeping my family alive at all costs.

Now Mr Berlique has interrupted me. He has brought anger back into my family. It rushes through their blood and jumps from mind to mind. Anger trumps fear and I wonder if my family are pretending to fear for once. It would certainly be more entertaining if they were.

And here Mr Berlique stands behind the table with his hand reaching out towards me for a handshake, and I must take it. I wipe my hands of the last blood with a cloth and throw it into the sink.

"Hello, I'm Anton. How are you? Sorry for the mess, I dropped this picture frame. Fucking butterfingers, I am." He shook my hand and held up a picture frame for a split second before hiding it in his hoodie.

"Really?" I looked around at my family, trying to find something that gave away his lie.

"Well, I'm Dirk and don't worry about it, Irene can clean it up later. And boy, will you look at this dinner?!" I sat down at the head of the table and began to cut into the lobster.

"Yes, your wife is quite the cook." Anton sat back down.

"Is it stuffed as well, sweetie?"

"Yes, with seafood stuff -"

"Well, I'll be - we should have more guests over if you're going to be cooking like this." I piled my plate up first, then everyone else's. "And if you're still hungry, feel free to have a second serving. Uh, Anton, beer or wine?" He looked up at me but didn't have a preference. "Oh, what am I talking about? You look like a wine type of fella."

I opened the cupboard, pulled out three glasses and a 1988 Magnum that came straight from the vineyard around here. I filled all of the glasses up to halfway with the red wine and passed the glasses to Irene and Anton, leaving the bottle on the table. Drinking wasn't a problem for me anymore. I knew how to control myself within level-headed boundaries.

"Professional, with a touch of naughty." I realized Anton was sitting in Irene's usual seat. We hadn't been in this house long, but it was where she always sat. "You're sitting in my wife's seat." I drank all of the wine in my glass already and went for a refill.

"Am I?" he asked, his voice almost lost beneath the thunder that rolled overhead. "I'm sorry, I'll move -"

"No you can stay there." I saw Irene watching us through the corner of her eye while she ate. It had gone terribly different the last time. But like I said, I have control now. "Brings you next to me, so we can speak man to man."

Elane and Jonah talked amongst themselves loudly, while Irene ate in silence on the other side of the table. She would sometimes participate in their pointless conversations. Me and Anton drank wine and got our fingers dirty, digging into the lobster and sucking up meat through its pincers.

"So how goes the launchpad project with Irene?"

"To be honest, we're behind schedule. We were going to work on it a bit more after dinner. Unless you and her were going to head to the bedroom after this."

"What did you just say?"

"Shit, forget about it." I threw down my lobster pincer and wiped my mouth, beard and hands with a tissue.

"No, what did you just say? I want to hear it."

"I will not repeat it. It was a slip of the tongue." I gulped down another sliver of wine.

"Your tongue does not slip to form full sentences. Now out with it!"

"Fine, I was merely alluding to the fact that you have some sort of domestic abuse controlling relationship with your wife and kids, for why else would they forget their troubles and worries in the blink of an eye as soon as you entered the room if not because they fear for their lives?"

"Don't say that. You know not what you speak of."

"I speak of the devil's work - that is what I speak of," Anton said. "And I will speak more of it, maybe to the authorities."

"AARGH!" My yell was like a booming bark, it made them jump like scared rabbits. I liked that. It made me feel mighty powerful. In that tall dining room, I was like the king and they were the scurrying servants of no importance.

I took my plate and cleaned it under the tap. I left the tap running. On the color spectrum, the white water tended to blue with intermittent, irregular shifting due to small changes in pressure of the fluid. It helped me calm down and control myself.

I hit my fork against the grimy metal tap, not in rhythm with anything. Just my head making up sounds in my restive state. And I was swinging it hard.

I asked: "If you died right now, would [tap] anyone care? But let's be honest, no one would give a shit. They wouldn't. The few people who would feel obligated to go to your funeral would probably be annoyed and leave as early as possible. That is who you are. That's what you are. You're nothing. [tap][tap] To anyone. To everyone. Think about it, because if you do, if you let yourself, you will know I am telling the truth."

Tap -- the fork broke. Outside, the wind didn't howl, it screamed. The rain didn't fall, it was driven, hard, merciless, torrential. The trees did not sway, they creaked, bent and moaned and their autumnal leaves became not confetti, but ammunition in the gale. I left the fork in the sink and shut the tap off. I turned back around to the dinner table. Anton had his back to me.

"Toilet break. Where's the toilet, Elane?" She pointed to the hallway on the right.

"Down that hallway, third one on the left."