In the End, Nothing: A Short Story Collection by Michael Patrick Hicks

Author:Michael Patrick Hicks [Hicks, Michael Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: High Fever Books
Published: 2023-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

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Gabriel Evans was six years old, old enough to understand death, and he was pretty sure his father, who was much, much older, was dead.

Only a few minutes before, Gabe had come out of his room, hungry and searching for somebody to help make him breakfast. Of his mother, there was only a piece of scrap paper left on the kitchen table, her chicken scratch writing on it. He paid it little attention and went off to find his dad, instead, his heart set on pancakes, or maybe some eggs.

He wondered if Daddy had been alive when she left, or if his death was the reason she had gone out. Gabe stood at the threshold of his parents’ bedroom for some time, watching in nervous apprehension. He wasn’t sure what had made him stop, some kind of instinct that was older even than his father, a subtle change in the air itself that froze his feet to the floor and ground him to a halt. Then, the smell hit his nose, and he knew. It smelled kind of like a bathroom, but there was another smell mixed in with all that awfulness that he couldn’t identify. Still, he stood quietly, watching, waiting.

Dad lay atop the bedsheets and blankets, sprawled facedown, perfectly still. Gabe kept hoping to see the subtle rise and fall of his back and shoulders that would indicate the man was breathing. He’d seen it before, lots of times, when he would silently creep into this room before they were awake and just watch them for a bit before crawling onto the mattress between them.

Rooms with the living felt different than rooms with the dead, as if when somebody died they took more than just their lives and souls with them.

A noise like nails skittering against the glass window made Gabe jump, a scream peeling loose from deep inside him. Shadows flickered across the pane, the wind moving the tree’s low-hanging branches, and he kicked himself for being stupid.

Slowly, he moved into the bedroom, tears welling in his eyes. He was grateful that his father’s face was turned away from him. The smell was worse up close, and when Gabe put his hand on his dad’s arm, intending to shake him awake, to bring him back to life, his father’s skin was cold.

His hip pressed against the edge of the bed, Gabe became aware of a tacky coolness pooling against his waist and stepped back, gasping in surprise. His pajamas were wet, sticky against his skin.

After a moment, his brain finally caught up with his eyes, made him realize the bedsheets were the wrong color, that it wasn’t just a trick of the light, but…something else. It was a color he knew well from all the summers of scraped elbows, knees, and hands. Curiosity pulled him forward again, put one foot in front of the other, and marched him around to the other side of the bed.

His father had settled into blankets soaked in blood. The early

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