Sin Of The Father {Black Bird Excerpt}

~unedited excerpt~

Peri loomed over the slumped figure of the little girl. She looked angelic laying there, having succumbed to the adult Benylin that had finally worked its way through her body—her hair hanging over her sleeping face; her fingers curled slightly against her cheek; her breath the soft sigh of peace juxtaposed against the dried tears that had left behind a soft pink stain in the shadows beneath her closed eyes.

Angelic? Ha! There were no angels. The devil had killed them all on that dark day when he had visited her.

Her body trembled as she lifted Bird onto the black leather table. She shook her hands aggressively, letting the action move along her arms and up her spine where it finally rattled in her brain—knocking against the screaming whore who never stopped telling her how badly she needed to medicate. She closed her eyes and willed the desire away, feeling her insides eating themselves looking for it. The hastily chugged cough syrup had done little to quell her need.

This was her lot.

She looked down on the sleeping child.

This was her penance—this girl. This curse.

This daughter.

She straightened the limp body out on the table—young, bare skin glowing beneath the work light, My Little Pony t-shirt removed and crumpled against the baseboard by the front desk.

Peri picked up the gun and peace descended in a welcome flood as she stepped on the switch and filled the tattoo shop with its comforting buzz. The cool steel calmed her and she felt her tremor dissipate the moment art became imminent. She looked on her canvas—blank and begging for her truth—and she knew only that art was her therapy and this art was priceless. She would mark this curse for the sin from which it came.

Her message followed the curve of the left shoulder blade as if she were putting a new scar on the old scar of a broken wing; and with each additional letter her body relaxed even more until she was near that perfect tipping point of bliss—finding her cloudy nirvana by putting a needle into someone other than herself.

Such a gift, to carve skin so flawless. She wiped small beads of blood as she worked, her hand steady as she dissolved into the euphoria she found in creating beauty out of the only truth she still clung to. ‘Sin of the Father’. It called out in perfect cursive from her daughter’s defenseless back.

She loved her art.

But the colour of the ink was the colour of everything hateful.

It would be exactly three minutes after she turned off the gun before she began to feel the steely cut of desperate remorse.