The trees were towering, staring down at us small ones below. They criticized for our new lives and unnatural being, most of all for our hearts blinded by jealousy. Simply, they were cruel, stripping us down to our barest and most vulnerable of selves through their ancient, subliminal ability to terrify. Being so naked now on this climactic of nights kept us wanting to stay hidden, and so we stood quiet within the brush still shadowed beneath the edge of the pines.

These trees, they made a smothering cage, a paralyzing nightmare all around us to which there was only one cold, icy escape. Tucked into the edge of this sudden clearing was still water, which spread far out into the night. A breeze whispered across its surface a great distance out, singing lullabies as the lake reflected the black and starry worlds above.

This scene couldn’t have been tranquil, however. The trees were too demanding, focusing on this one portion of the earth beneath a blank circle of the heavens. And we hated to be reminded of it, to be trapped in with it, both the atrocities of the past and the sin which some distant and make-believe God now committed before us.

Before us, the twisted event drew closer, and one man fell heavy onto the ground. He stared at the combatant above him, and as his arm gave way beneath him, ending blood’s battle. The taller man knelt down, taking his son’s head in his hands.

The father’s voice was soft, soothing, gentle as he spoke. He smoothed back the mess of his son’s disheveled hair, wiping off the tears and sweat, the blood, with his sleeve. The younger man’s eyes were clear, had lost their glassy quality, finally comprehending as his father spoke of times past, old feuds and arguments, carrying on with calm and measured beats through old anguish and the tragically ignored warnings. There was a falter in his words as he drew away from the reminiscence, to the reasons they were there now.

The father sat, cradling his son’s shaking form, whispering his sorrows and regrets, all the apologies he had that his extra miles and countless attempts at turning the boy around had not been enough. There was a glimmer of understanding as they sat there, between them passing dead words of hatred, mournful words of guidance.

The son, coward that he was, did not weep for his death, or beg for repentance and life as had been expected. The madness was gone from his eyes, and now they were left fragile, horrified at the stark realization of his murders. I think, as they stared into his father’s loving eyes, they asked just for his forgiveness.

That the damned creature deserved none had been the stance before, that even though we all killed, his were different. He had not meant simply to take his victims’ lives into himself as we all had been made to do for survival, had never felt the pains of guilt and questioning through which all others suffered from these acts. No, his tastes were for the death itself, the mangling of life and the torturing of a soul. He was a murderer, grotesque and unforgivable, even among our race of killers.

There was a glimpse of light as something passed between them, and a shock passed through me as I recognized the object; clasped tightly between our father’s fingers was the possession most intimately tied to his bloodline. Holding the son tightly, protecting him one last time from the cruelties that evil and killers brought to the world, his father kissed his forehead and gave a good-bye.

He took up the bloody blade, and drove it cleanly into his son’s temple.

For long moments, their forms were still and silent, blue beneath the all-seeing moon. Then his father wept, great jerking sobs wracking his body, the cool voice terrifying in its sorrow. He held the body of his perfect son tightly to him, moaning into the rough and bloodied mat of hair, until the will to cry left him.

There was another pause, and our father closed his son’s eyes.

We watched as this tall, admirable man – this man who we had never seen raise a finger to his children – lifted his son, black heart and all, bringing him to the edge of the water. We had for years sworn amongst ourselves that no matter how fiercely the boy would refuse his confidence and denounce his morals, our father would have his hand outstretched. That no matter how far he should go our father would never directly intervene or accuse him of wrongs. And no matter how many or who he killed, that even after it had been his own daughter, our father would ask us to forgive the wretch.

After resting the boy down, cursed blood soaking into the dull, brown sand, our father, he stepped back from the body of the one who had long ago ceased to be our brother, and we could see the pendant that had so many times been refused clutched between the long, bony fingers. He raised a hand, mouthing last words, and burned our brother.

We did not know this man, in those minutes as he stood in front of the flames. We did not know this man, who had given us all new life, and indispensable second chances; this man who had only smiles and good advice to offer, the warmest and most comforting of hearts, the immortal father who had brought us through centuries only to show us the brightest lights in each of them, our father whose only love was for his children.

But we watched as he gathered his son’s ashes, letting the breeze take a few, and scattered some into the lake. The rest were mixed among the sand. We watched this man who now had no need for apologies bathe his hands in the water, wash the blood and dirt from his arms and his face.

He stood, then, and left the oppressive woods.