It takes three flicks of my lighter before the end of my cigarette even begins to glow red-orange. When it finally does, I breathe in, both the warmth and the tobacco awakening my chest. Moths fly into the flood lamp above the back door, buzzing and pinging to their deaths. The cool, spring night gives me gooseflesh.

​

The door to my right peels open and a shaft of light floods the dark alley. Already, I’m annoyed. It’s Michelle—Arden, I mean. We usually work together on weeknights.  

​

She peeks her head out the door. Her tan, freckled skin makes her look like an albino leopard. “Some guy wants a malt, and I don’t know how to make those. I know you’re on your break, but could you please come in and make this one thing?” 

​

Scoffing, I roll my eyes. Most of the time, Arden and I are in a nice limbo of an acquaintanceship. A comfortable, gray level of human interaction. Of course, until she goes and does something insufferable like this. “Jeez, you still don’t know how to make a malt?”

​

“No, Hendrix, I don’t,” Arden says. She huffs for a moment, considering. “I won’t tell Lisa that you steal a quart of frozen yogurt every third Wednesday if you do this for me.”

​

I’m just amazed that Lisa, our boss, hasn’t noticed yet. Or that the cash drawer is always a few dollars off when I close. “Fine,” I spit. Arden looks at me expectantly, but I sneer and wave her off. “Can’t I just have this one cigarette in peace?”

​

“Sure, but you don’t have to be a dick about it.” She sighs and shuts the door.

​

In. 

​

Out.

​

I pull up the sleeve of my work shirt and put the cigarette out on my own skin, savoring the endorphin dump that lights up my brain like the Fourth of July.

 

Lisa leaves around seven. We can pretty much just hang out and serve customers after that woman stops watching us like a hawk. She gives me strange looks, but really, she’s nothing more than a spiteful, middle-aged woman who provides me with a steady income. Nothing I can’t handle.

​

“Making a malt is easy, Arden,” I say. I’m sick of always being the one who has to work that blender, and subsequently clean all of the dirty dishes it makes. “Would you like me to teach you?” I tease, as if she’s five years old. 

​

Arden rolls her eyes, redoing her strawberry blonde ponytail and pulling it through her visor with the swirly Billings’ Best Yogurt letters on the front. “Yeah, well I always seem to fuck it up, so why even try?” She leans back on the counter, and I pick at a bloody hangnail. “You know, I don’t even know why Lisa keeps this place open this late on a Wednesday night. Everyone in this tiny-ass town is at church, so all we get are the seedy characters.”

​

“You’re not at church,” I counter, pulling my shitty polyester work shirt away from the bloody spot on my upper arm, below my armpit. It stings, the ashy skin already blistering.

​

“Well yeah, that’s because I have to work.” Arden sighs and rubs her temples, and her tortoiseshell glasses shift with the movement. The only reason we have so much time to screw around and talk is because we’ve been here since five and we’ve had approximately five customers. 

​

“Lisa should just send one of us home.” In defeat, I stick the corner of my thumb in my mouth to get it to stop bleeding. 

​

 “Amen to that,” Arden says, shaking her head. “God, nothing ever happens here. Can’t even sell froyo on a summer night.”

​

“There was that one time when our county voted Democrat.” I know she enjoys it when I make jokes, and sometimes they seem to come naturally around her. Sometimes she has an energy I like to rub the wrong way.

Arden bursts into laughter, echoing through the empty, tile-lined ice cream shop. “You’re funny, Hendrix.”

​

“Thanks.” Arden does provide ample entertainment for me, although not much else. More often than not, she dips past endearing and turns irritating. 

​

The bell rings, meaning someone has just come inside the store. Like robots, Arden and I walk to the front. 

Cue the usual spiel. Arden perks up and puts on a winning smile. “Welcome to Billings’ Best Yogurt. How can I help you?”

​

The guy is middle aged with a beaten-up baseball cap tucked low over his eyes. He toes the line of ‘could be creepy’, so a six out of ten. It’s a game Arden and I play when we work these long Wednesday night shifts. 

The man orders and sits down at a chrome and pastel table. He wants a milkshake, which is a part of my job description as outlined by Arden herself. Sometimes she’s efficient and eccentric. Other times, I want to strangle her. 

​

I pour in the frozen yogurt, the milk, and the toppings the man requested. It’s moments like these when my hands are occupied but my mind is elsewhere—where I seem to get lost in my own head, where the darkness tugs at the corners of my vision, crushing my mind like fingers in dough. I move over to the blender, and stick the cup underneath. The machine whirrs to life. 

​

I sense Arden looking at me, so I glance up. She smiles at me, tight-lipped, and I give her the same smile back—an empty reflection. One that reassures Arden. One that makes me feel . . . normal. 

​

But the distraction makes my hand slip, and the cup jerks out of control. The chocolate brownie shake splatters all over the blender, the floor, and me. Lightning rips through my body, shattering my veins.

It comes on fast, like it always does. One second the waters are calm, but the next is a raging hurricane, the darkness detonating at ground zero. “Fucking shit!”

​

I hear Arden gasp, but I don’t care because my hands are trembling from the startle and anxiety and the rage swells up to my eyes.  It’s blinding me. Even the man who ordered the milkshake is leaning over the counter. Both of their eyes are wide and accusatory and gaping at me like I’m the headline act in a freak show. Just like the goddamn milkshake, I feel my control slipping from its carefully tuned axis.

​

Crushing my hands into fists, I storm outside, the door creaking and slamming behind me. My breathing spasms, rattling and beating against my chest. I hear Arden profusely apologizing to the man and attempting to make him another shake, but I don’t care. I don’t care. 

​

Digging my spine into the brick wall, I push the heels of my hands into my temples, trying to ground myself. The anger boils in my chest, hot steam clouding my head. I slide to the ground, locking my body into a box, and try to resist the urge to punch the brick wall until me or it is a bloody pulp.

​

My eye catches on a stack of metal pipes against the alleyway wall. I grab one and bang it against the brick, chips of mortar flying. Fear—the kind that crawls up your back and makes a home in your neck—creeps up on me. The rippling pain through my arms almost feels good as  I hit it over and over, replaying the moment inside the frozen yogurt shop in my head. There’s a part of me that knows my anger is irrational, but I couldn’t care less. 

I drop the pipe with a clang and grab fistfuls of my hair. It’s like I’m breathing fire. 

​

I wait. I wait until the nothing returns. As I breathe, it returns just like the smothering darkness of clouds covering up the stars above. 

​

I walk back in. Arden’s on her hands and knees, wiping up the last bits of chocolate and brownie. 

​

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she hisses, standing and crossing her arms. I clench my jaw. She scoffs, smiling bitterly. “Sorry, that was rude—but seriously, Hendrix?”

​

“Seriously.” When Arden doesn’t budge, I give in. “Alright, I’m sorry.”  I’m not. 

​

Sighing, Arden rubs the bridge of her nose. “It . . . it’s fine. I made him the shake and gave him a generous discount. It’s fine.”

 

I don’t think Arden has actually forgiven me yet, which means I have to play an angle. There’s still two long hours of our shift left, and I’d rather be in Arden’s good graces when we close up. So I decide to approach her when the man leaves. 

​

“I really am sorry,” I say, picking at a hangnail. 

​

She smiles, and it looks like something inside of her is breaking. “It’s okay. We all have those days, right?”

​

“Right.” Except that’s my whole fucking life. 

​

Arden serves herself a small cup of vanilla frozen yogurt and sprinkles in crushed Butterfingers. “It feels like I’m having one of those years, you know?”

​

I scoff. “Yeah.” More than she’d ever know. 

​

She holds out a spoon to me. “Want some?”

​

I grimace. “Butterfingers are weird. They’re hard and flaky and get stuck in my teeth.”

​

Arden drops her jaw. “Wow, I guess we can’t be friends anymore. I love Butterfingers.”

​

“Were we ever friends to begin with?” Maybe not the best thing to say, but it’s too late now. 

​

She hoists herself up on the counter, cleaning her glasses on the end of her shirt. Raising her eyebrows at me in the harsh, artificial light, she says, “Touche, Hendrix. Touche.”

​

I sigh and start to count the cash in the register. 

​

“Did you ever work anywhere before this?” she asks, her words garbled by a mouthful of frozen yogurt.

​

“The slaughterhouse out by I-90.” 

​

Arden’s face wrinkles up a bit as she tries to hide her gut reaction. “Oh.”

​

 Yeah, that’s the response I usually get. As I’m counting the ones, I turn around and shove some in my back pocket, away from the camera that sits in the upper right hand corner of the kitchen. 

​

Arden stands, pacing. “Alright, now here’s the million dollar question: where are you going after graduation?” she asks. 

​

“I don’t know.  Nowhere.”

​

“Ha, yeah, same.” Pause. “Are you nervous? It’s in like, two weeks or something.”

​

I hesitate. “No.” This is a lie, but she can’t know that. 

​

“You’re lying. Everyone’s nervous-excited about graduation.” Arden jabs my ribs with her fingers, and I worm away, cringing. “We are at the beginning of the rest of our lives, Hendrix! Isn’t that an amazing kind of scary?”

​

Arden’s vulnerable questioning makes me uncomfortable. I try to think of something to end this conversation. “I guess.”

​

“Are you ready? To be done?” she asks. 

​

“No.” An honest answer, for once. 

​

“Yeah, me neither. I’m just not sure what I fear more . . . staying somewhere safe forever, or the wild, uncertain beyond of the future.” She waves her hand in a dramatic arc for emphasis.

​

I nod. “Yeah.”

​

A pause as Arden scrapes the last of her frozen yogurt from the cup. “We should totally hang out sometime, Hendrix. You’re a good listener. A bad conversationalist, but a great listener nonetheless, and I need more people like that in my life.”

​

“Thanks.” We should definitely not hang out. I’m getting the increasing urge to gut her with one of the spinning blades we use for milkshakes. My fingernails vibrate. 

 

Eleven o’clock comes, and Arden and I close up shop. She smiles and waves to me on our way out. I drive home in silence. 

​

My house is a crackerbox on the edge of town. One level, no garage, and hasn’t been updated since the seventies. Our driveway is at least a half mile long, winding from the road to our patch of dirt where we keep our cars. The grimy windows are black holes, cardboard cutouts against a backlit stage. I’m not sure where the darkness ends and my house begins. 

​

Some nights it’s a gamble on whether my dad will be in a good mood or not. It’s no use asking him. Every day is a rough day at work. He’s been in one of his ‘moods’ for several weeks now. Last week, he brought home two women from the bar to have sex with on a Tuesday night. Week before that, he gambled away so much money, we had to sell some of my Grandpa Chuck’s antique farm equipment to pay the electric bill.

​

I sneak inside, letting the screen door fall closed behind me. He’s just sitting on the couch in the dark, static from the TV playing in the background like he was waiting for me.

​

“Where you been?” he asks.

​

“Hi, Dad.”

​

“Answer me.” I can’t tell if he’s drunk or not, but he’s definitely not himself. Then again, I can’t seem to remember when my father ever truly was himself.

​

“I was at work.”

​

“Good.” My dad grunts as he stands up. I sneer at the smell of unwashed clothing and alcohol. He steps toward me, and everything inside me retreats. For a split second, I’m no different than a cornered animal.

​

But he just walks right past me and saunters into the kitchen. 

​

The fridge light casts a yellow haze onto my father, making him look older than he actually is. It floods the dark household like a crack in the universe. “Did you put away the dishes before you left?”

​

“Yes.”

​

“No you didn’t,” he says blatantly. “The fuck are those, then?” He points towards the half-full sink.

​

The ball of fire in my chest spirals. “They’re not mine. They’re probably the ones you used tonight.”

​

He laughs, hearty and disgustingly sarcastic, throwing his head back. The sound compacts the room, crushing it inwards. I just stand there and take it for a moment, sneering.

​

Spikes detonate in my gut, and my nostrils flare. “Stop laughing.”

​

My father pauses, shaking his head,  “Are you stupid, boy?”

​

“I don’t know, are you?” Fear impales me— carves me up like a turkey on Thanksgiving.

​

He slams the fridge shut, and I rub the hem of my work shirt between my fingers. 

​

My father jabs his finger at my face, and gets so close that his sticky breath crowds out my own air. I can’t breathe. “Don’t you fucking dare speak to me that way.”

​

“Okay.” 

​

He steps back, opening the fridge again. “I’m taking away your car.”

​

“What? You can’t do that!” I spit. 

​

“Give me your keys,” he says, so utterly unemotional and stoic that it splits me right open.

​

“You’ll have to drive me to school then. And work.”

​

He laughs again. “Like hell I do. Find your own goddamn ride. You’re eighteen, boy. ”

​

“Stop calling me that. I have a fucking name.” The tendons in my hands twitch. My clenched jaw throbs. Why doesn’t he just call me by my fucking name? Oh, right. Because that’s the name Mom wanted. 

​

“Give me your keys,” my dad says. 

​

“No.” I fumble with my lanyard in my hands to try and shove them in my pocket, but it’s too late. He’s already seen them and suddenly he’s grabbing my face and my neck and my hands. 

​

He pins me onto the wall, his forearm at my neck, and claws the keys out of my hand. My eyes burn.

Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry you learned a long time ago what happens when you fucking cry in front of him—

Then he lets up, clutching my keys and tucking them deep into his pockets. “Get out of my house.”

​

I heave, utterly castrated in front of my father. I push it down, down, down, until it’s gone.  This is a home I will not miss.

​

“Gladly.” Shaking, I walk out the back door to the wooden shed, slamming the shitty door frame behind me. Flick on the single light bulb that illuminates the grimy space. I crouch down under the worktable and pull off a blanket to reveal a metal cage, teeming with chittering rats. 

​

Like muscle memory, I prepare my workspace. Latex gloves, an apron, a cutting board, a rag to wipe up blood.

Carefully, I reach my hand into the crowded cage and pull out the largest rat. I like to let them grow a bit, feed them grain and such. 

​

“Hey hey hey, shhh,” I say, as the small rodent writhes in my grasp. Its pink tail whips my bare arm. I find myself smiling a bit. Here, I am in control.

​

From a small, hidden bag near a rake, I take out a utility knife. While they’re small, I find their precise sharpness works best on small animals. 

​

I place the rat in the center of the board. Suddenly, it’s gone still. Calm, almost. Its wet nose sniffs the air.  I hold onto the rat’s abdomen, bracing for what’s to come. 

​

I saw off one leg. Then another. 

​

The rat screams, wails, whines. For a moment, I fear my dad can hear it from the house, but the rat’s movements become more erratic. The thing bucks under my hand. I plunge the tip of the blade deep into the rat’s neck and rip it downward. The rat twitches for a moment, and then bleeds out. 

​

I breathe. Time to dispose of the evidence.

​

My fingers claw into the cold, wet earth as I bury the rat. I hose off the board and the utility knife, watching as the bloody water sinks into the black earth. But in that moment, relief doesn’t come rushing in. Instead, it feels like I’ve just begun, just scraped the surface of a deep iceberg. In the lukewarm spring night, I’m nothing short of unsatisfied. 

​

Anger—just as violent and rash as what I experienced in the frozen yogurt shop—rips through me, and I thrust the cutting board against a nearby tree, grunting. With a crack, it bounces off and falls to the ground. Any ounce of calm I felt from killing the rat is long gone. 

​

It may be time to move on to something larger. Something human.