The Burden of the Bread-winner

My stepdad, Carl, didn’t hide his hatred of me.

“Matt, if you don’t like it, go and live with your dad!” Carl would yell, squinting at me through his wire-rimmed glasses, arms folded.

“I don’t know where he is, though. I don’t know him. He left when I was seven!” I’d reply.

“That’s not my problem, is it? I’m the bread-winner in this household, so if you want to live here, you’ll do as I say!”

The chore schedule was always strict. Sweeping. Doing the dishes. Washing the car. Dusting. Vacuuming. Invariably, Carl would find some fault with the quality of my work and call a ‘house meeting’ to make clear that the piece of gravel he found on the kitchen floor was not acceptable. Had I even done the chores at all? Or was I lying? My mom would sit there, eyes downcast, letting him get through his spiel. Evie, his daughter, my step-sister, would hover by the doorway, waiting to dash out of the room when he’d had his say.

I learned long ago that there was no way to win the argument, so I’d be deferential and apologise, and say it’ll never happen again. But it would. When he was out at his job as a mobile mechanic, I’d say as much to my mom.

“He has his flaws, but he’s practical, and in his heart he’s good. He’s been the closest thing you’ve had to a father, Matt. He took that responsibility when he didn’t have to.” She’d say soothingly.

“In your heart, you’re good. But you don’t treat Evie like he treats me.” I’d respond.

“Evie has a mother who shares the burden.”

“It isn’t my fault my dad ran away!”

That’s how the conversation would always go. Around and around in circles. In fairness, my stepdad could be a dick to Evie too. He’d restrict our internet access. He wouldn’t let us have sugary snacks. He’d lock our phones away in a cupboard at nine-PM sharp and send us to bed. He’d bang on the bathroom door if he deemed we’d been in the shower too long.

As a result, Evie and I bonded. The austere rules pushed us together, and we developed a genuine friendship. She appreciated that I was more hard done-by, so she’d smuggle me biscuits and tell me the Wi-Fi password, if she’d managed to weasel the information out of Carl. Needless to say, the rules were subject to a degree of flexibility. He’d buy chocolate bars and Doritos for himself and munch a whole bag in a night, spilling crumbs over the sofa he sprawled out on. I could hear the TV blaring til midnight sometimes, the drone being broken only by his guffaws.

Strict and baleful as the man was, he’d never lay a finger on us. Instead, he’d smash objects and write notes in a capitalised font on the back of envelopes for me to discover in a morning. He’d scream and shout in my face, sending the sour stench of his breath my way. I wondered if he was trying to provoke me to hit him, which would be absurd. He was pushing two metres tall and heavy-set, and I’m a skinny seventeen-year-old who’s far more interested in reading about battles than fighting them.

One day, Carl was trying to fix the pipes under the kitchen sink, while Evie pressed him for extra pocket money. He was grumbling and largely ignoring her until she mentioned something about the chest in the basement. Carl stopped his tinkering and slid out from under the counter. He towered over Evie, ominously silent. I was studying at the kitchen table, but stopped to watch. Carl’s face, usually so snarling and pained when he was angry, was utterly blank.

“What did you say?” He whispered.

“I–I was just joking. I said I could sell that old chest in the basement to get some pocket money.”

“I’ll say this once, Evie. You leave my chest alone.”

His eyes, cold as frozen planets, bore into Evie’s for a moment longer. Then he went back to work. Evie left the room, sobbing. I followed her up to her bedroom, where she was crying into one of her old teddies.

“I thought I’d be doing him a favour–it’s full of his army clothes. People buy that sort of stuff nowadays, don’t they? And it’d clear some space. I was trying to be nice!”

I put my arm around her. “I know, Evie.” I said. Two years younger than me, and less beaten down, Evie’s heart was more open to assault. Still, the coldness of Carl’s fury had shocked me.

“Fuck him! Fuck him! FUCK HIM!” She screamed into her teddy.

“Say, Evie, shall we see what’s in Carl’s chest tonight? Three-AM?”

She looked at me with vengeful, red-rimmed eyes and nodded. I played on her heightened emotions a little, I’ll admit. But the way Carl reacted had me genuinely worried about what he had in that chest. If it was anything that could endanger my mom or Evie, I had to know.

The evening passed. Evie and I completed our chores, and I read for an hour before surrendering my mobile phone. I said goodnight to Carl and my mom, and only got one response. It’s not worth pointing out who ignored me and who replied. I climbed the stairs and closed my bedroom door. It was far too early to sleep, despite what Carl thought, so I read by lamplight every night until my eyes got tired. The only thing to be wary of were slow creaking noises that might indicate Carl was creeping up the stairs. Reading in bedrooms was also banned, and publicly, neither me nor Evie did it. However, Carl had his suspicions, so he’d climb with stealth to a certain point on the stairs to check for a glow beneath either of our bedroom doors. If he saw light, he’d burst into the room hoping to catch us. Therefore, I’d pre-emptively switch off the lamp and pretend to be asleep at the sound of any unusual noise. Once a military man, always a military man, I guess.

Carl had spent a decade in the army as an engineer. He’d been deployed multiple times, but never to an active theatre of war. Bowing to his ex-wife’s demands, he’d returned to civilian life a year after Evie’s birth. Everything I’d been able to glean seemed to indicate Carl had enjoyed his time in the military. The problem is that he never talked about it. He'd smile absently and his eyes go somewhere far away. What had he seen? What had he done?

I woke to a gentle tapping at the door. It was time.

“Follow my steps.” Evie whispered.

She’d charted the least creaky path down the stairs, it seemed. We reached the stone slabs of the kitchen floor and gently opened the basement door, careful of squealing hinges. I closed the door behind us and turned on the flickering light. Pressing against the dusty, cobweb-ridden walls, we descended. The basement itself was cramped and filled with tools, shelves, bicycles, shoes, boxes. Evie pulled a picnic blanket off of a bulky mass to reveal a mahogany chest that was curiously dust-free.

“He comes down here most nights, you know.” She said.

“Why?”

Evie shrugged and nudged a coded padlock.

“Shit. Do you know the code?” I said.

“Maybe.” Evie said, before twisting four numbers into the padlock. It clicked open.

“Ha! Dad’s army serial number. It’s full of army crap, so I assumed that’d be it.”

“How do you know it’s full of army crap?” I asked.

“He told me once, duh…or at least I think he did. Let’s open it and find out.”

The lid was heavier than we expected. It was four inches thick and must’ve been full of lead. I heaved at one side and Evie heaved at the other until we got it up. Inside, there were no combat fatigues. No dog-tags. No boots. It was empty, except for two objects: a long, black cushion and a human jawbone.

Who’s there?

Evie and I stared at each other, then back at the jawbone.

Boy? Girl? Speak!

“Can you hear a voice?” I asked Evie.

“Yeah.”

“This isn’t army stuff. I don’t know what this is.”

I heard a hollow laugh before the voice continued.

He wouldn’t have told you about me: his charnel confidant. Such is his shame. For he slew me long ago, somewhere far from here.

“I don’t like it.” Evie said.

“Who killed you?” I asked the bone.

Her father.

“My dad wouldn’t kill anyone. That’s a lie!” Evie wailed.

“Shhh! You’ll wake them.” I whispered.

“I don’t like this.”

He comes here every night to pray and beg and weep, just as his spawn does. He’s certain it was an accident. A firing range mishap, nothing more. Do you believe him? Might he do it again?

“I hate this.” Evie said, and went to close the lid, but I held her back, chewing my lip.

“Are we in danger?” I asked, and that chilly laugh rattled through my head again. Evie broke my grip and lunged for the jawbone perched on the black cushion.

You dare to touch me!

The chest lid slammed shut on Evie’s right arm, halfway along the bicep, shattering the bone. She let out half a scream before passing out and sliding down the side of the chest. A gristly grinding sound came from her trapped arm as it twisted further. A cold sweat burst out all over my body and I sprang into action, heaving Evie back up from where she’d fallen.

“Let her out! Let her out!”

The voice had ceased to reply. Summoning all my strength, I squatted down and pressed the lid up. It didn’t budge. I adjusted my grip and pushed with everything I had. A dark centimetre grew into two, then three, then four. I glimpsed that grinning bone perched on black velvet before Evie’s mangled arm was free and she slid back onto the basement floor. I let the lid thud shut.

I helped her up the basement stairs, fully intending to wake my mom and Carl up because Evie needed to go to hospital. She was delirious and muttering. When we emerged, she looked at me, her face white as chalk.

“Run up the stairs. I was sleepwalking. I fell.” She said.

It took me a moment to realise what she was doing. Carl would question my role in his daughter’s injury. Despite her agony, she’d hatched a plan to protect me from his wrath. I nodded and stamped up the stairs as loud as I could before dashing into my bedroom and closing the door. I leapt into bed just as Evie started yelling from the foot of the stairs.

The next day was quiet with everyone at the hospital. I felt quite happy rocking back and forth on my bed. Thinking. At some point, I dragged myself down to the cellar and tossed the blanket back over Carl’s chest. I swept some dust around to hide any footprints. Part of me wanted to open it, to stamp the jawbone to pieces for what it had done to Evie. But I was scared. Did I have the bravery to deal with it alone? If it was to be trusted, the bone had my stepdad begging on his knees for forgiveness every night. It made the big, stubborn man beg, for God’s sake. If it could do that to him, what could it do to a weakling like me? I gave the chest a petty little kick and trudged back up the stairs.

Weeks went by and I really started to notice Carl’s trips to the basement. He mainly held his consultations with the bone before he went to sleep, but not always. I opened the front door one morning to go to school and stepped out into the cold, my breath fogging. Turning to lock the door behind me, I saw the blurred shape of him through the frosted glass pane, emerging from below. Did he spend full nights down there?

Another problem developed too: someone else was going down to convene with the jawbone. In the small hours, I’d hear a slight scratching from Evie’s bedroom. Then footsteps. Tiny creaks that disappeared down the stairs ever so slowly. Evie’s eyes were perpetually sunken and distant, her arm bound in a sling. She’d whisper to herself, and avoid me.

“She’s on a cocktail of painkillers, Matt. Best to leave her alone.” My mom said when I raised the change in behaviour one night.

“Mom, that’s not the reason. You don’t understand–”

Then Carl stepped over the threshold, returning from work.

“What have you been doing today? Hm? Using my water, my electricity, my heating, I suppose?”

“Nothing, really.” I replied sullenly.

He swiped a finger over the wooden sideboard in the hallway and showed me the tip of his index finger, now grey with dust.

“Sorry.” I said.

“If you were sorry, I wouldn’t be walking into my house all dusty like this. Not good enough.”

I stood with lips pursed, my face an artificial mask of contemplation as he took off his shoes and strode past. The routine was hateful, but necessary. For some reason, Carl needed this saga to be played on repeat. To fight with him was to start World War Three, and all the shouting, tears and pleading that came with it. It’d be my mom who suffered the most if I took that course of action and forced her to side with one of us. She’d be torn apart by it.

Knowing that he’d be monitoring the depth of my repentance for the dusty sideboard from the corner of his eye, I remained frozen while my mom fussed over Carl. Eventually, I slunk up to my bedroom and settled in for an early night, but sleep felt far away. I kept seeing, and hearing, the chest snap shut on Evie’s arm. Her shock. Her terror. Her pain. I lay in bed reading, my eyes scanning whole paragraphs, before I realised I hadn’t taken in any information. All I could visualise was what had happened when me and Evie went down to the basement that night.

The next morning, I found my mom fussing over Evie at the dining table.

“Are you sure your arm doesn’t hurt, Evie, darling?”

“No, honestly, it’s OK.”

I raised an eyebrow and went to grab the cereal. I’d fractured my elbow at football practice last year and knew full well that it hurt in those early stages. Hurt like a bitch. The injury to Evie’s arm was ten times as bad as what had happened to me.

“Well, if you need me to spoon feed you, that’s no trouble. Oh, I remember doing that for you when you were a baby, Matt, just like it was yesterday.”

“Sleep well, Evie?” I asked knowingly.

She scowled, face still paler than usual.

“On and off.”

After breakfast, I saw Evie brushing her teeth with her broken arm in the bathroom. She bent over the sink to spit and started brushing with the other one.

“Don’t think I didn’t see that.” I said.

“I already said it doesn't hurt.”

I considered her for a moment, standing there, obstinate. “What’s the deal? I know you’ve been creeping down to the basement. What has that thing in your dad’s chest asked for to heal your arm? Or is it a freebie? A generous gift? Out with it!”

Evie’s eyes were glassy as she came close, skin so white it was almost translucent.

“Why did you do this to me?” She asked.

“Do what?”

“Slam the lid on my arm! I know you did it!”

“Evie, no, I pulled you out of there. You fainted. You went to touch the jawbone, and it slammed shut.”

“Lids don’t slam shut on their own! Get out of my way!”

“Wait.” I said, before her bloodshot eyes widened and she bit down on my arm. I shrieked and Evie pushed past me, closing the bedroom door behind her. I examined the raw, red bite mark and pressed myself up against the door.

“I’ve known you ten years, Evie. We’re family. That jawbone has known you for two weeks. Don’t let it do to you what it’s done to your dad. I’m going to talk with it.” I said.

Any faint-heartedness evaporated and my heart burned with a solid ferocity, like iron at the core of the earth. That fucker in the chest was corrupting the relationship between me and my little stepsister. I marched into the basement while my mom was talking on the phone, flexing my hands into fists. No need to turn on the light this time as daylight seeped in from the small windows on ground level. I ripped the picnic blanket away and forced the lid up. The jawbone sat on its black cushion contentedly.

Boy.

“So, that’s the deal, huh? You turn Evie against me and in exchange, you heal her arm? What exactly is your game here?”

Bone knows bone. I merely repaired what was broken. Would you prefer to have the girl suffer?

“It was never that though, was it? Evie gets her arm fixed, while you get your…your fix.”

She asked if it was true. If her father was a murderer. Do you know what I told her?

“Whatever you said, it was a lie.”

A pause. The jawbone looked pallid, pathetic almost. Small and nesting, alone in the dark. The voice resumed.

I was a general from an old family who progressed beyond the age of battle. I toured military bases to give advice on strategy. At night, I liked to wander the grounds. To see bright lights shining down on flat buildings and parade grounds from afar, in the quiet, with the breeze.

One night, I found myself strolling around the perimeter when I happened upon a small unit of men conducting a nighttime firing drill. The men lifted up their night vision goggles and saluted. I bade them continue.

A soldier in the leftmost firing lane was struggling to hit anything, so I approached, but his aim only worsened. I put a hand on his shoulder in between shots and against all protocol, he swivelled, pointing the barrel of his rifle at my midriff. A shot rang out, and I fell onto my back. The world was spinning, but I recognised the face above me as darkness closed in. A face you and the girl know well.

A family as ancient and prestigious as mine cannot just be snuffed out, heirless. So the one who was my ultimate undoing was called to the gravesite some years later. Cursed to dig me up with bare hands and become my thrall. He only had the heart to linger long enough to grab the jawbone out of the coffin, the craven. At last, however, I could return to find a spiritual heir to my family. To find you.

You can have that inheritance, boy. I see potential in you. The others can go to rot. Reach out and take it. Take it!

I reached towards the jawbone. Dipping under the lid, I found the air to be stale and rank. A few rotten teeth were still lodged in the bone. Brown, yet sharp. Memories flashed into my mind’s eye that weren’t my own. A large house under a heavy night sky. An aristocratic woman lying crushed under a marble dining table. A room full of riches. Chalices. Ornate swords. Antique rifles. It was dizzying. Intoxicating. The tip of my finger drifted towards a molar.

“Matt? Matt, are you down there?”

I frowned. Recoiled. Banged my head on the upper lip of the chest and fell backwards onto my haunches, paralysed with fear over what I was about to do.

“Y-yeah. I’m OK, mom.”

Feet pounded down the basement stairs and I turned to see Carl standing there, cold fury in his eyes. My mom followed, confusion written across her face. Then Evie, higher still up the stairwell, and wary. Without ceremony, Carl strode over to me and drew back his fist.

“Dad! Stop!” Evie cried.

Carl hesitated.

“The things that bone says about you...don’t prove it right.” She said.

His fist dropped to his side.

“I’m not a murderer, Evie. Don’t believe it,” Carl said. His shoulders slumped and a pleading, whimpering tone entered his voice. I found this more disturbing than the raw anger it had replaced. A hollow laugh echoed out from the depths of the chest.

Yes you are.

“I didn’t mean it!” Carl snapped, half turning.

That’s not good enough.

“You disturbed me halfway through the drill! I was acquitted!”

Carl stepped toward the chest and I scrabbled to my feet, back against the wall.

I’m just as dead. You craven, murderous thrall. Shame on you! Beggar eternal! Bow to me!

“I hate you!” Carl screamed, before striding over to the chest and shattering the jawbone into pieces with the sole of his foot. The lid slammed shut on his kneecap once, twice, three times. It snapped open and closed piranha-like all the way along Carl’s thigh, dragging him further into the chest. It twisted him around wickedly and bit down on his waist, which forced his free leg up above his shoulder, and still it chomped. Cries of pain and disbelief morphed into a long, primeval groan of utter agony. I rushed over to the chest, but it was too late. The chest now contained mangled pieces of the man who had been my stepdad. Sharp bones and blood and viscera. I closed the lid to save Evie and my mom from the sight.

Tears will come later for all of us, I’m sure. The emergency services have taken the chest away for a proper examination and to conduct a post-mortem on the contents, but for now at least, none of us are under suspicion.

It’s hard to put my feelings into words. I’m sitting on my bedroom floor looking out of the window. Night is falling.

The bone is gone. But at what cost?

Article © Cameron Walker. All rights reserved.
Published on 2025-01-27