Page 92 of Tiny's Testament
Her smile warms a part of me I thought the past had ruined for good.
The ride takes me out of the city, toward roads lined with trees that have seen more winters than I can count. The house sits at the end of a narrow dirt path where the branches twist overhead like skeletal fingers. I haven’t been here in over fifteen years, yet the moment I stop my bike, the air smells exactly the same.
It smells like abandonment.
The house sags under its own weight. A place meant to shelter kids like me but hurt them instead still stands, stubborn and broken, even after the world tried to burn it out.
A flashlight flickers inside, and I stop moving. The front door creaks open, and Creed steps out like a ghost that never learned to stay dead.
He’s older and not as tough, but his eyes haven’t changed. They’re still sharp, still mean, still calculating how much he can take from whoever’s standing in front of him.
“Well,” Creed says, his voice rough with age and smoke. “Thought I recognized that bike.”
I don’t answer. Instead, I walk toward him slowly, my boots crunching over gravel and broken glass. He shifts his weight, and his hand twitches like he’s thinking about running.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming back here,” Creed snarls. “After what you…”
My fist connects with his jaw before he can finish the sentence. He hits the ground hard, wheezing and scrambling like an animal that finally realizes the cage door is locked shut.
I grab him by the collar and drag him inside.
I shove Creed against the wall. Images of the bunk bed, where I tried to make myself small enough to go unnoticed, flash through my mind. The kitchen, the yelling turned to fists. And the patch of dirt in the yard where I buried the stray dog I could not save, the one that taught me what failure feels like when it has a heartbeat.
“You ruined a lot of things,” I say, my voice low and steady. “A lot of lives.”
Creed laughs. It’s weak, cracked, and afraid. “You think killing me fixes that?” he spits.
I lean in close enough that he can see himself reflected in my eyes. “No,” I say. “It just ends it.”
The knife is already in my hand. With one clean motion, Creed crumples to the floor, choking on the sound of his own ending.
I watch until there’s nothing left to watch. Then I step over him.
Memory doesn’t come all at once. It comes in jagged flashes as I move through the house. The bunk bed. The corner where yelling turned into fists. The walls that learned to keep secrets.
I crouch and pick up a piece of charred wood. It crumbles instantly, turning to dust between my fingers, like it’s been waiting to fall apart.
I walk to my bike and pull a gas can from my saddlebag. Heading back inside, I spread the liquid across the floorboards in a slow, deliberate line. It seeps into the cracks, soaking into the bones of the place. I circle back to the room where Creed lies and splash the last of it there.
I strike a match. The flame wavers for a second before rising, eager for release.
I drop it.
Fire races along the trail, climbing the walls, curling around beams like it is reclaiming something that belonged to it all along. For a moment, I stand and watch memories burn.
I step into the yard as the roof collapses inward with a groan. Embers float upward, drifting against the darkening sky like orange fireflies. When the flames finally settle into glowing ash, I crouch again and gather a small handful.
“You were never home,” I say into the settling ash. “I can finally put you down.”
I open my hand and let the wind take the ash. It scatters across the dead grass until there is nothing left
By the time I ride back into the compound, darkness has settled across the lot like deep blue velvet. The garage is quieter now, the earlier chaos replaced with low music and the murmur of brothers packing away tools. Torch wipes down his welding table. Trigger rolls up extension cords. Bones and Dagger lean against a half-built frame as they argue about torque ratios. It feels like a living thing again.
Syvannah is still on the bench, wrapped in one of my hoodies. Peanut sleeps curled on her stomach, one paw twitching as if she dreams of chasing something. Syvannah looks up the second my engine cuts, her smile warm enough to meet me halfway across the lot.
“Feel better?” she asks.
“Lighter,” I say, and I mean it.
