Page 82 of Unhinged Cain

“What are you doing here, Abel,” I asked, my eyes looking around for the best possible weapon as I ran through all my training.

This was a different scenario than the mad dash through the woods with Cain chasing me down, but it was no less lethal. He was already holding a weapon, and like Cain, he was a foot taller with at least seventy pounds on me.

He smiled like a cat that had just killed the canary, and there was no guessing with him. I was the next bird on the menu. He brought a massive knife up and rubbed his forehead on the back of his arm. Abel saw me as a threat to the relationship he had with Cain. I understood that during our last confrontation, but I hadn’t seen him. Cain hadn’t mentioned him, so I thought they’d sorted their shit out, but apparently not.

“Well, isn’t this cozy? You’re a regular little Susie-Homemaker. So are you Cain’s maid now?”

He laughed at the joke, but I didn’t crack a smile at the rude comment. There was a statue sitting on the coffee table, a lamp behind me, and a tall decorative vase in the far corner. Cain was a minimalist, and there weren’t many choices unless I could get to the kitchen, but that was a long run from this spot.

“I’ll ask you again, Abel, what are you doing here?”

“Ahhhhhhh,” he screamed and grabbed at his hair, allowing me to take a large step toward the coffee table and my best potential weapon. “Don’t fucking do that! Don’t sound like him. You’re not him. You’re not my brother.”

“I’m not trying to sound like Cain, but considering you wanted to kill me the last time you visited, and you’re holding a knife, it seems like a pretty fair question,” I said.

Abel took a step forward.

“Even that…” He pointed the knife at me. “Even those fucking words sound like him. He hasn’t killed or fucked someone with me since he got serious about stalking your ass. He’s my brother. Mine! And somehow, you’ve fucked up our relationship.” He took another threatening step, and I moved until my legs hit the coffee table.

“I’m sorry, Abel. Maybe it’s just that I’m the new shiny toy at the moment,” I said and knew it wasn’t true, but I was hoping to reach him before this got a lot worse. “You know what it’s like when you get a new plaything, something that interests you and holds your attention for a while.”

“You know…” He tapped the side of his head with the sharp point of the knife. “I thought about that. I’ve spent days in my house thinking those exact words, but here is the thing….” Abel took another step, and I grabbed the statue off the table and took a step away from him. “My brother has never kept anyone longer than seventy-two hours, and he’s had them strapped to the table the whole time. With you, he never put you on the table. Instead, he feeds you and fucks you, and now here you are, wandering his home free as a bird. Naw gurrl, you’re the fox in the hen house.”

I wasn’t sure I’d ever classify Cain as a hen, but I got the analogy. “Why don’t you come back for dinner? I’m making ribs, homemade fries, and corn, and we can discuss this. Abel, you must know if you hurt me, Cain will not just be angry. He won’t forgive you.”

Those red-rimmed eyes held so much anger and hate as he stared at me.

“No, I don’t want dinner. I want him to find you unbreathing and for him to realize who he still is. You’ve fucked with his head. You’ve warped him into this….” He waved the knife around. “Domesticated thing, this lap dog that you control.”

Abel spat on the floor, and my eyes went wide. Cain would kill him for spitting on the floor, let alone insinuating he was being controlled. Add in killing me, and Abel was digging his own grave, but Abel was so angry and hurt that he wasn’t seeing straight. Then again, with a personality like his, did he ever really see straight?

I managed to move to the blank space between the living room and the dining room and waited. My self-defense training was coming back to me, but it was always a harder fight when someone was drunk.

“I’m going to kill you like I killed our mother. It will be a reunion for us, a good old go-back-to-the-beginning reset. He forgave me for killing her, and he’ll do the same now.”

“You’re fooling yourself, Abel. Cain planned on killing your mother, but you took that from him and made a mess he had to clean up, but at least he already wanted her dead. He doesn’t want me dead.”

“Fuck you! Don’t tell me what my brother wanted.” He took a large step forward, and even drunk, he held the knife steady. My fear wanted to take over, but I forced the feeling down. I knew how to fight, and I would fight with my last breath. “You don’t know my brother the way I do. Y-you don’t know what we’ve been through to get here…or how we think and do our shit. That’s our shit—for us only,” he slurred.

“Did he tell you our mother was still alive when I ripped her intestines out with my bare hands and played in her blood? I’m going to do the same to you.” His muscles flexed, and his face darkened into a rage-filled mask as he came at me. I held my ground. “You better run.” His tone reminded me of a low-growling animal.

“Not a chance,” I said, then jumped out of the way of his charge. He ran into the dining room table and sent the closest chair flying across the floor.

“You fucking purple-eyed bitch,” he snarled.

I wanted to hold up my hand and ask him what the fuck that was supposed to mean.

Abel swung his arm in a wide sweeping arc with little to no real skill for fighting, unlike his brother. However, the blade was as long as my forearm making it extremely dangerous, so I backed out of the way. He came at me again, with the blade slashing through the air like his hand was connected to a rubber band. With each strike, I avoided it and found my opening. Using his momentum, I hit his hand with the statue.

“Ahh, you fuckin donkey shit biscuit,” he growled out.

I would’ve laughed if this wasn’t a life-or-death moment. The statue became a shield, and I felt like I was in an old swashbuckling movie as he took a swing. I blocked it with the solid marble figure. Sweat was running down my body, and my hands were getting slick on the smooth statue’s texture.

“You need to die, just fucking die!”

I brought the statue up to block the next blow, but the damn thing sailed out of my hands and crashed into the wall, knocking a framed picture to the ground. Shards of glass scattered everywhere as it smashed on the floor.

Catching Abel off guard as he stared at the damaged painting, I jumped in the air and landed a roundhouse kick to his face. He grabbed the side of his cheek, and I didn’t wait for him to recover before landing a hard blow to his side and jumped into the air to bring my fist down onto his jaw. I caught the angle wrong and felt my hand crack on impact.