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Sam’s eyelids shot open and she instantly pulled herself into an upright position. The familiar sound of her father recklessly throwing her bedroom door open had startled her awake. Stumbling in, nearly spilling his bottle of Budweiser, Sam’s father, Bill, flicked on the light.
“Samantha you piece of shit, just like your mother. Wake the fuck up!”
Sam wondered what she had done wrong this time. Her father was good at finding things to yell about.
“You lazy piece of shit goddamn let down. I work my ass off and I pay the bills. I feed you and clothe you and you can’t even do the damn dishes? You’re a fuckin’ disgrace!”
The drunk finished his beer in three gulps then chucked the empty bottle at Sam’s head. Sam ducked to the left, but Bill’s intoxicated throw was off by two feet anyways. The glass shattered against her wall, sending shards in every direction. She felt a small sting in the arm she was using to protect herself. Bill staggered closer to his daughter.
“You ain’t ever gonna amount to shit you know that?” slurred Bill, waving his pointer finger in Samantha’s tear-stained face.
“Hello? Anyone in there? Can ya speak? I know you have something to say to me with that smart-ass mouth you got from your mother!”
“Get the fuck away from me,” replied Sam through her tears calmly, but sternly.
She cried but not because she was scared or hurt. The tears she shed were full of rage and full of hate – hate for Bill’s disease and for the selfishness that came with it. He had wrecked both their lives after getting fired from his job, forcing Sam to quit school and pick up full-time hours to support the two of them. Sam’s father was nothing but a nuisance to her, and that’s all he would ever be. She was tired of her father dragging her down, the way someone drowning in a lake pulls their rescuer to die with them. Sam was suffering, in that agonizing state of asphyxia prior to death, and she was ready to leave the horrid state of suffocation that she was stuck in.
“Whatever you little bitch,” mumbled Bill before he left the room. Sam’s door slammed shut in such a way that she almost expected it to crumble on its’ hinges. She smiled through her tears because she knew that the end was approaching. This is it, she thought. Tonight is the last night I will ever deal with his bullshit.
Sam liked the idea of a painful, horrid death. She figured if one was to die, it would be best to make the end excruciating. The thought of finally going through with her scheme, after all these months, filled her with a rush of excitement. Samantha rehearsed the plan inside her head several times before she was able to fall back asleep.
Sam woke up extra early with a grin stretched across her pale, freckled face. After rummaging through her cluttered closet to find her largest suitcase, Samantha began neatly folding her clothes, packing them tightly as possible. She gathered her makeup bag, cell phone charger, hair brush, and the stack of crinkled up bills she had been saving for the past two years. After struggling to shut her luggage, Sam followed her daily routine as normal. She threw on her uniform, drove the fifteen minutes to work, and clocked in ten minutes before six as always. Clocking out after her twelve hour shift, Sam swiftly entered her four-digit code then excitedly hurried to her beat up Honda Civic. She drove down the road to the nearest liquor store. She bought the largest bottle of Ciroc – Bill’s favorite – and scurried to the check out.
“ID please,” inquired the clerk, snapping her bubble gum and twirling her long blonde locks. Samantha pulled out her driver’s license from her wallet, along with thirty dollars to pay for the vodka. She rushed to her car and drove home in anticipation. Sam barged in through the front door.
“Hey. Dad, where ya at? I got us some Ciroc!” She wandered down the hall, through the kitchen, and into the living room where she found Bill in his recliner watching baseball.
“Goddamn it, Fernández! Don’t ya know how to throw a fuckin’ strike?” Bill crinkled up his fourth Heineken then chucked it at the old television set. Samantha set the bottle of Ciroc down on the kitchen counter, then retrieved two glasses from the cupboard. She filled both to the brim – one with vodka, the other with water.
“Hey, Pops. I’m real sorry for leaving the dishes out last night. I thought I’d make up for it,” said Sam as she pulled up a chair from the kitchen next to Bill’s recliner. She went to fetch the two glasses. “What’s the score?”
“Six to two. Bottom of the eighth. Ya know, Miami’s got their heads so fuckin’ far up their asses, they ain’t gonna shit straight for the next goddamn month.”
“Is that right?” Sam replied, setting their drinks down on the nightstand between their seats. “Well it’s only the first of the series. The Rays’ best pitcher is out for another week or two, and we have Alvarez then Ramos in the rotation.”
“Yeah, well we ain’t got no defense. Jesus Christ Sam, you don’t know shit. You’re a fuckin’ idiot. How the hell do you expect to win, without no goddamn defense?”
Sam ignored her father’s remark. It was as if he hadn’t said a word. She gulped down her glass of water in one huge swig, then made a grimace as if her throat was burning.
“C’mon dad. You’re gonna let your twenty-two year old daughter out-drink ya? Step up your game, old man.”
Bill finished off his glass of Ciroc with no hesitation. “Well I’ve been fuckin’ waiting for you to fill me up.”
Soon after two more glasses, Bill’s eyes fluttered behind his head, and he drifted off into a hazy state of unconsciousness. Samantha walked to the kitchen, fetched the half-full bottle of Vodka, and then opened the first junk drawer where she rummaged around for a box of matches. She calmly strolled back to the living room, and stood over Bill’s recliner where he laid sprawled out snoring with his mouth slightly open. She unscrewed the cap with a smile, then stood staring at her father for half a second. A rush of loathing like none she had ever felt before consumed her whole essence.
“Fuck you, Bill.”
Sam poured the vodka directly on Bill’s face, drenching his clothes and dowsing the recliner, choking him, forcing him awake as he violently gasped for air. The intense smell of alcohol burned Sam’s nostrils, but she could hardly notice. Samantha struck three matches at once and lightly tossed them all at her victim. Bill’s wild gray beard burst in flames, filling his eyes mad with terror. Soon the whole recliner was encompassed in a wicked blaze of orange. Sam walked out of the living room, leaving behind her father’s gruesome screams, with a rather sinister smirk plastered across her countenance. She strolled through the kitchen, down the hall, and out the front door where she serenely started her car and backed out of her driveway one last time, still wearing a wide grin. She drove off with composure and liberation. She adjusted her rear view mirror, and glanced at the smoke behind her which was growing farther and farther away. She turned up the radio, rolled down her windows, and drove off. Sam was free.
MaKayla Kuhlman is a graduating senior from FHS in Findlay, Ohio. She has only recently discovered her passion for writing through her Creative Writing class this past semester. Her other hobbies include reading, fishing, kayaking, and drinking coffee with donuts.
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