Ain’t No Dark Til Something Shines
by Spencer K.M. Brown
Martin and Vincent sat cross-legged on the kitchen table beside the broken window watching their mother stand in the thunderstorm. She stood peacefully amid the cracks of lightning and thunder and made the hard rain look soft. She was nearly see-through. Loretta had died two days ago, but there she was, standing in the storm as if nothing had changed. The boys watched her intently because of this, their eyes affixed to her, ready to say something the moment she vanished entirely but tongue-tied when she remained with every flash of heavenly light.
“We needed a good rain. Too bad we don’t have a garden,” Vincent said. “Mom loves storms like this. Good, hard summer rain. She said it does something for the soul.”
Uncle Forrest lay supine across the kitchen floor slowly sipping his beer as he stared at the fan moving lazily above.
“That motor is dying out,” Forrest said. “Wiring is all shot to shit.”
Vincent looked at him. “You ever known someone to die who never went away?” he asked.
“Yeah, my first wife, Joan,” Forrest said, and laughed madly, then coughed himself into silence. “No,” he said after several minutes. “It is quite unusual,” he said, giving extra voice to each syllable so his drunkenness didn’t mar his words.
“You know, I think I know what’s happening. A theory,” Martin said. He sipped from his second beer and felt warm now, despite Vincent’s concerned glares each time he drank.
"Is that so? Well, enlighten us all,” Forrest said.
“Well, it’s written that there will come a day when death won’t be found. People will seek it, will pray for suffering to end, but death will escape them. That will be the end of the age. And both spirit and flesh will become as inseparable because a final judgment is at hand. There’ll be signs and wonders, wars and rumors of war. But the Son of Man will not come until these things take place. And none shall know the day nor the hour, not even the angels in heaven,” Martin said. “This is also why Mom didn’t care for keeping track or being beholden to time. It’s none of our concern. But I think such times might be here. Not sure about the rest, but it seems like death can’t find Momma. Or us. And you know, in town, I . . . I saw something strange. A girl.”
“And me,” Vincent said to his uncle. “On the road. Did you see it, Uncle Forrest? I saw those men on the road, and one with a fish, standing on it. Did you see it?”
"No, I didn’t see a man standing on a fish,” Forrest said. “Lord, y’all have been hiding out so long you can’t tell what’s real from what’s in your mind. No God is coming, and your Momma ain’t going to any paradise. She’s dead as dust, she’s nothing now. And the end times? Yeah, you’re right there. We’re living in them. It’s always been the end, ever since we took that first breath. You boys need to wake up to reality.”
Martin looked over at Forrest lying on the floor. His eyes narrowed as something severe crawled into his mind. “Why are you here, Uncle?”
Forrest lifted his head a little to look at the boy’s stolid face. “You called me, remember?”
“But you didn’t have to come. You haven’t been here or talked to any of us in ten years. So why now?”
“Don’t get all smartassy now. Your Momma—my sister—is dead.”
“But you just said yourself that it don’t mean anything. She’s nothing, you said. To you, life don’t mean anything and death nothing more than a final exhale of dust. And since you’ve come here, you’ve done nothing but disrespect our Mother and blaspheme our Lord.”
“Ah, hell, come on now, no need to get all pouty,” Forrest said.
“You didn’t come to help us, because you don’t help. You don’t care about anything but yourself, isn’t that right.”
Forrest grunted, mumbling under his breath.
“I think you should go, Uncle. You offer us nothing good.”
“Hold on now,” Forrest said. He squirmed a bit on the floor. His wooden leg gave him trouble, and he knew it, and made a pathetic scene of it.
“‘Fear ye not them that can kill the body and are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell,’” Martin said. “And I see that’s you. You are darkness, it follows you, Uncle. And I think it’s time you left here.”
“Now hold on a minute.” Forrest floundered in his drunken show. He knocked his beer over on the floor, desperately trying to reach for the countertop to pull himself up. He grunted and sighed. “Come on, help me up here.”
The boys didn’t move.
“Give me a hand, fellas.”
Vincent stood beside Martin. “You are, aren’t you. You’re darkness. That’s what I’ve been feeling in my stomach. That sickness.”
“What the hell are y’all talking about? Help me up for Christsake.”
“You say Christ is Lord! Say it!” Vincent shouted.
Uncle Forrest got to his feet and stood at his full towering height. “Look, you boys have been holed up here in this shithole house too long. Your minds are scrambled eggs. You don’t know the year from a katydid. You don’t know a thing about this world or life or me. You never seen the world I’ve seen, so y’all can just cut the shit.” He wiped at his lips, his face turning violent red. “People do unspeakable horrors every day. War and massacres, slaughtering everything good. The wretchedness and horror of it all. And sure, I’ve done my share. I ain’t no different. But you two stand here like you’re holy or special or some shit.” He grinned with a dark malice. “Let me tell you, no one’s special. You’re just brainwashed little shits, raised by a crazy Mother. Dying was the best thing she ever done for y’all.”
“Say it, Uncle,” Martin said. He stared dead at the man, shirtless and dirty, his chest all ribs and bone casting shadows down his side. He raised his skinny arm, pointing as he gazed fearlessly at his uncle. “You, you’re the dragon.”
“The what?” Forrest said.
“The false prophet. The wolf come here to destroy the righteous.”
“Good God, you’re just as crazy as your Momma,” Forrest said opening another beer. He drank and it sprayed across the air as he spoke. “And what’s more, you two really think you’re saved and redeemed. But you know, here’s the truth, there ain’t nothing to be redeemed from and no one to do the redeeming. Nothing is coming! There’s nothing in this world or the next but fire and let me tell you, that fire eats and eats, and no matter what you think is true or what you believe in, that fire don’t care. It stays hungry. All you can do is learn to walk in it and burn well.”
“You be silent!” Martin screamed. The veins in his face and neck bulged and thumped with his quaking voice.
The house was silent. Uncle Forrest stood staring at the two of them, terrified, as if he had stumbled upon rabid coyotes.
“You speak only venom, snake,” Martin said, nearly seething. “And you shall not foul this place anymore. For on your belly do you crawl and dirt fills your mouth.”
"Say it, say Christ is Lord!” Vincent shouted.
“What in the hell is the matter with you both,” Forrest said. “Calm down now, boys, just cool out.” He held his hands up in innocence, chuckling nervously. “Look, it’s a lot, I know. Your Mother is gone and you two are alone with everything that can happen in this Godforsaken country, I get it. I was you once. It’s heavy on the heart. It’s goddamn terrifying, all right? But there’s no need to attack me and go all nutso. I’m your blood. I’m all the blood you got left, like it or not. But you’re all I got too. And I sure as hell ain’t gonna do nothing to harm either of y’all. I ain’t no dragon and sure as shit ain’t any prophet, real or false. I got my own reasons for coming and hiding out here too.”
Martin’s face remained severe and stone solid.
“What reasons?” Vincent said.
Forrest swallowed the sticky dryness in his throat, lowering his hands. He looked at Martin. “Can we sit and talk calmly? Like educated men?”
The boy took a breath, holding his eyes steady on his uncle. Without a word he sat at the table, Vincent sitting beside him.
“Thank you, gentlemen, thank you,” Forrest said. He breathed and sat across from them. “One breath is often enough to save a life, and that life is more often your own.”
Why are you here then?” Martin said.
"Do you boys know the story of Lycaon, the king of Arcadia, and how his line came to be forever damned and cursed?”
The boys sat speechlessly, their eyes steady on Forrest, as if waiting for some sign to know if he was real or ghost, as if at any moment he might grab a shovel and hit them over the head.
“All right then,” Forrest said. “So, after creation, when all order was breathed into Chaos and all was made perfect, mankind was still not satisfied. Not with orchards bowing with heavy branches of all the fruits, not with fattened cattle and sheep grazing their fill upon emerald pools of endless pastures, not with rivers teeming in perpetual quiver with schools of fish circling lazily in the cool waters. Not with the sun as it climbed into the sky with each rosy dawn or how it set each evening, and yet the moon gave light still, never to leave them in darkness. Even with all the great pleasures and joys graced to them, they were restless and hungered still for more. Even the great giants of the earth were unsatisfied among the throes of life, and so they stacked mountains upon mountains so as to reach heaven and overthrow the gods and so become gods themselves. And when such things happen, when man thinks himself equal of a god and worthy of divinity, well now, you got trouble. And one such king on this mortal coil, Lycaon of Arcadia, began to think just that and perhaps worse, for that is the trouble of man’s habits and vices. Not even in our worst sins are we satisfied. So full of greed and envy and hatred for the gods was Lycaon, jealous even of other men who had what he did not. He thought himself highest born above all and then he began to believe it. He began to act upon his delusion. And so great Jove learned of this king and of humanity’s atrocities and flew down to see for himself just how evil and wicked man had become. So bad it was that Jove could not even bear it. So much so that upon seeing the earth he wept like a man and cried out unto heaven in a sorrowful rage. Disguised as a man he went across the earth and saw just how barbarous and wretched all of mankind had become. He crossed the land and so widespread was this evil that he wept again and his tears made new rivers in the land. He made his way to the great pine forest, to the kingdom of Lycaon to test this tyrant king himself, still bearing a glint of hope that goodness remained somewhere in this king. Jove, disguised as he was, was greeted with such hostility and horror by the people of Arcadia that he was forced to give a great sign of his godliness just to make them stop. The people saw this and fell to their knees in repentance. But the king Lycaon mocked them and their prayers. Seeing the people paying homage to a man other than himself, Lycaon became enraged. ‘This be no god at all, no more than a peasant conjurer, a shadow casting shadows. Watch and I will find out whether this be a god or a man. And he too shall pay me homage.’ And the people, renewed in wrath by their king, again rebuffed great Jove with mocking devotions. So Lycaon killed one of his many sons and brought the cooked flesh to Jove at his table that night. This to test him to see if the stranger could tell animal flesh from human. And when Lycaon set it on the table before the shrouded god, Jove could no longer hold back his fury. He unleashed great lightning through the house of the king, killing his servants and sons and wives, too numerous to count. Lycaon fled to the pine woods in terror as his people perished by the hand of the god. He fled not out of shame or remorse but merely for the safety of his own flesh. When he reached that silent forest, he tried to call out to heaven but could now only howl. And when he made vain repentance, he only drooled. Foam dripped from his mouth and he was forced to crawl on all fours. Thick hair now covered him and he remained bloodthirsty and forever unsatisfied, forever restless. Once a great and noble king, now but a mongrel wolf, lower than all, unworthy of even being human. He would spend his days devouring flesh but never being filled. His gaze forever cast upon the dust, neck bent to the roots of trees, his eyes unworthy of ever glancing toward heaven again. And so the house of Lycaon fell and was destroyed and scattered. His offspring likewise cursed and left to wander the forests vagrant and banished forever. But this was only the beginning of man’s punishment. Great Jove set loose upon the earth the South Wind, the great zephyr of wrath and destruction. It came with dripping wings and his pitch-black veil of darkness and woe. The South Wind, his beard heavy with rain clouds and his eyes a furious maelstrom, frothing to let loose his rage. Mists are his chaplet and his wings and clothes run with torrents of storms. And so he swept across the earth flooding every river and stream, filling every valley with watery death. Crops and orchards were swept away, cattle and sheep and houses sunk to the bottom of new seas. Not only man and their possessions and houses, but their altars and temples, even the hallowed places were not spared from ruin. The land became a great barren sea. The flood took all things and those whom water by chance had spared, starvation soon found.”
Uncle Forrest lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair.
“I tell you this because it is true. Not the giants or gods or flood or someone being turned into a werewolf, but all the rest. The bereft condition of the human heart. And a great woe is coming. Hell, it’s here. This world remains soaked in evil like bleach, killing everything, and my own life has not been spared. My bloodline, which is yours too, is just as cursed as that Lycaon fool. It plagues us. We’ve all tried to outrun fate but that’s the thing, she’s there smiling to greet us wherever we arrive. Your own Momma tried to hide away, she kept you two hidden from it. I can’t say if it did anything, but only time will tell. Time and the heart when conflict pierces the flesh. And me? I’ve done horrible things. Unspeakable things. I’ve committed such horrors. I am just as wicked as the next. You’re right when you said as such. I am but a wolf howling, bereft of true contrition. Yet I have looked for something more, something other than suffering and that dark down deep. But there ain’t nothing. No God who brought it all on or who will set it right again. We’ve sullied our own world with our blackness, and it is like a cancer in us all. That is, all but you two boys, as far as I’ve seen. And I have seen. You’ve been up here alone in this godforsaken house, this desert of country that is no place at all. You remain apart. So, I asked myself—as I am seeing the world burn and the end days slouching on, grinning at me on every horizon and people killing themselves and each other—I see all this and wish to know how I might free myself of it. I wish to glimpse one moment of hope, for just a moment, even if it’s just an hour right here at the end of this . . . whatever this is. But like all men in all things, I’m here now in this place that is no place, away from the noise, and still I feel just as dark. Because, everything is never enough, but nothing is too much to bear. We want it all, the noise and the silence, the sin and the salvation, and then we want more. We’re restless creatures. Always will be, always offered grace and refusing it for our own disfigured divinity. Spouting how we need no salvation, but too graceless to slide softly into our own oblivion. That’s what I know. And to answer your question, I’m here to hide out from it. Just like you two.”
The boys sat silently, thinking and sweating as the hot, wet stormy air breathed through the house.
“What terrible things have you done?” Vincent asked.
Forrest stared solemnly at the curls of smoke hanging suspended before his eyes. He took several moments delicately ashing his cigarette, rolling the burning tip against the sharp edge of an empty beer can. Outside the storm raged on in the sultry night. Flashes of lightning illuminated the hidden line of forest and the trees stood mute as black sentinels keeping watch. The heavens folded in on itself with every violent crack of thunder, clouds billowing unseen like pillars of a forgotten city building and crumbling in endless succession. His words stammered and choked. He drank and lowered his eyes, rolling the tip of his cigarette between his fingers.
“There were eight of us. My job was to run point for the squad. We were clearing out this village on the outskirts of Kabul. Wasn’t even a village anymore. It had been hit so hard by mortars and fire it was nothing but rubble. But people were still living there, as if nothing was happening, nothing was so great as to make them leave their homes. We went in to clear the rest of them and locate a group of rebels they were hiding. We broke into twos and me and another guy kicked in this makeshift door. In this little hovel a woman was holding a baby in her arms, half a dozen men were sleeping on the ground. But this little girl, maybe five or six years old, she was standing there pointing a goddamn rocket launcher at us. She stared at me, her face stone, not a bend of fear in her eyes. We shouted for her to put it down and the men in there woke and began shouting at her to fire. The woman and the baby just standing there behind her, just calm, waiting to see what we would do. It was like she knew what was going to happen and just stood there waiting for it to arrive. The girl moved her hand and we opened fire on them. We killed them all, just . . . blew them apart. Christ. I didn’t know I was capable of such a thing. I’d been there two weeks. I didn’t know the world could know such things. But from then on it was as if some caul was pulled over me. I wasn’t me anymore. I was numb. I killed and killed. Never even thought twice on it. Until one day I did. We were in a caravan headed to a recon point, crossing over a no man’s land. Suddenly the Humvee running point was blown to pieces. Shrapnel and bodies flew everywhere. We got out and took position. I saw where they were firing from and had a clear shot with the .50 cal, but I did nothing. I stood and stared and I saw every face of everyone I’d killed. All of them right there looking down at me. And I just stood as my buddies were killed one by one. They called for me to fire and help but I was gone, numb and frozen. I just let my arms hang down and waited to die. I really did. A mortar hit my vehicle and I don’t remember it after that. I woke up without my leg and the rest of my platoon dead. When I came home I didn’t have the heart to see anyone. Not my wife, not my baby girl. I felt dead to everyone, and have been dead ever since.”
Forrest opened another can and drank it all in a few slugs. The boys said nothing.
“But I do get a decent check each month,” Forrest said and laughed. “Even murderers and cowards get their day.”
“You know, you contradict yourself, Uncle,” Martin said.
“That so? Well, so be it. I contain multitudes.” Forrest laughed sadly.
“Both of your stories actually. You say because you’ve seen suffering, because you’ve done evil, there can be nothing good, no God, because if there was, why would such things happen. But that’s like blaming a builder for a house fire, or a doctor for a disease. We broke the world, not God. Suffering only shows man’s rebellion, just like your story. But if life is just nothing, just chaos like you say, then why does suffering bother you at all? When you call something evil then you’re saying it assuming a certain truth, but also that there is an opposite to that evil. And that only serves to show there is God and goodness. And just like these hills and seasons show, that if there’s disease or drought or badness for so long, there is always goodness next, always a new season. Tutto passa, Uncle. Mom always says that at the end of our lives we won’t ever regret having suffered. We will regret having suffered so little and suffered that little so poorly.”
Forrest stared at him, then shifted his eyes to the storm outside. He tried to think of nothing and sweat dripped down his neck. The wind outside blew the rain in through the hole in the window and he watched the water slide down the jagged pane of glass.
“And now you’re here because you have no place to run,” Martin said. “You’ve exhausted your own will, and you’re out of oil and have come to take ours.”
Forrest scoffed. “You know, that’s the trouble with being smart. It makes you an ass who makes foolish assumptions. I don’t need anything. I don’t care a damn about you.” Forrest’s jaw was tight as he gnawed at nothing.
“Yes you do. But you’re too dead to see it, like you said yourself. You need to wake up then.”
“I just want silence,” Forrest said. “Silence, and then I’ll be on my way.”
The boys were quiet, watching him. Vincent leaned over to Martin, and they whispered back and forth.
“What, are you boys plotting against me now?” Forrest said and laughed nervously.
“No. We decided you can stay here, and if it’s the end of the world, you’ll be with us,” Vincent said.
Forrest laughed harder. “That so? Well thank you for the kindness.”
“Yessir. Under one condition,” Martin said.
“And I suppose you’re the man of the house to make conditions. Let’s hear it then.”
“You can stay with us, but you’ll have to go out into that storm, look up to heaven and say ‘Christ is Lord’ and repent of your sins. Say it loud enough for both the angels and demons to hear.”
Uncle Forrest began laughing, and he laughed harder, and his laughing turned into a hacking cough. He caught his breath, smiling as he dropped his cigarette into the empty can.
“Yeah . . .” Forrest said, holding each syllable the length of his smoky breath. “I ain’t doing that, fellas.”
“Either that or you give us your leg,” Martin said.
“The wooden one,” Vincent added. “And we chain you up, so you can’t get away or try and kill us in our sleep.”
“What?” Forrest said. “Look, I’ve taken a lot of shit in my life, but I ain’t about to sit here and let two dirt faced boys tell me what I have to do or what I have to believe in.”
“Grace offered and grace refused, didn’t you say that?” Martin said.
“I ain’t being chained or giving y’all freaks my leg.”
“Just say it then,” Vincent said. “So we know for sure you ain’t of the evil one.”
“I’m not saying anything!” Forrest shouted. “Any why? What’s so damn important about me saying that?”
“Well, to be frank, we haven’t decided if you’re real or not. You might be a ghost like Momma out there. Or else a demon come to claw up our souls before the Second Coming. So by going out there and saying those words we will know for certain.”
“Good God, where do you come up with this shit?”
“Read it in a book about Vikings. Mom says our blood is Nordic, that’s why we don’t trust anyone.”
Uncle Forrest scoffed. “Said.”
“What?” Vincent asked.
“Your Mother said. Not says. She can’t say anything anymore. She’s dead. Past tense.”
The boys looked at him like stone children.
The man sighed. “You’re serious about this.”
“Yessir,” Martin said.
Forrest eyed them sinisterly as he rubbed his stubbled jaw. “Well, then,” he said standing. “Let’s go get us some redemption.” He smiled, shaking his head, then paused as a veil of dark certainty came over him. “Look, y’all boys have been under a great emotional strain. Christ, your own Mother just died not two days ago. I come here and disrupt your life, I know, and my apologies. But everything is . . . well, coming to an end. Everything loose is traveling. Your Momma dies and the sky’s falling in out there. Your lives are never going to be the same. I’m sorry for that but that’s it, that’s being alive in this world. But there ain’t any need to start turning on me and adding to the great whirlwind of it all. We need a breath. Silence. Hell, have a smoke, drink a few cold boys here and relax. Let’s just relax. Look, there’s a beautiful storm, a theater of nature on full display right out that window. Let’s enjoy it. If it’s the end of it all why ruin the silence with all this groveling? Whatcha say fellas? I ain’t no dark one or a snake or dragon or anything come to ruin y’all. I’m a bad man, sure. Most are. But a ghost? Demon? Hell, could a ghost do this?” He held up his bloody, mangled thumb. “No, I’m just poor flesh, like you. But if you let me, I can also be your Uncle. Your family. I can help, we can get this place into shape if you let me.”
“Really? But you said this house was a shithole,” Vincent said.
“It is, it is, but a little work can change shit to shrine.”
The boys’ faces remained void of any sentiment.
“Sorry. You heard our conditions, Uncle,” Martin said.
“Ah, hell.” Forrest stomped across the kitchen and pulled off his shirt. He threw open the back door and limped down the steps into the storm. The boys crowded in front of the window. Forrest stood in the downpour with the stiff grace of a corpse in a riptide. The wind thrashed and rain pelted his bare chest like stones. He did not bow or cower to the storm though. He held his arms out like a crucified thief, holding the rain in his hands as the storm raged and turned his head to thunder. The prideful smirk drained from his face. He stared at the swirling sky and listened to the thunder peel across the far hills. His arms fell to his sides, the rain running down his hot skin. His boots sank deeper into the soaked mud as if his soles had grown roots and the fibrous tendrils were digging deeper into the earth to pull him under.
“Kill me already,” he said quietly, as if but a breath. “Come on and do it, you son of a bitch. Here. I’m right here,” he said to the sky, but the sky said nothing and did not open and there appeared no golden light or hollow, angelic voice.
“Maybe it ain’t your time. It also ain’t mine, I guess. And that’s fine. I’ve been crucified more times than you in this life, and they’re coming to do it again. So I’m not saying nothing to you. Not unless you let this cup pass, brother. Not until.”
Forrest turned and took slow lumbering steps as he splashed his way back to the house. The boys stood in the kitchen, waiting. Forrest stood in the hall dripping rain. It ran down his arms and hands and blood and watered dripped to the floor. The blood had run from his skin and his eyes gazed out with terrifying lifelessness.
“You didn’t say it,” Vincent said.
Forrest was silent. He unbuckled his pants and pulled them off along with his boots. He unbuckled the strap that was taught around his left thigh, just above the knee. He pulled the prosthetic limb off and tossed it across the floor toward the boys. They stared at the bruised puckered end where the rest of the leg should have been. Forrest balanced on one foot before drunkenly falling to the floor. He dragged himself down the darkened hall and into Loretta’s room. The boys stared as he disappeared into the blackness and closed the door.
Vincent went and picked up the leg. “Man, this is how much a leg weighs?”
“Put that down,” Martin said. He walked through the kitchen to the living room and knelt down before the crucifix. His little brother followed.
Spencer K.M. Brown is an award-winning poet and novelist. He is the author of the novels Move Over Mountain and Hold Fast, the poetry chapbook Cicada Rex, and the forthcoming story collection Into My Heart an Air That Kills (Loblolly Press, Fall 2026). He lives in the foothills of North Carolina with his wife and three sons.
by Spencer K.M. Brown
Martin and Vincent sat cross-legged on the kitchen table beside the broken window watching their mother stand in the thunderstorm. She stood peacefully amid the cracks of lightning and thunder and made the hard rain look soft. She was nearly see-through. Loretta had died two days ago, but there she was, standing in the storm as if nothing had changed. The boys watched her intently because of this, their eyes affixed to her, ready to say something the moment she vanished entirely but tongue-tied when she remained with every flash of heavenly light.
“We needed a good rain. Too bad we don’t have a garden,” Vincent said. “Mom loves storms like this. Good, hard summer rain. She said it does something for the soul.”
Uncle Forrest lay supine across the kitchen floor slowly sipping his beer as he stared at the fan moving lazily above.
“That motor is dying out,” Forrest said. “Wiring is all shot to shit.”
Vincent looked at him. “You ever known someone to die who never went away?” he asked.
“Yeah, my first wife, Joan,” Forrest said, and laughed madly, then coughed himself into silence. “No,” he said after several minutes. “It is quite unusual,” he said, giving extra voice to each syllable so his drunkenness didn’t mar his words.
“You know, I think I know what’s happening. A theory,” Martin said. He sipped from his second beer and felt warm now, despite Vincent’s concerned glares each time he drank.
"Is that so? Well, enlighten us all,” Forrest said.
“Well, it’s written that there will come a day when death won’t be found. People will seek it, will pray for suffering to end, but death will escape them. That will be the end of the age. And both spirit and flesh will become as inseparable because a final judgment is at hand. There’ll be signs and wonders, wars and rumors of war. But the Son of Man will not come until these things take place. And none shall know the day nor the hour, not even the angels in heaven,” Martin said. “This is also why Mom didn’t care for keeping track or being beholden to time. It’s none of our concern. But I think such times might be here. Not sure about the rest, but it seems like death can’t find Momma. Or us. And you know, in town, I . . . I saw something strange. A girl.”
“And me,” Vincent said to his uncle. “On the road. Did you see it, Uncle Forrest? I saw those men on the road, and one with a fish, standing on it. Did you see it?”
"No, I didn’t see a man standing on a fish,” Forrest said. “Lord, y’all have been hiding out so long you can’t tell what’s real from what’s in your mind. No God is coming, and your Momma ain’t going to any paradise. She’s dead as dust, she’s nothing now. And the end times? Yeah, you’re right there. We’re living in them. It’s always been the end, ever since we took that first breath. You boys need to wake up to reality.”
Martin looked over at Forrest lying on the floor. His eyes narrowed as something severe crawled into his mind. “Why are you here, Uncle?”
Forrest lifted his head a little to look at the boy’s stolid face. “You called me, remember?”
“But you didn’t have to come. You haven’t been here or talked to any of us in ten years. So why now?”
“Don’t get all smartassy now. Your Momma—my sister—is dead.”
“But you just said yourself that it don’t mean anything. She’s nothing, you said. To you, life don’t mean anything and death nothing more than a final exhale of dust. And since you’ve come here, you’ve done nothing but disrespect our Mother and blaspheme our Lord.”
“Ah, hell, come on now, no need to get all pouty,” Forrest said.
“You didn’t come to help us, because you don’t help. You don’t care about anything but yourself, isn’t that right.”
Forrest grunted, mumbling under his breath.
“I think you should go, Uncle. You offer us nothing good.”
“Hold on now,” Forrest said. He squirmed a bit on the floor. His wooden leg gave him trouble, and he knew it, and made a pathetic scene of it.
“‘Fear ye not them that can kill the body and are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell,’” Martin said. “And I see that’s you. You are darkness, it follows you, Uncle. And I think it’s time you left here.”
“Now hold on a minute.” Forrest floundered in his drunken show. He knocked his beer over on the floor, desperately trying to reach for the countertop to pull himself up. He grunted and sighed. “Come on, help me up here.”
The boys didn’t move.
“Give me a hand, fellas.”
Vincent stood beside Martin. “You are, aren’t you. You’re darkness. That’s what I’ve been feeling in my stomach. That sickness.”
“What the hell are y’all talking about? Help me up for Christsake.”
“You say Christ is Lord! Say it!” Vincent shouted.
Uncle Forrest got to his feet and stood at his full towering height. “Look, you boys have been holed up here in this shithole house too long. Your minds are scrambled eggs. You don’t know the year from a katydid. You don’t know a thing about this world or life or me. You never seen the world I’ve seen, so y’all can just cut the shit.” He wiped at his lips, his face turning violent red. “People do unspeakable horrors every day. War and massacres, slaughtering everything good. The wretchedness and horror of it all. And sure, I’ve done my share. I ain’t no different. But you two stand here like you’re holy or special or some shit.” He grinned with a dark malice. “Let me tell you, no one’s special. You’re just brainwashed little shits, raised by a crazy Mother. Dying was the best thing she ever done for y’all.”
“Say it, Uncle,” Martin said. He stared dead at the man, shirtless and dirty, his chest all ribs and bone casting shadows down his side. He raised his skinny arm, pointing as he gazed fearlessly at his uncle. “You, you’re the dragon.”
“The what?” Forrest said.
“The false prophet. The wolf come here to destroy the righteous.”
“Good God, you’re just as crazy as your Momma,” Forrest said opening another beer. He drank and it sprayed across the air as he spoke. “And what’s more, you two really think you’re saved and redeemed. But you know, here’s the truth, there ain’t nothing to be redeemed from and no one to do the redeeming. Nothing is coming! There’s nothing in this world or the next but fire and let me tell you, that fire eats and eats, and no matter what you think is true or what you believe in, that fire don’t care. It stays hungry. All you can do is learn to walk in it and burn well.”
“You be silent!” Martin screamed. The veins in his face and neck bulged and thumped with his quaking voice.
The house was silent. Uncle Forrest stood staring at the two of them, terrified, as if he had stumbled upon rabid coyotes.
“You speak only venom, snake,” Martin said, nearly seething. “And you shall not foul this place anymore. For on your belly do you crawl and dirt fills your mouth.”
"Say it, say Christ is Lord!” Vincent shouted.
“What in the hell is the matter with you both,” Forrest said. “Calm down now, boys, just cool out.” He held his hands up in innocence, chuckling nervously. “Look, it’s a lot, I know. Your Mother is gone and you two are alone with everything that can happen in this Godforsaken country, I get it. I was you once. It’s heavy on the heart. It’s goddamn terrifying, all right? But there’s no need to attack me and go all nutso. I’m your blood. I’m all the blood you got left, like it or not. But you’re all I got too. And I sure as hell ain’t gonna do nothing to harm either of y’all. I ain’t no dragon and sure as shit ain’t any prophet, real or false. I got my own reasons for coming and hiding out here too.”
Martin’s face remained severe and stone solid.
“What reasons?” Vincent said.
Forrest swallowed the sticky dryness in his throat, lowering his hands. He looked at Martin. “Can we sit and talk calmly? Like educated men?”
The boy took a breath, holding his eyes steady on his uncle. Without a word he sat at the table, Vincent sitting beside him.
“Thank you, gentlemen, thank you,” Forrest said. He breathed and sat across from them. “One breath is often enough to save a life, and that life is more often your own.”
Why are you here then?” Martin said.
"Do you boys know the story of Lycaon, the king of Arcadia, and how his line came to be forever damned and cursed?”
The boys sat speechlessly, their eyes steady on Forrest, as if waiting for some sign to know if he was real or ghost, as if at any moment he might grab a shovel and hit them over the head.
“All right then,” Forrest said. “So, after creation, when all order was breathed into Chaos and all was made perfect, mankind was still not satisfied. Not with orchards bowing with heavy branches of all the fruits, not with fattened cattle and sheep grazing their fill upon emerald pools of endless pastures, not with rivers teeming in perpetual quiver with schools of fish circling lazily in the cool waters. Not with the sun as it climbed into the sky with each rosy dawn or how it set each evening, and yet the moon gave light still, never to leave them in darkness. Even with all the great pleasures and joys graced to them, they were restless and hungered still for more. Even the great giants of the earth were unsatisfied among the throes of life, and so they stacked mountains upon mountains so as to reach heaven and overthrow the gods and so become gods themselves. And when such things happen, when man thinks himself equal of a god and worthy of divinity, well now, you got trouble. And one such king on this mortal coil, Lycaon of Arcadia, began to think just that and perhaps worse, for that is the trouble of man’s habits and vices. Not even in our worst sins are we satisfied. So full of greed and envy and hatred for the gods was Lycaon, jealous even of other men who had what he did not. He thought himself highest born above all and then he began to believe it. He began to act upon his delusion. And so great Jove learned of this king and of humanity’s atrocities and flew down to see for himself just how evil and wicked man had become. So bad it was that Jove could not even bear it. So much so that upon seeing the earth he wept like a man and cried out unto heaven in a sorrowful rage. Disguised as a man he went across the earth and saw just how barbarous and wretched all of mankind had become. He crossed the land and so widespread was this evil that he wept again and his tears made new rivers in the land. He made his way to the great pine forest, to the kingdom of Lycaon to test this tyrant king himself, still bearing a glint of hope that goodness remained somewhere in this king. Jove, disguised as he was, was greeted with such hostility and horror by the people of Arcadia that he was forced to give a great sign of his godliness just to make them stop. The people saw this and fell to their knees in repentance. But the king Lycaon mocked them and their prayers. Seeing the people paying homage to a man other than himself, Lycaon became enraged. ‘This be no god at all, no more than a peasant conjurer, a shadow casting shadows. Watch and I will find out whether this be a god or a man. And he too shall pay me homage.’ And the people, renewed in wrath by their king, again rebuffed great Jove with mocking devotions. So Lycaon killed one of his many sons and brought the cooked flesh to Jove at his table that night. This to test him to see if the stranger could tell animal flesh from human. And when Lycaon set it on the table before the shrouded god, Jove could no longer hold back his fury. He unleashed great lightning through the house of the king, killing his servants and sons and wives, too numerous to count. Lycaon fled to the pine woods in terror as his people perished by the hand of the god. He fled not out of shame or remorse but merely for the safety of his own flesh. When he reached that silent forest, he tried to call out to heaven but could now only howl. And when he made vain repentance, he only drooled. Foam dripped from his mouth and he was forced to crawl on all fours. Thick hair now covered him and he remained bloodthirsty and forever unsatisfied, forever restless. Once a great and noble king, now but a mongrel wolf, lower than all, unworthy of even being human. He would spend his days devouring flesh but never being filled. His gaze forever cast upon the dust, neck bent to the roots of trees, his eyes unworthy of ever glancing toward heaven again. And so the house of Lycaon fell and was destroyed and scattered. His offspring likewise cursed and left to wander the forests vagrant and banished forever. But this was only the beginning of man’s punishment. Great Jove set loose upon the earth the South Wind, the great zephyr of wrath and destruction. It came with dripping wings and his pitch-black veil of darkness and woe. The South Wind, his beard heavy with rain clouds and his eyes a furious maelstrom, frothing to let loose his rage. Mists are his chaplet and his wings and clothes run with torrents of storms. And so he swept across the earth flooding every river and stream, filling every valley with watery death. Crops and orchards were swept away, cattle and sheep and houses sunk to the bottom of new seas. Not only man and their possessions and houses, but their altars and temples, even the hallowed places were not spared from ruin. The land became a great barren sea. The flood took all things and those whom water by chance had spared, starvation soon found.”
Uncle Forrest lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair.
“I tell you this because it is true. Not the giants or gods or flood or someone being turned into a werewolf, but all the rest. The bereft condition of the human heart. And a great woe is coming. Hell, it’s here. This world remains soaked in evil like bleach, killing everything, and my own life has not been spared. My bloodline, which is yours too, is just as cursed as that Lycaon fool. It plagues us. We’ve all tried to outrun fate but that’s the thing, she’s there smiling to greet us wherever we arrive. Your own Momma tried to hide away, she kept you two hidden from it. I can’t say if it did anything, but only time will tell. Time and the heart when conflict pierces the flesh. And me? I’ve done horrible things. Unspeakable things. I’ve committed such horrors. I am just as wicked as the next. You’re right when you said as such. I am but a wolf howling, bereft of true contrition. Yet I have looked for something more, something other than suffering and that dark down deep. But there ain’t nothing. No God who brought it all on or who will set it right again. We’ve sullied our own world with our blackness, and it is like a cancer in us all. That is, all but you two boys, as far as I’ve seen. And I have seen. You’ve been up here alone in this godforsaken house, this desert of country that is no place at all. You remain apart. So, I asked myself—as I am seeing the world burn and the end days slouching on, grinning at me on every horizon and people killing themselves and each other—I see all this and wish to know how I might free myself of it. I wish to glimpse one moment of hope, for just a moment, even if it’s just an hour right here at the end of this . . . whatever this is. But like all men in all things, I’m here now in this place that is no place, away from the noise, and still I feel just as dark. Because, everything is never enough, but nothing is too much to bear. We want it all, the noise and the silence, the sin and the salvation, and then we want more. We’re restless creatures. Always will be, always offered grace and refusing it for our own disfigured divinity. Spouting how we need no salvation, but too graceless to slide softly into our own oblivion. That’s what I know. And to answer your question, I’m here to hide out from it. Just like you two.”
The boys sat silently, thinking and sweating as the hot, wet stormy air breathed through the house.
“What terrible things have you done?” Vincent asked.
Forrest stared solemnly at the curls of smoke hanging suspended before his eyes. He took several moments delicately ashing his cigarette, rolling the burning tip against the sharp edge of an empty beer can. Outside the storm raged on in the sultry night. Flashes of lightning illuminated the hidden line of forest and the trees stood mute as black sentinels keeping watch. The heavens folded in on itself with every violent crack of thunder, clouds billowing unseen like pillars of a forgotten city building and crumbling in endless succession. His words stammered and choked. He drank and lowered his eyes, rolling the tip of his cigarette between his fingers.
“There were eight of us. My job was to run point for the squad. We were clearing out this village on the outskirts of Kabul. Wasn’t even a village anymore. It had been hit so hard by mortars and fire it was nothing but rubble. But people were still living there, as if nothing was happening, nothing was so great as to make them leave their homes. We went in to clear the rest of them and locate a group of rebels they were hiding. We broke into twos and me and another guy kicked in this makeshift door. In this little hovel a woman was holding a baby in her arms, half a dozen men were sleeping on the ground. But this little girl, maybe five or six years old, she was standing there pointing a goddamn rocket launcher at us. She stared at me, her face stone, not a bend of fear in her eyes. We shouted for her to put it down and the men in there woke and began shouting at her to fire. The woman and the baby just standing there behind her, just calm, waiting to see what we would do. It was like she knew what was going to happen and just stood there waiting for it to arrive. The girl moved her hand and we opened fire on them. We killed them all, just . . . blew them apart. Christ. I didn’t know I was capable of such a thing. I’d been there two weeks. I didn’t know the world could know such things. But from then on it was as if some caul was pulled over me. I wasn’t me anymore. I was numb. I killed and killed. Never even thought twice on it. Until one day I did. We were in a caravan headed to a recon point, crossing over a no man’s land. Suddenly the Humvee running point was blown to pieces. Shrapnel and bodies flew everywhere. We got out and took position. I saw where they were firing from and had a clear shot with the .50 cal, but I did nothing. I stood and stared and I saw every face of everyone I’d killed. All of them right there looking down at me. And I just stood as my buddies were killed one by one. They called for me to fire and help but I was gone, numb and frozen. I just let my arms hang down and waited to die. I really did. A mortar hit my vehicle and I don’t remember it after that. I woke up without my leg and the rest of my platoon dead. When I came home I didn’t have the heart to see anyone. Not my wife, not my baby girl. I felt dead to everyone, and have been dead ever since.”
Forrest opened another can and drank it all in a few slugs. The boys said nothing.
“But I do get a decent check each month,” Forrest said and laughed. “Even murderers and cowards get their day.”
“You know, you contradict yourself, Uncle,” Martin said.
“That so? Well, so be it. I contain multitudes.” Forrest laughed sadly.
“Both of your stories actually. You say because you’ve seen suffering, because you’ve done evil, there can be nothing good, no God, because if there was, why would such things happen. But that’s like blaming a builder for a house fire, or a doctor for a disease. We broke the world, not God. Suffering only shows man’s rebellion, just like your story. But if life is just nothing, just chaos like you say, then why does suffering bother you at all? When you call something evil then you’re saying it assuming a certain truth, but also that there is an opposite to that evil. And that only serves to show there is God and goodness. And just like these hills and seasons show, that if there’s disease or drought or badness for so long, there is always goodness next, always a new season. Tutto passa, Uncle. Mom always says that at the end of our lives we won’t ever regret having suffered. We will regret having suffered so little and suffered that little so poorly.”
Forrest stared at him, then shifted his eyes to the storm outside. He tried to think of nothing and sweat dripped down his neck. The wind outside blew the rain in through the hole in the window and he watched the water slide down the jagged pane of glass.
“And now you’re here because you have no place to run,” Martin said. “You’ve exhausted your own will, and you’re out of oil and have come to take ours.”
Forrest scoffed. “You know, that’s the trouble with being smart. It makes you an ass who makes foolish assumptions. I don’t need anything. I don’t care a damn about you.” Forrest’s jaw was tight as he gnawed at nothing.
“Yes you do. But you’re too dead to see it, like you said yourself. You need to wake up then.”
“I just want silence,” Forrest said. “Silence, and then I’ll be on my way.”
The boys were quiet, watching him. Vincent leaned over to Martin, and they whispered back and forth.
“What, are you boys plotting against me now?” Forrest said and laughed nervously.
“No. We decided you can stay here, and if it’s the end of the world, you’ll be with us,” Vincent said.
Forrest laughed harder. “That so? Well thank you for the kindness.”
“Yessir. Under one condition,” Martin said.
“And I suppose you’re the man of the house to make conditions. Let’s hear it then.”
“You can stay with us, but you’ll have to go out into that storm, look up to heaven and say ‘Christ is Lord’ and repent of your sins. Say it loud enough for both the angels and demons to hear.”
Uncle Forrest began laughing, and he laughed harder, and his laughing turned into a hacking cough. He caught his breath, smiling as he dropped his cigarette into the empty can.
“Yeah . . .” Forrest said, holding each syllable the length of his smoky breath. “I ain’t doing that, fellas.”
“Either that or you give us your leg,” Martin said.
“The wooden one,” Vincent added. “And we chain you up, so you can’t get away or try and kill us in our sleep.”
“What?” Forrest said. “Look, I’ve taken a lot of shit in my life, but I ain’t about to sit here and let two dirt faced boys tell me what I have to do or what I have to believe in.”
“Grace offered and grace refused, didn’t you say that?” Martin said.
“I ain’t being chained or giving y’all freaks my leg.”
“Just say it then,” Vincent said. “So we know for sure you ain’t of the evil one.”
“I’m not saying anything!” Forrest shouted. “Any why? What’s so damn important about me saying that?”
“Well, to be frank, we haven’t decided if you’re real or not. You might be a ghost like Momma out there. Or else a demon come to claw up our souls before the Second Coming. So by going out there and saying those words we will know for certain.”
“Good God, where do you come up with this shit?”
“Read it in a book about Vikings. Mom says our blood is Nordic, that’s why we don’t trust anyone.”
Uncle Forrest scoffed. “Said.”
“What?” Vincent asked.
“Your Mother said. Not says. She can’t say anything anymore. She’s dead. Past tense.”
The boys looked at him like stone children.
The man sighed. “You’re serious about this.”
“Yessir,” Martin said.
Forrest eyed them sinisterly as he rubbed his stubbled jaw. “Well, then,” he said standing. “Let’s go get us some redemption.” He smiled, shaking his head, then paused as a veil of dark certainty came over him. “Look, y’all boys have been under a great emotional strain. Christ, your own Mother just died not two days ago. I come here and disrupt your life, I know, and my apologies. But everything is . . . well, coming to an end. Everything loose is traveling. Your Momma dies and the sky’s falling in out there. Your lives are never going to be the same. I’m sorry for that but that’s it, that’s being alive in this world. But there ain’t any need to start turning on me and adding to the great whirlwind of it all. We need a breath. Silence. Hell, have a smoke, drink a few cold boys here and relax. Let’s just relax. Look, there’s a beautiful storm, a theater of nature on full display right out that window. Let’s enjoy it. If it’s the end of it all why ruin the silence with all this groveling? Whatcha say fellas? I ain’t no dark one or a snake or dragon or anything come to ruin y’all. I’m a bad man, sure. Most are. But a ghost? Demon? Hell, could a ghost do this?” He held up his bloody, mangled thumb. “No, I’m just poor flesh, like you. But if you let me, I can also be your Uncle. Your family. I can help, we can get this place into shape if you let me.”
“Really? But you said this house was a shithole,” Vincent said.
“It is, it is, but a little work can change shit to shrine.”
The boys’ faces remained void of any sentiment.
“Sorry. You heard our conditions, Uncle,” Martin said.
“Ah, hell.” Forrest stomped across the kitchen and pulled off his shirt. He threw open the back door and limped down the steps into the storm. The boys crowded in front of the window. Forrest stood in the downpour with the stiff grace of a corpse in a riptide. The wind thrashed and rain pelted his bare chest like stones. He did not bow or cower to the storm though. He held his arms out like a crucified thief, holding the rain in his hands as the storm raged and turned his head to thunder. The prideful smirk drained from his face. He stared at the swirling sky and listened to the thunder peel across the far hills. His arms fell to his sides, the rain running down his hot skin. His boots sank deeper into the soaked mud as if his soles had grown roots and the fibrous tendrils were digging deeper into the earth to pull him under.
“Kill me already,” he said quietly, as if but a breath. “Come on and do it, you son of a bitch. Here. I’m right here,” he said to the sky, but the sky said nothing and did not open and there appeared no golden light or hollow, angelic voice.
“Maybe it ain’t your time. It also ain’t mine, I guess. And that’s fine. I’ve been crucified more times than you in this life, and they’re coming to do it again. So I’m not saying nothing to you. Not unless you let this cup pass, brother. Not until.”
Forrest turned and took slow lumbering steps as he splashed his way back to the house. The boys stood in the kitchen, waiting. Forrest stood in the hall dripping rain. It ran down his arms and hands and blood and watered dripped to the floor. The blood had run from his skin and his eyes gazed out with terrifying lifelessness.
“You didn’t say it,” Vincent said.
Forrest was silent. He unbuckled his pants and pulled them off along with his boots. He unbuckled the strap that was taught around his left thigh, just above the knee. He pulled the prosthetic limb off and tossed it across the floor toward the boys. They stared at the bruised puckered end where the rest of the leg should have been. Forrest balanced on one foot before drunkenly falling to the floor. He dragged himself down the darkened hall and into Loretta’s room. The boys stared as he disappeared into the blackness and closed the door.
Vincent went and picked up the leg. “Man, this is how much a leg weighs?”
“Put that down,” Martin said. He walked through the kitchen to the living room and knelt down before the crucifix. His little brother followed.
Spencer K.M. Brown is an award-winning poet and novelist. He is the author of the novels Move Over Mountain and Hold Fast, the poetry chapbook Cicada Rex, and the forthcoming story collection Into My Heart an Air That Kills (Loblolly Press, Fall 2026). He lives in the foothills of North Carolina with his wife and three sons.