By Dennis Eamon Young

Scully felt the heat of the blood run down his arms and chest. It was burned into his brain. The look, smell, the taste— all part of that vivid long ago picture. He’d been nineteen at the time, but it took four grown men to pry him off his father.
“Was it that confrontation that started you on such a life of violence, my son?” the old priest asked.
“No, Father. That just provided a stop along the way.” Scully noted the shaky edge in the priest’s voice, and the lack of eye contact. The man didn’t want to be here anymore than Scully wanted him. That was obvious. Scully didn’t care.
“Don’t be afraid, Father. The guards are right here. They won’t let me hurt you.” Scully laughed from that deep, dark place inside, the place where a little boy had cowered in abysmal fear for as long as he could remember. The same little boy who’d been hurt time and again, and who covered his eyes so he didn’t have to watch his mother getting battered.
Emmet Scully waited stoically for the state to put an end to his miserable existence. He told the priest his tale of schoolboy fights that had escalated as he acted out his anger on others until he grew strong enough to turn on his real target, his father. His old man survived that fight and Scully served his first year in prison.
Just before Scully’s release, his old man had come home in a drunken rage and had gone too far. Scully’s mother ended up in the morgue. Too late for her, but his father would spend the rest of his life in prison.
“I’m my own man,” he told the priest. “I do as I please and I don’t stand for anyone to order me around. I didn’t ask you to come here and I ain’t looking for anything from you. I couldn’t make any of the women in my life happy, but I never hit any of them. It sure as hell pushed my button when I saw some other man hit a woman or child. I’d always stop stop them.”
“You’re going to be executed for killing a man you didn’t even know. You left his wife a widow and his daughter fatherless.” The priest shifted his bulk on the hard steel bunk. His voice rose an octave. “Do you at least feel badly for causing such a tragedy? Do you wish to seek their forgiveness?”
“Ha! That’s a good one, Father. You have no idea how much better off they are without him. Too bad someone didn’t get rid of that vermin a hell of a lot sooner. The other guys told me he beat them a lot and he beat anyone else who tried to stop him… until he met me. I just meant to teach him a lesson. Listen up, old man!” Scully reached out and shook the priest by the shoulders. The guards jumped in and pummeled his arms with their batons.
“I didn’t hurt you.” Scully cradled his arms to his chest. “I just wanted to make my point. You should look at the whole story. They owe me, not the other way around. I’m paying the price for their ticket to freedom.”
“You could’ve accomplished that, you fool,” Father Doyle hissed, “if you’d just called the police.”
“And how long would that have stopped him? You and I both know why society hates me.  Because I did what they couldn’t.”

Dennis Eamon Young is a writer and professional photographer living out the dreams of his youth with his wonderful wife and a bevy of creative friends on the enchanting Central Coast of CA. Dennis is proud to be the President of SLO NightWriters, for writers at all levels in all genres. Find them online at slonightwriters.org.