Quantum Dissolve: Chapter 28. (Harry Hembock: Revelations (Part 2))

1992.

Kelly Tamron stood back, and looked at her handiwork.

The four month old, the one year old, and the two year old were floating face down in the tub like kernels of puffed wheat.
Very blue, very dead.
She'd sent them to Jesus.

It was now the turn of the three year old, Tommy, to take his bath.
"Tommy! Bath time!", Kelly called out.

Tommy always hated bath time, and fought it like cats and dogs every time.
He was out in the living room running around in his superhero jammies.
Kelly would have to go get him.

The two year old had put up an ungodly struggle, and made some unsettling noises.
Tommy was a bit bigger, and would take some doing.

She went to the kitchen to get the butcher knife.

She retrieved it, and hid it behind her back, and tried to grab Tommy with her free hand, but he was a slippery little piglet.
Always had been.

He giggled, and kept outrunning her.

He led her on a merry chase, until he got a peek in the open bathroom door, and saw.
At first, he couldn't quite comprehend what he was seeing.

Then, his brain didn't seem to want to process it.

In that frozen moment, Karen Tamron, his own mother, was lifting the knife to strike like a cobra.


A claw hammer swung, claw side down, into Kelly's skull.
And again, and again, furiously.

"You evil fucking cunt!! You evil fucking cunt!! You!! Evil! Fucking!! Cunt!!", 16 year old Lash screamed as he hurled blows at his deranged mother.

Finally, she plopped to the ground with a dumb look on her face like a gaffed fish.
She was no more.

"Good".
Lash mentally hissed.

Lash surveyed the damage in the bathroom.
He shrieked, then bawled, then vomited in the toilet, then bawled some more.

Tommy was still frozen in shocked disbelief.

Lash was gripped in horror, anger, outrage, despair, and worst of all, guilt.
He had been out smoking and drinking beers with his stupid friends.
If he'd been there, the babies would be alive now.

He came out, and hugged Tommy for dear life, and kept on bawling, and whimpering through hyperventilating hiccuping "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry...I'll never let you down again...I'm sorry...".


1993

State agencies had torn the brothers apart.

Tommy had been adopted by the Irwins, and renamed Dusty.

Lash would bounce from institution, to foster home, to juvie hall, to foster home, and so on, until he was big enough for jail for the next 20 years.


2005

Lash saw the conviction of his brother on the news.

Guilt roared through him like a forest fire for the millionth time.

"If only I had gotten him out of that toilet of a town", he admonished himself.

He remembered the lame promises he'd given Tommy/Dusty that they'd be together again, and have superhero adventures together, like the old days.

Unable to bear it, he got shit-faced drunk.


2009

After many failed attempts, Lash had finally dried out from the booze, and made his plan.


2011

Lash, wearing a ski-mask, broke into the judge's house, tiptoed into the judge's room, pulled out a long strand of hair, dangled it into the judge's mouth, and used the hair to guide droplets of poison in.


2014

Harry/Lash pulled JS to him, and whispered a secret.
It took a couple minutes to tell, and it was just enough time.
Harry/Lash breathed his last, and his hand dropped away.

JS recoiled from both the secret, and the passing, as if electrocuted.

The suppressed memories poured in like water from a broken dam.

It all bowled him over like a baseball bat to the guts.

JS shook the body, and wailed.
"Oh no!! Oh no, oh no, oh no!!! I can't lose you now!! We were supposed to find each other!! We were supposed to have adventures together! We promised! Aw no!! Aw nooo!".

JS clutched Lash's body even tighter, and wailed guttural sobs that almost sounded like wounded animal howls.

It started to rain.

Harry Hembock was not after all, indestructible.

Neither was, to JS's humiliated frustration, his own heart.

No, Harry Hembock was not indestructible.
But he had protected him when it mattered most.

And The Jade Shade would add him to the long list of people he would have to avenge.