Border, KS

Images swam before Siobhan’s eyes. She saw and did not see, comprehended and did not comprehend. The raven spread its wings and took to the inky sky, a thousand stars looking down in judgment. A pool as still as the sky reflected only the black above, and the face that peered down in wonder and horror. A darkness spreading across a plain. An army of faceless men, each marked only by three lines of crimson burning like a brand.

She heard sounds, and knew they were from beyond. She could not make them out. She heard sounds, and knew they were from within, and could hear them like bells.

She heard her father shout “Get back!” She heard the clang of metal and something like metal, but different. She saw her house, so new to her but already so familiar, shadowed by flickering as shapes danced in front of light. She saw a hundred ways of blood and death, and so very few of life and hope; and she knew she had to wake.

As she began to rouse she heard the real world, and her visions began to fade. She began to forget and lock them into the dreaming part of her for her own safety, save for one impression.

“She just fell down!” A voice, Antigone, was saying in worry. “We found the circle, we walked up the steps and through that arch and when she stepped in her nose started bleeding and she fell down!”

“Arch? Steps?” Came another voice, somewhat familiar…where had she heard it. “Its just a busted ass ring of stone, there’s no arch.”

As Siobhan struggled to open her eyes she could hear the pause that Annie took. “Of course there is. It looks old, but its there…are there two circles?”

Lacey, that was the other voice. The odd cheerleader who had hugged her. “No, thats an urban legend. I’ve been in there a dozen times, it doesn’t exist.”

Siobhan was finally able to lift her eyelids, and energy started to flow back into her body as if it had been held at bay by something. Electric tingles ran through her limbs like they had all fallen asleep, and she let out a groan.

The first thing she saw were her sister’s eyes, looking down at her with worry. “Bonnie, don’t move, we’ve got to get you to the hospital. You fell down.”

She saw that they were back in Lacey’s backyard, somehow. Annie looked exhausted, sweat beading her brow and matting her so carefully brushed hair, and neither of them had their shoes.

“You carried me…all the way here?” Siobhan asked, stunned away from her dreams for a moment by that. The logistics of it baffled her; the love in her sister’s actions made her eyes prick with tears.

“You fell.” Antigone said, sheepishly but with conviction, and an unspoken promise. “I couldn’t leave you, even to get help.”

Siobhan decided she would cry later, as memories of dreams and dreams of memories returned to her. A raven, a darkness, three burning brands…and their father. “Dad’s in trouble…” Siobhan said, drawing stunned expressions from them. She started struggling to her feet, and was proud she only stumbled a little.

“Bonnie, lay down, we can’t move you—” Antigone began, but Siobhan cut her off. She grabbed her sister’s wrist and started tugging her on on increasingly steady legs. Lacey gaped, until Siobhan caught her eye.

“Call the cops. Don’t ask. But someone is going to try to kill Walter Richards.” She rattled off her address as she began to tug Annie into a run. “Hurry!”

The forest was larger than Antigone had expected, a dense verdant mass almost dripping in the late summer humidity. The cicadas were deafening at first but once they were into the forest proper they dropped off significantly. It left the woods with a faint buzzing in the distance matched by the shuffle of their feet, in a dark lit only by the moon and the fireflies.

“Bonnie…” Annie whined, before she flushed a little bit angrily at herself for how whiny she sounded. “I didn’t wear hiking boots for a reason.” She grumbled. “Cause I didn’t want to go hiking, mostly.”

“Shh.” Siobhan responded simply as she continued to walk along carefully, stepping under low branches and thick leaves.

“And your perverse desire to see people doing it is…” Antigone struggled momentarily for a word. “Perverse.”

“You covered that. Now shut up, this is…sisterly bonding.” Siobhan said breezily as she continued walking along. Annie sighed, carefully stepping through some particularly sharp looking branches before she stepped out into an opening.

The first thing she saw was the gate. A stone arch held a large wooden door, pitted and partially rotted and looking as ancient as the night. Little stone clumps all around it indicated what had once been a house or a wall, the gray sharp and clean against the natural green. Beyond it lay carved stairs set with old flag stones that had as many chips and cracks as they did solid pieces. Unlike the gray stone they were a rich brown that seemed to grow from the very earth itself, and lead up to the flat top of a hill.

Antigone’s grumbles died on her lips as she walked after her sister. A dozen fireflies flitted around the scene, casting flickering shadows and fey light. The cicadas were utterly quiet, the stillness broken only by the flitting of wings and the shuffling of sandals and combat boots. Soon, before Antigone even realized, they were at the top of the stairs.

Rough gray stones lay in a circle, each slightly different but the same size and general shape. Though each was of dull stone they all contained little veins of glittering quartz that flickered with the firefly glow.

“Beautiful.” Siobhan said breathlessly, and Antigone couldn’t disagree. But it was a haunting beauty, like a mist-shrouded lake or the sight of a fire running wild across a plain.

“It is.” She agreed softly. Now entranced, she took her cell phone out and checked it—3 bars. She took a step to the edge of the circle, and stopped for a moment of consideration before she stepped out of her sandals.

“It’s a fairy ring.” Siobhan said, looking around the stones at the small mushrooms growing between them. “Like mom used to point out.”

With a tentative step Antigone passed into the ring, and her cell-phone immediately displayed ‘No Service’ where the three bars had been. She shook her head in wonder as she looked at it. “Check yours.” A shiver crossed her skin, a cool caress like fingers on her arms and the back of her neck. The stones flickered with the firefly’s dance for another moment, but it was gone so quickly she couldn’t be sure it had been real.

Siobhan took hers out, and paused for the same moment before she struggled out of her boots. Tentatively she stepped in to the ring as well, reaching for her phone. Her hand touched her pocket for only a moment before her eyes widened, her face going pale and a thread of blood began to trickle out of her nose. She fell down to the soft green grass, a silent scream on her darkly painted lips.

Very few things can drown out the concentrated musical explosion that is a high school party in a house absent of parents. Antigone had to admit that a Kansas summer with a bumper crop of cicadas was doing a rather good job of it.

It had taken them twenty minutes to walk to Lacey’s house, including a brief detour through the High School. Now, having been there an hour, they stood in the expansive back yard. It backed on to one of the heavily wooded areas in and around the city, and the gate between large cypress trees seemed more a formality than a barrier.

Antigone had taken a pop for herself when she entered that she was still nursing, while Siobhan had been greeted very differently. The moment she had walked in Lacey had walked over with a can of Budweiser, and pressed it in to her hand. She was nursing it as well, occasionally staring at it in bewilderment. Annie knew she had stolen drinks at parties before, but she was treating this one like it was made of tissue paper or gold. Or poison.

After a few more minutes of debating who to talk to and about what, Antigone walked over to Lacey. “Hey, Lacey.” She said, her tone a bit more sheepish than she intended. She swallowed a bit of pop to cover her nervousness.

“Oh, hey.” The blond girl said, as she drank her own beer.

Going great so far… Annie thought to herself. Say something else, dummy!

“So…” She said, all of her planned conversational topics leaving her mind as she bit her lower lip. She looked around quickly, and saw another group of people coming back in from the woods with their cell phones in hand, speaking in quiet excitement. “Why do people keep going in to the woods with their phones?”

Lacey looked over toward the woods, her eyes concerned for a moment before growing bored and affected again. “Oh, that. There’s a spot a little bit into the woods that doesn’t have any cell phone coverage, and its treated as a kind of local attraction.”

Antigone looked at the dark woods with a healthy dose of skepticism. “It’s the woods. I thought ‘not having cell coverage’ was kind of the point of the woods.”

Lacey paused for a moment to consider that. “Well…yeah, ok. But it isn’t like it fades out or comes in patches. When you get there it just stops.”

Suddenly Siobhan was by her side, curiosity shining in her eyes. “Where is it?” She asked, eagerly. Lacey blinked, as if surprised that someone would be that interested in it. “I like ghost stories and spooky shit.” Siobhan offered by way of explanation.

Lacey took this information in and considered it for a moment, as if she was deciding whether or not it made Siobhan de facto un-cool. “Its about a fifteen minute walk into the woods. Look for the stone circle.”

Before she could say anything else, Siobhan was dragging Annie by the hand toward the gate. “Come on.” She said quickly. “You can figure out something else to talk about while we’re walking. Besides, maybe we can catch some people boning.”

Antigone was waiting for her nails to dry when Siobhan padded in to her room. The house had an interesting floor plan, with two rooms in a hallway behind a door that made it seem like another wing. The rooms also shared an interior door, like two hotel rooms in a suite. They had unilaterally declared that to be their wing and set one of their Nerf weapons as a spring gun to protect their territory. Neither their father or Ryan had protested, although whether that was because of their desire to not have conjoined rooms or fear of their superior fire power remained to be seen.

Siobhan stepped out of her compulsively tidy room and gave a little hop over the pile of clothes closest to the door. She was dressed in black jeans and a black t-shirt with the words ‘Shadow Moses Athletics’ printed on it. Save for the fact that she hadn’t put on her boots yet Antigone figured she was ready to go.

“Should I ask if you’re wearing that for reals, or just skip to the eye-rolling and comedic sisterly disapproval?” Antigone asked. Siobhan just shrugged and flopped down on to Antigone’s bed, legs flapping in the air humorously.

“Why don’t we skip to the eye-rolling. Remind me again why you plan how to take over the world down to the bathroom breaks, but your room looks like a hoarder vomited panties in it?” Siobhan asked, kicking her legs idly.

“Safe space.” Antigone answered, standing up once she was clear her nails were dry. She made her way over to her closet and began pulling out items. “Besides, you own like…six total outfits and all of them are black.” She held up a sun-dress and looked in her full-length mirror. “Hmm.” She hmm’d pensively.

“Is it really safe if we’re in danger of finding you eaten by a pile of sentient clothes?” Siobhan asked flippantly, reaching down to check a nearby pile as if expecting to find a lost triplet. Antigone threw a sun-dress at her.

“Wait, damn, that’s the one I wanted.” Antigone said, reaching out to grab it. Siobhan pulled it away but the motion was half-assed, and after the briefest tussle Antigone was disappearing into their bathroom to change. “Why am I leaving my room to get dressed?”

“Manners.” Siobhan said primly, before she started playing basketball with a bundle of clothes and the laundry hamper that looked as if it might die of loneliness. “You know when you let yourself unclench your sphincter you’re alright, Annie.”

Antigone snorted as she stepped out, pulling on a pair of sandals. “What a ringing endorsement, Bonnie.” She said, throwing her sister’s boots at her. “Come on. We walking or getting a ride from Dad?”

“I’m serious.” Siobhan responded after she finished dodging the thump of the combat boots. “I’ll deny it in public because you’re a weirdo, but when you choose to stop obsessing you can be pretty cool. Which is lame.” She added solemnly as she laced her boots up. “I’ll overwhelm my natural desire to be chauffeured about so we don’t have to show up with Dad.”

Antigone paused on her hopping way to the door to look back at Siobhan. “I just want things to work, Bonnie. It wouldn’t kill you to try to plan once and a while either.”

Siobhan shrugged, and hopped up. “Come on, let’s go see if I get to punch anyone tonight.”

Walter killed the engine to his bike and swung himself off of it, rolling his neck around as he shoved his keys in to his pocket. The house he had found, with the help of the Marshal’s office on one of the many trips to and from Kansas City in the months before the move, was nice and neat. A small green space lead up to a porch ringed by little garden areas for Antigone and Ryan, who had their mother’s green thumb. He stepped up to the unlocked door and swung it open, scattering a pile of shoes and socks stacked by the door.

Walter chuckled a little bit, shaking his head. Since he couldn’t get them to move them to their rooms he decided to be grateful they didn’t track at least. He heard the sound of the television coming from the den, something animated that he would probably have little interest in, complimented by the sounds of Antigone and Ryan’s murmured voices. In the kitchen he found Siobhan seated at the island, her bare feet propped up on one of the other chairs. He gave them a significant glance and she stuck her tongue out at him while he retrieved a beer from the fridge, and another bottle of water.

“Top you up?” He asked, and at her nod refilled her glass. “Long day, Bug?” She gave a little bit of a smirk at the familiar nickname, before she shrugged. He’d known her shrugs for as long as she’d been breaking them out, and he figured this one was inviting. He leaned against the counter. “Wanna talk about it?”

Siobhan sighed a bit, idly checking her fingernail polish (black) as she thought about if she did. “Well, good news is we got invited to a party tonight. Benefit of school starting on a Thursday and Friday being a day off, I guess.” Walter nodded.

“And the bad news?” He asked.

“Well, some creeper harassed Annie.” She answered, and Walter blinked. And then sighed, and shook his head.

“Am I getting a call from the school?” He asked in a somewhat well-practiced tone of weary acceptance. Siobhan considered for a moment, before she gave a little smirk and shook her head. “Well good. I suppose you can go to the party then.” He said, drawing a pair of raised eyebrows from his daughter. “If you want to.”

She pondered. “I think Annie wants to. She really wants to be popular.” She looked up at her bangs. “I’ll see if I can darken up my hair a bit. It’d be a shame if I blew my image by being popular.”

Walter snorted, finally popping the cap off of his Newcastle Brown and taking a long draw from it. “Yeah, what a shame.” He looked over as Ryan entered the room. “Hey Ry, how was your day?”

He grunted, retrieving a diet soda from the fridge.

“Alright man, it’s time.” Walter told him, still leaning on the island. “Haven’t heard you talk all day, you know what to do.”

Ryan rolled his eyes, and gave a long suffering look to Siobhan, who returned an un-goth-like giggle of amusement. “I am still capable of human speech.” Ryan uttered with a deadpan seriousness as he exited the room.

“Thank you!” Walter called out, shaking his head. “Try not to punch anyone tonight at the party, huh Bug?” He asked. “It was an…odd day already.”

Siobhan smiled gently and stood, reaching out to squeeze her father’s hand, as she padded away to go start getting ready.

“I didn’t know Border had seen any of the Three Stripes killings.” Walter said. It was closer to four than three, and it had taken them that long to get back to the station house. They were once again in the Marshal’s office, all five of them now—Alexander, Andre, Leah, Morgan, and himself. With everyone a little shaky from the shooting, Alexander had surreptitiously pulled a bottle of bourbon out of his desk and poured into plastic water cups for everyone. He’d teased Andre about being old enough to drink even though he clearly was, with an old familiar and familial feel to the teasing. They’d sipped the whiskey—Bulleit 10 year—in silence for a few minutes until Walter had broken the silence with his statement.

Alexander sighed. “Not just any of them, the first of them. The most of them.” He said it plainly, like it was common fact, but Walter boggled.

“The first of them?” He asked the quiet room. Each of them looked somber and shaken but neither surprised not like they wanted to contradict. Each of their faces told a slightly different story. Andre was angry, like his home was under attack. Leah was sorrowful, etched with an unspoken burden of not being able to help put a stop to it and protect the people she was sworn to. Morgan looked…remote, almost affronted, as if it was an attack to her dignity. And the Marshal looked…weary. “If thats true why hadn’t I heard about it? Why hasn’t the FBI turned this place upside down?”

Alexander traded a glance with Leah, which was curious, before he shrugged. “We’re a small town, Walter. I know, I know,” he waved a hand at Walter’s raised eyebrow, “not as small as we like to think. We got a few agents but when bodies showed up in Seattle and D.C. they decided we were a fluke, and the real hotspots were elsewhere.” He snorted. “Some cities hate it when the Feds roll in to town. I’ve had to beg for every goddamn G-Man I’ve ever had come look at a case.”

Walter continued to look baffled for a few moments, before he shook his head. He didn’t know what to say, and Andre ventured into the pause. “You’ll understand once you’ve been here a while, Walter.” He said with a sigh. “Weird stuff happens in Border. We have more disappearances than any city in the west per capita, and we have more unsolved murders than Denver or Kansas City.”

“Per capita?” Walter asked, and Andre shook his head gravely.

“Total.” Andre answered simply, prompting Walter to just about fall out of his chair. The rest of the room very casually finished their whiskey and set the cups down.

“Welcome to the Border, Walter.” Alexander said, rising with a grim little smile. “Unsolved murder capital of the Midwest, home of the Three Stripes killers, and weird shit capital of the U.S.A.” He said, pouring himself another drink. “Go home; its a lot to think about. I’ll see you tomorrow; and good work today.”

CHAPTER 3: THREADS

Walter hit the ground with Doctor Winters underneath him just as the shot flew where her head would have been. Each of the others—Alexander, Andre, and Leah—had gone to the body and come back to stand next to the doctor. So they had all been facing away from the darkest corners of the room. Not standard procedure, but a killer that somehow leaves a boatload of cicadas behind throws everyone off. But they had all been facing him.

And so they hadn’t seen the man up in the rafters with a rifle. Walter had barely seen it except for the faintest glint of light off of a scope, and his body had moved without thinking. His fellow policemen had been drawing down on him first out of instinct, but almost as one turned their heads and raised their pistols to fire at the rafters.

Walter stayed on top of the doctor, raising his pistol up to try to track the gunman. He expected to see a corpse falling to the floor, but instead he saw the shooter…jumping. From rafter to rafter he flung himself with the grace of a dancer. His feet always found an even landing even after a leap that, when Walter’s hind-brain was forced to consider it, had been impossibly long. With wood chips exploding all around him and a few shots that Walter swore must have hit him he continued his leaping waltz to the back window, and threw himself at it. Walter raised his pistol and fired off one shot, finally at a good angle, and was sure that his bullet should have hit home. But he saw the man turn and look back before he disappeared out of the window and in to the alley behind.

Andre and Leah ran toward the back door and Andre threw his shoulder into it, sending it exploding outward in a shower of splinters and rotted wood. But when they paused there, guns out, there was apparently no sight of him. They checked out and around the building before reporting back over the radio that the shooter had, apparently, disappeared.

Walter slowly brought himself up and held out a hand to the doctor, who accepted it with a grateful and appraising nod. “I apparently owe you my life, Mr. Richards.” She looked a bit uncomfortable at that, remote and withdrawn for a moment before she nodded. “I won’t forget it.”

Still a bit shaky with the excitement, Walter gave a half-grin. “I never get to say this. Just doing my job, ma’am.” He offered, drawing a genuine laugh and a warm smile from the woman. They both turned to look at Alexander, who shook his head. “I’ve never heard of someone coming back to a Three Stripes scene like this?” Walter made it a question.

Alexander shook his head. “Congratulations, Deputy Richards. Two years into these killings with nothing new at any of them. You show up at one, and we get something.”

Inside the warehouse was cooler than the warm and sticky outside, although it was still a thing of relativity. In a few minutes the cool was going to be worse than outside simply because the air was still, where the hot at least had a breeze.

And with the corpse lying there, the stillness was a favor to no one. It was a man, an older looking dignified man with salt and pepper hair and a look of exquisite agony on his face. He was lying on his back, and his face was the only relatively untouched thing about him. Blood flecked his lips and his eyes stared sightlessly up at the ceiling, high and away and shrouded in shadows.

Below the chin the horror began. A slashed throat and a long carve down the center of his naked frame, the skin flushed red and burned black and yet all still together. Behind him on one of the broad brick walls was the calling card of the Three Stripe killings, two equally sized stripes on either side of a longer one in the center: I|I.

Kneeling next to the corpse was a slender woman whose raven black hair was neatly braided and swung down to the middle of her back. She had pale skin, and when she stood she was taller than Walter expected. She had a mask over her face, blue gloves on her hands, and a white lab coat. She walked over to the three of them, nodding familiarly to Andre and Leah.

“Marshal on his way?” She asked, her voice lower than Walter expected but warm and professional.

“Here now.” Came Alexander’s voice as he stepped in from the outside, and looked across the warehouse and its grim tableau. “Damn.” He said simply, sighing. “Well, there goes our hope it was a copy-cat or coincidence.” He said, with a faint tilt up at the end indicating the tiny little hope he might be wrong.

But the woman shook her head. “Its the same. Everything the same, down to the little details. The cicadas, the simultaneous cutting and burning with the wounds. And the symbol, of course.” The woman said with a sigh, gesturing to the wall.

“Any more evidence at this scene than the last ones?” Leah asked while everyone considered for a moment. The other woman, who was obviously a medical examiner of some sort, shook her head.

“None. No fingerprints or footprints, no signs of a struggle or defensive wounds.” The woman sighed. The others went to look at the body one by one, then stepped back to stand next to the medical examiner. “This your new deputy?” She asked.

Walter held out his hand. “Walter Richards, pleasure to meet you.”

She gave a wry smile. “Doctor Morgan Winters, coroner. This your first look at a Three Stripes?”

He nodded. “They had one in Kansas City while I was there, but I was new. I didn’t even get to secure the scene. I got to secure the scene of the people securing the scene. Didn’t even know about the cicadas.”

Morgan nodded. She opened her mouth to say something, but Walter was already moving. With fluid speed and practiced ease he had his gun in his hand and was leaping forward to tackle her to the ground. He opened his mouth and shouted, as the gunfire began.

END OF CHAPTER 2: BEGINNINGS

Thousands of strands of emerald ivy crawled up the fronts of crimson bricked buildings, all rolling by the tinted window of the Ford Crown Victoria. It gave the world a muted look, like a documentary about crumbling facades. The heat and humidity of late summer beaded the plants with what looked to be water and sorrow, giving them a somehow lifeless vibrancy. It stood out against the mottled crimson and rust of the old brick as a memorial to older days, a memory of cool shade and times gone by.

Walter knew they were driving through one of the oldest sections of town. Across the river, more of a jumped up rivulet, was the surprisingly large Old Market. The large buildings there were well maintained, complimenting the strange architecture of the Border PD. Here they were abandoned, the insides dark for years, their only shoppers rats and a few stray dogs.

The call had come in while he and the Marshal had been reminiscing. Well…bullshitting, really, but if the boss wanted to chew the fat Walter wasn’t going to call him on it. Now he was in a car with two officers. The driver was tall, with strong features that looked like a younger version of Marshal Alexander. His name was Andre, the elder Alexander’s nephew, and he spoke with a softly courteous voice and moved like he was made of ass-kickings. The other passenger, politely in the back, was a slender woman whose short hair was as dark as her eyes. Her name was Leah Silverman.

They were both apparently his partner, since the Border PD didn’t seem to know what the word partner meant. Every deputy marshal worked in a team of three, and normally only two were in the field at any one time. The third played floater from the office.

Normally. Today was different, and each of them knew it. The silence in the car was almost palpable; someone could have picked it up and shattered the window of the Crown Vic with it. It would have relieved the tension.

They pulled up to yet another dilapidated warehouse and exited to the roaring sound of cicadas. Walter winced, looking around as if they were going to jump him from behind. It drew a small smile from the other two, but the smiles were tense at the edges. A grim joke, then.

“Always seem to be cicadas when it happens.” Leah said quietly, as if out of respect as they walked toward the open warehouse.

“I’d forgotten how much I hated the sound.” Andre said with a quiet sigh. “Hoped we wouldn’t hear it again.”

The cicadas heralded death as they walked into the latest scene of the Three Stripe Killer.

Siobhan watched the group of girls warily as they approached. While they had all sorts of looks there was a general peppiness about them that made her nervous. She wondered, briefly, if they were like Tyrannosauruses; if she stayed still would they not see her until the bell rang?

She was prepared for a lot of things. She was prepared for them to yell something ranging from the inane to the hurtful. She was prepared for them to scoff, tease, bully, or make fun. And she was prepared, if they were going to go after Annie, to introduce them to the meaning of fear.

She was not prepared for a perky blond about her own height to walk over and quietly hug her. She froze, her arms out and down and stiff as a corpse’s. After an awkward few moments she reached around the older blond to pat her back, while shooting her sister a confused look.

“Gary has needed punching for years.” The blond said simply. Since Siobhan had only punched one person (that the cheerleader knew about, at least), that meant that letter jacket was Gary. “Why did you do it? Most people just…you know, let him.”

Siobhan paused for a moment, reaching down to adjust her clothes more to stall for time then that she cared about them. “We get to choose who we’re gonna be, and what we’re gonna let happen in the world. I don’t chose to let assholes do that kind of thing.” She said, with a shrug. The attention from all of them made her self-conscious, and she kind of wanted to just go hide.

The blond nodded, looking to another young woman in a cheer outfit; her fellow cheerleader was African-American with breathtakingly good looks, and she nodded.

“I’m Lacey, that’s Monica. We’re having a party tonight, you should come.” Lacey, the blond, said as she pulled an honest to goodness business card out of her purse with an address and a phone number on it.

“This isn’t like a Carrie moment, is it?” Siobhan asked warily, eying the card. “Cause I don’t own anything that goes with pig’s blood.”

Monica snorted, and Lacey let out a genuine little laugh. “We’ve got better things to do with pigs out here than bleed them.” That drew some laughter, and Lacey blushed when she realized how that could be taken. “Bring your sister. I’m not saying you’re cool, but decking that dick definitely earned you an invite.” And with that the whole clique turned and flounced away.

“Huh.” Siobhan said, as Antigone continued to just stare. “Dad was wrong, I should have just been punching people the whole time.”