End Times

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DAPHNE’S mother clutched her husband’s hand, which was blue and waxy under the hospital lights. Tears ran down her cheeks, carving sooty mascara canals in skin as dingy and haggard as the cracked linoleum and seasick-green walls in the intensive care unit.

“Are you proud of yourself?” Her hair stood out in frizzy, white-streaked lightning rods from her head, as if electrified by the dark mania in her eyes. “You killed him.”

Daphne didn’t answer. She just stared at the slack line on the life-support machine, listened to the empty space that had been filled with her stepfather’s raspy, uneven breathing just moments before.

It was over. He was gone. There would be no more sleepless nights spent smothered by the close, dark air of her tiny room in their dingy Detroit apartment, bracing herself with every footstep behind the door. He would never come to her bed again, demanding something she wasn’t willing to give. She was safe—and no matter what her mother said, the world was a better place without guys like Jim in it.

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