When Monsters Pass

The phone buzzes, jarring, but quiet enough to have two missed calls when she answers it.

"Hello?" Sleep clings to her voice like steam to glass.

"What time is it there?"

"Late." She does not bother with checking. Moonlight filters in through her open window along with the sounds of the street.

"Oh... I can call you later."

Her sister sounds eager to talk about something like it is not just the usual chatter between moments of her day. She sits up in bed and pushes her bangs from her forehead.

"No, no, I'm awake now. What is it?"

The fan hums in the corner. Her lab stirs but settles back to sleep on his side of the bed. There is a long pause before her sister pushes out the words.

"They found a tumor in dad's brain."

"And?" she asks, voice dry like summer grass.

"Well, it's cancerous. He declined chemo or removal." Her sister sounds like she has not yet discovered how she feels about. Like she is hoping to find it on the call.

"Well yeah, he's old as fuck." A tart laugh manages to escape.

"Yeah... That's probably why. Mom said he refused to talk about it."

"Shocker," she adds coldly.

Bruno raises his head and thumps his tail, once, twice, thrice. She rubs his ear. Under the thrum of the fan, she hears drunken song from the bar across the street. The world is alive, breathing, and moving on.

"He probably won't live long with it. Honestly, chemo would be rough for someone his age, and without more scans, which he refused, they don't know that it's operable anyway." There is a calmness to her sister now, a simple acceptance.

"About time, that evil bastard lived too long." She is aware as she says it, the words might be hurtful to her sister. But she knows a part of them both is thinking it. After everything he did to them, to their mother. It's beyond her why her mother stayed.

"He outlived the sheep," her sister jokes. Their father had used to say that a lot back before the flock all died of old age, that the sheep would outlive him.

"His dog too," she offers.

"That's cause he shot his dog. The asshole."

Bruno does not know it, but he was almost shot as well. He sets his gray head her in lap and closes his eyes again. Almost. She got him out in time.

"How are you feeling Rach?" she finally asks. She supposes they both have emotions to unpack. That's why Rachel called.

"I don't know. It is what it is, ya know?"

"He hasn't spoken to me in ten years, longer for you," she reminds her.

"I know that. Guess we weren't missing out on much."

"He was never nice to us, not really, not for long. There was not a world where we were going to be able to keep contact with him. You know that."

They both knew it, so very well. He was a monster and monsters only kept company with prey. They had stopped being that long ago. And once they slipped free from his control, he had banished them.

When she had went to collect Bruno, he was there, yelling and threatening. She had looked him square in the eyes and dared him to call the cops. Then, she had taken her dog and left. College had been rough with a dog, but she was glad she had managed to finally save one pet. The others were buried out in the woods, most victims of his temper.

Rachel had suffered the most of his cruelness. Yet, somehow, she managed to hate him less.

"It feels wrong to be glad," Rachel whispers.

"No, it makes sense to be glad, it's more that it's relief," she soothes, but her fingers go white from clutching the phone.

"Cancer is a horrible way to die." Despite the words, she sounds impassive.

"He's in his eighties; there are worse ways. Seems fitting, honestly with how paranoid he was about us getting skin cancer as kids."

There is a simple irony to it all that makes her laugh. The monster is eaten alive from the inside by his own flesh. The only person left in his life to torment was their mother. And, despite her youth compared to his age, he torments her well. Her sister waits patiently for her laughing fit to subside.

"I was never really close to him. I hope you take time to process it," Rachel says in a tone that only older siblings manage.

"Yeah, well he died to me long ago. I offered him peace and he spat on it." The memory returns to her sharp as a knife. It stings. "I hate him." And she means it.

"Well, once he goes we're going to have to help mom sort through everything, the house, their finances."

"I know. I'll fly back to help, but I won't attend any funeral."

"Who's going to throw him a funeral? We aren't," she snorts as she says it. "All his friends are dead, all his family besides us. Mom doesn't want to do a funeral. She said cremate him and dump it somewhere."

"Let her dump it somewhere, I ain't touching that man's ashes. That's how you get haunted." That makes them both laugh.

Silence stretches between them, heavy with the emotions they are not yet expressing. Relief, that's what she feels. Like a nightmare that has long plagued her will soon fade out completely. Then she can return home and visit her mother at the place of her childhood. She's not sure if she's ready to yet. Ten years changes a lot. She wonders if she will recognize it.

"Well," her sister finally says. "You should go back to sleep. I need to make dinner for the kids anyway."

"Yeah... Tell them I said hi, give them my love."

"I will."

The phone call ends. Bruno lifts his head again and issues an impatient yawn.

"I know, I know," she soothes and they hunker down to return to sleep.