A canon-adjacent Harborview Immortals flash fiction about a newly-turned Steven getting revenge for all the years of his father’s mistreatment. (TW: implied sexual abuse, outright violence)

Copyright 2015 by Emma Peterson/CLI

Cover image by Ethan Rougon on Unsplash

1978

Stop struggling, Stevie. You’re only going to make it worse.

Steven had long lost count of the number of times he had heard those words over the past ten years, whispered drunkenly behind the closed door of his bedroom and followed by atrocities that no human being should ever know. Although he was no longer a human being himself, the damage done as a result of his father’s abuse endured, seared into his mind and etched onto his soul for all eternity. While the fear those words inspired was purged in the transition from living to dead, the rage was still there, seizing his heart in an unrelenting grip, firmly rooted for the rest of time.

It wasn’t always that way. He recalled the years before his life went to shit at the tender age of eight, good years filled with laughter and joy, all on account of his mother. He remembered the occasions when he would eagerly help her hang the laundry on a sunny southern day, gladly assist with the cleaning and the cooking, and intently watch as she turned thread and random scraps of fabric into something amazing, blissfully unaware of what his father had meant when he told her that she was “turning the boy queer.” It didn’t matter that the other kids in the neighborhood called him a freak because his eyes were two different colors. It didn’t matter that his only friend in the world was a stray cat that traded affection for scraps. Steven was happy once upon a time, before cancer came along and robbed him of it by killing his mother and causing his father to replace her in the most unacceptable of ways. In the years that followed, the very idea of happiness seemed alien to him. Revolting, even. Anger was a far better fit. Especially now, considering what he had become.

“I owe you my gratitude, in a twisted sort of way,” he murmured while turning a knife over in his hand, his fingers moving along the length of the sharp blade that appeared to glow under the light of the moon. It was the same knife that his father had used to gut his kills, all the poor deer and rabbits and other wildlife that made the mistake of crossing his path while he was on the hunt. Steven had always been disgusted by the thick and nauseating stench of the entrails that spilled from their bodies when the man sliced them open, but there had also been an underlying fascination with the act, and deep in the recesses of his mind, in that dark and far away place that had remained locked down until his mother’s death, he had occasionally wondered what a person would look like dangling from that ominous backyard hook.

Now he knew.

“If you had never taken advantage of me, I would have never found it as easy as I did to let a perverted old vampire have his way with me,” the teenager continued, raising his head to glare at his father. “It was worth it, though. Because in return, he gave me this.”

He bared his fangs and laughed gleefully at the shirtless and bound man who wriggled about in an effort to free himself in spite of the pain he surely must have felt. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to bite you. I have no intention of putting my mouth anywhere on your body ever again.”

Steven closed in on him. The smell of fear and panic was overwhelming. The man’s heart was racing; Steven could hear it clearly over the muffled sound of moaning and grunting. As much as he wanted to savor the experience, he decided that it was time to wrap things up. It just wouldn’t do to let the bastard off the hook—pun intended—by allowing him to die of a heart attack.

“I killed that perverted old vampire. I had to fuck him to do it, but at least I was nice enough to wait until he was finished with me. He didn’t even see it coming. You, on the other hand…”

The tip of the knife slid across his father’s stomach, causing the skin beneath it to quiver.

“I want you to see it. I want you to feel it.”

The man screamed around the handkerchief that was shoved in his mouth. He thrashed wildly, the hook in his back sinking deeper into his punctured lung with each passing second. The vampire grabbed him by the waistband of his pants with one hand while the other tightened around the handle of the knife, ready to strike.

“Stop struggling, Daddy. You’re only going to make it worse.”

With brown and blue eyes that were filled with absolute madness, Steven looked at his father and smiled.

He was still smiling moments later as blood flowed and viscera spilled onto his feet.