The Children of Old Leech Excerpt: “Learn to Kill” by Michael Cisco

Today’s excerpt from The Children of Old Leech comes from Michael Cisco‘s patricidal tale, “Learn to Kill.”

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Nodded off! How long was that? Everything looks the same. My boots, bony knees, knuckly hands. My chair. The window. Bare boards.

Lessons from Dad. When I was about eight or nine, I decided, I forget why, to provoke my father. I was very contrary and then, I remember standing stock still shouting

“FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!”

at him. He smiled at me, queerly. Then he went and shut himself up in his room. That was his sanctum. He padlocked it when he wasn’t in it. I wracked my brains for a way to get in, and I never did. With all my ingenuity, my genius for trouble, my intuitive sense of escape routes and infiltrations, when there was no hillside full of dense foliage I couldn’t wriggle inside somehow, to think, I never managed it. I never saw the inside of it, even after I killed him.

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