Free-write. Sort of.

There was a certain color to his words when he got angry. It felt like the normal blues and grays fell away, replaced by crimson. He produced more mucus so his words almost gurgled, as if his blood was literally boiling.

That's how it sounded when he told his son he'd had enough. And the boy never forgot how enough felt.

Growing up with a dad like that was hard. Stephen knew too well the back of his father's hand and the pain that came along with doing something wrong or doing nothing at all. So nobody blamed him for what happened.

Out behind their house there was a great stretch of land, nearly a hundred acres. A small dirt trail weaved its way through the fields to a barn right smack in the middle of it all. That's where the father and son team spent every day from sunup to quitting time. There wasn't much to it really. In the barn they kept a few tools and the rusty old Ford tractor, nearly dead but never quite there. Stephen ran the tractor and Dad ran Stephen. At the end of the day it always seemed like they had finished every chore or little bit of work imaginable. But every morning Dad would find something else that needed to be done. This left Stephen with plenty of reasons to daydream and it left his father with excuse enough to take out his anger on him.

Stephen did his work quietly to avoid trouble, but one job always made him utter curse words under his breath. He hated feeding the chickens. There was just something about it that he loathed.

After the trial, lots of folks conjectured that he had been planning to kill his father for years. Whether it took a year or ten seconds to conceive of the actual method, Stephen had certainly let the idea ruminate.

Okay and that is where my energy runs out. I'm too tired to finish this story. Maybe I will and maybe I won't. I just really needed to get something out there like I used to. I love to write and the more I practice, the better I will become. If you hate it, spare me the pain. It's my first piece in a long time and I did no revision. If you want to read more, let me know so I can be inspired enough to finish it.