Allrighty! Final chapter! (not including the epilogue of course) Let's see if I can't make it my best one yet.

The very last of twilight ebbed away from the horizon, leaving the sky an endless, black abyss broken only by the faint glimmer of the stars. Not that any of the Rippner family could see the night sky. All the doors were closed and the blinds shut. When Greg Rippner called up the stairs for the two boys, Jackson knew that he had found out. There was no denying that sick, twisted pleasure he could hear in his father's voice. He was considering not responding, but what would that accomplish? He got off of his bed, and Richard did likewise. He was halfway through his doorway when he heard something he would never have expected; he paused to listen. It was his mother's muffled voice.

"What was the phone call about, Greg?"

There was a pause as their father apparently debated whether or not to tell her, "Well, all I can say right now is that our boys are in serious trouble." At this he raised his voice, "You two better get down here now!"

"Oh honey, can't we just have a quiet evening?" she pleaded, "Please?"

"Sandra, they killed a guy. Now, why don't you go back to the living room and have another drink. Maybe once I'm done, I'll even join you. We'll have a drink together."

There was no noise for a few seconds, then he heard the soft patter as his mother left Greg alone at the bottom of the stairs. Jackson was surprised. She never stood up for them, and though tonight was a pitiful attempt, it was more than normal by far. Was she sober?

"Jackson! Richard! Get down here now!"

Okay, dad. Don't burst a blood vessel. We're coming. Jackson continued out the door and most of the way down the stairs and stopped. Richard followed him and stopped a few steps above him. They both looked down at their father, who seemed to be inspecting them like a drill sergeant, his hands firmly clasped behind his back.

"Where'd you get the shiner, Jackson?" he asked, almost casually, tapping beside his own eye for added clarification. "And Richard. Where are your glasses? Those cost a lot of money, you know."

They only watched him, waiting for him to get around to the reason he called them down.

"Were you two fighting earlier today?" he waited… not long, "Answer me!"

The last was so loud and abrupt that it startled Richard into a nod.

"I see…" he acted pensive, "Did you win?"

They looked at each other then back at their father. Jackson's eyes were dull and emotionless as he answered.

"You already know the answer to that."

"Why, so I do…" he said, "You know what else I know?" he didn't wait for an answer, "I know that in the course of the fight one or both of you killed a guy. What I want to know is which one of you did it." He was looking right at Jackson. Piercing blue into piercing blue.

"I did. Richard didn't do anything, dad." Jackson spat the last word out with disgust. "It was all me."

"Now, why doesn't that surprise me?" Greg raised his head and looked down his nose at Jackson in a look of silent triumph. "You know what we do to murderers in this house, Jackson?"

"I can imagine."

"You're right you can imagine. Now come here."

"I'm not a child anymore. I'm seventeen."

"Come here."

Jackson knew it was coming, but he didn't want it to come. He wasn't ready yet. He was supposed to instigate it, not his father. This wasn't how it had happened in his fantasies of exacting revenge on his father at all. Adrenaline started to pump into his blood, and his hands started shaking… but not from fear, never from fear. He slowly started to descend the stairs. His eyes became amazingly alert. They spotted even the slightest movement. He felt like he could anticipate anything. His father was probably going to throw him onto the couch again, take off his belt and begin beating him with it, exactly as he had seven years ago. But would he stop this time? Or perhaps his father would just grab him by the neck and throttle him right there. The possibilities were endless. His muscles tensed.

But when he got close enough, his father did something that took him completely off guard. Partially because close enough was not as close as Jackson thought it would be.

Jackson was still three stairs up and four or five feet away from his father when his father suddenly whipped his right arm around from behind his back. It was a blur and Jackson only had time to register that his father's arm seemed much longer than it should have been before pain exploded from the lower left portion of his ribcage. He cried out breathlessly as the force of the blow knocked him against the wall. He lost his balance and tumbled the short distance to the bottom of the stairs, groaning when he reached the bottom on his back at his father's feet. Richard screamed.

"No, Dad!"

Greg didn't even spare his younger son a glance, his eyes were fixed down at his older, who had his arms wrapped around his wounded side. Jackson looked up with pure hatred. This was not how it was supposed to be. His father raised the ski-pole clutched firmly in his right hand up until it rested on his shoulder a despicable grin on his face.

"I know you've had it out for me, son. Ever since the ski-slope incident. I saw it in your eyes. And now that I know you're capable of actually taking a life, I figure that you're too dangerous to stay in this house." He swung the pole down hard and hit him in the stomach. Jackson cried out again, and curled up on the floor, gasping loudly. It was getting increasingly hard to breathe without pain. Greg brought the pole up again.

"Stop it, Dad! Stop it!" Richard screamed.

Greg's alarming blue eyes looked up at Richard, and Richard recoiled. Those were not the eyes of a rational man. They were the eyes of insanity. Greg smiled lopsidedly at Richard and brought the pole down again on Jackson. Tears started leaking out of Richard's eyes, as he ran down the stairs, stayed as far away from his father as he could and ran for the kitchen.

Reality for Jackson seemed a bit surreal. His vision was clouding. His torso roared with an amount of pain he didn't know if he could bare much longer, and it looked like his father was about to hit him again. This time he raised his hands and managed to catch the ski-pole before it could strike him. Greg was caught off of his guard and his grip momentarily loosened. Jackson took full advantage of that moment and yanked it out of his father's grip, and swiping his father's feet out from under him with it. His father came down hard. The ski-pole flew out of his loose grasp and he lost track of it and focused mainly on getting to his feet again. When he finally managed, his father also had regained his footing, the two instantly went at each other's throats, each wanting to see each other dead as much as the other.

They got each other's throats, but in the end brute strength won out. Greg had a better grip on Jackson's thin neck and slammed him against the wall to help dislodge his son's long slender hands from his own throat. It worked. The world began to fade in and out of focus as Jackson felt his windpipe pinched shut. He tried to gasp, but only got an unsatisfying choke sound. He started clawing at his father's hand to try to get it to loosen and when that didn't work, he lashed out weakly with his hands, trying to hit something, anything. It was getting very hard to see, he could feel the blood rushing to his head and even sound was starting to fade. He could feel himself weakening and returned his hands to his father's hand to try to dislodge it. Consciousness was very thin.

His father watched with great satisfaction as his son's eyes turned bloodshot, as he tried to squirm out of his grip but failed to do so, as he tried to breathe but could only croak and choke, as his face turned red, and his face relaxed into loss of consciousness. But then he heard a screaming behind him. He turned around and saw his younger son running up to him with something in his hand. When Richard collided with him, he felt an amazingly terrible pain arise from his leg. He screamed and lost his grip on Jackson, who fell into a fit of coughing and gagging, with both hands up to his throat, taking in ragged, painful breaths. He looked down to see his younger son who came just above his elbow in height pulling a long knife from his leg and preparing to stab him with it again. All the while, Richard was screaming something that may have had something to do with killing Jackson, he couldn't understand him. He just knew that he had to take care of Richard, and fast before Jackson could regain his senses.

He had run into the kitchen and searched for the knife rack. He had found it shoved back in a corner and pulled out the longest one. On his way back, he had seen his mother curled up on the couch crying. He would have stopped to comfort her, but when he looked back down the hallway he saw that his dad with Jackson's throat firmly squeezed in his hand, and as much as he didn't want to fight, he knew that his father wouldn't let go until Jackson was dead. He had run down the hallway and buried the knife in the first non-lethal place he could get to, and here he was. His father grasped his reddish-brown hair and flung him back against the wall. Jackson looked up from his spot on the floor and watched in horror, thoroughly unable to do anything at the moment, as his father grabbed his little brother's arm and wrenched it until he dropped the knife. His father bent down and scooped up the knife and held it in front of Richard for a moment. Jackson started trying to struggle to his feet, but made it only to his knees. No! he wanted to shout Don't! Please! But his raw throat would allow nothing more than a pathetic wheeze. Greg stabbed the twelve-year-old boy twice.

Jackson's eyes went wide in shock. Richard screamed, fell back against the wall and slid down to the ground. No… he thought this can't be happening. It's a nightmare, all this is a nightmare. But the pain in his throat and ribs and his brother's blood spattered on the wall told him otherwise. Greg bent over the boy and pulled out the knife, receiving a quiet grunt from the boy. You made a promise, Jackson. Repay everything. You'll have lied if you let dad turn around and stab you next. He threw his shock, surprise, and sorrow aside and allowed all the rage he'd pent up over the past seven years to flow through him.

He got the rest of the way to his feet as his father started to turn around. His eyes were blazing as he went up behind his father, grabbed the hand with the knife and wrenched it around until his father's arm was on the verge of breaking and his father let go, he swiped up the knife and tucked it into his belt. Not time for that yet. He rammed his father's face against the wall, and his father rebounded back in a daze. Jackson shoved him down the hall into the kitchen and, finding the ski-pole his father had used to beat him, carried it with him down the hallway. His father was on his feet and looking confused. His eyes faltered even more when they met Jackson's. Greg knew then and there that stabbing Richard was the biggest mistake of his life. Not many people will ever see the unbridled rage in Jackson Rippner's eyes, but the few who do, don't normally live much longer afterward. Greg Rippner saw it in the moment his older son swung back the ski-pole like a bat and used it to break his left knee.

The pain was immense, but nothing was worse than seeing the complete hatred in his son's terrible blue eyes. Jackson brought the pole around the other way and swung it down to shatter Greg's right knee. Greg screamed, and though in all of Jackson's fantasies, he had been smiling when his father screamed out in agony, no smile found its home on Jackson's face. No genuine smile would ever find its way to his face again. Instead tears streamed down his face as he wept silently for his brother and beat his father twice for every blow he'd ever landed on Richard. Finally, he pulled out the knife, crouched over his battered, bleeding, crippled father, and held the knife in front of his father's dazed blue eyes.

"This is what happens," Jackson said in a tear-clogged voice that obviously took a lot of strength to control, "to people who take my little brother away from me."

He flipped the knife so the blade pointed downward and stabbed his father four times with it. Crying out with each blow. His father gurgled and blood streamed out of his mouth. Jackson made his way to his dying brother in the hall. Richard opened his blue-grey eyes and hovered them on Jackson's face before closing them again.

"He's dead, Richard." Jackson said, cradling his brother's head and crying, "I kept my promise to you, and paid him back."

Richard opened his eyes again, gave Jackson a weak smile and strained to say, "then you need to run away, Jackson. Run, and don't come back to this house ever. Go now…"

Jackson understood why he should run, but he didn't want to leave his brother.

"Go!" Richard managed.

Jackson let go of his brother, got up and headed for the kitchen. He picked up the phone and quickly called an ambulance with the slim hopes that maybe his brother might be saved. He hung up and felt a new sense of urgency sweep over him. Before he left, he opened an end-table drawer in the living room, only briefly noticing that his mother was still there crying, and pulled out a small revolver they kept for emergencies. His father gurgled again, and when Jackson glanced at him, he was startled to see his father looking directly at him. His gaze faltered and he ran out the back door, off the back porch and into the woods. He ran for a minute or two before stopping, falling to his knees and crying loudly. He was starting to get himself under control when he heard someone call his name from back in the direction of the house. He stood up straight, gripped the pistol, flicked off the safety, and looked back in that direction.

"Jaaaaaaaacksoooooon." He started to breathe more heavily. Surely his father can't have still been alive after four stab-wounds. He heard footsteps crunching in the thick layer of leaves, coming toward him. He cocked back the hammer and raised the gun to his shoulder.

A figure broke through the trees and stopped. His eyes went wide when he saw his father, staring at him, grinning. Blood was flowing out of his mouth and onto his shirt, from which the knife still protruded. His legs were horrible tangled things, but he was running on them anyway. Jackson was terrified. This can't have been real. He aimed the gun at the monstrosity.

"Stay back!" he cried out.

"Jackson, wait," the thing said in a gurgly voice and advanced slowly, "Please put the gun down."

"No! Stay back!"

"Jackson?" he didn't stop.

Jackson pulled the trigger and the revolver discharged with a deafening bang. Jackson's aim was good, but his mouth dropped open in shock and self-revulsion when he saw who he had really shot.

Sandra Rippner held her hands to the red mark, blooming between her breasts. She looked at him with sadness and confusion, and fell to the terrain on her face, dead.

Jackson threw the gun on the ground and looked at his own hands for a moment. He took a step towards his mother's corpse, then doubled over and vomited. After that, he straightened up and ran until he could run no more, never looking back. When he reached a clearing he looked up at the starry sky and screamed with anguish.

What had he become?

There, how'd you like it? I know… the last chapter was fairly long, but hopefully it lived up to your expectations. Please review! (and remember there is an epilogue)