Family Dysfunction

James hated it when his entire family got together for dinner. With the exception of Annabelle, they drove him nuts when he was around just any one of them. Being stuck in a room with Joseph, Caroline and Jacob all at the same time made him want to fucking kill every one of them and then toss their bodies to his pit bull Sammy. But he didn't do that because he didn't know if human flesh would make Sammy sick. He didn't want that to happen, so he tried to grit his teeth and just eat as fast as he possibly could.

Annabelle was sitting next to him, and she looked like she would rather be anywhere else in the world. He really didn't blame her. Dinner was going even worse than he had expected. Joseph had come home completely trashed last night and had thrown up all over the place, which had set Caroline into a complete tizzy. And to make matters worse, she would not let the damn subject go, so they were all being subjected to her whiny, nasally voice.

"Can you just shut the fuck up for two fucking seconds?" Joseph finally snapped. His beady eyes that were sunken into his pudgy face were glaring daggers at his wife. "So I threw up all over the place. Big fucking deal! I am the man of this house and I can damn well do what I please."

Caroline glared right back at him. "You think you're a man? When a man gets wider than he is tall, he is no longer a man. He is officially a beached whale." Then she glanced over at Jacob. "Yeah, keep stuffing your face with more food," she snapped sarcastically. "You just need to get SO much bigger."

Annabelle leaned over towards James. "Come on, let's get out of here," she whispered. "I don't want to be here anymore."

James shook his head. "No way. I haven't eaten a damn thing all day. I'm not letting myself starve just because these people are assholes."

"What the fuck did you say over there?" Caroline snapped. Her full attention was on the two of them now.

"I said you all are assholes," he replied. "Now someone please pass the salt."

Joseph grunted. "At least being an asshole is being better than fucking insane."

James glared at his father. "Don't start going there with me Joseph. You don't know just how insane I can be."

"James don't," Annabelle pleaded. She didn't like it when he went crazy. He scared her when he was like that.

Joseph leered at Annabelle. "Yeah, you tell him you little whore. You keep this little fucker on a leash, or I'm going to--"

Nobody got to hear what he was going to do. In fact, nobody got to hear much of anything from him besides a gargled scream. Once James heard Annabelle being called a whore, that was it for him. It pushed him over the edge he had been trying to balance on all day. With one fluid motion, he grabbed the knife he had been eating with, turned the table over completely and stabbed his father directly in the heart.

"James!" Annabelle screamed. She tried to pull him back, but didn't succeed until he stabbed Joseph two more times. Jacob just stared at the scene before him, his eyes wide as dinner plates and his mouth completely agape. Caroline on the other hand, didn't seem fazed at all by what her youngest son had just done. In fact, it looked like she had been expecting something like that to happen.

James kept trying to go after Joseph, even after he died right there on the kitchen chair. "Fucking bastard!" he hissed. His vision was actually red and hazy because of his rage. "Fucking pig! She's not a whore! She's mine!"

Despite being a lot smaller than he was, Annabelle somehow managed to pull him upstairs to her room. It probably helped that he let her do it. He very rarely ever pushed her away. She was his Annabelle, and he didn't want to hurt her. That was why he claimed her first before Joseph or Jacob could. She was his, plain and simple. And not only was she his, but he was hers. Even though she hated it sometimes because she had morals and he didn't, it didn't change the pure and simple fact that there was a connection between them. It was deeper than blood and beyond anything any two siblings should share, but it was still there.

"What the hell was that?" Annabelle demanded to know. "Have you gone completely insane? You just…you…"

"Killed Dad," he finished for her when she didn't get the words out fast enough. "I'm very well aware of that."

"But you…you're going to get--"

He cut her off with a kiss. He knew he was taking a risk because things were going to go to hell if Caroline walked in on them right then and there. He was going to have to find a way to cover up the fact Joseph was dead, and having both parents disappear at the same time would be a little too suspicious. "It's going to be okay," he assured her. "Nothing's going to happen to me."

She shook her head. "We can't keep going on like this James. You with your killing, me with the not telling…us being together…it's not right."

He smirked. Right…wrong…these were just words. They were words that meant nothing to him. For him, the only things that meant anything to him were murder, chaos, insanity, sex, Mark and her of course. She was the thing that drove him more than anything else. Their love and their hate would keep burning and consuming them until there was nothing left.

And he would enjoy every second of it.