The Tithe

A Flash Fiction February Day 7 Offering to Lord Devereux.

Brian’s father was supposed to be recovering from a bad fever. That’s what the nurse said when she called. But when he stepped into the hospital room, he understood the lie for what it was: something had already claimed the man and begun its slow work.

The skin around his father’s eyes had thinned. The color beneath it had gone wrong, not yellow or gray but something that pulled light into itself. His breath came uneven, like each inhale cost a piece of him.

“Close the door,” his father said.

Brian didn’t argue. He shut it and felt the air change, as though the room sealed itself.

His father watched him with a clarity that didn’t match the body beneath it. “You’ve been seeing things.”

Brian’s chest tightened. He thought about the delivery driver yesterday. The faint, moving stain beneath the skin that shouldn’t have been there. Gone when the man stepped back into the sun.

“You’re mistaken,” Brian said.

“No,” his father answered. “You saw it. The first sign. It’s how it begins.”

Brian stepped closer. “Tell me what’s happening.”

His father shifted, a small movement that took effort. “This isn’t sickness. This is unmaking. This is what happens when the bargain is broken.”

Brian stared at him. “Bargain with who?”

His father’s voice thinned. “The Queen. The one who keeps the door between worlds closed. That protection has a cost. She claims her tithe from our bloodline. You don’t say her true name. Never.”

He coughed. Blood sputtered from his mouth. He wipes it with his hand.

“You don’t speak it aloud, Brian. You offer what she marks, and the world stays in balance.”

Brian shook his head. “Dad, listen to yourself. Offer what she marks?”

His father nodded. “The tithe. Their blood pays the tithe. Your hand carries it out. You end their life and the world keeps turning.”

His father didn’t flinch. “Your grandfather carried the tithe. His father carried it before him. Woodsmen. Executioners. Stewards of the old way. We did it because someone had to. There’s nothing special about it.”

He drew a breath that rattled through him. “I was supposed to shield you from this. I planned to carry it until I died. I would have kept going. I would have left the burden with me. That was the promise I made when you were a child.”

Brian felt something in him fold and strain. “Dad, you want me to murder people?”

His father looked at him with a sadness that cut more deeply than any fear. “I broke the promise when I refused the mark.”

Brian’s mouth dried. “What mark.”

“A mother,” his father said. “Down by the water off Riverside. Her son was asleep in the stroller. She had the mark beneath her jaw. It appeared when she stepped into the shade. That was the Queen’s choice. That was the tithe.”

His voice trembled. “And I couldn’t do it. After all these years, I couldn’t take another parent from a child. I couldn’t be the hand again.”

He looked down at his own wasted arms. “So she turned the sentence on me. I’m being undone piece by piece. And when I’m gone, the burden passes. It always passes.”

Brian took a step back. Something cold gathered at the base of his neck. “I don’t want this.”

“No one does,” his father said. “But the Queen doesn’t ask. She marks. She tithes. And someone in this family answers.”

Brian shook his head again, harder. “I’m not doing this. I’m not becoming some… thing that kills whoever she points at.”

“If you refuse,” his father said quietly, “you won’t be unmade. Your child will inherit it early. Children aren’t meant to do this, Brian. They don’t understand what it means to take a life. They don’t know how to bear the guilt.”

His eyes shone with something close to grief. “That’s why I did it all these years. I carried the stain so you wouldn’t have to. I took the marks so you could grow up believing the world was ordinary.”

Brian pressed a hand to his forehead. The room felt too sharp. The lights flickered in a way the fixtures couldn’t explain.

“You think this is noble,” he whispered. “You think murdering strangers is noble.”

His father didn’t rise to it. “I think protecting people is. Even when the cost is unbearable.”

Brian’s voice cracked. “I won’t do it.”

“You will,” his father said. “Not because you want to. Because the Queen passed the tithe to you the moment I failed. Because the mark is already in your sight. Because you’ve already seen one.”

Brian froze. He didn’t need to ask how his father knew.

“You’ll try to fight it,” his father said. “Everyone does at first. But there’s no escaping the tithe. Only delaying it. And delay is its own cruelty.”

Brian took a breath that shuddered through him. “I hate you for this.”

“I know,” his father said. “And if it spares your son, I’ll accept every part of that.”

Brian stared at him. The man in the bed was still his father, but the truth behind him was older, heavier than anything he’d imagined. He felt sick with it.

He left without saying goodbye. The door caught softly behind him.

The hallway lights buzzed overhead. Nurses walked past carrying charts. A janitor pushed a cart of mop buckets. Nothing looked strange until he saw her.

A woman pushing a stroller. Hair catching the fluorescence. A child asleep under a light blanket.

And beneath her jawline, something shifted. A stain that moved against the grain of the skin. A mark that didn’t belong to this world.

The same one his father had described.

She offered him a polite smile without knowing why he stared.

Brian didn’t smile back.

He followed at a distance. Not rushed, but not calm.

She turned toward the family restroom near the elevators.

Brian stepped in behind her.

The light above them pulsed once, as if a shadow passed over it.

Then the door closed behind them.

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This is a response to Day #7 in Bradley Ramsey’s Flash Fiction February event.

I realize I have no chance in hell to actually “win” this, but if you like this story, please like, restack, and/or comment. That’s how the stories are highlighted and judged during this event.