Stephen Liosi Writes

By Stephen Liosi

COUNTRY CLUB GUTTER TRASH DEMON

My sister was born
with demonic DNA
and a switchblade smile
and a ledger where her heart should’ve been:
black ink, red margins, every entry already balanced in her favor.

Even though I was adopted,
I once believed we crawled from the same cracked womb of lies,
same house of thin walls and thinner mercy,
same dinner table where grace was just another word for surrender.
Same two people pretending at parents,
their eyes already rehearsing how to look away.

But the demon learned early
how to swivel their heads like cheap bar stools on a slow Tuesday night.
A trembling lip here, a poisoned tear there,
a story twisted just enough
to make me the villain in every chapter
while she collected the inheritance like communion.

They believed her.
Of course they did.
It was easier than admitting
what their own blood had become.

I left.
Went out into the world carrying nothing but rage and a pen,
writing self-destruction in hotel rooms and half-empty bottles,
learning how to keep breathing without their permission.

She stayed.
Born with malice aforethought,
she studied the signatures like scripture,
bribed the notary with that same switchblade smile,
and found where the old man hid
the last brittle shard of his spine.
When I came back for the death,
it was already over.
It’s always already over, isn’t it?

He lay there shrinking into yellowed sheets,
a ghoul with sunken cheeks and eyes gone milky,
tubes whispering the only prayers left.
His mouth moved like a fish in the bottom of a boat:
no sound worth hearing.
The room smelled of piss, antiseptic, and surrender.

I stood at the foot of the bed
with a lifetime of hatred balled tight in my throat
and a hollow where my heart should have been.

She stood in the corner:
calm,
clean,
finished.
Satanic in her stillness,
paperwork already notarized,
damage sealed in triplicate.

I didn’t need to ask.
You can feel a theft like that in the marrow:
cold fingers reaching in,
pulling out the last vein of belonging,
rearranging whatever blood you thought was yours.

They didn’t just cut me from the living trust.
They cut me out of the story entirely.
Took the final excuse I had for calling any of this “family.”

I looked at him:
the man who never fought for me but gave only enough money to keep me hooked on him.
I looked at her:
the demon who should have been exorcised from my life.
I looked at my mother:
the poorest excuse for a Catholic you’d ever see, with her rosary beads and her selective
blindness, who had everyone in the neighborhood conned,
kneeling at the altar of convenience once again.
I looked at the whole fucking room
where every decision had been made without me,
where my name had already been erased from the will and the bloodline.

And I felt nothing
but a clean, surgical hate:
the kind that doesn’t scream,
doesn’t shatter glass,
doesn’t beg for explanation.
The kind that simply turns
and walks.

I left before the machines flatlined.
Didn’t stay for the funeral.
Didn’t shake the hands of liars.
Didn’t play the grieving son for an audience of cowards.
Hugged no one.
Some deaths don’t deserve witnesses.
Some souls don’t deserve clean burial.

Let them keep the house,
the money,
the carefully edited memories,
the story they’ll repeat at Thanksgiving like a rosary.

I’ve got the truth:
cold, sharp, and mine alone.

St. Peter won’t need to check the list.
He’ll smell the sulfur on their clothes
and simply shake his head.
No entry.
No absolution.
Just some cheap bar stool
waiting for them in Hell.

About The Author

Dive into a raw, unfiltered look at family wreckage and the recovery journey. Stephen Liosi is perfect for readers of Bukowski, dark poetry, and gritty contemporary memoirs.

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