Ominatio (o-mi-na’-ti-o): A prophecy of evil.
Nothing was right. Nothing was good. Nothing was the way it was supposed to be. I could smell it in the wind. Something bad was going to happen. It would be bad, we would moan and whine, seeking solace in the midst of unforgiving pain and karmic remorse.
At that point, my father told me to shut the hell up and light candles on his birthday cake—nothing was going to ruin his birthday again this year.
There were three of us at Dad’s birthday: Dad, me and a homeless man I had brought along to liven things up. Dad had alienated my mother and four sisters in various ways, for example, although he was wealthy, he wouldn’t pay college tuition for my sisters because they were “girls.” He did so many bad things to my mother, I can’t recount them all, but one of the worst was making her eat until she was a bloated blimp and then relentlessly making fun of her. There was no way my mother and sisters would come to his birthday celebration, or to anything that had anything to do with him. I stuck it out because I hoped to inherit his wealth.
I lit the candles on the cake. We sang a bad rendition of Happy Birthday. Then, we ate slices of cake.
The homeless man cried a shook his cup. Dad told him to go get hit by a car. He cried harder and ran out the front door. We heard car brakes screech but we didn’t care. That’s when I gave dad the joke gift. It was a loaded Glock with a hair trigger and an instruction manual listing where best to shoot yourself if you wanted to commit suicide. He thought it was great! Dad took the gun and pointed it at his forehead and said he didn’t need any “goddamn” instruction manual. Then, the gun went off and he blew his brains out.
I called Mom and told her “The old bird has landed.”
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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