The Devil Cries in Fathers Too

by (Abdul Rahim Wiqad)

Tom never liked the quiet before the storm — not the one outside the house, but the one that lived within its walls. That silence came after the creak of the front door, after the boots stomped across the linoleum floor, after the whiskey bottle kissed the kitchen table.

He could tell by the way the door closed whether his father had finished one bottle or two. He could tell by the way the boots hit the ground whether the man was tired or angry. But most nights, he was both.

Tom was just ten when he first learned that love could hurt. His father wasn’t a cruel man by nature, but life had made him sharp — like a broken bottle. He was a man who had survived too much and spoken too little. A man who mistook pain for strength and silence for control.

“Boy,” he used to say, voice slurred with bourbon and bitterness, “you got the devil in you.”

And Tom believed him. Not because he saw horns when he looked in the mirror, but because the belt never landed on angels.

Forgotten chores. Unfinished dinner. Talking back — or sometimes not talking at all. The reasons were always different, but the result was the same: pain disguised as parenting, discipline dipped in rage.

But Tom was observant. He learned to read his father’s storms. He learned how to become invisible. How to walk on eggshells. How to cry without making a sound. Until one night — the worst of all — something inside him snapped.

He didn’t even remember what set it off. Maybe it was the plate he didn’t finish, or the tone of his voice. Maybe it was nothing. The belt came down like thunder. Again. Again. Again.

And then it happened.

Tom stood up. Shaking. Eyes wide with fury. His voice trembled, but it didn’t waver.

“You say I have the devil in me,” he said. “But maybe you put him there. Maybe he came from you.”

The room went silent.

The air, thick with whiskey and smoke, turned still. His father didn’t move. The belt hung loosely from his hand. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Then slowly, like a dam breaking, he sat down at the kitchen table.

And cried.

Not the way drunks sometimes sob — sloppily, for pity. This was different. This was deep. Raw. Primitive. His whole body shook. His chest heaved. And for the first time in Tom’s life, his father looked small. Broken.

A boy himself, trapped in a man’s body, buried under years of guilt, anger, and inherited violence.

Tom stood frozen. He should’ve felt victorious. Brave. Liberated.

But all he felt was sorrow.

He realized in that moment that monsters are often just men who were never taught how to heal. His father, too, had been a boy once — maybe even a kind one — until someone beat the softness out of him and called it strength.

And now here he was, years later, a father who didn’t know how to love without pain, who thought silence was safety, who mistook fear for obedience.

The devil had cried.

And it broke Tom’s heart.

Years later, long after he moved out and built a life of his own, Tom still remembered that night. He remembered the rain, the smell of tobacco and regret, and the way his father’s shoulders shook.

He never told anyone what happened.

Not the bruises.

Not the cries.

Not the moment he saw the ghost inside his father escape — if only for a minute.

Because it was enough.

Enough to know that behind the belt, behind the rage, behind the whiskey-soaked curses — there was still a man in there.

Wounded. But human.

Tom vowed he’d never become like him.

And he didn’t.

But he kept the memory.

Not to hate him.

But to remember:

The devil cries in fathers too.