by Mary Ramsey
I fell onto my stomach, holding myself in the fetal position as fire rained down all around me. Was this the end? I closed my eyes, expecting to burn to death. After all, I knew full well what that felt like; death by a thousand cuts, flesh being forcibly torn from my body.
Instead, I felt warm, like a heater. I assumed the fireball was just far away, and my mind was slowing down time, to give my life a chance to flash before my eyes. But then I felt a hand upon my shoulder.
“Hey,” said a calm male voice.
With my hands over my head, I could barely hear him.
The hand started to shake me. “Wake up, sweetheart.”
“Dad, is that you?”
For a moment there was no reply. “You’ve got to wake up.”
Dear Dad: The Legend of Jed Miller
My father died when I was seventeen. He was a sweet man, a kind soul. I guess you have to take my word for it. Jed Richard Miller was born in Jackson, Mississippi. He was a typical blond, blue-eyed Southern boy with a heart of gold. He went to college on a baseball scholarship, got his religious studies degree and went to work in the ministry. His work took him to a small town in Florida. And that was where he met her, the green-eyed angel, vixen, demon. Also known as my mother.
Julia Dixon was a twenty-year-old waitress from Jersey who’d hitchhiked to Jacksonville to start a new life. Her beauty was the stuff of fairy-tales. She had an insatiable lust for life. Until I was born. I assumed my mother suffered from postpartum depression. At least that’s what I learned in school; some women just get depressed after having a child, it’s natural. But growing up, all I knew was she never wanted to be around me.
My dad was my rock. He worked from home, writing sermons and doing paperwork. He cooked and cleaned, kept house, all while my mother worked ten-hour shifts. She was a waitress somewhere on the Army base or Air Force base. It was one of those. I just know she was gone most of the day, and every weekend. And she never went to church with us.
Mom and Dad started to argue a lot. We lived in a studio apartment, so I learned to hide in my mother’s walk-in closet while they fought. I know he never hit her. Even though she broke his jaw, three fingers on his right hand, his ribs, and even fractured his eye socket, leaving him partially blind. She would storm off into the night. And Daddy, he would let me out and make hot cocoa for us while we sat together watching television, working on homework, or just talking. At midnight, Daddy would put me to bed in my crib (I slept in a crib until I was seven). As I got older, I knew to turn away, sleep against the wall. This was the only thing that preserved my sanity.
Otherwise, when my mother came home, no matter how many hours later, I was treated to what I thought was sex. I’d seen sex on TV; it was kissing, touching, making sounds. But the people on the screen, they looked happy, safe, loved. Not my parents. Soft sounds turned to loud sounds, and then screams; deep, animalistic screams. She would leave for work and Daddy would sleep. Sometimes I’d wake him; other times I’d just give him a kiss goodbye before catching the bus.
This went on for nearly a decade, then came the day of the accident. He’d been on his way home when his car was forced off the road. According to the police report, he had been tired, sick, and his wheels had just slipped. I understand this as an ‘if you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras’ situation. But even I could tell by the publicly available crime-scene photos that something had pulled him.
I just know it wasn’t suicide because he’d never leave me all alone with that evil, malicious woman. My father’s chest was crushed, shrapnel puncturing his liver and spleen. He required hours of extensive surgery. That was when they found it; late-stage bowel cancer. I knew he was in constant pain, but my mother never let him see a doctor. I didn’t really know why; adults get in trouble for hitting kids, but I’d never learned anything in school about a wife hitting her husband in the face as he fell to his knees. All while he begged her for forgiveness. I thought that was all perfectly normal. So did the police. That was why all of Daddy’s injuries were attributed to the crash. Even the bone fragments in his cornea.
Despite the fact that my mother was not, in any way, a suspect, she left. Yes, seriously. She was simply the doting wife who devoted her life to caring for her chronically ill husband and young daughter. Everyone loved her; hospital staff, church community, until the moment she just up and walked out, abandoning my father in the hospital. Looking back, that was actually one of the positives. I had no idea where she went, nor did I care to find out. With no way to make rent, I slept on a chair in the room by his side. It was actually kind of nice, not having to live in fear of my mom.
What was not so nice was my father’s rapid decline. He was already sickly and weak after the surgery to remove the worst of the infection. His church started a crowdfunding campaign to help pay for chemo. But it didn’t last long. The treatment did a number on him. After just a month, I was pretty sure I saw my father’s soul being dragged into Hell.
He was violently ill, vomiting and convulsing at all hours of the night. He had a constant fever resulting in horrifying delusions. He claimed he was being burned alive, on a bed of hot coals, while demons drooled over his smoldering flesh. Each drop of their acidic fluid opened up sores on his skin; sores that would appear on his actual, physical body.
It got to the point where even full sedation did nothing to ease his pain. Since chemo would have only granted him a few more months at best, he came home to die in the bed that he’d once shared with my mother. (Rent would be paid by the church.) I spent the summer of my junior year by his side. With no other family in the area, it was determined that I would move in with the Lee family. Members of my father’s congregation, they had a large family with room for me to sleep on the floor of their daughter’s room until I was of age to live on my own. That was really more for show (to avoid child welfare services or the police).
In reality, I couldn’t sleep knowing my father could die at any moment. So I watched my father in bed, writhing in pain. Each day I checked on him to bring food and water, and I kept him clean and presentable. But on just the second week, the site of his colostomy bag felt wet and warm. Removing the blankets, I saw there was so much dried blood and pus. I knew he had an abdominal infection. I called 911. By the time the paramedics arrived, he was sick with a bad fever, struggling to breathe on his own. But they refused to treat him, much less take him to a hospital.
The team was two women and a man, but the tall blonde seemed to be the leader. She said my father had a DNR on file, with my mother listed as having medical power of attorney. I knew that was a lie. And even if it wasn’t, she was gone. Except legally she wasn’t; my mother wasn’t missing or dead or even divorced, so her status remained.
So they left. Over the next few days, my father slowly made a recovery, kind of. The fever left my father with a severely weakened heart. His kidneys and liver were already in failure. All I could do was wait for him to pass away. But he didn’t. His body just hung on, as if waiting for something. Until the day he suffered his last seizure. I turned him on his side, allowing him to hopefully spit up whatever was blocking his airway. He started to cough up saliva laced with blood. “I-I need to talk to you.”
I simply nodded while stroking his face, ready to let him speak his final piece.
“Raven, my love, you need to know the truth.”
“The truth?” I asked in a soothing whisper.
“About your mother.”
“You mean why she left?” I honestly did not want to talk about my mother.
“I-I had to make a bargain.” His voice had a sense of truth that I had never heard before.
“What are you talking about?”
“They’re going to come for me. You’ll be ok.” He gripped my hand tightly. “You’ll be ok. Just go to bed in the bathroom and lock the door.”
“Sure, Dad.” I had no idea what he meant, but I would do as he said. If nothing else, it would be a nice, quiet place to sleep. That night, I clos
ed the door, locking it as if I was taking a shower. The lock was strong, but just in case, I also moved the supply cabinet. Feeling secure, I made myself a pillow from towels and tried to make myself comfortable on the vinyl tile floor. Somehow, I managed to sleep. There were no windows in the bathroom, but I had my wristwatch on me. So I knew that I awoke at 8:23 the next morning.
I pressed my ear to the wall, listening for any noticeable sounds. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, so I started the process of opening the door. What I saw nearly caused me to scream.
My mother was standing over an empty bed, calmly changing the sheets like a hotel maid. “Your daddy passed in his sleep last night.”
I knew she was lying; she had to be. “Where is he?”
“The paramedics already took his body away. But don’t worry, you’ll get to say your goodbyes at the memorial.”
“Memorial?” She’d already made funeral plans? Was that even possible or legal? I should have known something was up. But I just nodded my head like a good daughter. I needed to play along.
The memorial, held in our living room the same day, did not have an open casket or a casket of any kind, but rather a photo and an urn. She had him cremated? I knew how long cremations took, and less than a day was just insane. Was that even my father in the urn, or was he being held captive somewhere?
As the guests (my mother’s friends and a few people I recognized from church) dispersed, I took the opportunity to steal the urn, locking myself in the closet the way I had as a child. I opened the urn and touched the ashes. If this was really him, I wanted to chance to say goodbye. And if not, I wanted real answers. “Daddy?” I felt a pulse; a throbbing, human pulse. There was something inside the urn. I reached further down until the urn swallowed me up to my elbow. This was impossible since the urn itself was only the size of a large mason jar. I blacked out from the pain in my hand. Only then did I see the truth; flashes of a memory that I would have rather forgotten.
My father had a ten-inch scar on his upper thigh. I had been told it was the result of the accident. I had no reason to doubt the validity of the claim. After all, he had been in surgery to remove massive pieces of metal and glass from his body. But I had seen the scar before. It looked like he’d cut into his inner thigh with a large kitchen knife. The wound had long healed over, forming scar tissue. And that tissue had scar tissue of its own: he had been hacking into his leg on multiple occasions. That was the image seared into my mind as my hand finally gripped the source of the pulse; a warm, still-beating human heart.
“Daddy, are you in here?” As the words left my lips, my word was plunged into darkness. A single point of light illuminated a figure. With the eerie silence, I felt as if I was watching a stage play.
My father sat in the shower, naked with his knees pulled to his chest. In his hand, he held a large serrated knife. I could hear him breathing as his hand trembled. He was mumbling to himself, praying. I watched in horror as he closed his eyes and brought the knife down on his own crotch, over and over. A pool of blood was forming underneath him when he suddenly heard a knock at the unseen door.
“Daddy?” asked the innocent voice of a first-grader who’d just gotten home from school. “Daddy, where are you?”
“I’m in the bathroom, sweetheart,” he replied with a strained voice.
“Okay,” the child version of me said as she took a seat outside the door. “I’ll wait for you to finish.” I’d always been a polite child.
My father chuckled, knowing how his request sounded. “No, sweetie, I’m not using the toilet.” He started to laugh, despite his situation. “I-I just need some time alone. Daddy just needs to rest for a while.” He reached his hand up to turn on the shower, allowing a stream of water to hit his body. This washed only a small amount of the blood down the drain.
Suddenly there came a third voice. “Where’s your father?” My mother sounded annoyed, maybe even drunk.
“Daddy’s resting in the shower,” my little voice replied.
“Like hell he is.” My mother didn’t even knock; she went straight to kicking open the door. It took her a few tries to break the lock. “Go do your homework-now!” she screamed at little me in exhaustion.
“Yes, Mommy,” I replied, quickly moving away from the bathroom. She made sure to slam the mangled wood door closed in my face before I had a chance to see what was actually happening.
“Jed, my love, you are a fucking sorry excuse for a man. I mean really, cutting the arteries in your legs? Is my little choir boy too much of a pussy to hang himself?” She paused, her mind suddenly overcome with a realization. “You were trying to castrate yourself, to deny me another child and cut off my power.” She laughed as she stomped her foot down on his groin with a sickening crunch. “It doesn’t work like that. You don’t get to choose when you die or even how.”
I remember this moment. The child version of myself went and worked on homework, pretending to not hear the sounds emanating from the bathroom. But I heard every word. And now I was being treated to a stage performance of what my mother did to him that day. Standing over his body, she turned on the water to its hottest setting, causing the bathroom to flood with steam. My father gritted his teeth in pain, but he didn’t cry out for help.
When the steam cleared, she forced him onto his knees. “You’re mine,” she said with a sadistic moan. “I think I’ll let you live another ten years or so, just until I’m finished feeding on your precious soul. Unless you’d rather I start work on your daughter: MY daughter.”
My father quietly nodded in agreement, as if also trying to apologize for upsetting her.
She turned him, slamming his body into the wall. Her hands rummaged in an unseen cabinet, and she pulled out an electric toothbrush, rubbing it against her hand. “No, that’s too good for a mongrel like you.” She pulled out what appeared to be a cross between a curling iron and a hairdryer. As she brutally abused him, I quickly realized that the metal tool was probably handmade for that very purpose. She moaned with pleasure, grinding her hips despite the fact she was still completely clothed in her work uniform. “You like that? I know you do.” She kissed his neck, breathing into his ear. “Scream for me. You know want to.”
My father frantically shook his head.
“No, Jed? Well, I have ways of making you scream.”
My father let her do as she wished until, broken, his body fell limp. To his credit he never once screamed. My mother was the same height as him but too slim and slender to lift his body. So instead she dragged his naked body to the sofa. In the corner of the scene I caught sight of my six-year-old self, peeking from around a corner. Everything about the memory was correct; I had snuck silently, staying close to the ground, unable to see my father. No, I remember seeing his feet; his naked, blood-covered feet. Choking back tears, child-me sat in the corner, waiting for my mother to leave. It didn’t take long.
My mother chuckled, laughing at her work, as she left out the front door. The child version of myself stood up. It seemed like she truly wanted to rush to his side. But her legs were frozen. After a few seconds she walked backward, off stage, out of the scene.
It was my turn now. I took a step forward towards his body. The sound under my feet was wooden, like an actual stage. “Dad?”
My father’s corpse-like form was looking up at the ceiling. “Raven, sweetie? Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, Dad, I’m here.”
“Where are you?”
I had no idea how to answer that. I was apparently trapped in a closet holding an urn, watching a memory. “Are you really gone?”
“I died?” he asked calmly.
“Why am I here? Why am I seeing this?”
“You were the only reason I stayed, the only reason I can stay.”
“Why were you cutting yourself? Did you want to die?”
His dead eyes took a moment to blink. “I tried to keep her power at bay. Really, I did. But she did things. She was too powerful. So I let her take what she wa
nted, what she needed, in hopes she would move on.”
“I know.” My mother was always so good at covering her tracks. When my father suffered from tremors, migraines, and even seizures, she told people he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Of course, he never went against her word. The lie made her look like a saint for staying married to him, even when she was cheating on him with every man in the county. “She did a lot of bad things.”
“There were dozens of other men. Her hunger was insatiable. You probably have at least a few brothers and sisters out there,” my father sighed. “I pray those children are as strong as you.”
“I think I would know if Mom had been pregnant,” I said, assuming I was her first child. It didn’t even occur to me that he could have been referring to an older sibling.
“No, you wouldn’t,” he said with tears in his eyes. “It’s part of their power. Y-your power.”
My power? What a joke. “Can I save you?”
“You save me by saving yourself. Give in to her, just enough to learn her secrets, and destroy her.” He sounded so confident, but I felt sick to my stomach.
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You won’t have a choice.”
Light flooded my vision. The closet doors were flung open, and I was dragged out by my legs. I screamed, but not for myself. I screamed because the urn flew out of my arms, spilling all over the floor. “Grab the heart!” my mother shouted.
My eyes darted around. All of the women were people I’d met in the past; doctors, teachers, even some people from church. These were people who’d visited the hospital when my father was too sick to work. When he was bedridden, they’d brought food and medicine and offered their prayers. I always forced myself to be polite. But I always knew no one cared. They came to watch a show, to watch him die.
