by Poppet
I was almost 3 years old, he’d locked me in my bedroom after punching me, then all hell broke loose between him and Amy, the shouting and screaming pouring paint thinners on my fragile psyche, debilitating me with trauma and terror, when the door unlocked and he burst in, wielding that belt like a whip to a wild animal, the leather and metal battered relentlessly, every angle, everywhere, front, back, legs, arms, face, neck, skull, over and over and over until my entire body was trembling and throbbing, I was crying so hard I couldn’t speak, I had hiccups of fright so bad. It was unprecedented and I still don’t know why he went diabolical on me that night, but I’ll never forget it.
He was so angry, insane with rage, with only two people to unleash it on. It started at the dinner table and didn’t end for the entire weekend. It finally stopped when he went to work on Monday morning, but by then I was too afraid to move. No matter what I did I pissed him off, and the one thing you never want to do in this life is piss off Adam Ward.
I cried the entire weekend, until everything in me was chaffed hoarse and sore, my eyes stung, my throat was swollen, I’d pissed myself because I couldn’t leave my room to potty. I was alone and afraid, the pain unbearable, and the tension of fighting fatigue to watch the door, anticipating the next attack any moment now was traumatizing. No one came for me, no one fed me all weekend, just the bad dad with his endless supply of violence.
Just the sound of him removing his belt regresses me to a helpless toddler unable to defend myself. Frozen, standing stone still in the entrance hallway to the hovel which is my home, it’s all I can do to breathe. My mind is screaming warning, alarms are firing my neurons like rapid fire Gatling rounds, but the horror and dread holds me under in the dark, in the pit of pain where he buried my heart the day I was born.
The flare of punishment rouses my awareness and it’s automatic to raise my arms to fend off the onslaught. He smashes that fucking belt buckle the size of a medal into my face, whaling on me with his face contorted with hatred.
“You little bastard! Enjoy that? Making me look like shit in front of your entire school?!” As usual he’s punctuating each point with the forked tongue of nickel. He doesn’t discipline with the leather end, oh no, meet my dad, he’s the sadist in the family. “Fucker! How DARE you defy me in public! Who the fuck do you think you are? That piece of paper means shit! You’re nothing! You’ll always be nothing! You evil murdering prick!”
I’m walking backwards along the walls, stumbling over the mess, the place stinking of decay, my arms already throbbing with the barrage of assault. I simply have my face barricaded behind my forearms while my sire tries to unsire me.
I run out of room when he hems me into the corner between the kitchen and the bathroom, a leaking faucet adding a unique form of psychological torture to his rampage.
“I hate you! You’ve been nothing but a stone around my neck! Now you think you’re better than me! You’ll NEVER be better than me! You’re scum! Scum! You took the one thing I loved from me!”
“I didn’t!” I scream back, now as unhinged as my Pa. I don’t give a shit anymore. Dropping my guard down I stand tall, my head exploding with pressure, bellowing, “YOU KILLED HER! YOU! You made ME bury her! You made me LIE FOR YOU! All so you could get a paycheck every month! ONE SHE PAID FOR IN BLOOD!”
He looks crazy. His eyes are bulging from their sockets, his tie is skew and flung over his shoulder, somewhere he rolled his shirt sleeves up, and I’m so busy feasting on details he sucker punches me hard enough to slam my cranium into brick.
The bomb of blood and throb and numb returns my calm, my fighter training kicking in, the hit to my face a familiar friend in the abandoned alley of a ghost town. Home.
It’s reflex, I react without even processing the thought, my graduation scroll dropping to the floor when my fists come up and I give him the one three clock to the face. I hammer him the same way he hammered me, without mercy.
But I gotta give my old man his dues. He fights back, pounding me flesh for flesh, the two of us duking it out around the house, me still in a ridiculous gown.
Why are we fighting? I still don’t understand this protocol and methodology?
“Why can’t you TALK to me like a normal person?!” I shout, deflecting his attack, blocking punch after punch, frustration driving him to a dangerous madness.
“Because!” he spits, his breath heaving, the effort of our conflict taking it’s toll on him.
“Because WHY?!” I holler, now taller, now stronger, now finally I’m standing up for myself after seventeen years of abuse.
“To break you! BREAK, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”
And he goes berserk. Man to man is gone, now it’s all bets off, biting, clawing, kicking, trying to thumb stab my eyeballs out of my head, but I break through his hold and punch him as hard as I can, one badass clock to the face, and my heart stops when he drops like an anvil from a skyscraper. His jaw is sticking out at an odd angle, his eyes rolled back, foam oozing out his mouth. Shit.
I panic, trying to resuscitate him, when there’s knocking at the door.
NOW the neighbors decide to intervene?
FUCK! My life is hell. I was cursed the day I was born and no matter how hard I work, or how humble I am, I’ll never fucking prevail! I never get sympathy or help or intervention. The one fucking time I punch him back, THEN the fuckers come to see what’s going on inside these damned walls.
Gulping down the dry spit in my mouth, my heart hammering, the rush of the battle still surging in my veins, I watch my father regain consciousness, whispering like a drunk with his jaw unhinged, “Why couldn’t you stay dead when she aborted you?”
I could take his punches for the rest of my life if I didn’t have to hear that one sentence.
Those nine words will change my life forever.
Amy didn’t love me. She didn’t even want me. That’s why I was born premature. Three whole months premature. It robs the fight from me and I collapse back, losing my balance, off my haunches and onto my hiney while the knocking at the front door becomes thumping. “Chris?!”
I’m away, inside my head, burrowing new catacombs through my delicate self-esteem. All the work means shit. It doesn’t matter how far I go in life the truth is I’m not wanted. No one has ever loved me. I’ve lived seventeen years hearing those words spoken over and over again, in hallways, in cinemas, at drive-ins, in books, in class, yet no one has ever said those words to me. Not once.
The violent shaking on my shoulders pulls me out of my stupor, and I look up into Steve’s eyes. “You killed him.”
Alarmed I snap my attention to Adam, recognizing that special glaze over his unseeing eyes. This house is cursed. All who enter, die. It’s a hungry mouth demanding sacrifice, virginal blood, the screams of the innocent, the death of the damned.
“Want to tell me what happened?” demands Steve.
What have I got to lose?
I tell Steve everything, leaving no bone unturned.
There’s a graveyard out back, where most kids have a garden swing.
~ Chapter 9 ~
Once a message came quietly,
so quietly I could hardly hear it.
Like a nightmare it disturbed my sleep.
~ Job 4:13
THE POLICE HAVE come and gone. My wounds, swelling of both eyes, the cuts to my flesh, they all bear testament that I speak the truth. I’m bust up bad.
It’s the truth sure enough, just maybe not today’s truth.
I told them it was self defense, that he wanted to kill me the same way he killed every woman who ever came home with him.
Confessing everything I took them to Amy’s grave, this time without the emotional tug of sorrow and grief. She tried to cut me out before I had even taken a breath.
Why?
To save me from him? Or because she’s a soulless witch?
Does it matter? My mother rejected me before I was even fucking born!
Dejected, and with eyes swimming with unshed t
ears, I am wooden when I trawl the house for my scroll. I still haven’t opened it. This was supposed to be a happy day and he robbed me of it. He robbed me of everything good, his drama and abuse had zero limit. Amy was no better, I guess.
I didn’t tell the police about the rape, but I did tell Steve.
He’s a good guy. He didn’t look at me with pity or disgust, he just pulled me in for a hug and cried with me. He knew something was wrong, he knew I’d run away and preferred sleeping in an office than dare to come back here, so he looked up the address of Adam Ward and found an old listing for us. Dropping Marie at home he came straight away, to save me, to rescue me, but he was too late. Story of my life.
Steve gives false witness, saying he walked in when I delivered the punch to get Adam off me, being the adult the cops take his word for it without question, nodding and mumbling about how they can’t respond to calls about domestic abuse, only if it results in death, that he did the right thing calling them.
And they’re sorry for my loss.
I’m not, this is no loss at all.
The loss was delivered in his final breath. That is a loss.
My mother never loved me.
It keeps coming back like waves of vomit. Just when you think you have it under control you have to heave and purge again. I don’t know if it’s true, but he had nothing to lose in that moment. Why say that at all if it isn’t true?
Words like guardian until I turn eighteen fly over my head.
It’s a numb shock which robs me of lucid recollection of the following hours. I wake in the early hours of the 29th of June 1973 with a demon skinning my soul. I’m free! Truly free! Like the space shuttle I have nothing holding me down no more, nothing keeping me back.
Packing my stuff at Steve’s place, I head to the gym, packing my stuff there too. Steve’s been good to me, but now I need fights to pay for my future, I need a scholarship, I need to get my ass into gear because I have destiny calling my name.
It’s dark out and I’m hiking back to‘my place’.
Returning to the shithole of my home, I get to work. Three months ago I bought myself a record changer and all the best imported records. I’m a teenager and addicted to vinyl. We’re finally pulling out of Vietnam, too late. Like my dad, he pulled out too late. He pulled out of me too late, pulled out of my life too late, pulled out of Amy too late. Time is essential, it’s the difference between destroying life or nurturing it. It’s the difference between disfiguring a mind or keeping it whole and sane.
Plugging everything in I’m grateful there’s still power to the house. Half the light bulbs are missing, but all I need right now is Led Zeppelin filling these blood stained walls with music. I finally got their 1971 album IV and the choons are jamming. Stairway to Heaven, Rock n Roll, Misty Mountain Hop, the album cover holding sigils dedicated to Aleister Crowley, while Denny’s symbol is of the ancient Christianity godhead. The sigils call to me, and fascinate me. They’re a riddle I need to solve.
I start cleaning, this time for me instead of Steve. I found out one night, when nonna Rizzo popped in at the gym to say hello to her favorite grandson, that his real name is Stefan. We’re all hiding the truth, aren’t we?
Scrubbing to loud music I have to say I prefer this vibe to the current billboard hits. Killing me Softly with his Song, You’re so Vain, Tie a yellow Ribbon around the Ole Oak Tree, and Sunshine of your Life, can fuck right off. I’m a boxer for shit’s sake, I don’t listen to wussy music made for lovesick skanks.
Three days later Steve agrees to allowing me to live in my own home. The bodies have been exhumed, my family name the scandal of the town. I always knew he was odd. Is it hereditary? So those screams, those were the women he murdered?
No Doris, they were me being butt fucked by Satan! He was a missionary man who liked to be on top.
There was no way I could ever bring a girl home. He’d have done something heinous and ruined my exo-home life. And the gym was no place to seduce a lady either. Now I’ve graduated, applied to universities, and have thirteen underground fights lined up to help me pay for the fixings to mend this broken home. If I can sell it for a tidy sum I might just have a real chance at adulthood. Finally!
For seventeen years I’ve lived an aphotic existence, now finally the bottom feeder breaches the pond to breathe in free air and sunshine.
I work tirelessly throughout the summer, fixing the place, earning enough money in fights to tattoo over the scars and cigar burns. I eat well, train harder, pump weights, and do my cleaning at Steve’s gym. I owe him everything, there’s no way I’m dropping him after he harbored a fugitive. I was a fugitive, from my own parents.
Something changes in me in December 1973. I live in a repaired house, with a landscaped garden, a swimming pool (the first in the neighborhood), the latest appliances and a pantry permanently stocked with nutrition, but the voice has come back. The voice in my head whispers to me constantly, and the whispers became shouts the night I watch The Exorcist, starring Linda Blair.
It’s based on a true story!
The suspicion I have over my father’s extreme behavior is reignited. There’s power in this world, unseen. The Devil and God wage a war for souls, for human lives. Why else would a mother want to rip her unborn son from her body, why else would a father beat his toddler? The Devil’s been after me my whole life. He’s been after me since the day my father planted me inside an embryo within Amy.
During my cleaning spree I found their last will and testaments. Amy didn’t marry Adam. She kept her maiden name and she kept her maiden money too. What an eye opening discovery I had waiting for me when the lawyers called to tell me to come and collect my British passport, that my relatives have been notified and are willing to pay for my tuition as long as I agree to live in London for five years and regain my citizenship.
Medical school takes four years from my life, and then I have to complete my residency, which usually takes another few years. I’ll be stuck there for five years, at least. The bonus is these people are connected and I’m already enrolled at the University of Cambridge. It’s fifty minutes from London, so apparently they’re willing to pay for my accommodation while I’m enrolled and studying.
I didn’t know I had any relatives, least of all in Britain. They’ve never met me, I have no clue who they are or what they look like, but for the first time in my life money is no longer an issue.
Her letter to me in the unlikely event of her death disclosed that she had her suspicions about Adam and wanted to keep my inheritance safe from his addictions, so up to my eighteenth birthday I’d receive an allowance with full inheritance of her trust fund transferring to me when I turn eighteen. I’m the only grandchild in her family, as she was an only child. Due to differences with her parents she escaped to join the free love movement in the USA, and she’d very much like me to reach out to her parents, to be the family she couldn’t be. Apparently in the UK you can buy alcohol when you turn eighteen, it’s when you become an adult.
Amy, so many secrets. She’s a British citizen. I belong to two continents, not one. She comes from money but never used any of it to escape. She could’ve run away with me, saved us both, but chose not to. She knew he’d kill us both one day and yet she did nothing to prevent it. Nothing!
I’ll never understand her choices, but now I’m thinking Adam got her possessed or something. We never went to church, agnostic like the mother in the Exorcist. By denying god, he’ll deny you. Stevie Wonder’s been singing Superstition and even he says the Devil’s on his way. Last year David Bowie was singing about the Starman, two years before that he was singing about the Space Oddity, pointing up to the astronauts of the pioneering space program, but shorty thereafter we have The Dark Side of the Moon, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and Starman. I feel surrounded by signs, by synchronicity.
Too much has happened this year which points to the nefarious agenda upping its game. This esteemed year we started genetic engineering in the US, we
introduced the barcode which half the nation is calling the mark of the Devil, NASA launched the Mercury probe, we introduced optical fiber and the space station (Skylab), Dick Nixon is interrogated in the hearings for Watergate, the World Trade Center just became the tallest building in the world, we withdrew from Vietnam, the oil price went up by two hundred percent, and the Mississippi flooded for 77 days.
Seventy-seven days is a long time, and we all know seven and flood are two things that have God’s signature M.O all over them. Back in the day God made it flood for forty days and nights, we just outdid that by an extra thirty-three days.
Thirty-three! That’s how old Christ was when he died.
We just paid interest on religious discipline and chastisement.
Fuck man, I just watched a chick fuck herself with a crucifix and speak with the voice of a horned spirit. I saw a child overcome grown men purely because she had the spiritual acumen to do so. Do women hold the key? Like the bitch who bought the stairway to heaven? Is it Jacob’s ladder?
This year I’ve seen Jesus Christ Superstar which unequivocally proves Jesus was just a man, born to die like the rest of us. We’re all Jesus, aren’t we? The Forgotten with the clinically insane in a sanatorium, where a woman fucks a corpse, the place ruined with murder and lunacy, a woman loses her tongue, it’s enough to make any good man think twice about what wickedness lurks behind closed doors. Too much.
I know, the diabolical lived in this house for decades.
Messiah of Evil was another movie I got to see in the unholy year of 1973. Now on my own, left to my own devices, I’ve seen movies like Children of the Damned which is already ten years old. If there is a greater power in this universe it’s forcing me to acknowledge the existence of malevolent forces, of the supernatural, and linking this to the unrighteous, unholy, and crazy.
