Slay Belles & Mayhem: A Medley of Dark Tales

by Dani René

  The first night my fathers’ routine attacks started truly scaring me, I cried out for her, not quite sure why my heart was racing.

  During her horrid abuse on our bedroom floor, she endearingly told me, “Vita Mia, go back to sleep.”

  I believed her false calm and closed my eyes, falling back asleep to the sound of her being struck by one of my fathers. Whack!

  He warned, “Don’t speak that Italian shit in this house.”

  Not being permitted to learn about my heritage was especially unkind, as the men who spawned me preferred that I not exist at all, but what they were doing to her was far worse.

  When Mother spoke of her own father, tears would fall, and her ocean blue eyes would see beyond our prison walls. She would wish out loud, “Had only his hunger for more wealth not blinded him to the devil in disguise.”

  The devil had tricked my grandfather into believing he would bounty without a cost.

  Now, as a woman with eyes wide open, I say, “To men who believe anything is free, may they lose their eyes and feet.” That way they can continue to be blind, yet not have the ability to run from the price of their crimes. Just as my mother nor I could.

  I believe I was almost seven years old when I awoke to mother sitting on top of my stomach one night, a knife in the air being held over my chest. Her eyes were squeezed shut, an agony-stricken face crying…

  I whispered, “Mama?”

  She gasped and snapped her eyes open. Then ultimate pity replaced her expression of dread. The knife slowly coming down to rest on the bed next to me, instead of in my chest, was her choice. I see that now. I understand her ultimate regret for not being stronger at the crucial moment, where my fate could have been altered for the better.

  Her haunting whisper and cry are now embedded in my soul. “I am so sorry, Vita Mia. I have failed you. Your angel hasn’t come, and I do not possess the will to bring you peace, even though I would happily be condemned to Hell for my sin. For you. For I love you, my daughter.”

  She knew. She knew of the appalling acts that were approaching, and tried to save me from becoming the next victim of the torture that had become her everyday life.

  My mother tucked the knife under my pillow before lying next to me, pulling me close to her chest so we could fall asleep. “Vita Mia, if one of your fathers ever tries to lie here with you, you are to take this knife and sink it into his stomach.”

  I gasped. I had never raised a hand to a father, nor had I ever been physically close to one.

  “I know,” she patted my head, “but you need to promise me.”

  Scared and so confused, I vowed to use the blade.

  I think she secretly hoped the disobedience would anger a father to the point he would kill me in rage. I think she hoped they would snuff out my life, where she couldn’t.

  When I was much older, there would be many a time I would be angry at her moment of weakness, wishing that blade would have taken me from this earth…

  Soon after that, my fathers took Isabella Giordano from our room and never brought her back to me. I cried for her. I cried so long, I believe it’s all I did for days and days…

  I was surprised by the smell of a father as he crawled into bed with me, waking me from slumber. His breath was sharp to my delicate nose. His weight was so much more than my mother’s. His touch lacked her gentleness.

  Never having hurt anyone before, or even seen a movie to know how hard to stab with a knife, I barely punctured his skin. I was so young, and so inexperienced. How was I supposed to know how to be violent?

  After that, everything as I knew it tumbled away. Just like my innocence as it was stolen by the very same father. Two of us bled on that bed that night.

  How do grown men find gratification in sexual encounters with little girls? I don’t think I will ever have that answer. Fortunately, not all of the fathers were interested in me at such a young age. With the couple that were, I quickly surrendered to them because the pain was much less when I didn’t resist.

  After being physically hurt, my childhood swing set felt different the next time I was allowed to be outside. I was too inexperienced to understand what was happening, but everything around me felt altered. It was almost as if, even though sexual abuse was common practice, due to what I had witnessed my mother endure all my life, deep down, my heart still knew something was wrong. Idaho’s mountains seemed farther away, as if the rest of the world I had heard about was fading from my memory. The tall grass around me no longer looked like a shield, but a promise of a grim future to come. An alternate future was inconceivable since I knew nothing else.

  More children and women appeared in the house from time to time. I could hear cries and sometimes screams while I huddled in my bed. I even shared my mattress when some kids were tossed into my room, until they, too, were taken away and never returned. Just like my mother.

  I don’t know what changed, or why I was soon no longer being taken out of my room, but I never saw my swing set again. Nor was I ever able to be outside of the dilapidated home. In fact, there would only be a number of times that I would see beyond my bedroom. Then my end would come, once and for all.

  Eventually, I lost more things I would sorely miss. As my body grew and could no longer fit into my little girl clothing, I was offered no new clothes. Soon in a constant state of nakedness, and no longer with children in my room, my only visitors were more fathers.

  As I developed, so did their hunger.

  It’s sad, but I was so lonely, I wished they would talk to me as they used my body. They didn’t. At least nothing as wonderful as my mother’s stories, that is. Here and there, I would get foul words shared, such as, “Ah shit, that feels so fucking good,” or, “Oh yeah, this tight little hole is just what I needed after my fucked-up day”.

  When my menstrual cycle began and I was scared of the unusual blood, I didn’t get an explanation about my body transforming into a woman. I simply was told, “Stick these in your cunt so you stop bleeding everywhere.”

  “I’m not sick?” I asked, confused by the changes my body was experiencing.

  Washcloths were tossed at me. “No, you dumb shit.”

  That’s why, when my belly began to grow beyond my bare ribs, I again thought I was sick, but all I got was, “Jesus.” And, “We knocked her up!” And, “Fuck.”

  Delivering my child was a ghastly experience. It was pain like never before, and that was a vile statement considering what I had endured up to this point in my life. Even though I was unaware what the fathers were doing to me was ‘bad,’ per se, it still hurt. I quickly learned my pain was not important, only their pleasure.

  At the young age of twelve, I was left all alone in the bathroom. I was not permitted to get out of the old pink tub. They hadn’t appreciated the ‘mess’ I was leaving on the bathroom floor as my body prepared for the birth.

  “Help me,” I cried to deaf ears.

  The fathers couldn’t have cared less about my horrendous labor—a young body trying to deliver another human while so malnourished it was a sin.

  In all my life, I had never watched TV or read an adult book of any kind. Therefore, I had no knowledge of childbirth. That’s why, my stomach twisting as if the infant trying to be born was wielding many blades, I was filled with terror. “Help me,” I cried out again, my voice echoing against solitary walls.

  Watching blood seeping toward the drain, I was sure I wouldn’t survive. My body forced me to bare down, and I believed my end had come, like a character from a book Mother once read to me.

  When an infant finally broke free from between my thighs, my body found instant relief. He slipped toward the drain as I sunk back against the cold tub, trying to regain awareness. My mind spun as my body attempted to adjust to no longer housing another human, although I didn’t understand that at the time. The lightheaded sensation was only cleared by a cry I had never heard before.

  I knew little of mothering, except for the care my own mother gave me. How was
I supposed to know how to treat an infant when never having seen one before? Even though my education was grossly limited, and I was clueless about how babies were born, common sense had me quickly realizing I was staring at a baby.

  My mother had spoken of instincts and how important it was that I followed them.

  So, that’s what I did.

  My heart, my gut, and my aching arms insisted I pick up the newborn and offer it warmth, in an embrace only a mother could offer.

  “Scarlett,” my mother’s voice echoed in my mind. “Would you please start the water?”

  Holding my baby close, I leaned forward and ran the water until it was warm, then cupped the cleansing fluid in my palm. My plastic cup had broken long ago. I missed it dearly. Gently, I dripped the water over my son, who would come to be named… Seth.

  Chapter Two

  The Mother One

  After the birth, and because I had gone so quiet, a father checked on us. He peeked in the tub. “A boy? Huh. That’s better than what your mother gave us.”

  Wet, cold, bleeding, and exhausted, I peered up at the man who found what ‘my mother gave him’ to be a special treat for his body to enjoy as he pleased. I think it was the first time I felt anger toward a father.

  He lifted a brow in warning. “Scar, you want me to stick that bastard in the toilet and flush?”

  Seth was so tiny, I assumed it was possible. My arms tightened around the infant as I quickly began to understand my mother’s actions. She hadn’t been weak not fighting my fathers. She had been strong by trying to protect me.

  He sneered, “Exactly,” then started walking away.

  “Wait,” I dared to call out because I was already caring and fearful for my son’s well-being. “What do I feed him?”

  “That shit leaking out of your tits.”

  Seth—my premature baby—and I had beautifully tender moments between a son and mother. In between those moments were trials and errors, but he made them all worthwhile. I endlessly gave and gave to him all I could. Kisses and hugs…

  I drank plenty of water from the faucet so I could keep producing milk. It had barely been enough for me to survive. Now, only receiving food once a day was even worse. I rapidly lost weight from nursing him, but kept giving because he made my heart so full.

  I was no longer alone.

  Not familiar with diapers, I didn’t think to ask for any. Not that the fathers would have obliged. With my clean menstrual washcloths, I did my best to create a place for Seth to soil.

  Instead of appreciating their son, or treasuring him as I did, the fathers prevented more children. I was put on birth control as soon as I was finished bleeding from giving birth. I also received a couple of baby garments that took a long time for Seth to grow into, due to his concerning size. Razors were provided to me to ‘clean up’ the hole that I ‘ruined’ with my son.

  As my fathers had done to my mother, they used Seth against me. Not that I ever fought them, but they could get me to do anything they wanted if I could keep my child. They seemed to feed off my desperation to not lose the only being I had in my world.

  By the age of approximately thirteen—my body was fully developing—and no fathers held back on their sexual needs. At that time, I was only spared dealing with them all at once. Having them all at once would not have been viewed, by me, as a horrendous circumstance. Again, it was all I knew—what I had witnessed my mother undergo.

  Because she somehow successively kept me from becoming damaged with all I had seen and had me believe there was no foul play, I believed Seth would grow up to be just like me. Unmarked. After all, he was only being exposed to what I had seen for years—horrors I didn’t recognize as horrors.

  What I had no way of comprehending, being raised in such an environment, was all my mother’s prior experiences before she had been abducted. How her knowledge influenced her actions and made her capable of controlling my perception of the rapes taking place in plain sight. She had once been a woman living in a world I had never known; therefore, she had tools I had yet to possess or know.

  Besides what brought my body physical pain, I wasn’t aware of the effects of seeing a significant amount of abuse or how it could be detrimental to one’s mental well-being. I was blind to how I had already been affected, thinking this way was a clear sign of my damaged perception.

  Having no knowledge of how my son would be affected if the man who biologically fathered me, also biologically spawned him, was also a hindrance. Or how much damage was caused to Seth by me being so malnourished during my whole pregnancy. Not to mention the premature birth with no medical assistance.

  After one of my fathers was done having sex with me, he noticed Seth sitting on the dirty carpet. Getting dressed, he lifted his chin. “Why does he do that?”

  Seth, now a year old, often sat on the floor with the tip of his finger drawing a continuous circle around himself. The process would entertain him for hours on end.

  Concerned by the question, I sat up on the bed. “Do all kids not do this?”

  His upper lip snarled. “It sure don’t look right.” He eyed me. “Did you do something to him?”

  Appalled, I gasped, clueless to any harm I may have caused. “I don’t know. Did I?”

  “Damn, you’re dumb as hell.” Blowing off any concern he should’ve had, he shrugged. “Maybe he wants a train set or something.”

  Now, my eyes widened for a different reason. I had never seen a train set in real life.

  That father had been correct about our son. Seth was different from average children. He was walking by seven months and potty trained by eleven. He didn’t talk. He didn’t call me Mama like the children in books my mother had read to me.

  Without the true experience of being a mother or witnessing more mothers in action, it was too late by the time I realized something was wrong with my child, although there was nothing I could’ve done to change the outcome.

  It was the way Seth would sit so still, watching, staring, as if studying everything going on around him. I would try to hold the toddler in my lap and read to him, like my mother so affectionately did to me, but he would crawl out of my lap to sit on the floor and go back to drawing circles around where he sat with his finger.

  How the fathers had not lost interest in my body was bewildering to me, but the older I got, the more their interest grew. They didn’t seem to ‘like’ me much but didn’t carry the same hatred they carried for my mother. They even made comments on my beauty and body, how my hair was black as night, my skin as light as snow, and my flared lips red like a ruby.

  Internally, I smiled, proud to look like my mother.

  In my bedroom, I would tell my little boy to go play with his train set as I was surrounded by all my fathers. I believed I was now seventeen and learning a little of what my mother had tolerated. Several of my fathers’ organs would penetrate me at once. My mouth. My vagina. My anus. The rest would fondle me or themselves.

  Sadly, and somewhat pathetically, I was thankful to not be in need of muffling cries as my mother did. When they ganged up on me like they used to her, it wasn’t quite as brutal, hostile. Or maybe, because I knew no better and had been undergoing rapes for over a decade, years longer than what she had suffered, I didn’t see the destruction being done to my body or spirit.

  I guess the ‘damaged’ find encouraging thoughts wherever they can.

  Tears would eventually be mine, though, in a very unexpected form.

  Asleep in bed one night about a year later, I woke to a very unfamiliar touch. To this day, I still can’t shake what I saw. Seth was sitting between my legs, touching my vagina with his toy train.

  I may have not known much due to the way I was raised. I may have become accustomed to the atrocity of being forced to have sex with my fathers, but my son touching me in that manner rocked me to my core. The revulsion in my heart and soul was as powerful as an erupting volcano, icing over in only one second.

  I can’t recall racing from the
bed. I can’t recall how I ended up sitting in a corner on the floor, staring at the little boy who still sat on the bed, watching me. His expression was… void.

  If my mother wanted me to protect myself against the fathers touching me like that, what would she have thought of my son? Would she want him to be stabbed, too?

  I hadn’t even realized I had wailed out in horror until the bedroom door opened and a father demanded, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “I…” I pointed to my son, who now felt like an unknown danger. “He…”

  “Speak!”

  “He touched me!”

  “So?”

  I pointed to between my thighs.

  “No shit?” My father actually smiled, gazing back at the child as if the boy was finally becoming something he could be proud of.

  To my dismay, he left, only to return with the rest of my fathers. They all circled, curious as to what was happening.

  The father that discovered me earlier in the corner, where I was still, now stood pointing. “Our Seth here felt up his mom.”

  Sensing impending danger, I pulled my legs close to my chest.

  “What?” squawked a father. “He’s like, what, five?”

  “Hey! Maybe he’s my kid, after all!”

  “I’ve been fucking her for years longer than you. He’s totally my kid.”

  How this was something to be celebrated is another facet I may never understand, but celebrate they did.

  After they had proof.

  Besides when I had been seven, I had never felt so violated as I did while being held down by them all. I roared, spit like an animal, and fought to be set free, but my weak and malnourished body was no challenge for seven men.

  Cemented to the ground by fourteen brutal hands, my legs were held apart.

  A father called out, “Hey, Seth, come show us what you like to do with your train.”