Death

by C. M. Radcliff

  She takes her opportunity and digs in deep. “Why does it continue to haunt you? Where does all of the guilt come from?”

  I chuckle, lightly shaking my head at her. “Are you a therapist or a reporter?”

  Her face softens as she smiles. “If you must know, I minored in psychology.” She pauses as her smile falters and her face becomes serious. “More importantly, I want people to hear the reality of your story, that underneath it all, behind the tragic event, there’s a remorseful human being that was a victim himself.”

  Leaning forward, I rest my elbows on the table, waiting for her to flinch, but she doesn’t react.

  “One of the biggest debates is nature vs. nurture, especially in cases such as this. With you, I believe that nurture is the sole reason that got you here,” she says, gesturing around the room. “You weren’t born a monster, you were turned into one, you were a product of your environment.”

  Am I that transparent? Everything she says is completely true.

  She sees the humanity beneath the monster that we both know I am.

  “I’m still to blame for the terrible things that I’ve done,” I remind her with pure honesty.

  Christine nods in agreement. “You’re right. You could have gone a different route, but violence was all you had ever known. It’s not uncommon for the cycle to continue.”

  Taking a deep breath, I shake my head, in disappointment and disagreement. “Violence wasn’t all I had ever known. My grandma was never violent, and I spent a lot of time with her. She treated me with kindness, with love and respect. I became what she tried to stop me from becoming.”

  My eyes drop down to my clammy hands as I lace my fingers together. “I failed her,” I whisper, admitting it out loud for the first time.

  “Tell me more about her,” Christine replies gently. “She sounds like she was a wonderful woman and like she was more of a parent to you.”

  I look up at her, feeling a smile playing on my lips. “She was the best person I’d ever known.”

  Closing my eyes, I see her face as clear as day like she’s standing right in front of me. She smiles and nods, telling me it’s okay. I can share her with the rest of the world now.

  chapter eight

  PAST

  The summer had passed quicker than I wanted it to, and it was now my first day of junior high. We hadn’t lived in the city for long, so I didn’t get the chance to make any friends before school started.

  We lived close enough to the school, so I had to walk. Most kids that lived in the city walked, even if it were a shit load of blocks away. The school was loud and crowded, it was like being in a zoo, full of uncaged animals.

  After getting my schedule from the office, I got lost three times before my first class. I had no idea where anything was and no guidance from anyone so I was late to every class. None of the teachers seemed to care, if they even noticed.

  The other kids would give me dirty looks and whisper and stare. For the first couple of weeks, they ignored me for the most part and left me alone.

  And then they noticed me.

  At first it started off with the occasional bump of a shoulder or a shove into the lockers. They had an endless list of names for me, which they made sure everyone knew. Having red hair made me an easy target for name calling and I stuck out like a sore thumb.

  Eventually they became more aggressive and volatile toward me. They bullied me in ways that I had never imagined. I had no friends there, only enemies. I went to school each day never knowing what to expect.

  The faculty at the school wrote it off as nothing and didn’t do anything about it. There were times when I was bullied that I was blamed for it, even when I didn’t lift a finger or open my mouth. They knew what these students and their people were capable of.

  My parents were made aware of it all. Sometimes they ignored it, like it never happened. Sometimes they gave it to me worse. I was constantly the problem, I was the one asking for it and I had to be punished for it because I clearly wasn’t learning my lesson.

  I preferred the bullying at school over the abuse at home.

  My grandma knew about everything going on and she tried her hardest to get me out of there. She tried to convince my parents to let me live with her and go to a different school. For whatever sick reason, they wouldn’t allow it. They didn’t want me at home, but they didn’t want me to have a good life anywhere else.

  I was only allowed at her house on the weekends. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. She became my safe haven, her home was my sanctuary. She showed me the good in life, the love and affection I would never see at home.

  My parents progressively got worse and were fighting more than ever. Every lamp in the house was broken and there were holes in the walls of almost every room. Cabinet doors were ripped off, doors were kicked in and knocked off their hinges. Eventually, we didn’t have a single plate or cup in the house that hadn’t been shattered.

  I became even more of a target and Carson faded into the background. They typically forgot about him, unless they were forced to interact with him. He wasn’t allowed at my grandma’s for some reason and every time I came home, he was filthy and starving.

  When Carson was born, I was too young to understand the extent of his medical problems. He had different nurses for a few years until they got tired of our home and refused to return.

  Carson had a cleft palate, so he had a feeding tube that was only supposed to be in place until it was fixed. He never had the surgery to close his palate. After the nurses left, I took care of his feedings and became his caregiver when I was home.

  He couldn’t talk, but we had our own way of communicating and understanding. When shit got crazy and I told him to hide, he knew to go in our closet or to hide under our beds. He had cognitive and developmental delays, but he understood more than he was given credit for.

  My grandma tried to convince my parents to let him come to her house with me, but they refused. All she wanted to do was take care of him like she was me and she barely even got to know him, thanks to my parents.

  She knew about what was going on in the house, the drugs, the drinking, the abuse. Her last-ditch attempt was to call Child Protective Services. She knew the shit storm she could create by doing so. She knew that we would most likely be thrown into the system and into foster care, but she had every intention of having them place us in her care.

  She called and started a shit storm. Only it wasn’t the shit storm we were anticipating.

  It was the middle of my first year at this new school, right after Christmas break when it happened. She was hesitant to leave me with them, but she knew that I needed to return to school.

  “Curtis, I can turn this car around and we can go back home, to my house where you belong,” my grandma said as she pulled up in front of my house, putting the car in park.

  Every light was on inside the house, the broken blinds were still closed, but you could see my parents’ shadows.

  “It’s okay, Grandma,” I assured her as I watched their figures moving in the windows. My little brother was trapped in there with those monsters and I couldn’t just leave him there.

  I could see the turmoil in my grandma’s eyes as she reluctantly let me slip out of the car out into the dark, cold night. I could hear their voices echoing from the house as soon as I closed the door. The soles of my new sneakers padded softly on the broken sidewalk as I walked up to the front stoop.

  Hearing them from the outside made it that much harder to open the door, but I knew Carson was in there and I couldn’t leave him in there alone. I took a deep breath and stepped back into the burning flames of hell.

  “I know it was you, Jack! Don’t you fucking lie to me!” my mother screamed from upstairs. I walked into the house. I had to duck to dodge the arms full of clothing and shoes that were being thrown over the railing from the second floor.

  I paused for a second as the house fell silent before my father began to laugh. “Please tel
l me why the fuck I would call CPS, Candy?”

  Shit. Someone called Child Protective Services.

  The screaming continued and I hurried into the living room, relieved when I found Carson sitting on the couch with a coloring book. He sat unfazed, conditioned and oblivious to the fighting that was consuming his surroundings.

  The fighting wasn’t abnormal. The circumstances that it involved was. And I knew deep down who had finally pulled the trigger on getting Carson and me out of that house.

  I sat with Carson through the night as the screaming continued, as they pointed their fingers at one another with no idea who made the call.

  When CPS showed, my parents ended up being home and had to take a drug test. Her piss was dirty, but my dad’s was somehow clean. That had all fingers pointing in his direction. He hated my mom and because she tested positive for numerous drugs, she was automatically removed from our house.

  That night she left and went to live with her parents and our father drank himself into a stupor, which was normal. I bathed Carson in our mildew-ridden bathtub and did his nightly care before getting him into bed.

  I waited until the house was finally quiet for the night and called my grandma on the prepaid cell phone she had bought for me months ago. There was a hole in the one wall of my closet that no one ever repaired. I kept my phone in there, wrapped in a handkerchief.

  “Curtis, is everything okay?” she asked as soon as she answered.

  “They made her leave,” I whispered into the phone, carefully keeping my voice as quiet as possible.

  “So, you and Carson are there with your dad then?” she declared. “Okay, good. Without Candy there, things should get better.”

  She sounded like she truly believed everything she was telling me. I don’t know who she was trying to convince more, me or her, but in the end, her efforts would fall short and life would prove her wrong once again.

  Life didn’t change with our mother getting kicked out because she was never truly gone. On paper, she wasn’t living with us. On paper, they had gotten divorced. But paper is frail, it’s brittle, it holds no bearings against any element. Like earth, air, water, and fire, she was always there, a constant threat to the world around her.

  chapter nine

  PAST

  Life went back to normal after my mother was removed from the house. She would come and go as she pleased with a bottle of vodka glued to her hand. The fighting only escalated because now my father could kick her out of the house or throw calling the cops in her face or she could just up and leave and there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do or say about it.

  Carson was still forgotten about and I steadily remained their personal punching bag. As time passed, I grew, sprouting up like a weed and it wasn’t long before I was standing eye to eye with my father.

  Height had no effect on him, just as it had none on me. I continued to take the beatings because it was what I deserved. It was the only thing I had earned from him. Any type of attention he gave me made me feel like I was worth something, even when I was lying in the fetal position, coughing up blood.

  I still got to see my grandma, but not nearly as much. My mother began to notice the nice clothes Carson and I would be wearing or the bags of food she would send me home with. Candy was quick to be in my father’s ear, making accusations and swaying his mind.

  They started to keep her from me.

  The only person who truly cared for me was being used against me. I was caught in a vicious game of tug-o-war between going with my grandma and staying with Carson.

  Carson would win; he always had to. He was helpless and I was the only person he had to make sure he was okay. He didn’t have the mental capacity to help himself. I couldn’t fault him for that, but there was always a part of me that would be envious and resent him for that.

  Sometimes, ignorance truly is bliss. That was one thing from this shithole life that he was blessed with.

  School continued in a similar fashion, even after I wasn’t the new kid there anymore and I was well into my last year of junior high. The kids were vicious, and I somehow constantly remained their main target.

  There were three guys in particular that constantly fucked with me and always got away with it. Lamar, Andre, and Gat. They were stealthy and careful to make sure they were never caught. The other kids were afraid of them, so no one ever spoke up or jumped to my defense… not that they would anyway.

  I had no friends; my corner was vacant, filled with only cobwebs and dust.

  One afternoon on my way home from school was when it first happened outside of the brick walls. My house was only a few blocks away, so I walked every day. It was a warm spring afternoon; the streets were busy, and the city was buzzing. That day, I decided to take a shortcut and dodge the dealers and the panhandlers occupying every corner.

  I turned the corner and started walking down the empty alley that cut over to my street. I was about halfway through when I heard the whistling and hooting and hollering. We had stickup kids lurking around, but I had nothing for them to take. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t being followed when I ran directly into another body.

  I stumbled backward as I was shoved back in the opposite direction.

  “Watch where you’re goin’, fuckin’ fire crotch,” Andre spat at me.

  I quickly regained my balance and found myself face to face with one of my biggest enemies. He was standing in front of me, with a smirk on his face, cracking his knuckles.

  “There he is.” Gat’s voice and Lamar’s laughter came from behind me. “Exactly who we were lookin’ for.”

  Unsure of who I’d rather have my back facing, I turned my back on Andre and then it all happened so fast. Something black in Gat’s hand flashed in front of my eyes as he whipped me across the face. The hard object hit the side of my head and the blow to my skull knocked me down onto the cracked pavement.

  As I hit the ground, my vision blurred, and dizziness filled my head. I felt the warm liquid trickling down the side of my face before I felt it with my hand. My eyes traveled upward to find Gat smiling down at me with a pistol in his hand.

  They didn’t call him Gat for nothin’.

  I was taken aback, completely thrown off and surprised, left frozen in place, bleeding on the ground. The gun didn’t surprise me because Gat was always strapped, but I didn’t expect them. Not like this, not today.

  “Get the fuck up, pussy,” Gat barked at me as his minions crowded around, laughing loudly.

  Andre kicked a piece of gravel at me. “He’s a fuckin’ bitch,” he chuckled. “He’s not gonna do shit.”

  Rubbing my face, I stared at the three of them, looking down at me like a piece of shit on the bottom of their shoes. Shifting my weight, the loose pieces of pavement dug into the scrapes on my arms and legs from my fall. I slowly climbed to my feet and just as I was about to stand up straight, Lamar drove his foot into my stomach.

  Clutching my abdomen, I fell to my knees, groaning and coughing loudly. Hunched over, staring at the ground, Gat’s black Jordans were suddenly directly in front of my face.

  “I said, get the fuck up,” he commanded, tapping the butt of his gun with every word on the back of my head.

  I didn’t move, I stayed on my knees staring at the ground, wishing they would just leave and let me be.

  “Fuck this,” Gat grumbled and in one swift movement, he pushed me over onto my side with his foot. With my arms wrapped around my stomach, I didn’t have a chance to reach out to support myself or break my fall. I hit the ground, my head bouncing off the pavement.

  My vision went black for a moment as my brain rattled around within my skull. It wasn’t long before I was attacked again and they began kicking the shit out of me. Their feet hit every inch of my body from head to toe. I tried to curl into the fetal position, using my hands to cover my head and my face. Bruises were forming as they delivered each blow, digging the toes of their shoes into my bones.

  At one point, I
opened my eyes, finding Gat standing back, watching with a grin as his boys were fucking me up. Andre and Lamar were doing his dirty work for him.

  Eventually, the world around me went out of focus and reality became a memory as I drifted in and out of consciousness. I could hear their voices and feel the blows stop, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  I opened my eyes just as Gat climbed on top of me, pointing his gun directly between my eyes.

  “You snitch and you’ll be pushin’ up fuckin’ flowers, you feel me?” he growled, pushing the barrel into my skin.

  “Why not finish this now?” I choked out, coughing up blood.

  Gat’s face was out of focus, but I could still see his bright white teeth shining as he grinned at me. “Because this is fuckin’ fun for me.”

  I stared up at him, still unable to focus and barely following a word he spoke.

  “Remember, some stickup kids tried to rob you and beat your ass instead,” he says with a wink and cocks back his arm, smashing the butt of his gun into my head.

  It was well into the evening when I finally woke up and could get up off the ground. Getting home took much longer than normal, as I hobbled the entire way, constantly looking over my shoulder.

  When I got home, I don’t know why I expected anyone to care. It’s not like they ever did before.

  Like every other night, Carson was on the couch with his coloring book, my father was passed out, drunk in the recliner and my mother was staring bug-eyed at the T.V. watching fucking Charmed. Ignoring them, I hobbled up the stairs and into the bathroom. My face was riddled with black and blue marks, scuffs, and small cuts.

  “What the fuck are you doin’ in here?” my mother scoffed, shoving the door open. My eyes followed her as she walked over to the toilet, pulled down her pants and sat down. She caught my stare, narrowing her eyes at me. “Ya like watchin’ your momma take her pants off, don’t ya?”