After The Flesh

by Colin Gallant

  John walked in and first saw the image frozen on the television. He would have felt fear and rage. Certainly, he felt violated. Next, he saw his son, naked on his knees, masturbating furiously with his head buried between the girl’s thighs.

  Carrie saw John and froze. Two things happened then. Carrie screamed and absurdly tried to close her legs. For the moment she forgot that Freddy’s head was in the way. Second, an instant after Carrie screamed, Freddy came. Only then did he realize they had been discovered.

  John stormed into the room. Three long strides took him to the television. He shut off the power and turned on the kids. Freddy managed to get his shirt over his head in time for it to be grabbed in his father’s outstretched fist. Poly-cotton blend tore with a dry crackle.

  Freddy choked, gargling deep in his throat as he was pulled back off his feet. John’s eyes never left Carrie and her hurriedly closing legs. A viscous smile covered his face and for a moment he looked about ready to kneel down in his son’s place. Watch now, boy – I’ll show you how it’s done.

  “Get dressed, darling,” he told her. John watched her intently until her fly was done up. He turned to his son, still laid out in the mile-deep shag, pants around his ankles and his spent erection rapidly shriveling into nothing. “Get up,” he grumbled. He was still holding a scrap of Freddy’s torn shirt in one clenched fist. “Show your girlfriend to the door and come up to your room. We need to talk.” The note of scorn he placed on that one word told Freddy he could have said ‘slut’ or ‘whore’ just as easily. Freddy hiked his pants up but left his ruined shirt untucked. He fixed his father with a flat stare and nodded as Carrie slipped around him as if he were a slavering dog at the end if its chain. Freddy took her hand. “Yeah, Dad,” he agreed, “we do need to talk.”

  Inside Freddy was scared. He was more scared that he could ever recall being. This only increased his anger. In fact, he could not remember a single instance of ever being truly terrified. He wasn’t now but what he felt made him certain he never wanted to experience anything greater. Even when he lay in bed at night, listening to his parents fighting, his mother crying and John yelling, the dull slaps of his fists striking her, he was never afraid. He was only annoyed. He was not annoyed because his father was hitting her or even that they were fighting at all. He was annoyed because they were fighting while he was trying to sleep.

  In a way he did blame his mother – which is why I believe he never rose to her defense. If she would not do anything to discourage John’s abuse Freddy did not feel he needed to either. Freddy had never confronted his parents before but now he felt it was time to air out a few issues.

  Freddy let Carrie out the back door into the cooling evening air. She turned to him about to speak but he silenced her with a shake of his head. Freddy smiled faintly and kissed her. Without a word he closed the door on her. He paused in the kitchen and listened to his father’s footfalls mount the stairs. John paused, murmuring something to Maggie. Her Singer abruptly stopped. Freddy heard a door open and close. The sewing machine started up again as if the only thing amiss was a run-down bobbin. He rolled his shoulders and took a deep, slow breath.

  The fear was gone, replaced with something far more invigorating. Freddy had never heard the term ‘fight or flight response’ but if he had he would know it immediately. His heart pumped heavy, slow beats, pushing his seemingly electrified blood through weightless limbs. Around him the kitchen was cast in the stark contrast of light and deep shadow of the evening sun slanting in through the windows. He saw everything in startling clarity. His veins were filled with a cold, pure energy on tap for him to use. Flight was not an option.

  As Freddy mounted the stairs and passed his mother’s opened door, she glanced up from her sewing but the plunge and rise of the needle did not slow. Her expression was unaffected by fear, anger or even concern. It was vacant and unaffected by anything. Maggie was an automaton, only glancing up at motion in her field of view. He ignored her and kept walking. His hand fell on his own door knob and his bedroom door swung open. John’s shadow-cast form, like the hulking silhouette of a cathedral gargoyle, hunched just outside the sphere of light cast by Freddy’s desk lamp.

  Freddy was prepared. He knew what to say and what he needed to do. He needed to put John in his place, to exert some level of control over his father. I guess deep down he knew that was why his mother was treated so badly – she never attempted to be in control. He shut the door and opened his mouth to begin but got no further. His father moved far more quickly than he would have guessed. Freddy managed only a surprised squawk before his throat closed up and the breath was hammered from his lungs.

  In the almost fifteen years of his son’s life John had never once raised a hand to him, save for the required parental duties of the occasional spanking during his formative years. He made up for it for a solid twenty minutes.

  Freddy tasted blood mingling in his mouth with the fading tang of his first cunnilingus. His lungs burned and his body ached. It was nothing like it would in the morning. By dawn his left eye would be completely closed. Sometime during the night, he would spit a tooth into his pillow. But he took his beating without a whimper or a tear. He raised hardly a defense for himself and was consequently tossed around the room like a rag doll in the mouth of a pit-bull. When John was finished, more frustrated than satisfied, Freddy looked up from where he lay and smiled a bloody grin.

  “I take it you don’t approve of my company,” he managed although it hurt to talk. At that moment it hurt to even breathe.

  John cursed nearly in tears himself and sank to his knees. “Damnit, boy!” He hissed. “Don’t you get it? You could go to jail for that. She’s a minor and it don’t matter that you are too!”

  “What do you care?” Freddy spat, literally. A gob of bloody phlegm landed on John’s pant leg. He forced himself to stand and fought not to sway. His breath was returning but his voice was still strained and wheezy. “You got an eyeful. I saw you looking.” He wiped the blood from his lip with his shirt tail. “A sweet piece isn’t she, dad? You’d be right in there with me!”

  John’s jaw clenched. An angry vein began to pulse in his forehead. “Freddy, don’t make me wail on you some more. I will. I swear it!”

  “Don’t make you?” Freddy laughed. “Just like mom makes you? Fuck off, Dad.” His fear was entirely gone. No matter how much more he got he was positive his body couldn’t hurt any more than it did right then. Besides, the pain was not bad. In fact, it was good. The pain made him feel alive. More importantly he needed to regain the upper hand. His strategy had been changed somewhat. “Go on,” he challenged, “hit me again.” Freddy closed his eyes. He heard his father’s knee pop as he stood. He saw in his mind John’s fist coiling. A knuckle cracked under tension.

  He prepared himself for the first blow. Freddy raised his hands, putting them behind his head. He forced his face to remain calm, dispassionate, untroubled. “Before you hit me, dad, I want you to know something: This’ll be the last chance you get. I’m not like mom. If you’re going to hit me, you better kill me.” Freddy knew he was playing with fire but sometimes in order to save the forest you had to burn it down. “You gotta sleep sometime.”

  He heard John snarl. “You little bastard. I’ll-”

  “How’s Maybelline, dad,” Freddy cut him off, “how’s she runnin’?” Somehow, he knew this thinly-veiled threat would work. It did.

  John cursed softly and his fist stalled. His footsteps stormed out of the room and down the hall. The staircase shook with his descent. Freddy kept his eyes closed until he heard the front door slam shut. Outside the Impala cranked over, catching immediately as if sensing John’s mood. The engine gunned once, twice, then shrieked to life as John tore away with a howl of boiling rubber.

  Somewhere nearby a dog started barking.

  “Honey?” His mother’s tentative voice carried down the hall. “Are you okay?”

  Freddy ignored her. He was not sure at what point during his bea
ting she had stopped sewing. He seemed to recall hearing her machine even as John’s fists struck him. Once more he used his shirt to wipe the blood from his nose and mouth. Cautiously he touched the swelling around his eye and quickly drew his fingers away. His whole body hurt but he didn’t care. In a strange way he had won.

  Maggie’s approaching footsteps were nothing after John’s departure. “Honey?” Her voice was hesitant but carried more emotion than he could recall hearing from her in a long time. She did not come into the room but stood framed in the doorway as though afraid to draw any closer. “Freddy?”

  “I’m fine Mom,” he told her. He touched his nose. The bleeding had stopped.

  “Honey, please,” she did come in then, seeking to embrace him.

  “I said I’m fine!” He brushed her off and stepped away. There was no satisfaction from his small victory. He felt only emptiness and disappointment that John had surrendered so easily.

  “You shouldn’t antagonize him, Honey,” Maggie cooed in soothing tones. “It’s better if you don’t.”

  “Mom,” Freddy clenched his jaw. He could feel the loose tooth squirming around in its socket and a fresh spike of pain shot through his skull. He resisted the overwhelming urge to hit her, to lash out and share with her some small portion of the pain he felt. “Why don’t you fight back? He beats you until his hands are too sore to keep going. Yet you do nothing. Fucking nothing! Why don’t you scream at him, yell at him, fight back – do something!”

  “I don’t want to make him angry,” Maggie replied, unfazed by his outburst. “It’s my fault when he’s upset anyway.”

  “Is it your fault he’s an asshole?” Freddy countered evenly. His rage was a molten ball in his chest, ready to burst. He was angry at his father, angry at his mother and bitterly disappointed that he and Carrie had been interrupted. His anger and frustration heaped together with the unsatisfying victory. The fuse was set, the match struck. For a moment there was the tangible sensation of stepping outside himself.

  “Honey,” Maggie cooed again.

  “I’m not a coward!” He screamed. “I’m not like you!”

  Maggie remained as unaffected as a statue. She came close again and tried to collect him in her arms.

  Freddy smelled gin on her breath and cigarettes on her clothes but was only repulsed by her calm. “Shut up!” He spat. A fine mist of blood-flecked saliva rained on her cheeks and forehead but she didn’t flinch. She didn’t even blink. “Get away from me!”

  He flung his mother aside, momentarily startled at how light she was, and fled. He just ran. He ran from his room and from his mother. He ran from the house and the lingering stink of tire smoke by the curb. He ran from everything and did not pause to consider where he was going. Freddy ran until his abused lungs all but bled.

  He ran down Cornwall Road and turned onto Maple Avenue, passing a block from Carrie’s house and disappearing from their neighborhood. He fled through the outskirts of the town center, through the commercial district and its wholesale stores catering to contractors and tradesmen. Freddy ran through streets where the houses grew run-down and the cars parked by the curbs were occasionally resting on blocks.

  He fled until his legs surrendered. Freddy stumbled and sprawled full out, scraping his chin and palms on loose gravel and broken asphalt. Fresh pain brought him around and he sat up, rubbing his charley horses and looking left and right. Fear flashed up in him as he came to realize he had no idea where he was.

  The sun was only an ugly smear of red and gold over the rooftops to the west. Around him the shadows were deepening, filling with the steel-blue non-light of dusk. He was alone in a dilapidated alley, silent save for the rustle of leaves in the trees, chirping of birds and crickets harping away in the long grass growing up against unpainted fences. Somewhere a mother was calling her children in from play.

  Freddy sucked cool, evening air in great gulps through his raw throat and lay on his back in the filthy alley. The strain of his beating and his heedless flight announced itself throughout his body and for a time he came close to dozing. He was empty. Fatigue drained from him all emotion save the lingering dissatisfaction he felt.

  He should have been happy – he should have been jubilant – after his father stormed out, likely to get drunk at Dyson’s before returning home to beat his wife until he passed out. Instead Freddy was angry at himself for letting it happen at all. He tried blaming Carrie but recalling the sensations of her hands and lips on him it was worth every bruise and ache he now felt. Still his frustration remained. Like a gaping wound, he could not staunch it.

  How long he lay there, his breath softening, the pain in his chest subsiding, Freddy did not know – only that when he heard a clatter of loose pebbles behind him barely a sliver of light remained in the sky. The brightest stars were just becoming visible and the urine-yellow glow of a street light at the alley’s mouth held back that small part of the night. Freddy turned, rolling first to his side, then rising to his knees. He expected to see his mother but hoped to see his father. Instead a small mongrel stray wandered into view. It whimpered once as it caught his scent and held back.

  The animal was pitiful sight. Its narrow snout was dirty and scarred, its thin body riddled with knuckles of bone barely hidden beneath a ragged coat of no discernible color. Half an ear was missing. At some point it had lost its tail. A docked knob, only a hand’s breadth remained.

  Freddy smiled at it, clucking his tongue. Sitting back on his haunches he patted his hands on his knees, beckoning it to come. The dog regarded him warily, a growl buried deep in its narrow chest. Freddy beckoned it again.

  “Here boy,” he called softly. “C’mon. I’m not gonna hurt you.” Freddy patted his knees again and waited.

  The dog growled once more before quitting. It looked about ready to run. Finally, lonely and half-starved, it ventured forward. Its discolored tongue lolled out as it ambled over.

  “Good boy,” Freddy soothed the dog. He was instantly reminded of his mother’s tone of voice as she tried to placate him not long before.

  The dog sniffed his fingers, retreated and advanced once more, eventually coming close enough for Freddy to touch it. He scratched its ears and patted its flanks. Freddy let the dog lick his hands, cleansing the scratches on them. Ignoring the fetid reek of its matted fur, seemingly reminiscent of gin and cigarettes, he gathered the small animal in his arms.

  “That’s a good boy,” he told the dog.

  The dog panted and corked its head around to lick his chin.

  Freddy smiled and squeezed it in a tight embrace. The dog whimpered and tried to pull free. Instead of letting go, he held on more firmly. “Shhh,” he soothed and found his strength both cool and boundless. His smile didn’t falter for a moment, nor did his gentle words. Not even when its neck broke.

  Ch2. Awakening

  Awakening

  I never had control over Freddy back then and I will never claim to have ever had control. But there was a time in our youth when I could at least influence him. I had his ear but not firmly and never for long. I was a passenger on his journey. I had no life of my own – he saw to that. Freddy was my whole existence. He did only dwell in the corners of his little world. Those corners surrounded mine. The only way out was through him and I have always been afraid of the dark – not because of what may be hiding there but because of what was hiding there.

  Freddy had an epiphany that June evening back in 1991 – the seventeenth of June to be precise. He called it an epiphany but I would sooner say the last – or one of the last – switches fell. He did not ‘snap’ exactly but he did seem to grow more aware of what or who he really was – what he thought he was.

  I often wondered if Freddy Cartwright was nothing more than a concoction of my darkest nightmares. I think I could live with myself if he was, if it was only me affected by his darkness. My life has been little better than a nightmare either way but at least if it was just me it would not be so bad. As a child he could have been
. But now? No. I cannot delude myself any longer. He is just as real as the setting sun. Too many people have suffered for this to be my own private hell.

  But I get ahead of myself.

  -

  The sound of bones cracking was like glass shattering in the darkness, a concussive force that reverberated deep into his being. The senses spring to life. The mind races, the heart surges. Things long hidden become clear. An eye opened. Freddy’s eye. A door in the darkness of his mind that had been padlocked his whole life sprang open. It would be closed to him no longer. He could finally see. He knew who he was.

  Freddy Cartwright was truly born on that early summer evening, the crickets and birds chirping around him, mothers calling to their children from the safety of distant porch lights as if sensing his presence. From the east, the whip-note crack of bat on ball, cheering crowds, the joyful shriek of a young girl carefree at play. These sounds came to him like woodsmoke on a complacent night breeze. Streetlights flickered on across town. To the south, Dale Thorlakson, a drop-out working at Clausson’s, sped off a light, his Barracuda’s glass-pack mufflers flatulating across five octaves before second gear dropped the tune back into the basement again.

  Freddy heard everything. The world flowed around him and through him at the same time, like watching replays from multiple angles. Time seemed to slow so that every moment was encapsulated as its own event. Ripples cascading into ripples, cascading … He could have strolled through a market and caught every word, every sound and every smell in perfect clarity. In his alley even the creak of grass blades bending in the wind became significant and audible. He could see it all. He could hear it. More importantly he could feel it. That night he was more than reborn. He became!

  The power over life is a divine thing and yet it is a mortal thing as well. Although it is opened to all of us few of us ever have the will or the desire to possess it. Freddy discovered he could take life from the pitiful creatures around him with the undaunted ease of a thief in the night. But he was not a thief – he did not consider himself a thief. He was something far more noble than that. He was an avenger. He was the equalizer and the destroyer. Freddy could feel the power of this gift flooding into him, filling his veins with a rush far greater than adrenaline alone. He felt more than alive. He felt something beyond his ability to relate with mere words. He was unraveled, spread across the world like a spiderweb, tingling and shivering with every minute input. It was surreal. It was orgasmic. He was, what he was. And it was grand.