Darkroom Saga Omnibus 2

by Poppet

  Back when I hit 12 and was tall enough to lie about my age and get work as a packer at the store, I made the terrible mistake of spending my hard earned money on food. I can cook eggs, so would splurge on eggs and bacon, thinking if we ate protein we wouldn’t get hungry so fast. I’m growing, I fucking need the protein, and my bastard father sure as fuck doesn’t get the munchies now that he’s mainlining MM (medusa-milk), the latest craze to hit the streets. Anyhow, I got home from work the next day, expecting to be able to fry an egg, and a rasher or two to fill my belly before hitting my homework, when everything I’d bought was gone. Him and his psycho friends ate everything in the house and my reward was another beating for not supporting him now that I’m‘flush’.

  The prick accused me of stealing the supplies I earned, of being a criminal, reminding me again how I murdered my mother and he’ll never forgive me for what I’ve done.

  Selective memory. Is that a disease?

  How does he not remember that night? It’s branded on my brain, I’ll never forget every single detail right down to the smell of her piss, yet in his head it was not only plausible but downright historical fact that an eight year old kid managed to beat a grown woman to death. He’s blanked that he did it.

  How fucking convenient for him.

  Yet he calls me the delusional one? Somehow I’m the liar in all of this. His mania has fried his brain. He’s perfect, flawless, a stand up citizen in his book. In my book he doesn’t even make the fine-print. That don’t fly no more. I know it wasn’t me who killed her, yet I carry the guilt. I have worn that yoke since the day he blamed me, and despite my brain knowing I’m innocent my heart is still weighed down, my conscience still takes the responsibility, still carries it, still resurrects her for my nightmares.

  Time has evolved and so have I, the maturation date on my soul was reached before I was even a teen.

  Teachers think I’m too young to know shit, they’re the ones who don’t know shit. The things I’ve seen and experienced in my short life is more than they’ve had in forty years on this planet.

  Yet they disparage. That pisses me off and makes me wanna lash out and face plant those tarts, but my intelligence works as my enemy. I know to ingratiatingly suck up tight, to keep getting good grades, to keep pretending I’m fine, just a little quirky with a bizarre sense of style, my body full of permanent marker graffiti, but straight A’s nonetheless. I know it’s a way out of perdition.

  Maybe one day soon I’ll have a scholarship, or corporate sponsor for college. While my peers are getting their first set of wheels and scoring girls like it’s a sport, I’m just grateful for an uninterrupted night of sleep. Because of my‘unique’ set of circumstances I’m playing the long game. Grades first, scholarship second, ticket out of Hades, career with big bucks, then and only then will I give a rat’s ass about scoring with the damsels.

  Inhaling and holding it like I’m about to fire a gun, I open the front door, hoping to sneak past the front room and go hole out in my bedroom. I just have to get to my room, then I can barricade the door and let his drugs take their course beyond my sphere of influence. No longer do I investigate screams and shrieks. I have muscles now because I dig graves at least every fortnight. Yeah, good thing I’m not squeamish.

  I have a dirty secret: my father’s a narcissistic psychopath and I bury the evidence. No one questions when known junkies go missing. These chicks turn tricks, they’ll do anything for a needle, and if they vanish without a trace it’s assumed they OD’d someplace isolated, yet to be found. They’re a dime a dozen, them dying did their families a favor. Wish my old man would peg, find that one bad batch that poisons his veins and explodes his brain.

  The corpses hidden in our overgrown yard are a blessing in disguise. I have blackmail on him, know where the bodies are buried, and because he’s a junkie the law never knocks on our door. Hell, they can walk right in, the lock hasn’t worked for years. I only keep him around because every so often he has to get the social security checks himself. And wouldn’t you know it, Amy had a policy, one that pays out monthly until I turn 18. Two whole years of insanity still to go before my parasite gets amputated. That money should’ve fed and clothed me, instead it went up his nose and out his piss.

  Adam thinks I’m ignorant, he still thinks I’m eight and can fleece me with his bullshit. I’m onto him in so many ways. The week before I turn 18 I’m calling the cops and letting them know the murders I’ve witnessed, tell them about my abuse, blow the whistle on this sleaze and make him pay for his fucking sins. Just the withdrawals he’ll go through awaiting trial would make it worthwhile.

  Taking another deep breath to steel my muscles I prepare for a maniac when I shadow the passage, heading for the steps to the second floor, noticing the disarray of my home. It smells like something died in here, again.

  Glancing into the front room his lurch is faster than normal, still a foot taller than me, still stronger than me, but the mirror effect is happening. He gets weaker and thinner every month, I get taller and stronger.

  Soon. Soon father, you will feel the rage.

  Kill. Him.

  “Where ya been, HEY BOY?” slurs in my face, the rum fumes and fetid decay so potent I stop inhaling to squash down the retch.

  I need to keep this food down in my belly. I’m sick of the floor getting more nutrition than I do.

  “School,” I mumble, hoping he’ll go back to his floozy and forget I exist.

  He’s in my face, yellowed and unbrushed teeth souring my air, the stink of body odor ripe, his congested breathing rank and offensive. Then he dramatically sniffs like he’s pulling a line of coke, shoving me backwards into the front door, keeping a brutal hand on my shirt, the threadbare material scrunched in his tight fist. “You smell expensive, Christopher. Where’d you get the money for perfume, boy?”

  “Like I have money. You steal all my cash which is why I dress like it’s summer all fucking year! Leave me alone!” I try shove him off but the bastard has me tight, his exhalations rattling the phlegm in his chest, his grip tremulous but invincible, and still strong enough to break bone.

  His nose advances, his eyes in front of mine when he droops for confrontation, neck stooped like a vulture, and the blackness of his eyes uncoils a bladder loosening dread. That night, I didn’t know his eyes went black because his pupils dilate when he’s high. I know now, and every time I witness this look in him an intimate terror traverses my bone marrow, seeping into my spinal fluid and robbing me of pride, of courage.

  My bowels writhe and shift, heaviness settling in my body, my lungs too tight for breath. I try stand tall, warrior fierce and defiant, but the pain lancing down my neck through tendons, the instant headache from the ache of clenched teeth, they conspire to undo my resolve.

  What fucking hallucination did he have that justified what he did to us? That he still thinks I owe him anything? He’s violated me in every single way. This spiritual corrosion has eroded the hallowed kernel of spirit that I was born with. His drugs and drinking and violence have diminished me, the verbal abuse became psychic and mental persecution, and now all it takes is one look into those bottomless eyes to know he’s about to take more.

  Planting my feet, adjusting for violence, for flight, for fight, for struggle and misery, I brace for the clash.

  What happens when I break? Will I follow him into his numb zone of drugged up bliss, or do I do what he did to Amy? I sure as fuck won’t miss hi–

  The uppercut catches me completely off guard, blindsided I ricochet off the doorframe, then the wall, bouncing right back into his follow up punch which bombs my mouth with instant throb.

  The familiar tang of blood coats my teeth and panic robs me of bravado. Conditioned by trauma, I’ve already surrendered.

  “Bullshit! You ungrateful fuck! I’ll teach you to speak to your elders that way! When I was your age my father would tan my hide so hard I’d crawl back inside. You know what you need? Eh cunt? You need respect!”

&nb
sp; His grip on my hair is demonically strong, yanking me off balance, dragging me so my knees skin on the raw cement of the entrance hall. The linoleum’s been missing for years, now the house is as cold as my heart. There’s no cushioning left to protect the floor from the numbing temperatures, just like there’s no warmth left in my heart to forgive this fucker his brutality.

  Struggling, writhing and worming, I try my damnedest to catch my balance, to hook my hold on the next doorframe, to hold on so he can’t drag me outside and lock me in the fucking shed again. The smash to my cranium blanks out light, my thighs shiver, my intestines tremble like they did as a child, and it’s all I can do to breathe, praying I don’t black out. He’ll piss on me, or worse.

  When I was ten I woke up with his shit on my face, all over my pillow, on my lips, in my mouth. I puked violently for days, nursing the fractured wrists and splintered eye socket, my sentience disfigured. His idea of fun is defecating on his unconscious kid. Being high means you end up laughing hard as a demented lunatic, never thinking his crap could’ve asphyxiated me. How I’ve lived this long is a miracle.

  There’s a sacrosanct quintessence in us all, until someone beats it out of you, until someone abuses you so badly that your spirit has scars so thick it can’t find love anymore, can’t find hope or pleasure or fuck all. The day I gave up was the day he took a dump in his child’s mouth after he beat and screwed me unconscious. Drugs, do they replace humanity, or was this cesspit always inside him?

  “You think you some kind of wise guy? Eh boy?!” Fingers vice onto my arm, pinching so hard my bicep spasms and I’m borderline hysterical, trying to get my vision back so I can defend myself, trying to breathe so I don’t hyperventilate. “You want tattoos? Is that why you draw this shit all over yourself? Want to be a man? Like some cool shithead from the ghetto? Then fight me like a man, dipshit! You’re a pussy! You’re my bitch! I’ll fuck you up and then I’ll fuck you! Come in here stinking of perfume!Think you’re too good for us now? Think you’re better than me? I shoulda cut your balls off when I first made you my whore!”

  He punctuates each point with a fist to my face, and my nose is gushing blood so bad I can’t feel my teeth, my cheekbone throbs, my eyes can only see the abyss and my ears are ringing the suffer-knell.

  I’m shaking so bad you’d swear I was the junkie in this relationship. I hate myself for the weakness. For giving him the power. I can’t help it though, he still makes me piss my pants. At times I fight that urge until I pass out. Because I can’t handle the shame. I’m wrestling it now. The older I get the more I need to best him, to show resistance even if it’s just holding my bladder in check.

  “Screw you,” I slur through the thick lip and swollen tongue, knowing it’ll only end in me choking on my own blood. But he fucked my soul, shredded my childhood, disfigured my thoughts, and still keeps my spirit in the basement in a jar of ash.

  The only thing left to lose is my life, and too often I think it would be mercy to die. This shit would finally end. The bruising and swelling and fractures and aches would cease. The verbal and mental abuse would fall on deaf ears. Death is mercy. Psychologically and spiritually I’m losing this battle.

  Kill him.

  Christ, kill him before he kills you.

  “Baby, you’re killing my buzz. Come fuck me.”

  My vision clears just in time to see his rank, two inch beard, tilt up so he can look at the chick in the doorway, rubbing at her pussy like she has pubic lice, itchy and antsy and shifty, unable to stand still, rubbing over her dirty white panties like the crabs in her camel-toe are giving her razor burn, her anorexic legs covered in scabs, her arms bullied by bruises and track marks.

  Adam’s full facial topiary cloys with mess, with dried drool, vaginal cum, rum, crumbs, and something sulfuric and hard, like dried puss; a veritable pubic nest sprouting all over his face. If she’s got genital lice this asshole has them too, right next to his mouth, under his nose. He probably eats them, smokes them, oblivious to the contaminated smorgasbord feasting on him, him feasting on the parasites in turn. I’ll never have a beard, or should I say smorgasbeard. Put your face between the wrong legs and you’ll have that shit all over you in minutes. One lick of the wrong slit and you’ll have the clap in your nose hairs and in your unshaven thicket. It even looks like wiry pubic hair growing from his chin.

  Instantly my skin flames with psychosomatic itch. Quashing the ripe urge to vomit my guts out, I’m so disgusted I launch with both hands, gripping that hair and using it as a handle, headbutting the fucktard as hard as I can, stunning myself in the process.

  He staggers off me, unbalanced, and I don’t stick around for round two. My backpack is still on my shoulder and I sprint like the devil wants to pierce my cock, down the passage, out the door, into the night.

  I run and run and run until I have cramp and my lungs are incinerated by the cold air. Slumping to the sidewalk I hunch over, sucking in oxygen, wiping my befouled hands on the asphalt when the breeze whispers to me, carrying the sounds of redemption.

  Looking up, I’m outside a boxing gym.

  Good. They can patch me up, then teach me to break heads.

  Fuck yes! Why didn’t I do this years ago?

  Because you’re stupid, Christ.

  No I’m not, I’m a genius, half my teachers say so. I’m gifted.

  Gifted at what? Getting your ass handed to you so you can lick your own balls?

  Fuck you.

  Ha! That’s rich. You’ve been fucked by your father since you were in 4th grade.

  Why can’t you leave me alone? You’re as bad as he is.

  You need me, Christ. I was there for you, in the dark, all those nights you got locked in the closet. I was the only one who never left you. I was there mopping up blood and the stink of death softened bowels with you, holding your hair for you while you puke into the mess, making sure you coat your signature into every crime scene. You can’t report him, they’ll bury you.

  Ignoring the voice I head into the gym, hit by the overpowering scent of testosterone and sweat. It’s a damn sight better than drugs and halitosis.

  For the first time in my life, I’ve come home.

  I won’t go‘home’. The streets are safer.

  Tonight I eat like a king because I’m dumpster diving at the back of KFC. And as I’ve done before I’ll sleep in the bushes at the park, where the sounds of nature keep me restless.

  How pathetic am I that I feel more secure barricaded behind my bedroom door, sitting up against it, dozing on and off until I hear his snores, then I know it’s safe to sleep.

  Out here when my stomach grumbles I wake and freeze, afraid of thugs finding and beating me so bad I’ll end in hospital. In my prison I know the exits, I know where the weapons are, I know where the best hiding places are, I know the routine. Out here I’m vulnerable.

  This is a mind fuck.

  Rolling into the underbrush, still smelling the sweet scent of soap, I cry into my elbow, finally alone enough to succumb to my humanity. What does that tell you about love? About‘family’?

  You’re fucking clueless, you neighbors and teachers turn your eyes away and pretend you saw nothing, can’t see the bruises, don’t care I’ve got hard white plaster on my arm again, you pretend you can’t hear me screaming, you pretend you’ve got laryngitis, that’s why you can’t call child services, or tell the priest, or your uncle the cop. Yeah, sterling fucking citizens, you just pretend your neighbor is the odd one out in the street, he’s misunderstood, his wife left him, he’s trying to raise that child on his own, can’t be easy. You think I don’t hear the gossip?

  Let me tell you a little lesson about karma. Those who see no evil will be blinded.

  Those who don’t speak against it will be silenced.

  Those who heard‘nothing’ will be deafened.

  I won’t be weak forever. One day I’m going to rip through this street like the angel of death.

  Armageddon will come in this lifetime.<
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  ~ Chapter 7 ~

  A man will give up everything in order to stay alive

  ~ Satan (Job 2:4)

  Steve:

  THE SECOND THE kid walks in, I spot him. He’s got that wild look in his eye, his walk harried, not jaunty.

  I’ve seen it all in my twenty years at this gym. You get two types of fella walking in here. The jaunty assholes come in to become hotshots, wanting to have the edge in their frat, and then you get kids like this one. Life has handed him the short end of the stick and he’s here to learn to survive. It’s the latter I’m interested in. Rich kids will never know the hunger to win, they’ll never comprehend the fire in the veins of a lad like this boy. Teach a kid like this to break jaws and he’ll earn you more money than you thought possible. It’s the desperate who become champions.

  Tapping the ropes, I don’t even look at Gresham. “Time out. Go take a break.” Then I hop to the gym floor, striding to the kid before he loses his nerve.

  He’s watching Chad slaughtering a punch bag, his eyes wide, fascinated, already soaking in stance and technique. Then he spies me and I can see the debate happening in real time.

  Fear robs his expression as fast as cataracts over sight, then the brown eyes nail me, pupils dilating wide, wiping the irises black, his chin coming up by the merest margin of challenge when the widened pupils shrink to the size of pinheads.

  I’m going to take that atom of challenge he’s harnessing and nurture it into a flamethrower of wrath.