My Sister and I
(A novel by Sean-Paul Thomas)
My Sister and I is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents represented are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is solely coincidental or used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2018 by Sean-Paul Thomas
All rights reserved.
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Chapter 1
My earliest memory of my father's violence was when I was around five years old. I remembered sitting in the back seat of our old beat up five-door ford escort. It was cold and dark outside as we travelled down a long and lonely highland road where the only faded light came from a full but faintly clouded moon that had just slunk down behind one of the dark and brooding mountain tops that hovered over us like some gigantic sleeping dinosaur.
We might’ve been driving back from one of the local village shops, or even further afield, way down in Glasgow perhaps—which was around a four-hour drive south from our farm house in one of the remotest regions of the Scottish Highlands, or we could’ve just been out and about for a little random winter drive in amongst the beautiful snow swept highland valleys and mountains. I can’t quite remember for sure. Although, my father did enjoy his random, spur of the moment drives and ventures out into the wilderness, so it could have been that more than anything else.
Mother wasn't there, I recalled that much. When had she ever been? Just Dad, sitting up front by himself, singing along to his rolling stone greatest hit tunes on the car stereo while my twin sister and I sat silently in the back seat with our seatbelts firmly fastened.
In fact, if I recall correctly, my sister was sleeping soundly in the back seat right beside me, although she could have just as easily been in one of her foul, demonic moods and refusing to speak to me for some reason or another. That was never unusual for her.
That night it seemed like we were the only other people out there on those calm and quiet, isolated highland roads. Everywhere around us seemed so tranquil and peaceful as my father continued to drive along in good spirits, safely sticking to the fifty miles per hour speed limit like it was more important to him than his own kids, while singing with his heart and soul to some imaginary concert audience sitting behind the windscreen, out in the road in front of him. An audience that only he could ever see.
I remembered feeling him tense up all of a sudden. Only a little at first as his singing became less frequent and passionate until he ceased from singing out altogether. Concert over for the time being.
He kept glancing anxiously into his rear-view mirror. Every so often at first. Then it seemed like he spent more and more time just gazing into it than he did paying attention to the actual road up ahead. The next thing I knew a pair of bright headlights from behind us were swiftly shining in through the rear.
Another vehicle was fast upon us. A larger one than ours. Possibly a van or a big jeep. It had sped up on us over the past few miles, going well over the national speed limit, and now sat impatiently tailgating our smaller car from behind.
So, this was what had caused my father's new anxious state of mind. He hated anyone speeding up behind him, especially too fast and too reckless, when there was clearly no need for such bullish behaviour. And on a quiet country road too, with all that beautiful stunning scenery every which way one looked.
“Why is every cunt always in such a fuckin' rush these days, eh?” he always used to say while shaking his head in absolute disgust when other cars and lorries drove right up behind him, like he wasn’t even there. “Why would ye no just want tae go as slow as ye can driving doon these magnificent roads, or even stop and pull over for a wee minute, get the hell oot of your bloody car and just take in all this great, hunkin’ gorgeousness and fresh clean air. Ah dinnae ken.” He finished with a deep sigh and another shake of his head.
Observing him over the years, he usually—nine times out of ten—just pulled over into the next available parking or passing bay and let the impatient driver or drivers pass him by with only a dirty scowl on his face and a shame-on-you glint in his eye as they sped past, continuing on their merry way.
But something was different this time. Something was dangerously off inside my father’s head that night. A switch had been well and truly flipped and I was seeing it for the very first time. The driver of the van sitting tucked up, bumper to bumper directly behind us, had begun to push all my father's very few trigger buttons all at the same time.
First button: he was tailing so dangerously close to our car on such a treacherous highland road, obnoxiously disrespecting the national speed limit and failing to keep a safe distance from the vehicle in front, which was two seconds, he’d always said, in dry conditions, and six seconds in icy wet conditions, such as it was in that very situation.
Second button: the driver behind us was flashing his headlights over and over again, like his car was having some kind epileptic seizure, before leaving them on full beam, temporarily blinding everyone inside our vehicle. Putting the lives of not just my father in danger, but the lives of his two-innocent-little-darling-daughters seated in the back.
And third: the ignorant, arrogant driver was now tooting his horn for my dad to pull over or just move the hell aside and let him pass.
The only problem with that plan of action was that there happened to be no good passing points that my father could see in the darkness up ahead for him to pull over and into. He needed some time to find a good safe spot and this ‘arsehole, baw-jawed bastard, cunt bag’ —father’s words not mine—just wasn't allowing him the time to do that.
I was beginning to see an insane and uncontrollable rage brewing in my father’s eyes, slowly but surely taking over his recent placid energy. At the time, it terrified the life out of me because it was the first time I'd ever seen him morphing into such an enraged, demonic creature. Although, it was by no means to be the last that I ever witnessed such an act.
It’s just that the first time is always the most shocking. It’s the one that sticks with you always, and so much more than all the others that came thick and fast over the next few years. It’s the first memory you always carry with you, even when you see it happening all over again and again, in even greater and gorier detail.
What happened next transpired so fast. Like a snap of someone else’s fingers right in front of my face. Anger and hate engulfed him. It raged through e
very ounce of fibre in his being like some out of control freight train from hell.
Then it happened.
Without any warning to the driver behind, or any consideration for his daughters’ safety tucked up in the back seat, dad braked violently hard.
My sister, who had been sleeping soundly up until that point, suddenly found herself jolted awake. We stared at each other in absolute dread as the large van ploughed hard into the back of our car with the most deafening crash and bang of crushed metal on metal.
Within seconds we came to a shuddering halt in the middle of the deserted road, as did the van with its front bonnet crushed up into the back of us. Without any hesitation, my father swiftly blazed from the car like some freak force of nature. He seemed completely oblivious that my sister and I were even there at all and could even be hurt from the collision. And without checking to see if any of us were all right, he yanked out a secret hidden baseball bat, from behind the front driver’s seat.
Immediately, I unclicked my seatbelt. My sister did the same before we both clambered up onto our knees and up onto the back seats of the car. With curious eyes, still caught in a frozen, dream-like aura of shock, horror, and excitement, we watched as my father approached the van and dragged a bearded and dazed, stocky older man out from the driver's seat of the smashed-up vehicle.
Then without a single thought of mercy, regret or consequences, our father began to beat and pound the holy living hell out of the man, right there in the middle of the dark road, with stroke after brutal stroke from the full length of his bat—to the man’s chest, arms, legs, and head.
When the man became motionless and no longer seemed to be putting up any kind of fight or resistance— when all life appeared to be pummelled from every ounce of his body and soul, well that was when my father proceeded to use the soles of his big, black, leather, steel-toe-capped boots to stamp and crush the poor man’s head to a total bloody pulp on the tarmac.
I remembered compelling myself to turn swiftly away and hide my face in my hands as the brutal, vicious acts of horror became far too much for my young innocent eyes to handle and my small child brain to comprehend.
My sister, on the other hand, continued to watch the severe act of violence without any feelings whatsoever. At first her face looked expressionless, like she was watching some late-night, violent, adult TV show that she wasn’t really supposed to be watching but couldn't care less if someone walked in and caught her. It was like she’d seen it all before, a thousand times and it wasn’t affecting her in the slightest. She seemed immune to the most shocking and horrific of sights.
If it wasn’t for the tiniest flicker of a faded grin upon her angelic face then I would have just figured that perhaps she had no emotion about the situation in the slightest, good or bad. But secretly, I knew in that moment she was loving my father’s brutal actions and learning from it too. Soaking in all that fiery rage and terrible violence into her not so innocent sponge like brain.
When the sick thudding noises of boot upon crushed bone and flesh came to an abrupt end, I gradually found the courage to glance back up and out of the window again.
My father had finally exhausted his efforts to pound the man’s head and body into the ground.
He then dragged the dead man—who I sincerely hoped was dead or else I couldn’t imagine the pain and suffering he’d be going through—back up onto his feet before bundling him into his van again but on the passenger side.
Dad then climbed into the driver's compartment and reversed the vehicle away from our own before accelerating forward and pulling up alongside our car. He climbed out of the van and approached us. He leaned into the driver’s side door and gave us both a warm, reassuring smile. So, he’d remembered that we were there after all.
“Ye’s both all right, aye?”
We both nodded in unison but said nothing. Words were not needed in that moment, only our calm, cold expressions that told him that we were both fine and unphased with everything that had just gone down.
“That's ma fuckin’ girls. Strong as fuckin’ Oxen, eh? just like their fuckin da.”
He gave us a firm, cocky wink and smile that said everything was going to be fine because he was back in charge of the situation.
He told us to stay in the car and not get out or go for a bloody wander while he was away. He said he wouldn't be long. He said he had to drop his friend off somewhere safe and sound and that he’d be back real soon to take us home.
I think we waited for around thirty minutes or so. Only one other car passed us by on that lonely highland road during that time, but lucky for them, they didn't stop. My sister and I kept our heads down low when their vehicle drove past, just like Dad had taught us to do when he wasn't around. He wasn’t a big fan of nosy strangers either.
I was about to fall asleep in my sister's lap when the loud, violent sound of the driver's side door swinging open then shut again, jolted me hard awake. My out-of-breath father had thrown himself back inside our car again.
“Fuckin’ freezin’ oot there the night girls, so it is, eh? Jeezo.”
My father didn't wait for an answer. He'd already started the engine and was soon driving off, back along the dark and lonely highland road.
His car back to being the only other vehicle out on the road once more, just the way he liked it.
Without words, my sister and I resumed our seated positions in the backseat and clicked our seatbelts back into place. On went the CD player again and, just like nothing had ever happened, our dad began singing once again—full swing, full passion. Normality resumed.
A few minutes later I remembered gazing out of the car window as an old stone bridge emerged from the darkness in front of us. A rip-roaring river wound its way down from a higher valley to flow right underneath the old bridge. On the right-hand side of the bridge, half of the old stone barrier had come away from the edge like something big and heavy—perhaps the size of another vehicle like ours—had smashed right through it.
Sure enough, as we slowed down to cross the single laned bridge, I could just about make out the dark outline of the van from earlier. Its front end totally submerged in the freezing cold-water depths of the murky riverbed below while it's rear-end, poked straight on out of the rough flowing, ice cold water, shiny and glistening in the moonlight.
As we drove across the bridge, my father stopped singing for a moment. He grinned then snorted out hard.
“Ooh ye fucker. Looks like a sore yin that, eh? Bad luck there, fella. Al need to report that to the station first thing in the morn.”
And with that my father began singing out to the high heavens once again.
Chapter 2
I’m now almost thirteen years old and I hate my father more than anything else in the whole wide world. In fact, I have more burning hatred for him in this very moment than I ever did at any other previous point in our troubled and turbulent history together.
Everyone who used to know us in the local area and saw us around the community, whether that be at our school or around the neighbouring town almost fifteen miles away, now believe—thanks to our father—that we have gone to live with our Mother, a mother we’ve never officially known or even met, back down in Glasgow.
The truth of the matter is that our mother has been missing from our lives for longer than we’ve had memories. And recently our father even pulled us out of the local village school when one of the new teachers started asking too many questions regarding our mysterious upbringing, along with questions about the source of the constant marks and bruises no twelve-year-old girls should ever have on their bodies.
Bruises and marks that our father didn’t physically put there himself, but nonetheless is still one hundred percent a contributor of.
You see, our father grew up in the wilderness—the glorious Scottish Highlands, lochs, valleys, forests, and mountains that you see every which way you looked in this neck of the woods. His own father, who my sister and I never had the pleasure of m
eeting—thank Christ—is always mentioned by our father like he was some kind of ancient, magnificent god of men.
He made our father grow up in the wild too, living, working, hunting, and surviving in the great outdoors and now our father does exactly the same thing to his own children. A passing down of his family values, ideals, and traditions, no less.
When our father was a young boy, our grandpa told, preached, and convinced him—although I say more like brainwashed—that something truly awful was going to happen to the world and mankind, someday very soon, and that only the ones who truly prepared for this awful event and put in the brutal time, effort and hard work to ready themselves for the imminent, world-wide disaster to come, would be the ones who would truly survive this ever-nearing, brutal apocalypse, and thus emerge from the death and destruction to drive mankind onwards into a new era. A better era. A better world and place. A better place where the world could take all the time it needed to recover from the sins, destruction and devastation that mankind had inflicted upon it.
Ever since my sister and I were old enough to walk, our father had passed this knowledge and ideas, along with his family traditions and philosophies, down onto us—his only two daughters and only family blood kin still alive – or, that I know of.
Every day, for as long as I could remember, he had drilled and trained the mantra survival-of-the-fittest into us like it was the only thing that mattered in our screwed-up existence. And to him, it really was the only thing that ever did matter in our screwed-up way of live.
From the age of five onwards our father taught us how to grow vegetables in the dirt, how to source water from the ground when there was no sign of any rivers or water for miles around.
He taught us how to set traps and snares to catch small wild animals and fish. How to gut them, skin them, and cook those same animals. How to build a camp with branches and wood and put a roof over our heads in the heart of a storm while in the middle of nowhere.
My Sister And I: A dark, violent, gripping and twisted tale of horrifying terror in the Scottish Highlands. Page 1