My dad finally paused for breath. His eyes were glazed with a burning, psychotic rage. He took a long sip from his big glass of orange juice, gulping it down almost to completion, before slamming the near empty container back down on the table with a frightening vigour.
My sister was smiling wildly and avidly listening to my father’s every word. She was enjoying the show immensely. I, on the other hand, was feeling very nervous and uncomfortable. I could see most of the eyes and the expressions from the café’s paying customers seated all around us, all of them were solely focused on our table—my raving lunatic father, in particular.
I glanced over at the chefs and waitresses too, all of them anxiously chatting away about which one of them should come over and tell the crazy man with the kids to shut up or leave. Whatever was going to go down next, I didn’t like the feeling I was getting in the pit of my stomach about what might happen if one of those nice, innocent folks did come over and say something on behalf of everyone else who just wanted to have a quiet meal and chat amongst themselves.
“We live in a world where thousands of people die every single fuckin’ day from all kinds of serious shite. Thousands more are badly injured whilst brave, hardworking others are helping those less fortunate get back ontae their fuckin’ feet again. Now, if that isnae real fuckin’ news then ah dinnae ken whit fuckin’ is?”
“Ye ken, ah could safely say that oot of all the peeps in this fuckin’ daft country, ninety nine percent of the clueless bastards are utterly fuckin’ mind-warped by all they tabloid/media cunts. Maybe more so in the elderly likes cuz, let’s face it, they auld bastards have even less tae dae with their time than the rest of us 'up tae oor fuckin’ eyeballs in debt' bastards.”
I watched as an old couple at the back of the café just shook their heads and tutted dad’s remarks, but again, like everyone else they didn’t pipe up and say a single damn word in father’s direction. Like everyone else they just sat back and took it, trying their best to ignore the crazy nutter and get on with whatever it was they were pretending to do.
“And dinnae get me started on all they bloody numpty, clueless, talk show hosts either. Some of they slanderous cunty balled, shite bag, bastards would have ye convinced that they’re the ones actually running this country, ken. And that their uneducated opinions matter a flying fuck tae the rest of us. Which they dinnae of course. No for one smelly ginger ball-haired second dae they fuckin’ matter. Only tae cunts with a TV who dinnae have a bawbag clue what tae dae with their precious time on this planet, does that shite fuckin’ matter.”
Dad paused for breath. This time though he sat right back against the comfy booth chair. He looked so smug and proud and was grinning wildly. Like he owned this audience all around the cafe. Like his words actually mattered to these people’s good normal lives when all they truly wanted was him to shut the hell up and just go away.
“But who kens, aye?” dad continued, shrugging his shoulders for effect. “Maybe there are good people oot there who really dinnae give a hoot and nanny aboot anything the media shoves intae oor faces. People who can just turn their backs on it all and throw their fuckin’ TVs, I-phones, and computers right oot the fuckin window and say, Ye ken whit baw-jaws! Ah really dinnae gee a fuck. Ah really dinnae give a flying fuck, ye fannies, aboot anyhing ye have tae say in your shitey trashy tabloids and tv shows. Cuz, ah have ma own unpolluted brain and ma own unpolluted opinions. Just like us, eh girls? Just like us.”
He winked at both me and my sister, but I could tell it was more for my sister, who, by the look of her and by the way she was leaning over the table, all doe-eyed, was ready to eat out of the palm of his hand.
“The media tells us whit tae eat. Whit tae drink. Whit tae buy and how tae live oor fuckin’ lives. Where does it bloody well all end likes, ken?”
Dad hesitated again. He looked down towards his feet with a look of great sorrow, shaking his head with a bitter disgust. After a, long, anxious and awkward second, he quickly glanced back up at us, his main audience in his arena, as if suddenly remembering something else to rant on about. Something else that his audience might want to hear—no, in fact, needed to hear until our ear drums burst and our lobes bled red.
Dad took a long hard look around the entire room after he said that. I couldn’t believe that he was trying to look every single person in the café directly in the eye, but not even a single one of them was able to meet his stare.
“But ken whit: all ye cunts are in for one big fuckin’ surprise soon enuf, because it’s coming. This big fucking thing that’s gonnae change everything. And ah mean EVERYTHING! Well, it’s coming. It’s on its way. And none of ye’s. None of ye’s baw-jawed bastards are even ready for it.”
Dad spat on the floor with sheer and utter disgust. Still, nobody said a damn word. But at least he’d stopped ranting and raving. The whole entire café didn’t know which way to turn and neither did I for that matter. Then my sister started clapping like some over-enthusiastic seal. Again, I didn’t know which way to look; I felt so embarrassed. Like I wanted a big dark hole underneath the table to open up and swallow every single person there whole, all except for me and my sister.
I didn’t know how or even why, perhaps it was that sharp look-of-daggers scowl on my father’s face when he glanced at me next, but I eventually started clapping too. Just to keep on his good side.
He then made a move to leave.
“Mon then girls. Let’s get the fuck oot of this polluted shitehole.”
My sister was still so excited that as she stood up, she even had the audacity to ask dad if she could have another milkshake, even if just to take away with her.
“Do ah look like a fuckin’ piggy bank, eh?” dad replied. His foul mood reigning over us again like the return of a familiar storm slowly rolling its way over the mountain tops beyond us. And without looking back at the eyes of pity which fell upon both my sister and I, all three of us left the café.
Chapter 10
It was getting late. Really late. Dad was still driving around the vibrant city centre, mumbling to himself every so often about something that I couldn’t quite make out. When he did say something that was just barely audible for me to hear, it was more or less along the lines of: ‘These people are a fuckin’ disease and we are the fuckin’ cure.’
At first, I didn’t have a clue what he was looking for that night as he patrolled the streets of Glasgow well into the early hours, cruising from one grubby little side street to the next. Or what actions he might partake in, if any. All that I knew was that I desperately wanted to fall into a deep and blissful sleep after eating all that sugary, fatty food. But even more than that, I just wished to go home.
Suddenly, dad pulled the car over onto a curb halfway down a dark little street that ran adjacent to a huge, towering railway station. With sleepy but curious eyes, my sister and I glanced at each other in the back seat yet none of us said a word.
Then it soon became abundantly clear as to why dad had stopped on this particular street. A very bold and mildly attractive woman, wearing ripped black stockings, a tight black mini skirt, and an even tighter cropped white top, approached the driver’s side window like she knew dad or, at the very least, had no fear of him whatsoever.
Instantly, I found myself loving her confidence. I secretly wished that I could be as bold and as confident as her one day, or even just to walk around with that same fearless swagger. Apart from my father, it was something that I’d only ever seen in my sister before.
“You looking for business sweetheart, aye?” the woman casually stated. For the life of me I couldn’t think what business dad could possibly have with such an empowering woman.
“Aye,” dad swiftly replied with a glint in his eye and cheerful snort. “Ye any good at plumbing likes?”
“Av been aroond a few pipes in ma time, sweetheart. Ah think ah couls handle yours,” the woman replied with a sly wink and without missing a beat. Like she’d had this very same conversation
a thousand and one times before. Their strange, almost forced, crypted chat, absolutely baffled me though.
“Good girl. Jump in then, Hen.”
When she climbed into the passenger seat, I noticed a rake load of scars and marks all over her arms and wrists. She had a faded scar too about four inches in length across her cheek, on the right side of her face. Even up close I still thought she was beautiful though, in a raw, earthly kind of way, and those scars just gave her so much more character, made her so much more interesting to look at.
Of course, I wanted to ask how she’d gotten such wounds on her body. Perhaps she’d enjoyed living out in the wilderness too from time to time, trying to survive with nothing but her wits and her own two hands to aid her. Just like me and my sister. But I didn’t dare say a word. Not while dad was sitting right beside her. Only when he drove away did the woman finally notice us sitting in the cloaked darkness of the back seat, directly behind her.
“Whit the fuck are they daen back there?” said the woman aghast. The woman who’d looked like she’d seen it all. Her cool and confident persona evaporated in seconds.
“Dinnae ye worry aboot them. They’re just ma bairns, that’s all.”
“Jesus Christ. Am no daen ye wi fuckin’ minors in the back. Are ye sick in the heed likes?”
“Dinnae be silly, woman. What kind of man dae ye think ah am, eh? Ramming ye in front of ma ain bairns? Are ye off your fuckin’ rocker, woman?”
The woman continued to look utterly freaked out. Whatever business with dad she had in mind, it was clearly something that my sister and I were clearly not meant to be a part of.
“It’s no right this. Av got kids of ma own tae and they dinnae even know whit ah dae tae make ends meet. Naw. This isnae right. Just let me oot at the end of the street, pal, and we’ll say no more aboot it, aye?”
We were driving along, past a vast black river now. Dad quickly shoved his hand into his pockets and pulled out a large wad of cash notes. I think they were twenty-pound ones. He crammed them down between the woman’s thighs which I thought was a little improper to touch someone down there, but the woman didn’t seem to mind at all.
“Half now. Half after,” dad bluntly stated.
The woman hesitated. She glanced away from me and my sister and pulled out the money from between her legs. She looked at the crumpled notes for a long time. Like they were the answer to all her prayers. They seemed to hypnotise her into submission and finally, she let out a deep, defeated sigh and her whole, tense body seemed to relax.
“All right. But no anywhere near the car, okay? The Bairns dinnae get tae see, aye?”
A look of bitter disgust wafted across dad’s face.
“What kind of sicko freak dae ye think ah um, eh? Ye dinnae even ken what ah want ye tae dae yet, fucks sake.”
“Aye, well, if you’re like every other man av ever met in ma puff, then I cannae see there being tae many surprises there, sweetheart.”
The further we travelled along the wide black river, the darker the city became.
Like my sister, I had no idea what we were doing or even where the hell we were going. For a second, I even considered that this woman might be our own mother. Ridiculous as that thought may have seemed - that she’d been away from us for such a long period of time that she’d somehow forgotten who she was and who we actually were.
But I quickly shook that notion from my head. She looked nothing like me or my sister. And without the scars she seemed far too young to be a mother to anyone our age, but then again, she had stated that she did have kids of her own. Boy, they had to be young though.
“Where we going anyhow?” the woman asked. “Ah know a good wee spot if ye just turn aroond here and go back tae that red building back there likes, sweetheart.”
“Ah ken a better spot,” dad firmly replied, and within thirty seconds he was slowing down and pulling in beside an old and abandoned, half-demolished factory. He took a sharp, right turn just past the broken factory brick walls and drove into a dark, narrow and secluded alleyway.
“Well, ye learn something new every day, aye? Am fae Glasgow and ah didnae even know this place existed.”
Dad drove all the way to the end of the alley. The lights of the car lit up the blood-red brick walls on either side before beaming hard off the old brick wall at the dead end as we approached.
Dad stopped the car. He turned off the engine and the headlights as darkness swarmed over us in seconds like a black plague.
“Right,” said the woman, turning back to face us in the pitch black. “You guys stay here and behave yourselves, aye. Me and your da are just nipping oot tae the other side of the alleyway there, tae dae a wee bit of business. It shouldnae take very…”
Like a flash of thunder and lightning exploding from the darkness, dad started punching and pounding the woman with his bare fists. He must have punched her a dozen times, over and over again, in the nose and mouth, before he finally stopped.
I was too shocked and scared to even move a muscle. I felt her wet, warm liquid splattering all over my face too with every crunch of his knuckles on the poor woman’s face. But I couldn’t see a thing. Only dark flashes of aggressive shadows followed by flickers of even faster shadows. I could hear every excruciating, gruelling sound though of what was happening in those two front seats.
When dad finally stopped pounding the woman’s face, he took a deep breath and relaxed. I could hear the woman making some kind of low-pitched yelp. She wasn’t screaming, shouting, or saying anything, just making that strange, eerie shuddering yelp and wheeze, which could have been coming from her nose rather than her mouth.
Dad turned on the headlights again. He opened his driver’s side door and climbed out of the car. For the first time, I got a good, proper look at what my father had done to that nice, friendly, confident, and attractive, if not a little too talkative, young woman.
She lay sprawled out, half conscious in the passenger seat. Her shoulder-length, dirty blonde hair was now a mop of sticky, red ooze. Same as her face. Most of the blood seemed to be coming from her flattened nose. Her mouth and jaw looked a little off-centre. She seemed to be trying to open her mouth every now and again like some kind of broken robot, but only her lips seemed to be moving.
She reminded me of one of those fishes that my sister had recently caught back at the loch where we’d camped out by ourselves, lying utterly helpless in our hands as it pouted its lips in and out, up and down, desperately trying to breathe.
She was breathing though. Her chest was lifting up and down, deep and slow, while little bubbles of blood, spit, and mucus throbbed around her nose. Dad opened the passenger side door and pulled the woman out of the car. As he dragged her in front of the bonnet, he told me and my sister to get the hell out and follow him.
I hesitated at first, but my sister had a wild look in her eyes. She already had her hand on the door handle, eagerly waiting to get a closer look at what father was going to do next. She opened the door and stepped outside. I reluctantly followed. What else could I do? I had to go with them.
Dad sat the woman down against the dead-end bricked wall of the alleyway, right in front of the strong car headlights. She looked extremely horrific, unrecognizable in fact from when we’d picked her up off the street only a few minutes earlier. Blood continued to pour out from her nose, drenching its way through her clothes and upper body.
“Puulease…. Wu…why…” I heard her finally whine through her broken jaw. Or at least that’s what I thought I’d heard her say. She was mumbling her words, unable to open her mouth and form any proper sentences.
My sister and I approached the front of the car. My dad came towards us. He sat down on the bonnet beside us, looking all smug and casual like.
“You remembered to bring your fuckin’ knives, aye? Like ah told ye’s tae?”
Without taking her eyes away from the bleeding, injured woman, my sister gently nodded. In that moment I felt the blood flowing in my veins swiftly
turn to ice. I couldn’t take another step forward. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even think. I knew what he wanted us to do and I felt sick to my stomach.
“Now finish her. Anyway, ye’s want. Stab the bitch. Slit her fuckin’ throat. Whitever takes your fancy, girls.”
My sister darted a glance straight at me. Her eyes were wide and filled with both danger and excitement, but she also seemed a little scared too, just a tiny little hint of fear that only I caught a glimpse of.
I’d never seen fear like it before in my sister’s demeanour. Not even when father was beating her. She was usually so calm and collected in those situations. Even when killing animals, she had no remorse or fear whatsoever. She just did it. She enjoyed it. She’d done it so often before.
But this was different. This was a whole, entirely different beast all together. This was another living person. Another human being. Just like us. Just like her.
“Dinnae look at your fuckin’ sister. And dinnae even hesitate either. Just get over there the pair of ye’s and fuckin’ dae it.”
My sister turned back to face the woman. As she approached, she pulled out her hunting knife that had been tucked up inside her belt. The woman, still dazed, confused, and bleeding, was gradually becoming more and more alert by the second. She desperately tried to speak and cry from behind her broken face.
My Sister And I: A dark, violent, gripping and twisted tale of horrifying terror in the Scottish Highlands. Page 8