Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

by Lisa Ann Porter

  He remembered not releasing her, until he heard a tiny sigh of defeat, whispering through her slightly swollen tender kissed lips. The taste of them caressing, heightened his senses almost beyond endurance.

  They were both breathing hard. Chests rising and falling in unison. Jennie, very surprised, wanted to slap his face, but could not find the strength to move her arms, and in truth did not want to. No one had ever dare to touch her, much less kiss her.

  George, trying to get a grip on his emotions, held her after the kiss ended, willing himself not to move another muscle. He still may want to strangle her, he thought. Both stared at each other through angry eyes. Jennie’s breathing was labored, her chest heaving with each breath. She was angry, at least she should have been.

  Neither said anything. George looked into the angry eyes of the young woman who made it her business to irritate him at every turn, summoning him to do ridiculous things, and interrupting his work for no reason. And all that he could think of at that moment, was how good she felt in his arms. Distraction.

  His eyes showed none of the turmoil rolling around in the pit of his stomach like acid. The muscles in his arms jerked for movement, as his fingers curled into her hair like hands fitting gloves. It was so right—this thing between them, but not now, he thought, though his fingers gently caressed her scalp unwantingly.

  Jennie met his unwavering gaze with one of her own, as a slight shiver trembled through her body as if cold. She was not. What she felt was a little uneasy at the amount of passion rippling through her body.

  This was new to her. She had never felt this way before. She was no longer angry; in fact, if she was honest with herself, she wanted him to kiss her. She was attracted to him since laying eyes on him. She softened in his arms. She wanted more.

  His arm was gentle. He was still looking at her as if he couldn’t decide what to do with her. Pulling her closer, against his better judgment, he slowly lowered his head. Lightly touching his lips to hers, he teasingly tugged on her bottom lip, feeling her quick intake of breath from his lungs into her own. Distraction.

  He felt her arms circle his neck like a silken neck tie. Smooth to the touch. Soft on the skin. Then, both were lost as the kiss deepened, as unfulfilled desire raged into a blazing inferno. Love. Distraction. And George did not care.

  They met secretly on many occasions. The joy they felt being in each other’s arms was worth the secrecy and the late nights. Knowing it was vital that her father never find out about their relationship, they sometimes met at the pond behind the horses’ stable where little light from the moon was ever shown. That was their special place and they met there every night.

  They touched one another with gentle caresses, professing their love and having a future together, but never consummated their love by intimately joining their bodies. It was too special, this love they shared. Waiting until they married was not a hardship at all. They would wait.

  The smile slowly eased from George’s lips as dark memories slyly crept in beside the sweet ones, causing George’s mind to slowly embrace the pains of the past before he was aware of its dark intent. Keeping him trapped in the past with hatred as his companion. His confidant. His unknown enemy.

  Late one night, George, returning home from spending time with Jennie, saw Joseph Chadwick leaving his home by the side door as he slowly walked the path to the front door.

  When he went in, the house was unusually quiet. He called for his mother, but she did not answer. George knew she was home. Pain made his fists clench again in agony.

  Hatred feasted on his mind, as the memories he was unwilling to let go of continued in full color. He saw himself as he once was, a frightened teenager, hope draining and dreams fading, with each step he took toward uncertainty. He slowly went upstairs toward his mother’s bedroom, and to his horror, found her gagged and tied to her bed.

  Beth was unconscious. There was money on the end table near her bed. She had been savagely whipped; the red marks on her flesh oozing with blood, from fresh wounds swelling in rebellion, from the pain once inflicted upon it.

  Sheets, once freshly washed George knew, now crumpled and stained from violence, hung half on the bed, the other half on the floor, imprinted with mud from a pair of shoes. Shoes too big to be his mother’s.

  Beth had also been burned, with what looked like cigarette marks on her arms, down the center between her small breasts to the center of her stomach; his mother, George knew, did not smoke. Her room reeked with the pungent smell of stale smoke.

  Gagging from the smell and the horrifying picture before him, George frantically, with violent shaking hands, untied his mother; he did not notice the tears streaking down his face as screams of terror echoed throughout the tiny house. She was stripped completely naked.

  Taking a urine-stained blanket, which lay bunched beneath her frail hips, causing him to tug furiously at it, for parts of it were trapped between her bone thin thighs. He gently covered her. Gathering her into his arms as though she was porcelain, he held her.

  He rocked her in trembling arms like a mourning mother who had just lost her child. He told her to wake up in a voice that he did not recognize as his own. He pleaded. He demanded. She did not.

  The quietness. The same quietness, which is good only when one is at peace, ripped at his tormented mind at the memories of his mother, Beth, lying limp his arms. His clenched fist were now oozing drops of blood onto his desk, as the memories of the past played out vividly behind tear-blurred eyes.

  He remembered reaching for the phone, calling 911 and asking for help in a whisper. His voice, sounding like dragging feet in graveling dirt, pleaded with the voice on the other end of the extension to send help.

  His throat, now throbbing with pain because of all the screams that came rushing through it just minutes before, started convulsing with racking sobs of excruciating grief. George’s mother never regained consciousness.

  The doctors questioned him extensively about his mother’s injuries; though to even the most junior resident, it was clear as to what had contributed to her death. In his traumatized state, he could not tell them anything. All he knew for sure was that Joseph Chadwick was leaving his home just as he arrived, in fact Mr. Chadwick waved at him.

  Beth died three days later of major complications. The coroner’s report stated that she had been brutally raped and died of massive internal bleeding. When the police questioned Joseph Chadwick, at first he denied knowing her, which was a lie because he often went to see her during the day.

  Some of the police officers knew this as well, but said nothing; after all, many of them went to see her at times as well. It was no big deal, so that bit of information was not important to the case. Anyway, Mr. Chadwick gave the kid a job, so he had nothing to hide.

  Joseph Chadwick was intent on protecting his family and name from scandal, and he had the money and power to do it. Although he was seen leaving the house, he stated his reason for being there was to meet the parent of the young man that was working on his property. Joseph said that he never went into the house.

  The police believed him—after all, he was Joseph Chadwick. Who was going to doubt his story and be willing to pay the price?

  Chapter 12

  Three days later…

  George’s mother’s funeral was a lonely one; no one in town attended. Not even those who knew her, the ones she worked for or with. One person did attend though, Joseph Chadwick. He told anyone who would listen, and most people did when he spoke, he felt sorry for the boy. After all, everyone should have at least one person attend his or her funeral.

  Many people in town thought he should have been angry that George fingered him as the last person leaving the house that night, but Joseph Chadwick said that he understood how such a mistake could be made because it was dark, and George no doubt was tired from working all day.

  Still, many in the town thought such a mistake could have ruined Joseph Chadwick and gallantly stood in his corner. Joseph made sure
that everyone knew he held no qualms with George; in fact he felt sorry for him, being alone now in the world. He also made sure everyone knew that despite George thinking it was him he saw leaving the house on that night, George still had his job as handyman around his house. People thought Joseph Chadwick was a saint.

  Jennie did not attend the funeral; her dad would not let her. When George came to finish the job he started, not because of some sense of duty, but because he needed the money for food and rent, he had found several eviction notices among his mother’s personal belongings.

  His state of mind was so chaotic he performed his work on automatic, not focusing on anything for the first time in months; he worked himself into a mental frenzy. He wanted someone to hurt, to feel the pain he could not escape with work or through sleep.

  The first person he saw clearly through his mentally chaotic mind, when focusing hurt even his tormented haunted eyes, was Jennie walking across the yard toward the barn. Anger erupted inside of him like a massive volcano. Sending blinding rage rushing through his veins like hot melted lava, his eyes blazed from the hatred within him.

  It was her father who used and killed his mother and George made sure that Jennie knew it. He told her all the horrifying things Joseph had done in graphic details. She of course defended her father, as everyone else did.

  George was in the back of the barn putting the tools away, when Jennie entered. “We need to talk,” she said hesitantly, pleading with her eyes.

  “We have nothing to discuss,” saying through clenched teeth. He was trying his best not to take his anger out on her, but she was not making it easy.

  “George, you can’t believe that my father would do such a thing! He’s an honest and decent man!” She was shouting now; she had to make him see he was mistaken.

  Sighing loudly, he slowly turned from what he was doing. The look in his eyes was one she had never seen before. He began to walk unhurriedly toward her; she felt like she was being stalked.

  Each step he took forward, she took two steps backward. “Not only did your father rape and murder my mother,” he said as he continued slowly toward her, “but he also gagged her and tied her hands to the bed poles.”

  Jennie was shaking her head in disbelief walking backward, as he continued toward her. “And when he couldn’t get release from those sick pleasures, he burned her repeatedly all over her body,” punctuating each word, driving them into her brain like nails being hit by a sledgehammer.

  He backed her into one of the stalls. “No!” Still shaking her head in denial, wide-eyed, she refused to believe her father was capable of such things. “My father would not do those things, I tell you!”

  He slowly raised his hand. She flinched. “How would you know, Jennie?” He asked as he lovingly caressed her jaw. “How would you know what some men are capable of, especially if they thought they wouldn’t get caught?” His eyes were blank of all emotion but hatred and pain. Her heart clutched in her chest seeing the pain.

  Jennie would defend her father to the last, he thought, as he bore into her eyes, wide with uncertainty. However, that is not what made him so very angry, it was the fact that he still wanted, no…he loved her, the daughter of the man that murdered his mother. He still loved her so very much.

  The thought sickened him for he hated her father. He still caressed her jaw, and then his hands on their own accord glided to her hips.

  “George…please,” her soft plea whispering through her lips as the pleasure of having him touch her crept under her skin. Her senses. Jennie knew she could have stopped him at anytime; George would not have hurt her no matter how angry and hurt he was.

  She knew that as sure as she knew her own name, but she did not want him to stop. She loved him so very much. George was not listening. Slowly touching her everywhere, Jennie shivered as if cold, but she was on fire. She wanted to make love to George…always had; he was the one who always held back.

  Putting a halt to things when she wanted to go forward, now there was no turning back, she hugged him closer; she loved him and had every intention of being his wife someday. Their eyes locked, both lost to all but each other.

  George made sweet, tender, passionate love to Jennie. It angered him that she defended her father, but his body had a mind of its own, and that mind wanted nothing but to melt into Jennie, to be one with her. He needed…wanted her to help him be whole again.

  He was so tender. Sweet. Loving. Jennie could not stop him and she did not want to because she loved him. She loved him. Jennie knew he was angry. And deep down, where no one could see, she knew that he was telling the truth about her father.

  She had heard her parents arguing many nights about her father’s visits to George’s mother. That is why she antagonized him every chance she got. How dare his mother try to break up her parents? Then, without meaning to, she fell deeply in love with George Van Cleef.

  Jennie had hoped to give George comfort for what her father had done, though deep inside her heart she knew that she could not; his mother was dead because of her father. Nothing could ease that pain, not even her love.

  Afterward, George was so ashamed of himself he cried racking sobs of tears and begged for her forgiveness. Jennie held on to him saying nothing for a while, allowing him time to say all the things he tried to hold inside.

  She understood; in her heart there was no need for forgiveness, as he did nothing wrong. She told him so repeatedly through tearful eyes. She knew that he needed someone…her, and she wanted…no needed, to be there for him. She also knew, despite what George thought, he made love to her tenderly and slowly. She smiled at the thought.

  They lay in each other’s arms, holding and caressing one another, conveying how they felt without words, locking out the outside world for as long as they could.

  That day, in the dark of her father’s horse stable, Sable was conceived. Their lives would never be the same.

  Chapter 13

  Eight months and one day later after Beth’s funeral…

  Being a slim girl, Jennie always wore her clothes oversized; she liked it that way, said it allowed her to breathe. So when at eight months pregnant, her dad, who normally knocked before entering her room, rushed in to ask her a question, was stunned to see his little girl standing in the mirror admiring her swollen stomach.

  Joseph was furious and demanded to know who the father was. Jennie would not tell him, the housekeepers later told the police. All throughout the house their angry voices could be heard.

  Jennie, pushing past her father into the hall outside her bedroom, held the front of her belly as if the child was already born, needing her protection. Standing at the stairs, “I’ll never tell! I love him!” she yelled, her fingers spreading across her swollen belly lovingly.

  Joseph, violently enraged, slapped Jennie so hard that it sent her fragile young body tumbling down the stairs. Her sharp screams piercing the air, like moving lightening, sent intense pains coursing through her like a knife. Then she was silent, body twisted at the bottom of the stairs like a stringless puppet, her oversized shirt partially covering her face, her swollen belly in full view. Still in rage, Joseph told the butler to take her to her bedroom.

  “But sir, she’s bleeding, shouldn’t I call the doctor?” Nervously, Mr. Neil hurriedly kneeled beside Jennie, looking worriedly at her bruised battered body, and the bump quickly forming on her forehead. The girl still had not moved.

  “You…” his voice rising in tempo with every word spoken, “…will do as I say or find another job! Don’t ever question me again!” Voice dripping with venom, Joseph looked as if he wanted to kill someone, anyone, and Mr. Neil would do.

  “Yes…yes Sir, Mr. Chadwick.” Picking up the unconscious Jennie, Mr. Neil carefully carried her up the stairs toward her bedroom, motioning for his wife, who was the housekeeper, to follow him with a slight movement of his head. Gently, he laid Jennie on her bed. This child needs help, he thought. Lord, help them all. What had Mr. Chadwick done now?


  He was terrified because Jennie, limp as a rag doll, did not move or make a sound as his wife and another housekeeper carefully put her under the pink-laced blanket covering her bed.

  The house was silent as a mausoleum. Many of the servants, hearing the argument, saw what happened and scattered, fearing Joseph Chadwick.

  The entire staff all knew that Joseph Chadwick was ruthless and that he had been seeing George’s mother, Beth, but no one said anything for they feared for their lives; rumor had it that Joseph Chadwick has had people killed.

  Jennie briefly opened her eyes, and clutched the blanket with trembling fingers, as though it was a lifeline. She was in so much pain. “Please Mr. Neil…make the pain stop,” her voice hitched as she fell back into unconsciousness.

  Mr. Neil anxiously looked at his wife, whose face turned white with fear, gently squeezed Jennie’s hands in hopes that she would open her eyes. She did, and then allowed them to close again because of the pain. As Jennie lay in the bed fighting for the life of her unborn child, her life was slowly slipping away.

  Joseph, still seething with rage, came and stood over her bed for a minute. “When I find out the name of the son of a bitch who touched my daughter, he’s dead.” Talking to no one in particular, he turned and left the room, not once asking about his daughter’s health.

  When her father left the room, Jennie’s eyes slowly opened. She was very weak and extremely tired. Turning her head slightly, she whispered, “Mrs. Neil?” If the housekeeper were not next to the bed, she would not have heard. Jennie’s voice was so terribly weak. Tears ran down Mrs. Neil’s cheeks like slow running water in fearful agony and despair.

  Jennie made Mrs. Neil promise that when the baby was born never to let her father know that the child lived. Racking sobs of grief clogged the housekeeper’s throat as she shook her head in promise because words could not form to pass her shivering lips. Both Mr. and Mrs. Neil tried to tell Jennie to rest, but she wouldn’t.