Vigilante

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by Jessica Gadziala

My mother was thirty-four when I was conceived after a week-long bender in which she must have forgotten to take her Pill. I heard about the bender directly from her.

  Damn tequila shots are the only reason your skinny, snot-filled ass exists.

  I was five the first time I heard that, not quite understanding at that point of course.

  The Pill part I speculated for myself, several years later when I understood such concepts.

  But, yeah, I was an epic fuckup that she absolutely did not want. Why she didn't abort me was completely beyond my comprehension. When you were as against having kids as she was, being that her life was dedicated to chasing the promises found at the bottoms of bottles, I couldn't imagine what made her decide to have me.

  To be perfectly honest, there was a chance she didn't know until it was too late.

  It was a fucking miracle I wasn't born with fetal alcohol syndrome. Though, to be honest, there was an argument to be made for there being some of that damage leftover. Namely in my social skills - or lack thereof - my impulse control, and my somewhat strong tendency toward obsessive behaviors.

  But, to be fair to a woman who didn't deserve any fairness whatsoever, all those things could have very much to do with my abuse later in life than the amount of booze she downed while pregnant.

  My father, well, he was like every other scumbag I put in the ground as an adult. This meant that he was mainly, above all else, an incredible fucking actor. His whole life was a lie. His every smile, every word of encouragement, his every pat on the back, it was all a mask he wore so no one would ever look deeper and see the evil just beneath the surface.

  Thankfully, I didn't see much of him when I looked in the mirror. If I did, well, I likely would have taken a blade to my face a long time ago.

  I looked like my mother- tall and thin, all arms, legs, and torso. I had her dark hair, her dark eyes, her cheekbones. My jaw, well, who the fuck knew where that came from. Some grandfather five generations back or some shit.

  But yeah, I'd rather look like my mother, the mess, the coward, the selfish bitch, than look like my father, the twisted, sick, perverse, child molesting freak.

  There's no way to describe what it was like that first night, the night I came home from little league, beaming because, for the first time, I struck a kid out, face still sticky from the ice cream we got on the way home.

  It was maybe the highest moment of my young life.

  Followed by the lowest.

  Because my father didn't fit the 'pattern.'

  My father didn't slowly escalate.

  It didn't start with inappropriate talk, then move on to touching, then masturbating, then oral sex, then the full act of penetration.

  I learned later in life, during a brief stint in counseling with a therapist who didn't seem like a complete and utter quack for a change, that this was likely because I was not his first victim. Because almost all offenders escalated. They had to test the boundaries, make sure they didn't get caught.

  Other little boys had suffered at his hand at some point.

  And given that he was forty when I was born, that left several decades and an unknown amount of misery before he finally had me.

  Little old defenseless me.

  Right under his very own roof.

  A convenient-to-grab sex toy anytime the mood struck.

  And it struck often.

  Almost nightly.

  Starting that first night when I was held with my face in a pillow so no one could hear me scream.

  And I did.

  Scream, that is.

  I screamed so hard that I felt like I had strep for a week after, that I bit my tongue so bad that it was flooded with blood and made speaking and eating impossible for days.

  I screamed.

  And cried.

  And begged God to end it.

  But he didn't.

  I searched for meaning that Sunday in church, shifting in the pew because no matter what way I tried to sit, it hurt so bad that tears stung my eyes. I heard words of sin and punishment, my sad, confused, betrayed little mind trying to make sense of that, trying to see what I had done to warrant such punishment.

  I tried after.

  To be a better boy.

  To keep my grades up.

  To never get into scrapes with other boys.

  To do my chores without being asked.

  To keep quiet.

  To never get in anyone's way.

  It didn't do any good.

  My sins, apparently, continued.

  As did my punishments for them.

  How did he keep me silent, that might be your next question. After all, in these times, how can a child not know their father isn't allowed to touch them that way?

  The answer is both simple and complicated.

  First, let's go with good old he was my father.

  At seven, your brain doesn't think too far beyond that. Parents are, for all intents and purposes, like gods to their kids. They know all; they make the rules; they are who you go to with problems.

  Likely because of my father's perverse tendencies and my mother's rampant alcoholism, I was very much raised with the idea of never 'airing your dirty laundry.' If there was a problem, it was handled in-house. We didn't drag strangers in to check out our soiled sheets.

  So reaching out, at that time, never crossed my mind.

  Second to that, I was taught nothing, not one single shred of sexual education. Not at home, nor at school. We didn't have cable. I didn't even know what sex was, let alone rape, until my teens.

  Third, we didn't live anywhere near other houses. We backed up to the Adirondacks. We didn't have neighbors to talk to who might have noticed something was off about me.

  And if you aren't taught that something is wrong, even if it feels wrong when it is happening, how the hell are you supposed to know it is abuse?

  I did, however, have a pretty good idea of the fucked-upedness of that fateful night when I was twelve, when my father got all his pervert friends together, and they all took turns abusing me.

  I had an idea a year later when he rented me out to one of those friends again, one-on-one because he needed to spend some time with me, because he wanted to 'bring me to heel,' because he was a sick fuck who loved knives and cigarette burns and whips.

  I had an idea as I nursed wounds for weeks after one of his visits, having to wear hoodies in summer to cover them up.

  His last visit was when I was fourteen, on the cusp of too old for all the old pricks to desire anymore. Maybe sensing the end of our time together, the knife seemed bigger, seemed sharper, and it meant to brand me forever, to make it impossible to forget him.

  So my father held me down, cock hard at my screams, as another man carved the word 'slave' across my chest.

  And I was.

  A slave, that is.

  I was a slave before then physically.

  Afterward, I was a slave mentally for years.

  But that night, that night when I was fourteen, bleeding openly from my chest, my whole body sore from other treatments I had already received, that was the night when grown men stopped putting their hands on my young body.

  Because it was also the night I first learned how to take lives.

  As my father exited the room to go get them a round of drinks to celebrate another night of successful rape, my 'master' moved to look out the window, chest puffed out in his satisfaction, the moon making him look even more sinister than he already did to my young eyes.

  But he had left the knife on the bed, still slick and red with my blood.

  I knew the knife.

  Winchester clip point with a wooden handle.

  I had been acquainted with it monthly for over a year.

  I knew just how sharp he kept it - sharp enough to slice the skin from my body with the barest of brushes.

  Sharp enough to do damage.

  Permanent damage.

  I don't know why that night was my breaking point.

  D
idn't matter how many times I sat in various therapists' offices and tried to pinpoint the breaking point. The best I could figure was, it was simply the last straw. And I somehow knew that it was the last time I would see my 'master.'

  My father's other friends had lost interest in me over the past year, my budding manhood becoming less enticing for their particular proclivities.

  And I knew this was the end for me and this particular sadistic bastard.

  And I was sick and fucking tired of being helpless.

  The second my hand closed around that handle, helpless was the last thing I felt.

  I felt powerful.

  For the first time in my life.

  And that feeling was heady, overwhelming, to someone who had been nothing but a victim.

  So when I rose from that bed, seven year's worth of pain, sadness, impotence, and rage rose up within me, a cocktail that had my blood screaming in my veins, my pulse pumping so hard in my ears that I literally couldn't even hear the scream when my knife slammed into his heart, sending a flood of warm, sticky, red blood down my hand and forearm before I could find the strength to pull it back out.

  It was a done deal, of course. There was no way for him to survive it.

  But I wasn't done.

  I had years to make up for. I had scars covering my whole body from his knives, his cigarettes, his whips.

  So I stabbed and carved that knife into his body until I was literally slick with blood, until his body was just a mess of open wounds.

  Until I felt my father's hands close around my shoulders.

  My hearing came back in a rush.

  "What have you done!" he shrieked, sounding horrified.

  As he should have been.

  The image was straight out of a horror movie.

  And I was no superhero. I was just a scared, traumatized kid.

  So my immediate response was to freak out, to beg, to cry, to look for mercy.

  I watched as he moved me away, kneeling down next to his friend, checking for vitals. It was ridiculous and ultimately fruitless being that the man was mincemeat, but he did it regardless.

  And then he did the one thing he could have done to wipe away my own horror at the whole scene.

  He turned over his shoulder with huge eyes, and he spoke.

  "Why would you do this? He never did anything to you!"

  It was right that second that I understood, not even having anything to truly understand, I did. There was no remorse in him for all the pain he had caused me. There was no regret. Because he genuinely did not think it was wrong.

  There was no cure for his sickness.

  Don't ask me why, but that was a blindingly clear revelation for me.

  There was no fixing him.

  And I remembered something in that moment.

  I remembered when I was ten, and we walked into the yard to find a raccoon in the garden, hissing, snarling, wobbling around.

  Rabies, he had said.

  Incurable, he added.

  You can't fix a rabid animal, son, he went on, you just have to put them down.

  He grabbed gloves, picked the raccoon up by the tail, laid him on the block, and decapitated him.

  A lesson was learned. And remembered, stored away for when I would need it again several years later.

  My father was a rabid animal. There was no fixing him.

  He needed to be put down.

  Maybe it was instinct, pure memory of our hunting together out in the mountains, or maybe it was just what was easiest to do, but I gripped the knife with the blade out sideways, and I sliced it across his throat.

  The blood spluttered out as he howled, hands going up to cup at it uselessly, like he could push it back in.

  It wasn't clean.

  It wasn't quick.

  My experience with killing was with small animals only. I had no idea how much more pressure I needed to use to cut deeply enough for him to bleed out in less than a minute.

  So he slowly drained of blood. I watched him go pale. I watched the life flicker in and out of his eyes. I watched as he became too weak to stay kneeling, and fell over.

  I watched as he gasped out his last breath.

  It took an eerily long time.

  And it should have been sickening. I should have been vomiting all over myself and the floor, crying, something.

  But I wasn't.

  I was cold.

  Detached.

  Level-headed.

  I walked out of the room and to the bathroom, diligently washing the blood off my body, off the knife, then carefully seeing to the cuts across my chest, my stomach lurching at seeing them reflected at me in the mirror.

  I dressed carefully in jeans, long socks, hiking boots, a tee, and a black hoodie with white hood pulls. I stocked a backpack with money stolen from both men's wallets, a change of clothes, some food, a fire starter, a pot, and the knife. I rolled up a knapsack and tied it on top.

  It was spring in the Adirondacks.

  If there was ever a time a young boy could hope to survive there, that was when.

  Sure there were no other options, sure the cops would be looking for me within hours, I also grabbed my father's machete out of the barn, and tore off into the mountains.

  I spent enough time out in them to know it wasn't the best plan. First, because I was alone and could fall to my own death, or get caught in a damn bear trap and die of infection. Second, because my own stupidity and lack of training weren't the only things to contend with. For instance, not only were the Adirondacks home to cool things like beavers and marten, but one could also expect moose, black bears, coyotes, bobcats, and, as legend goes, cougars. Any one of them could put an end to a fourteen-year-old boy's life.

  Spring would lead into summer where ticks came out by the billions, where mosquitos wouldn't give you a moment of peace. Summer would give way to fall where bears are looking to pack on the pounds for hibernation, making any meat source a good target. And winter, well, surviving on your own in the freezing depths of winter without losing limbs to blackness was big enough of a problem, doing so while not becoming prey to some desperate coyote or cougar was even more of a problem.

  But there were cabins, I knew.

  If you were strong enough to make it there, hunters had set up cabins. Survivalists as well. And, though you definitely didn't want to invade them, drug dealers who liked to grow their pot in the mountains, unseen, had cabins there as well.

  By the time I found one such cabin, almost a month later, I was thin from hunger, thinner than usual which was saying something. I was skin and bones.

  I could kill.

  I was good at killing.

  It was the tracking and trapping that I sucked at.

  And those were kinda the more vital parts of acquiring protein.

  I had been mostly surviving on wild blueberries, strawberries, Indian cucumber-root, and as disgusting as this was to admit, bugs, and small lizards.

  I was getting weak.

  And I was going to die if I didn't find shelter and a small supply of something protein-packed so I could refuel to seriously be able to hunt or fish again.

  So when I came across the cabin, I didn't care to inspect what kind it was.

  I didn't even notice the field out back.

  All I saw was a small shanty that provided a place to rest that wasn't hard ground, that didn't expose me to the elements and predators.

  Inside, I found a bed and a supply of canned beans.

  It was stealing, technically.

  But survival rules, my father taught me, allowed for such things.

  I ate the beans straight from the can, leaving the cash that was useless to me in the place of said can as a thank-you to the owners for their hospitality.

  And I went to sleep.

  I woke up to a gun in my face.

  "Ease up, G," the man behind the man with a gun said, looking down at me. "He's just a kid."

  "Fuck off with that kid shit," G said, shaking his he
ad. "I was running the street at his age."

  I didn't really need more than that.

  Drug dealers.

  Most likely, pot farmers.

  Of course.

  I released the machete I had been gripping to hold my hands out, palms up. "I just needed food," I admitted, waving toward their pile of supplies. "I left money to replace it even."

  There was a second of silent communication between the two hulking guys in their mid-twenties, indeterminate of heritage, but seeming mostly white. The one who wasn't G turned to me. "You lost up here?"

  "I... ran away," I supplied.

  "No shit," G said suddenly, pointing toward me, and doing so with the gun. "You don't recognize him? Man, he's that kid all over the news. They said you were abducted."

  Well, that sure worked in my favor, didn't it?

  No one was suspecting me of murder?

  It felt like a weight was lifted.

  "Wait," G said, head cocking to the side, eyes going a bit more wise than you would expect from a typical thug. "If you weren't kidnapped... and you ran away..." he trailed off, smile going a bit wicked. "You did it, huh? You sliced those guys up? Your pops and his friend? Damnnnnn, that's cold, kid." G was apparently loving this information. "So, what now, daddy-killer? You gonna just shack up in these mountains all your life? Become some backwards woodman?"

  I slowly pushed up in bed, rolling a kink out of my neck. "I didn't think that far."

  "No shit. You're like half fucking dead and this is the easy season."

  G, you could tell from first meeting, was a filter-free kind of guy. He grew up on the streets of Baltimore, dodging bullets, and putting them in others. He was not one for mercy, not even to a fourteen-year-old kid. But he was one for mutual respect. And he, as rough around the edges as he seemed, was a businessman through and through.

  His buddy, Mickey, came from the same neighborhood, but had a decent upbringing, had some love in his life that made him a bit softer to a trespasser in his cabin.

  "So, you get that you just showed us your hand, right?" G asked.

  "My hand?" I repeated, feeling my spine stiffen.

  "Daddy killer," he repeated. "I mean, what? He whoop your ass a time too many?" I meant to show no reaction. I didn't want anyone to know. Because while I only barely grasped the fact that what he had done to me was genuinely wrong, I still felt some sort of shame surrounding the whole thing.

 

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