by mike Evans
“Maybe he needs to go to counseling?”
“We are catholic, we don’t do counseling, and divorce isn’t an option; so please don’t even go down that road. He needs to go to church to repent and hope that God will forgive him for the ways that he has lived. It’s a shame, he had such potential.”
“Can I ask what happened to him, if it isn’t too invasive of me to ask?”
“Oh, I don’t care doctor; it’s pretty simple I think. He was eighteen, just graduated high school; he didn’t have great grades, but he wasn’t last in his class. The draft was started, and he got drafted. His number couldn’t have been worse, and he didn’t have college to get him out of it, or a rich dad to get him in the air national guard. Unfortunately for him, he went into the army. He did four tours over there between 1960 and 1964. We were married five years before we ever spent more than a week in the same house. The only thing we did manage to do together, was have Billy. When he came back for good, that was when my baby Anthony, who isn’t really a baby anymore, decided it was time for him to come into our lives. I love them so much, but the burden of them and not being able to secure a job once he got back has been too much. I was understanding for quite a few years, and tried to help him through whatever it was he was going through, but it seemed like it was just never enough.”
“I read about it in school. They call it PTSD.”
“PTSD?”
“Post-traumatic stress disorder, that’s what the doctors call it. It actually affects a lot of the veterans coming back. Not just Vietnam, but men who had fought in previous wars as well.”
“I don’t know if that is what it is, but he’s going to kill someone someday with that temper. He won’t go get help, and he won’t quit drinking. I just don’t know what to do. I love my boys, and I love my church, but there’s only so much that someone can put up with.”
The doctor leaned back, snipping his string from her head, finishing the last of the stitches. “There we go, all done, Mrs. Parker. Here, I want you to take this Aspirin please, and here is a bottle to take home with you. If you think you’ll be able to sleep without interference or any other issues, then I’d like you to double your dosage that is on the bottle. It’s going to make you sleepy and feel better. The more rest you can get the better. No one ever healed quickly by being rundown and tired. Please do what you can. I really am sorry about your circumstances. I would like to see you in another week or two so that I might take out those stitches. You’re going to have a scar, but your hairline should keep it from letting anyone see.”
“Doctor, I stopped worrying about being a pretty little thing a long time ago, but thank you for the medicine, and I truly hope that we all get to rest this evening. I think my boys couldn’t be any more tired than they are.”
“Best of luck, Mrs. Parker.”
She got up from the table, feeling her stomach gurgle, and wished for anything that she had gotten a chance to eat that chili. She knew it had been a few days since she’d had the opportunity to get a warm meal in her belly, and that meal had not been anything to write home about. The doctor caught her by the elbow as she looked like she was going to face plant. “You aren’t going to be okay. I'm going to admit you for the night; it’s free. Do you have a job you need to worry about getting to on Monday?”
“No sir, but I’m going to need to get three of them. My husband isn’t much of a provider but ‘not much’ is more than ‘none at all’. I'm going to lose our house if we don’t come up with the money for it, and I can’t leave my boys by themselves.”
He walked to the wall pulling the phone from its cradle and a minute later a nurse came back with Ralph and the two boys. Ralph asked, “What seems to be the problem doc? She’s going to be okay, ain’t she?”
“Yes, I think that she’ll be just fine, but what she really needs to do is rest. I don’t like the look of that bruise on the back of her head. Do you know if there’s any family that the boys can stay with overnight?”
“I'm right here, doctor, thank you very much. I don’t have any family around; I moved here to live with my husband once he was discharged, thinking there’d be plenty of work, only to find out the latter. He doesn’t have any family any better than him that I would trust these two darlings to stay with. I will be just fine; I promise I’ll find something to eat and I will be okay.”
Ralph stepped in her way as she was trying to pass. “You will do no such thing, Joan. The boys are going to stay at our house tonight, and Monday night if they need it. If you need to stay, then you stay. We’ve been caring for our own children longer than you’ve been alive. I'm sure that Mrs. Anderson is more than capable of handling these two boys for a couple days. Maybe we can put a little fat on them bones.”
“I promise, Mr. Anderson, I won’t stay any longer than they make me.”
“It won’t kill you to get a good night's sleep and a warm meal or two in your belly.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Anderson, I’m going to instruct the nurses to make sure that they get as much food in her as they can.”
“Again, I’m right here… like, literally. Please don’t treat me like a child. Billy, Tony, you both be good. I mean it, you don’t give the Andersons any trouble whatsoever. You’ll have more than just God to answer to, if you don’t behave yourselves.”
A nurse came in with a wheelchair and Ralph helped her to it. “They’ll be fine; you worry about yourself for just this once, and let me worry about the boys. We’ll keep them fed, and on time to school for Billy—unless you want us to keep him home on Monday. Tony and us will have a great time on Monday. You do what you need to, and then swing by when you are ready to pick things up. It isn’t a rush, and we are retired; we’ve got nothing better to do, so this really is absolutely no inconvenience for us. Like I said, we have been caring for kids for longer than you’ve been alive. We can handle two more. I’ll try not to return them with any dents.”
She laughed pulling Ralph down and gave him a hug. She motioned for the boys to come to her and gave them each a kiss and a hug. “Billy, are you sure that you are going to be able to go to school Monday?”
“Yep, I’ll be okay, I can handle a headache.”
“You two be good, that’s all. Have fun, don’t eat them out of house and home, even if they try to let you. Billy, have a good day at school; and Tony, you be a good boy for Mrs. Anderson on Monday. If you see your father come home, don’t go over there! I mean it, you stay put. He’ll never expect that you’d be at the Anderson’s house.”
“We don’t want to go with Daddy, Mom. I’ll be okay, Momma, Billy will make sure I don’t do anything too dumb.”
Ralph put a hand on both boy’s necks. He felt horrible when the boys cringed, both waiting for pain, not being used to a friendly hand on them from a man. “Sorry, boys, let’s get going, we can still get something to eat if we get home before Mrs. Anderson puts on her nightgown.” Tony and Billy watched as their mom got wheeled away.
Chapter 10
David Parker stumbled, making his way around the corner to his street. He was beyond drunk at this point and had an additional buzz running through his system from the pain meds the free clinic had given him after they had set the bone in his arm back in place. David had gone to one on the other side of town; luckily for his wife he’d not gone to the same one. He’d lied when they asked if he was taking medicine or alcohol before they gave him a shot for the pain. The euphoria that raced his body afterwards had left him walking aimlessly around the city for the last few hours. When his high had started to wear off, the anger and memory of what and why he had a broken arm in the first place came back.
David could think of only one thing, and that was making sure that his entire family felt every ounce of pain that he had endured. The lights were left on and he tried the door finding it locked. He took the locked door as a personal insult, ignoring the fact that the home he’d gotten them was in the ghetto, and except for a few good-hearted neighbors, the majority wouldn’t
be trusted further than he could throw them. Not that he had given any of them a reason to trust him either. He knocked lightly on the door, knowing that he’d not be tricking his wife. “Joan, honey, why don’t you open the door and let me in? I’m really tired, and my arm hurts. Open the door now, Joan.”
He waited a few moments, listening for the door to open, for any footsteps to make their way to let him enter. When no sound came from the house, he used his good hand to pound on the door until the door began to shake. One of the neighbors yelled from inside their home to knock it off. David—who always treated everyone with class—screamed belligerently, “You shut up, Phil, or I’m going to come to your house after I do what I need to at mine!”
Phil knew David was a brawler and was smart enough not to say anything back. David puffed up his chest when he didn’t answer and brought up his hand, content to break it or the door down if he was not allowed to enter. The lock clicked free, and the door began to open slowly. He was heaving and out of breath at this point from being a smoker who couldn’t handle screaming. He kicked the door in, expecting to see a cowering Joan, hands up, knees shaking, and ready to apologize and beg for her life. He scanned the room before he let his fist down for even a second, looking around wild-eyed. At the very least, he figured he would have seen her running up the stairs or back to the kitchen, also known as “the ring,” as that seemed to be where all the issues always began.
“Joan? Where in the hell are you? If you make me find you, it’s gonna just be that much worse, I can promise you that, woman... Joan, boys? Oh, I’m getting madder by the second!”
He walked through the kitchen slowly, looking around, seeing nothing had been cleaned up from earlier in the day. The chili was on the ground where Billy had dropped it.
The door slammed hard behind him. He turned around with his heart in his throat and ready to kill, but nothing was there. David’s mouth sat agape as he watched the deadbolt slowly begin to turn on its own, and he knew he could not chalk that up to the wind. For a man that did not usually know fear, he was getting a brutal meet and greet with it very quickly. His lips began to quiver as he slowly began to lose his mind. “What in the hell is going on here?”
A voice called back, seeming like it was being spoken into a bottle or cup as it reverberated to him. “The boy is ours, you must leave.”
Even when he knew he should shut up, the man didn’t possess the willpower or intelligence to do so. “Who the hell is that talking? Where are you? Get out here so I can whoop on you. No one’s taking my boy but God and that ain’t happening anytime soon.”
Only laughter answered when he said that. “God won’t be involved, fool.”
David felt the hairs rise up on the back of his neck. He looked down and saw his feet leaving the ground, only to realize his entire body was fully rising. He screamed as his arms slowly began to rise without his doing, his legs began to spread until they weren’t able to spread any further. David tried to scream, but he was unable to open his mouth. His teeth were clenched shut and pressed harder together until they shattered into his mouth, pushing what was left into his gums. Blood seeped from his mouth and tears began to roll down his cheeks. His teeth felt as if they were being stabbed into his gums.
The voice spoke again. “He is ours. Do not worry lost soul, there is a place in hell awaiting your arrival.”
It let the pressure off his mouth momentarily. “Who... who—what are you? Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because you are unworthy,” he told him the same thing he’d recited to Billy earlier in the day. “Soldiers need no name.”
The demon carried him upstairs; the ladder to the attic came down, allowing him up into it and shut behind him. David screamed in pain as he moved in front of the mirror, seeing something so dark and evil with its hands wrapped around his bicep and leg that he could not imagine such a thing actually existed anywhere but in nightmares. It squeezed harder until his bones snapped under the pressure. It broke each arm in three places and then pulled until it had ripped it from its place.
David screamed in agony, looking down at the bloody stump and the torn skin hanging loosely. “Why, why? I’ll leave, I’ll never come back again, you can have him! You can keep him, I don’t care, take the little bastard.”
“We will, but you lie and are not trusted to keep your word.”
David watched as his arm appeared to be floating in the air. The demon dropped it at once and focused its attention on his broken left arm, pulling at it now. He watched in horror as the skin stretched past an imaginable point. When the skin couldn’t be stretched any further, it finally ripped from its place. David was momentarily blinded as the blood shot into his eyes. He of course, at this point, could not move his arms to wipe it. Reason one, he had no arms, and two, the demon was still keeping him paralyzed. Tears were now coming down freely, and he watched as his thighs began to twist left and then right. The pressure exploded through his hips and into his spine. He saw them spinning until the bones in the joints gave way and they popped free of their home.
The demon tore his left leg off. David pleaded at the top of his lungs. “Just kill me, just kill me please!”
“We aren’t yet done; do not rush your death, for hell will be worse.”
“What’s left of me?”
It did not answer, it ran a hand that he could not see down his cheek sending a chill through what was left of his body. The demon craved the sound of fear and pain and let his grasp on David’s mouth go, leaving him to scream at the top of his lungs. The attic was shut, and he was high enough that the muffled screams did not travel far through the old brick home. When his final leg was torn from its place and he thought that death was near, that was when it took him back over near the mirror.
He was sobbing uncontrollably and on the verge of passing out from blood loss. He was ready for whatever would come next even if it meant hell; as long as he was put out of his misery, here on earth. He floated there staring at himself, his vision going in and out. The blood dripped from where his limbs had once called home. His blood almost seemed to float through the air until it reached the mirror, and a cross was drawn upside down onto it.
A sharp pain reached in through his back and he felt like something was tearing at his insides—because it was. He watched in a daze as his clothes began to tear and then his skin tore open in his back along his spine, followed by his kidneys and lungs being ripped from their place.
In his final seconds on earth he screamed, “I repent, I repent!” David prayed that God would forgive him and part his gates for him to enter. The demon must’ve been worried that it was possible as well, because it plunged into the last remaining item it wanted from David, gripping his heart and tearing it from its place, dropping it still beating on the ground, and then threw David down. He watched as it beat in front of him for only a moment longer that he remained conscious before passing to the great beyond.
Chapter 11
Monday morning
Joan was woken by the squeezing from a blood pressure cuff being placed around her bicep. The nurse smiled. “Good morning, Mrs. Parker. How are you feeling this morning?”
She sat up, feeling the instant pain in her head beginning an unrelenting thud. “I was going to say good, but my head feels like there’s a jackhammer going on inside my skull. I don’t know what I’m going to do, I have so much to do today.”
“Well, let nurse Betty tell you what you are going to do. First, you’re going to eat; your chart says that on top of a near concussion you also could barely hold yourself up. The doctor guessed the last time you’d eaten was a few days ago. Now, a young woman like you probably has at least one little one at home they are taking care of, and you need to be at your best because, oh my lord, do kids wear you down. I got five boys—five boys—each one of them is a gift from god, and has a Devil permanently sitting on their shoulders. If one of ‘em don’t think of it, the next one does. I don’t know what to do with those boys some days.
I tell you it makes me pray for girls if another one has to come out of this body. I say five and done though; it ain’t my job to go repopulating Earth, right?”
Joan smiled awkwardly, unsure what to say to that other than nod her head politely. “I could eat if there were any food around.”
“Oh please, there’s all kinds of food everywhere here. We got to feed our patients, we can’t send them out in worse shape than when they came in, now can we?”
“I guess not?”
“Well you guess right, honey. Now you sit tight, I’m going to get you a nice plate of eggs, and sausage, and maybe we can scrounge up some toast and coffee. Do you like coffee?”
“You’d be my new best friend if you got me some, nurse.”
“Now, you call me Betty, or Nurse Betty, but don’t call me the one who let you down.”
Joan smiled, watching the nurse shake her very healthy-sized rear end as she made her way out, dancing to a song that only she was thinking in her head. She felt like she just had a ten-hour conversation and could only nod her head yes. “Okay, sounds good to me. Thank you, I really appreciate it.”
The nurse turned around and gave her a wink as she made her way out the door, only to return a few minutes later with a tray heaping full of food. “Now, you eat this all gone if you can, and I’ll try to find some more for you if you need it. And I promise you, Nurse Betty can always find more food. I never leave hungry.”
Joan smelled the food and took the aspirin the nurse gave her as well. The coffee made its way up to her nostrils. She instantly felt better when she took a quick drink, seeing that the nurse had doctored it up with creamer and sugar. She felt comfortable for about ten minutes while she ate the food, until she was wiping a piece of toast across the rest of the eggs. Her stomach turned when she started thinking about everything that had happened the night before. Joan felt her cross and winced as she pressed it to her chest. She pulled her hospital gown down in the front, seeing a red bruise around where the cross hung. She thought of going to two places today, but the first would be the church. She didn’t know what had happened; it almost seemed like a miracle. Lord knew that the man deserved it, regardless of whether he got hurt, he still had it coming to him for quite some time now.