Helpless, I gaze on as my son points the knife at her.
While my husband struggles to keep her against the floor, his blood-smeared penis jostles against her naked rear.
“Help me, son!” he shouts, grabbing one of the girl’s arms as her other flails and claws at the ground.
The girl ploughs backwards into his crotch again. Stuart grits his teeth, moaning, and when she bucks her tailbone once more he finally releases her to protect his wound.
The girl takes her opportunity: she swings one arm backwards and smashes her knuckles into Stuart’s cheek. Stuart topples onto his side, his eyes wide.
The girl, lean and agile, rises to her knees and faces Declan. Her eyes are level with the blade as he jabs it towards her. The knife catches her cheek, draws blood, but with a sharp twist of her neck she sinks her teeth into Declan’s wrist. He drops the blade, howling, and in one smooth movement the girl releases Declan and scoops the weapon up from the carpet. My son backs away, nursing his arm, and the girl remains on her knees, gripping the knife with her arm crooked, poised to strike.
“Honey,” I say to her. “Please stop.”
Declan becomes a statue against the wall, clutching his gnawed wrist. He no longer looks like a young man entering adolescence; now, he is very much a vulnerable little kid.
“What do you want?” I ask, hating the tremor in my voice.
The girl’s lips part, perhaps to answer. Behind her, Stuart’s eyes have been drawn to the blade. As he rises silently to a partial sitting position, the girl closes her lips and spins on him.
She throws all of her weight into the blow. The knife blade vanishes like a magic trick, her hand and the plastic black handle halting only when they are flush against my husband’s throat. A dark rose erupts from his gullet, and red vines burst from his lips to course down his chin. The girl wrenches the handle away and the blade reappears, now crimson. Somehow Stuart continues to lean on one arm, staring at her, remaining almost upright as the girl pulls herself to her feet. Stuart’s expression is grim but he maintains his gaze, even as the blood pumps gurgling from his neck to run down his torso.
The girl lays her bare foot against my husband’s chest and sends him sprawling backwards. He lands heavily, rotates once, and stops moving with his back to the bed.
I’m suddenly alone.
Cowardice weakens me. I want to sleep, or faint, or die. Then some primal urge thunders through me and I tear at the handcuffs still binding my wrists, screaming wordlessly. Through my rage I see the girl turn to Declan, who still has his back pressed to the wall, his eyes pooled with tears yet to run.
“He’s just a child!” I shriek. “For God’s sake stop!”
She does not seem to hear.
Through the cracked-open bathroom doorway I notice my little survivor Phillip standing upright, his blonde crown and piercing black eyes peeking over the edge of the tub.
“You want to fuck my nice smooth cunt,” the girl says to Declan, the knife and her hand slick with my husband’s blood. “Sssshhh, everything will be okay.”
She ducks low. My son’s tears finally trickle down his cheeks when she buries the knife between his legs and thrusts, thrusts, thrusts.
“One, two, three, four,” she counts, as Declan buckles and slumps over her shoulder. “Five, six, seven…”
I can’t hear her voice through my own screams but she maintains the assault for what feels like minutes. Declan’s head judders with each knife thrust, his gaze pointed mournfully towards me. Then his streaming eyes lose focus.
In the silence afterwards, the girl lowers him gently to the ground, laying him onto his back like an adoring parent.
“Please,” I say, no longer sure what I’m pleading for. “Please.”
The girl looks gormlessly up from my son’s corpse. “Even little Daddies want to fuck us.”
15. Girl
The Girl on the bed is quiet now, even though her breathing is going, HUH HUH HUH. I really want to hug her again and say, “Sssshhh, everything will be okay,” but I don’t think she wants me to.
The little ones in the other room are quiet, now. I realise that I don’t know if they are Girls or Daddies, so I get to my feet.
The floor, the Daddy named Stuart and the little Daddy named Declan are all covered in pools and pools of red stuff. I step over Stuart, holding the metal thing tightly just in case he wakes up and tries to fuck me again.
The Girl on the bed says, “Please,” but her voice is like the little Girl in the film where the Daddy keeps fucking her with bigger and bigger buzzing toys. That little Girl had kept saying “Please please please,” but the Daddy didn’t listen. He kept fucking her until her cunt was really, REALLY big, and the little Girl’s voice was more like breathing than speaking.
One of the little ones from the other room looks up at me from a big white thing filled with water. This one is standing up, with hands on the edges of the white thing. The other one is sat down, with shoulders poking above the water. The one standing up is crying quietly and the one sitting down is smiling, but looks sad. They both have the same face.
“Please,” the Girl on the bed says, a bit louder. I look back. She is looking at the Daddies on the floor. “Please. Please stop.”
The little one standing up in the water in the other room has really big, dark eyes.
“Are you a Daddy or a Girl?” I ask it.
“They’re CHILDREN!!” the Girl on the bed screams.
I put the metal thing down onto the toilet lid and pick up the standing little one. He has a really small cock, but he is definitely a Daddy. His face screws up and he shrieks into my ear, so I put him back in the water. The other little one starts to cry too, and in a little squeaky voice she screams, “Mummy!”
When I lift her up I see her little cunt. She wriggles in my hands as I put her back down into the water.
The Girl on the bed rattles the handcuffs against the wall. When she shouts, her voice has become strong again. “I’ll do anything. If you stop, if you don’t hurt them, I will do anything for you. What do you want? For God’s sake, tell me what you want!”
I pick the metal thing up from the toilet lid. It’s really, really red, just like my hands and my arms and the sleeping Daddies and the floor-clothes in the other room.
Maybe I should turn this little Daddy in the bathroom into a Good Girl, too. I hold the metal thing towards him. He reaches out with one fat hand.
“Please,” the Girl on the bed says again.
The little Daddy wraps his fingers around the metal thing, and his dark eyes get even bigger. He pulls his hand back and it is covered in red stuff. He sees his fingers and giggles. The little Girl stands up to see. The little Daddy turns and strokes red stuff across her face. He laughs again. The little Girl looks like she’s going to cry, but she just stares at me with her big dark eyes and the splat of her Daddy’s red stuff on one cheek. She looks surprised. I laugh. She’s a Good Girl.
The Girl on the bed screams and screams and suddenly the little Girl and the little Daddy start to cry together. I’m looking at the metal thing in my hand and thinking that maybe I should just make all of them fall asleep, but then I think, no, it should only be the Daddies.
I go back to the Girl on the bed. She’s still screaming. Her eyes are shut and her handcuffed arms look shaky and her legs are closed, as if she doesn’t want me to see her cunt.
Hysterical.
That’s what My Daddy once said to me, the time that Red Daddy left my cunt covered in red stuff and I wouldn’t stop crying. My Daddy said, “Stop being hysterical. Stop it, stop it.”
“Stop being hysterical,” I tell the Girl on the bed. “Stop it, stop it.”
The Girl goes quiet. Her wet eyes make me think of broken screens.
“Please,” the Girl says. “I’m their mother, for God’s sake.”
Mother.
That word again. It makes me think of the hug that she had given me, and how she had kissed my cheek. Th
at hug felt like the warmest place I’ve ever been.
“It’s better if all the Daddies go to sleep, and don’t wake up,” I tell her. I want her to understand.
The Girl is still looking at the two Daddies on the floor. When she speaks, her voice is so quiet that I can hardly hear her: “Yes.”
“You’re saying yes, but you mean no,” I say. “You’re like the Daddy in the film where the Girl says, ‘Stop hitting me’, and the Daddy says, ‘Yes’, but then he doesn’t stop hitting her. He hits her more.”
The Daddy in the bathroom gurgles.
The little Girl in the bathroom says, “Urrrrrr.”
The Girl on the bed still doesn’t look up from the sleeping Daddies.
If I could show her that Daddies shouldn’t ever fuck us like they do, that all the Daddies I’ve met are all the same, then maybe she’ll understand.
Maybe she’ll hug me again.
Maybe she’ll even be my Mother.
16. Serenity
Without Stuart and Declan, death feels like a better option than survival.
The girl, blood-smeared and nude, remains vacant, watching me.
“I have to show you,” she says. “I’ll teach you.”
Through the bedroom door, across the hall and into the next room, Phillip and Lilith stand side by side in the bathtub. Their dark eyes glitter, their mouths are slack, and their tiny hands grip the porcelain rim like birds’ feet. For once, neither is crying and neither is laughing. Selfishly, detestably, I hope that if we are all to die, I am the first to be killed.
“I’ll show you what daddies are really like,” the girl says. She has been holding the knife limply in one hand, but when she raises it, blade upwards, her grip tightens. “I’m going to take off those cuffs, and you’re going to put your hands behind your back, like a good girl.”
She doesn’t need to threaten. I know what she can do, and if she decides to kill me, then that’s what she decides.
“You’re going to be a good girl,” she says.
She takes the key from the dresser and, holding the knife with her other hand, reaches down to the cuff on my left wrist. The key clicks against the metal and her eyes swivel towards me. “Like this?” she asks, and twists the key in the air.
“Yes.”
While she fiddles with the lock I try to breathe, to calm myself, and to evoke the cold calm.
I need to pull myself out of this mire, even if only temporarily. I should live for the twins, even if it’s only to survive this girl’s intrusion before taking my own life afterwards.
Stuart.
Declan.
Gone.
The left-side handcuffs click open, and my numb arm falls to the bed.
“You,” she says, holding out the key.
“I can’t move my arm. It’s dead.”
The girl’s face flickers. “Dead.” She goes to the other side of the bed and works the key into the other lock. After a second, briefer struggle, my hand falls from the bedpost, immobile.
She looks at me, and one side of her red-smeared mouth becomes an almost-smile. “Bend over the bed and give me your hands.”
I shuffle my stiff legs to the side and hang them over the mattress, my knees inches from hers. Circulation slowly returns to my arms.
“This is what daddies make good girls do,” she says.
I turn around, wary, and lay my face and breasts against bedcovers soaked in my husbands’ blood.
The twins watch us sullenly from the bathroom.
“It’s okay, Phil, Lilith!” I call out, weakly. “We’re just playing!”
I place my wrists together at the base of my spine, imagining how the knife would feel penetrating me.
My right buttock stings from a sharp but fleeting impact.
“You like that,” the girl says. Her hand returns to my spanked ass, squeezing the flesh. “You like that, don’t you?”
Metal clamps my wrists behind me. I feel what must be the edge of the blade scratch the length of my spine, down towards the upper cleft of my buttocks.
“If I was a daddy, I’d fuck you good,” she says.
It’s impossible to tell if she is making a point or enjoying her control over me. I await the sharp metal, but instead she takes hold of my hair and wrenches me upwards. I press a foot flat against the floor, rising to a half-kneel. I can tell that she will keep dragging even if I remain on my knees.
My dead son Declan seems to watch as I stand, his eyes dull white marbles. There lies the first child into whom I had planted my hopes, my loves, my plans and my morals, motionless beside the corpse of my husband, my protector, whose genes he shares.
Shared.
The girl steps in front of me, obscuring my view of the bodies. “Do you have clothes?”
“I…” I begin, having never been asked such a question. “In the wardrobe.”
The girl frowns.
“Over there,” I say, nodding towards the corner by the door.
Leaving me upright, naked and handcuffed, the girl raises a leg over my mutilated husband. When she pulls open both wardrobe doors her eyes fill with wonder, as if she is operating high-tech equipment from another world.
Across the hall, the twins splash each other in unnatural silence.
The girl selects an elegant charcoal grey chemise that will be too large for her, and a pair of white jeans that have too many silver buckles to match the top. She holds the clothes out, inspecting them. Her underbite hangs ajar. With care, but obvious inexperience, she tugs the items from their hangers before dropping the hangers to the carpet. As she turns the fabrics over in her hands, she stains them with my family’s blood.
I picture her corpse, clad in my clothes.
“Do you like them?” I ask.
She looks up, face unreadable, and nods.
“You can put them on,” I say. Trying to stay friendly. Trying not to look at my family, both the living and the dead.
Her eyebrows dip in almost Neanderthal confusion. She turns the clothes around in her hands.
“Do you need help … putting them on?”
She bundles the items into a fist and steps towards me, one of her bare feet pressing into the palm of my husband’s lifeless hand. “I’m going to teach you about daddies, and you can teach me about clothes.” She lifts the knife, prods its point against my left breast. “And you’re going to be a good girl.”
I nod. “Yes.”
17. Girl
The Girl who was on the bed tells me to take off her handcuffs. I step behind her and hold the metal thing against her backbone. It’s hard opening the handcuffs using just one hand.
When they’re off, she turns around and tells me, “If you put the knife down, you won’t cut the clothes when I help you put them on. I’m going to be a Good Girl. I promise.”
Daddy once told me that Girls lie a lot, so I say, “No. Just help me put them on.”
She frowns and ducks down to the floor, helping me to step into the leg-clothes. She pulls them up around my waist and sticks them together just above my nice smooth cunt. Next she pulls the top-clothes down around my neck. I put my arms into the tubes one at a time, switching the metal thing, which she had called a “knife”, between my hands as I go.
Her clothes feel better than warm water against my skin. Better than scratching the Bad away. Even though it feels different against my cunt and my skin, it’s like being wrapped in bedcovers while I’m standing up.
“Do you like them?” the Girl who was on the bed asks.
She sounds nice. It makes me think of when I had hugged her and she had kissed my cheek.
Mother.
I nod. “Yes, I like them.”
“Do you want to see?”
I look down.
“In a mirror, I mean.”
I once read a book where a Daddy fucked a Girl in front of a mirror. They watched each other while he fucked her. The book said that a mirror shows a reflection, like the water sometimes does in my toilet and in
my sink. After I had read the book, I had asked My Daddy if he had a mirror for me. He just said, “Don’t be silly. Good Girls don’t need mirrors to know that they’re beautiful. Good Girls believe what their Daddies say.”
The Girl from the bed says, “Come this way.”
I follow her to the bathroom, where the little Girl and the little Daddy are splashing together. They stop when I reach the doorway.
The Girl from the bed makes a shaky, different smile, and points at the wall. “Here.”
I step inside. There is a screen on the wall, and another Girl standing up inside the screen.
The Girl in the screen has the same face as the Girl from the bed.
“You look … lovely,” the Girl from the bed says. The Girl in the screen opens and closes her mouth, like she’s saying the same words. “Look.”
I reach out. A hand in the screen reaches for my fingers. I’ve seen pictures like this in my sink and toilet, but those ones wobble and shake and swirl. I snatch my hand back, but then reach out again and touch the screen. It feels like my TV screen did, before I broke it on My Daddy’s head. When I’m touching the mirror, the reflection-hand touches my fingers. I know it’s just a picture, like when I see movements in the sink and in the toilet, but it makes me want to scream.
The Girl from the bed moves sideways, away from me. I swallow because I feel different, but then I stand next to her.
A smaller Girl appears in the mirror.
The new, smaller Girl is not pretty like the Girls in the films. She has red stuff across her mouth and her jaw sticks out. Her eyes are really close together. Her hair is long but flat.
The Girls in the films always look really happy or really shaky and different when they’re being fucked, but the Girl in the mirror just looks sleepy. Her ugly face crinkles like a screwed-up blanket, and her eyes go small and wet. I want to break the mirror but I just stand there. When I start to cry, the ugly Girl in the mirror cries, too.
What Good Girls Do Page 5