I have no idea what I’m hitting.
I don’t hear the man’s screams.
I don’t feel the blood start to splatter.
I feel like my head’s underwater.
Wack! Wack! Wack!
I keep going, tears blurring my vision, putting as much strength in my now mechanical swings.
It’s only when I hear a shrill scream that I stop.
Looking up, I see my mother staring at me with horror filled in her eyes, a dainty palm covering her face.
She’s dressed to the nines in an elegant red dress with a thigh high slit. Her hair is styled in a fancy do and she has make-up on her face.
“Kimberly,” she gasps. In horror? In shock? In pride? I don’t know. She just gasps at me.
It’s the way she says it that makes me look down and that’s when I see it.
There’s blood at the back of the iron cast pot, on my dress, on my arms and all over the ugly floors of the trailer and the ugly, fat disgusting man is no longer moving, slumped in an awkward position between the counter and the floor.
Blank.
“What did you do?”
Part of the man’s head looks deformed and weird, with blood gushing out.
“Oh,” I murmur.
“Kimberly, sweetheart. What did you do?” my mother repeats.
I look up at my mother, then back down at the unmoving man.
“He said something.”
“What did he say?” she asks frantically, as flashes of red and blue appear from the distance, “What could he have possibly said that made you do this? This will get to your father.”
I look up at my mother. She doesn’t just look different by how she’s dressed, it’s the look on her face.
How can people say I look like her?
Maybe it’s the cascading dirty blonde hair that flows to the middle of my back like hers.
Or maybe it’s my ‘endless and toned’ long legs, or my plump lips that always seem like they’re puckered up for a kiss.
Or is it the uncanny look of brokenness we both share, showing through our slightly identical grey eyes framed by thick, naturally long lashes and perfectly shaped eyebrows?
My mother is a magnet to all kinds of wrong, bad and dangerous, and based on the unfortunate events of my life that have all culminated to this, so am I.
“Kimberly!” she shouts, snapping me out of my numbness—just barely.
Looking up at her, I frown.
I’m used to seeing her pale, with hollow eyes and a skinny frame. But right now, she looks… she looks….
“He said I look just like you.”
* * *
That night was pretty much the beginning of my hell.
I had no idea who called the cops or how much I noise was coming from our raggedy trailer but by the time I was led out by two grim faced cops—who so happened to be Big Earl’s friends—the entire St. Peter’s trailer park was outside and watching.
The fat, disgusting landlord was taken by three paramedics, and I was taken to the police station, barefoot and covered in blood.
They asked me what happened, but for some reason, I couldn’t speak.
All I noticed was how my mother didn’t bother showing up for me.
Three days later, I was charged, and in alarmingly short order, sent to court for my first hearing.
They told me the fat, disgusting landlord woke up and told the cops that I attacked him with no provocation whatsoever (emphasis on the whatsoever).
With that Texas gap in between his teeth, it’s a wonder he could even say the word.
He told them that my mother had told him that I was given the rent money to pass along to him which is why he had stopped by in the first place.
That was a lie. A lie my mother never refuted.
No one asked him why he dropped in at that late hour, apparently. It didn’t matter. I was the one at fault.
I guess that’s when something in me finally broke.
See, I’d known for a while that I wasn’t like other girls my age.
I didn’t feel the way they did but it was only a matter of time before the actual breaking started. I just didn’t know it then.
I mean, I was barely holding on as it was, having to fight for safety, for food and clothes. For school and a future. But the fact that my mother never defended me…
Anyway, apparently the rent money I was given, I used it all on drugs.
The last nail on my coffin.
So, between the underage drug abuse, the stealing and now, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon—yes, they classified the pan as a deadly weapon—I was going away for a pretty long time.
And my mother never showed her dainty, pretty face.
Through it all, I still didn’t say a word.
It’s as if my voice had been ripped out of me and I was nothing but a shell of a person.
In court, my state appointed lawyer didn’t bother asking me what happened.
He didn’t even mention the attempted rape or the fact that Big Earl had broken in while I was trying to fall asleep on an empty stomach.
I didn’t know how after all these years, I still hadn’t grown desensitized to the pain of starvation.
But I guess some forms of pain were meant to be consistent, incessant and unrelenting.
But it had nothing on what was to come. Only I didn’t realize that. Not until it was too late.
* * *
Eight and a half months later, I still hadn’t been given an actual sentencing hearing, but that didn’t matter at all.
I was booked, put in the system, and swiftly sent to the filthiest, most dangerous maximum security juvenile detention center while I awaited trial.
There was chatter that I might be tried as an adult. After all, apparently, my existence posed a great threat to the community.
And to my shame, I didn’t fight back.
Part of me was hoping my mother would turn up and save the day, but the rest of me just wished I’d known who my father was. Maybe he would come and get me out of this shithole but I didn’t know him and it never happened.
That was the time I lost my voice.
They called me a mute hussy and all sorts of unoriginal names you could think of when you’ve nothing to do but rile up other juveniles from equally fucked up backgrounds you were shacked up with in a facility where kids were treated like trash.
But that wasn’t hell. No. Not yet.
* * *
It starts out as any other illusion. A barely believable scene straight out of the twilight zone.
“Hey, mute bitch!” one of the guards, Olga, who hated me for what I did to her first cousin that she sometimes sleeps with to feel about herself calls. “Pack all your nothings.”
I stare at her, seeing the displeasure written all over her face. “You’re getting out,” she says, looking annoyed.
“Out?” I croak out my first word since that horrible night eight months ago
She rears back but catches herself in the last second.
“Ah! So, you can actually speak? What a waste,” she leers, then opens the door to my room. “Get your ass up and leave!”
Olga has never physically harmed me, none of the guards in here ever have. It’s always the other juveniles who tried picking fights and until recently, I didn’t know they were sent by the guards to teach me a lesson.
I should’ve known then that something was seriously wrong.
I should’ve pieced it together that the sudden ‘dismissal of your shitty case’ was not protocol.
Only I didn’t care. I’m out!
I ignore the fact that good things never happen to me and that happiness is a deceptive mirage that conceals the horrors that lie in wait for me.
And why would I think of that when there’s a nice, fancy BMW with a grim-faced driver waiting for me when I walk out of the detention center?
“Kimberly Allory?” a man dressed in a black suit and tie questions.
Nodding
mutely, I watch as he opens the door for me and waits for me to get in. With wooden legs, I walk over, not really grasping the situation until I’ve climbed in.
In quick order, the driver gets in and then suddenly, the car doors are locked.
“Uh, excuse me,” I start, my voice sounding strange to my own ears. “Who are you?”
He doesn’t respond.
“Where are you taking me?”
Silence.
Dread seeps into my bones then, but it’s a little too late.
I reach for the door handle but even then, I already know it won’t open.
He drives fast and by the time we arrive at an unknown location, I’m hysterical, kicking and screaming, banging my fist on the window, trying to break it, but all I manage to do is break is my own sanity.
Two other men, dressed the same as the driver, open the back door, then proceed to pick me up like I weigh nothing at all.
I try fighting but they easily restrain me.
I scream, but they don’t bother trying to stop me.
With tear filled eyes, I look up at the huge mansion in front of me. It’s beautiful but something about it makes me feel cold and even more aggravated.
Run!
But I can’t.
“He’s waiting in the dungeon,” a new, harsh voice speaks from somewhere. “Take her to him.”
Him? Who is him?
I’m frantic, my heart pounding so hard, I feel like I’m going to pass out any second now.
“Let me go!” I scream, but all they do is tighten their hold on me.
They walk with purpose down the hall, ignoring my screams and cries.
I even beg, but it doesn’t work. Not on these men.
They carry me in short order up the stairs and into a dimly lit foyer.
We go past that and into a hallway. From here, I can hear music playing and people laughing. I perch up, listening intently.
Is there a party?
I know that shouldn’t be my concern right now, but by the time we go down a flight of stairs, then another, I’m breathless and scared to death.
We enter a room with a metal door painted black and that’s when I notice the man who sits in the middle of the room, with a lone light dramatically shining atop his head.
He’s the him. I just know it.
And I know one other thing too.
I should run.
“Ah, Kimberly,” the man starts.
Something in me churns. I swear I can hear loud sirens of danger in my head. As I stare wide-eyed and scared to death,
Looking around, I don’t see anything at all, but I know we’re not alone.
“It’s so good to finally meet my daughter.”
Everything in me screeches to a halt, but the bad accident is unavoidable.
His daughter?
Is this man… is he… my father?
It’s then that he shifts, and I finally get a good look at his face.
I gasp out loud and step back, but the men holding me pull me back toward him.
The man is dressed in a nice three-piece suit. A picture of my mother the last time I saw her flashes in my head. She was also dressed to the nines.
Whenever she dressed like that, got her hair done like that and managed to spend more than a few seconds taking care of herself, she always said she was going to see him.
“Who are you going to see, mama?”.
“The devil.”
“Dressed like a princess?”
“Sometimes, you need to dress the part and act the part, when you enter hell.”
I gasp out loud again.
Is this man, who claims to be my father, could he be the devil?
Bile rises my throats. Fear takes root in the pit of my stomach because this man, he is the devil. I sense it.
He has an ugly, protruding scar from just above his left eye to his chin.
It’s as if someone took a sword or something and angrily slashed it along the length of his face.
“Surprise!” the man says, chuckling like a villain. “But unfortunately for you, you’re not here under some bullshit fairytale circumstances. This isn’t a sweet reunion.”
I open my mouth, but no words come out.
“I brought you here because I have one question for you and one question only,” the man says, watching me with a smile on his face that makes my skin crawl. “Where is your pregnant mother?”
My eyes open wide with shock. “My mother?” I croak. “She’s pregnant?”
“Don’t act stupid!” he barks, and I jump. “And don’t you dare lie.”
“I…” I stutter. “I don’t know where she is.”
The man looks at me, tilting his head to the left.
“You don’t know?”
I shake my head, fear starting to rise in me like never done before.
“What day is it today?” the man asks, the ugly scar on his face protruding angrily.
“Friday, the 13th of July,” one of the men responds in a mechanical voice that is not human at all. Which, I failed to realize was another red flag.
“Friday, the 13th,” the man hums. “This will be the day you will never ever fucking forget after I’m done with you. So, I’ll give you one more chance to tell me the truth, you little piece of scum.” He leans forward, staring me down. If eyes could glow with evil… “Where is your mother?”
I don’t say a word.
Honestly because I have no idea where Luci is, but my silence is the wrong response, because as I’ll learn now and later on, silence is the worst answer.
As if it’s happening in slow motion, the men holding me step away from me.
But before I can even breathe, before I can sense the danger or anticipate that I’ve stepped into the seventh circle hell, I hear the sound of a whip, slicing the air and then…
“Ah!” I scream and I go down, fire licking across my back.
Someone just whipped me.
Jesus Christ!
“Oh and remove that shirt she’s wearing then hold her down.”
The dirty white tee is shredded off my back. I’m kicked to the stony floor onto my hands and knees.
When I glance up at him, with my racing heart and burning back, I see him crossing his legs and lighting up a cigarette.
“We need answers. Daughter or not. Right Monty?”
“Right, Larry,” a drunk man jeers from somewhere in the dim room. “The stupidity, the foolishness and the devil should be beaten out of children.”
“Right you are!”
“But I think I’m going to try whipping!”
“Good idea, Monty! Our deal will move forward better.”
“Yes. So, is this the one?”
“Well… this one has a little rebellious spirit in her. Besides, I have another one.”
“Splendid,” the drunk man says cheerfully. “Please, gentlemen. Go ahead.”
And just when I thought the whipping was a one-time thing, I hear the cracking of the whip just before it strikes my bare back.
I scream.
Two, three, ten, fifteen lashes reign down on my back in quick succession. I cry and scream and thrash, begging them to stop. I can feel my heart about to give. I think I’m not breathing at all.
My back is one fire as they keep going.
“I think I want to try that as well,” I hear the drunk man say sloppily. “Let me have a go.”
There’s no protest, no hesitation. I’m held down as the drunk man starts whipping my back.
He misses a lot, but for every lash he misses, he whips me with an uncontrollable rage that makes me bang my head against the stone floor as he curses at me.
“No, please!” I cry, my voice broken and small. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be bad.”
But that doesn’t matter.
Time expands and loses meaning.
I start making up lies about where my mother could be.
I beg for forgiveness for stealing food at the local store.
I t
ell them that I was sorry for what I did to Big Earl.
I apologize for my existence.
But it doesn’t matter.
And as I fade out in and of consciousness on that floor, my cries and screams ignored by a drunk, inhumane man named Monty who’s voice I’ll never forget, and a father who wasn’t a father but was actually, the devil, I swore to myself.
I’ll never beg anyone for anything in my life ever again.
“I’m done. For now!”
“Good. Now, shall we go back out there and toast to the prosperity of the Blues through our partnership?”
“Fuck yes!”
“Then it’s settled,” the man who claims to be my father says. “Oh, and gentlemen, put her in the dungeon. She’ll come in handy soon.”
Broken, bloody and no longer coherent at all, I feel a part of me floating away.
It didn’t take long to realize that my mother’s butterfly now had broken wings… and it was all because of her and the man she loved.
Chapter 6
NOAH
Past
Kim Possible: Jesus, Noah, stop looking at me like that.
ME: Like what?
Kim Possible: Like we screwed like bunnies in the back of my car.
ME: That’s exactly what happened.
Kim Possible: Astraea suspects that something’s going on.
ME: She’s hella fucking smart & perceptive as hell
Kim Possible: She’s my friend and she can’t know that you and me…
ME: Fucked. Over and over again, in the dark. And then you slept in my arms and we fucked again when the sun came up?
Kim Possible: YES!!
ME: Why the fuck not?
Kim Possible: It’s just…
ME: I’m your dirty fucking secret, huh? I don’t matter to you?
Kim Possible: I also don’t matter to you. Right?
ME: Sure. You’re just the first person I’ve ever shared Hell Day with, drank with, opened up to and showed you where it hurt. But yeah, it was just fucking. Got it.
Kim Possible: Noah…
ME: I said I fucking got it!
Kim Possible: Blue Fairy… you’re not the only one who bled in front of someone else last night.
Petty Rage: Westbrook Blues Book 4 Page 9