8. 3
“Are you alright?” my dad asked as he gave me some water. I spluttered as I took a sip and glanced around, dazed.
“I think so. I don’t really know what happened,” I fibbed. I was getting mighty good at telling lies these days.
“Come on, let’s go back to my place. You can sleep in the guest room.
” Dad paid the bill and had the waiter box up my birthday cake, since we had skipped dessert.
I felt bewildered, as we waited for a cab.
As I entered my dad’s beach house, I was shocked to see how clean it was.
It looked like he had redecorated it all.
He led me to the guest room, and I flopped onto the bed, fatigue and the effects of too much champagne taking over.
Pretty soon, I was asleep, still fully clothed.
“Caspian! Caspian! It’s time!” I awoke to Bess prodding my shoulder.
“Bess?! How did you get here?!”
“You, or rather the weasel brought me.” I stumbled out of bed and peeked through the blinds and sure enough, there was my car parked outside.
What the fuck. I must have gone to the restaurant, drove home and picked up Bess.
It was still dark outside. I checked my Rolex.
It was 2am. My black leather sports bag was next to the bed.
I opened it and inside was the shotgun, a cordless orbital sander and some nails.
Also poking out from under the bed was a cordless leaf blower.
My head began to throb, and my body twitched. Bess clapped her hands.
“That’s it! Let the weasel in! You don’t need the mask anymore.
After all these years, it’s time to avenge Savannah!
” Bess’ eyes were flashing, her teeth were bared in a sharp, horrific grin and her burned face looked monstrous in the glow of the bedside lamp.
I felt apprehensive. My dad was despicable for what he did, but did I really want to kill him?
Caspian don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts!
Let me in!! The weasel said angrily. Then a million voices were in my head, Savannah pleading to be avenged, Bess singing an indecipherable tune as well as the snarl of the weasel.
Images flashed of blood and torture and Savannah’s beaten body.
The pain was excruciating and try as I might, I couldn’t bear it anymore, so I relaxed and felt myself falling back into nothingness as I let the weasel take over.
Bess began to pirouette like a ballerina, and I took a back seat, resigning myself to the fact that this was what I’d been waiting for my whole life.
I stupidly thought that I could be free after this was all over, but if I was brutally honest with myself, I knew that I would be chained to the horror of what had happened and what would come to pass for the rest of my days.
The feral animal slithered into my meat husk like it had always belonged there and its vicious features transformed my face into one of absolute terror.
He picked up the sander and walked silently into the lounge area, Bess skipping behind him, where he startled Angel, who was secretly cutting lines on the coffee table.
“Shit Caspian! You scared me!” she said, metal straw in hand looking sheepish.
“What happened to getting clean?” the weasel growled.
“I’m not as strong as your dad. I can’t just go cold turkey like him.” The weasel smiled, his grin maniacal.
“Well, let’s go onto the terrace and I’ll partake with you.” Relieved, Angel hoovered up the line she had cut, wetting her finger and cleaning the remnants off the glass and then followed the weasel outside.
“Do you see that doll?!” Angel said alarmed, as Bess curtseyed.
“What doll?” the weasel smiled, winking at Bess who laughed, sounding like wind chimes on the breeze.
“Shit. That coke is strong. Why have you got that?” Angel said, pointing to the sander.
“So I can get rid of the problem!” the weasel cackled, switching on the sander and thrusting it into Angel’s face, concentrating on her nose, “without a nose you won’t need to do coke!
” Cartilage, shredded skin, and mucus laden blood splattered out all over the weasel’s body.
I felt like I was sitting in a cinema watching an illegal snuff movie, safely ensconced in the darkness of my mind.
Angel’s scream was muffled by the blood that she was choking on.
The weasel grabbed her throat and flung her to the floor, the blood pooling around her. He and Bess began to sing.
Grind your skin and make you bleed. I‘ll drain the life right out of you. The last thing that you’ll see is me. Pop goes the weasel.
Angel writhed on the floor in fright as the weasel straddled her and Bess started chewing off her ear, her pincer-like teeth making light work of the lobe.
Angel tried to get up, but the weasel was strong and as she tried to take a swipe to knock him off of her, he snatched her wrist, bending her arm in an awkward position until it made a sickening crack and broke.
There was a guttural howl, laden with bodily fluids.
Bess, tired of destroying Angel’s ear, began pulling out her hair in clumps.
Angel jerked violently with each rip of her scalp, realizing that the doll really was there.
“Now I need to make you shut up. All of this noise is going to wake up dear old dad and ruin the element of surprise,” the weasel stated, digging the sander into the lower part of Angel’s face, just below her ruined nose.
Her blood-soaked screaming stopped and was replaced by the heavy slopping of churned up flesh and teeth.
The weasel didn’t tire, though my body was sweating as he delighted in being showered with Angel’s facial meat.
Eventually, the sander bore through to the ground and her skull separated from her body.
Bess inserted her little blood-stained porcelain hands into Angel’s eye socket, pulling out her eyeball, biting the stringy red bits with her piranha teeth.
She then began to throw it into the air and catch it, singing in a pretty child’s voice.
A faceless junkie dead and still , a casualty of violence . Grab her eyes, their light has gone. Pop goes the weasel!
The weasel’s body shook with mirth as he flung the blood dripping sander to the floor and narrowed his eyes, making his way back inside with Bess behind him, Angel’s eyeball tucked tightly under her arm.
“Daddy!” the weasel shouted as he got the bag and the leaf blower from the guest room. My dad came out of the bedroom bleary eyed, freaking out when he saw the weasel version of me splattered with gore.
“Fuck! Caspian what happened?” he said, not caring that he was getting covered in blood as he checked weasel me over.
I wanted to tell him to run. I knew I should want to kill him after what Savannah had revealed to me, but some part of me still clung to the notion of family and him being my dad, who, if he had been around more, probably would have been a better parent than my mom.
I bristled inside knowing that there was nothing I could do.
“Stop trying to get out!” the weasel growled, hitting the side of his head.
“Who are you talking to? And where’s Angel?” my dad said, an edge of hysteria in his voice.
“It’s OK Braiden, this isn’t my blood, it’s hers!
Caspian isn’t here right now, but I am,” my dad backed up against the wall, looking weak and defeated, “I came to punish you and take everything from you, even using your own child against you, leaving you with nothing, just like you did to Savannah.”
“We were young, and I have regretted what happened that night every day since,” my dad said, jumping out of his skin when he saw Bess holding Angel’s eyeball.
“For you!” Bess said smiling, her teeth dripping with blood as she dropped the eyeball into my dad’s hand, “Angel won’t be needing it anymore.”
“Am I seeing things?” my dad said, looking nauseous.
“No. Bess has been your son’s confidante and tutor all of his life leading up to this.
Revenge transcends all space and time, even veering into supernatural territory if the want and need are strong enough.
That’s how we are both here.” The weasel got the shotgun out of the bag and quick as a flash blew out both of my dad’s knees.
Dad fell to the floor with a thud and blood spewed forth.
There was so much of it, I had trouble believing that it was real.
“Stop! Caspian, I know you’re in there! This isn’t you. I’m your father!”
“You’re right. It isn’t him. Just so you know, he did try to fight me, but ultimately, he is no match for the weasel.
” Dad roared in absolute pain as the weasel shot off both of his arms at the elbows.
The gun was smoking, and he laid it down carefully on the coffee table, laughing at the way my dad’s blood sprayed out of the obliterated stumps.
Body parts were discarded like trash as my dad twitched like a fish out of water in a pool of his own blood.
He gurgled and bile launched out, mingling in with the bodily fluids.
The weasel rummaged in the bag and sang clearly as he produced the nails, flipping my dad onto his stomach.
The nails will penetrate your guts and turn your insides bloody. A bit of wind will send them deep. Pop goes the weasel!
Bess opened Dad’s ass cheeks as the weasel stuffed the nails deep inside, not caring that shit was steadily flowing out as dad lost control of his bowels.
To be honest my dad was now in shock, so I doubted if he knew what was happening.
I felt my soul hurt. No matter what he’d done, he didn’t deserve to die like this.
“Ah Caspian, having second thoughts now? You didn’t when you killed that girl at the beach house.
You embraced me and we did it together, and you enjoyed it.
Now you’re hiding like a coward!” the weasel exclaimed.
He inserted the end of the leaf blower into my dad’s shitty ass and turned it on.
There was an almighty whooshing noise, followed by the sound of metal and then something wet.
My dad’s stomach began to expand as his bowels were getting chock full of air.
The weasel kept the power at full throttle.
“Ew, there’s something coming out of his mouth!
” Bess said, eyeing up the thick brown sludge that was pumping out and then scurrying behind the sofa, peeking out curiously.
There was an echoey popping sound like a balloon being burst and dad spontaneously combusted, sending viscera, shit and bone across the floor, ceiling and walls. I dry heaved at the stench.
“Whooooo!” the weasel said hysterically, “pop goes the weasel!” but he soon shut up when I regained control, my face flickering for a second, looking like me again.
“Caspian!” Bess said, running from behind the sofa, dodging the lumpy puddle of slop, “what are you doing?” I held the shotgun to my temple .
“Don’t ever call me a coward again, you got that?” I said through gritted teeth, “now I’m in control, and you can take a back seat, you hear me weasel!”
“Calm down Caspian, it’s almost over,” Bess soothed, “don’t leave me!!”
Good boy Caspian. I knew you’d see sense in the end. Now you are the driver of your destiny, and I am but a small part of you, of your rage, of your taste for destruction, of your desire to kill.
The weasel’s voice echoed through my mind and my eyes flashed amber, all guilt and mercy forgotten. I looked at the decimated remains of my father and felt nothing. I picked up Bess and began whistling the weasel’s refrain as we left to go and murder my mother.