Chapter 10
Woodrow—aged seventeen
Iignored the sound, the echoing amplification of my father’s pounding feet bringing him closer to my bedroom door. His heavy footsteps blared like the drums of war, and a war was coming.
Fuck knows what Hell had done to piss him off this time. He hadn’t told me. He’d written nothing in the diary. . . left nothing but drawings—mocking laughing faces on my last entry. All over my feelings for Jolie.
I didn’t dare go look for her. To see if she was okay. I knew I didn’t have the strength to potentially discover that she wasn’t.
I couldn’t move.
My head was pounding—a side effect of switching. My body ached from running, and my feet bled, broken glass still embedded in them.
My throat screamed for another liquid salvation. I’d already downed half a liter of my mother’s strawberry water, found in the stripy lounger on the porch. The crunched bottle now sat at my side, annoying me slightly that the label had creased. But I didn’t even have the energy to correct it.
I hunched on the floor, on all fours as I listened to the creak of each individual naked floorboard.
The house was ancient, built by a man with a beard in the eighteen hundreds; he wasn’t a relative, just someone who had an unfortunate descendant who’d had this place stolen from under his nose by my grandfather.
Time hadn’t been kind to the white woodwork, or any other part of the edifice. Evil had stained the home the moment it claimed it, and it continued to do so as it bred here.
Creaky boards sounded again. Creaks and whines were common occurrences. My mother called these sounds, the house settling, but that wasn’t true. This house settled long ago, in a space too pure and pristine for those who now lived inside it.
My closed door opened, swinging wide and violently, crashing into the wall, so hard, that flakes of old plaster sprinkled the carpet, dusting the brown fuzz like dandruff.
I dragged myself to my feet, holding up my pants as they sagged down my hips. I stared at my father from this side of the door, as he stared at me from the other for a long second.
But it was only a second.
Before I could ask him what had happened, he charged at me. My prominent bones—invited to the surface of my skin by lack of nutrition, tried to pierce through my dermis as I took the deepest breath, bracing myself for a crippling impact.
The wind was knocked out of me with a heavy, brutal force.
I fell back to the floor, following my jaw’s collision with my father’s mammoth fist. I thanked God above for the extra weight my father carried, because as crazy as it sounded, it cushioned the blow to my stomach that came next, which had a mixture of blood and vomit rushing to my open lips as I gasped for breath.
“Calm already, boy?” my father sneered, dragging me from the ground by my throat until our noses touched.
The pain near my larynx taunted it would kill me. The mint he’d swallowed on the way home did little to hide the fact he’d been drinking as his heavy, angry breaths pounded into my face.
He hocked phlegm from his cigar-stained lungs and spat it in my face.
It almost turned me sick, but I ignored the urge, doing nothing but allowing the mess on my face to drop to the carpet of the same color.
“No wonder she fucking hates you. I guess now she has a real reason, huh!”
“What did he do?” I found the strength to ask, forcing the words past his tight grip.
But that was all I had strength for.
He dropped me onto my bleeding feet a second before he granted me the relief of being off them again by punching me in the face and knocking me back to the ground.
“Stop,” I begged, for his safety, not mine. “Please, stop. You know what will happen.”
“Oh, I sure do. I’m counting on it. . . now that it’s just me and you.” …and the false courage gifted by the vodka he’d been drinking.
He kicked hard into my stomach. And then my face. My nose felt like it exploded under his dirty, heavy boot.
A damp red patch spread across the carpet, my DNA digging its own grave in the brown ground that mimicked dirty soil.
I pushed myself up, my fingers sinking into the fibers.
My pain stunted my speed, but my father’s foot assisted me, lifting me from the ground when it, again, booted into my hungry stomach.
His force, so violent, it almost had his thick yellow toenails stabbing through his boots and my skin.
. . and I’d have welcomed the disgusting death; an end to my misery and the misery I brought the both of my parents.
“Please, stop,” I tried once more, tears falling from my eyes.
“You have the cheek to ask that after what happened to your mother, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean? Is Momma okay?” He didn’t answer me. “Please,” I begged from my lowly position. “Please, tell me if she’s okay?”
Hell wouldn’t have cared. He’d have been happy for her to be rotting in a shallow grave, but I didn’t feel that way.
“Did he hurt her?” I tried again.
He ignored my question, his heavy boot smashing into my face. My hand rushed to my nose, now surely broken; my blood gushed from the wound.
“You’ll bring him back,” I warned, floating between alertness and unconsciousness. My head shook—along with the rest of my body—worsening my headache and blurring my vision.
My father dropped to my side, his knees clicking violently as he bent. He wrapped his fist in my hair, dragging my eyes to his. “As I said, I’m counting on it, boy. Tonight, we are going to teach you how to channel your fucking anger. I didn’t spend fifty grand on a whore for nothing!”
He slammed my head to the floor, and his words spun, replaying in my ears, louder and louder, but I didn’t have time to register them. Back on his feet, he kicked me again. And again and again and again.
I felt nothing but pain.
I couldn’t feel my father’s rage—the kind he only ever had for me, and only ever after a bottle of vodka.
And then, I felt different. . .
I felt the change; I felt nothing. . . my emotions went blank. My sensors became ignorant of my pain.
I become someone else. . . the darker part of my soul. He was back, and despite trying with all in my power to hold him back—keeping him in the darkest part of the soul we shared—I couldn’t. He took over.
Hell
My father’s foot assaulted my ribs, and a laugh crept through my lips as the right side of my face lifted with amusement. Louder and louder it became, stealing all the ominous energy from my father.
“Is something funny?” His baritone was as hefty as his body.
But it didn’t stop me from replying, “Your efforts.”
My words were the same as the ones he’d always give me whenever he’d laugh in my face over anything I did to try and impress him.
A gold buckle hit me in the face, the prong almost taking out one of my eyes, reminding me how gold always trumped silver. The crack of the belt neared my face for the second time, and I forced my eyes to stay open, welcoming the pain.
I didn’t fear it.
I didn’t fear the fucking scars, either.
My image, despite my almost perfect face, meant nothing to me. A fleck of silver here and there would mean so much more. A trophy of survival was much more than a pretty boy image destined to wither with age.
His belt hit my body, its thundering crack echoing in my ears, calling out a red trail of blood and another laugh from my mouth. He thrashed, again and again, creating zebra patterns across my ribs.
I stayed low, allowing him to have his fun, beating up a teenage boy, who weighed almost half of what he should have.
The room silenced. I knew he hated the laughing. He hated that I still had control over my reactions. Power over the fear he hardly felt when he was this intoxicated.
“Get it over with, Daddy dearest,” I taunted, waiting for the worst of his aggression.
He moved behind me, his arm locking around my throat like a vice ready to snap my neck.
His free hand remained fisted, eager to deliver violence.
My head shook, my throat uncomfortably rubbing against the flabby skin surrounding the muscles in his forearm as his knuckles pounded my temple multiple times.
A bruise painted my skin purple; a swelling accompanied the new design I wore.
He moved his aggression to my empty stomach, punching once, twice, a dozen fucking times before he gave me the relief of a second’s peace.
Holding me in place, he hit again as he whispered into my ear, “I know what you’re thinking, you’re biding your time to kill me. But don’t be stupid enough to believe you’ll be successful tonight, Woodrow.”
“Don’t call me that.” I laughed again, almost like I was unable to help it. The movement strained my throat, but I didn’t fucking care. I didn’t care about anyone, anything. “I thought you knew me better.”
“Well enough to know that you’re not yourself right now.”
“Bull…shit.” I drew the words out, and I felt my father’s mood shift, becoming a little uneasy around me.
Such a thrilling fucking feeling. Why the fuck would a grown man—an oversized mass of male DNA—be concerned by the scrawny kid he may have created.
I laughed again, knowing he didn’t create me. . . the devil did.
His giant hand patted my back twice as he distanced himself from my unpredictability; violence didn’t linger on his touch; he meant me no harm, this time.
I stayed on the carpet for a second longer than I needed to. I took a single breath, and then I rose to my feet. Staring at my father, I smiled as I swallowed the lump in my throat without covering my neck.
The look of disgust on our father’s face, would have hurt Woodrow’s feelings, good thing the pussy wasn’t around right now, so he didn’t have to fucking see it.
“Don’t,” he warned me, believing he could sense my next move.
“Don’t fucking tell me what to do, you sad old prick.” I stepped forward, ignoring his warning to deliver my threat. “Hit me again, I dare you.”