Chapter 2
i
Daryl
My brother looked at the scene before him with mingled rage and revulsion on his face as he trained the gun on our father. And I cringed back – even trying to hide behind my father who pulled out of me immediately and dropped the end of the belt when he saw him.
Because I'd wanted him to find us but not find us if you know what I mean.
I was ashamed and embarrassed.
Strangely, I felt guilty.
Merle looked at our father who had thankfully withdrawn and got off me. Trying to get his breath back. Sheepishly covered his swollen and dripping penis by wrapping a towel round his waist that lay on a nearby chair while Merle sneered at him with revulsion and disdain. Still hadn't managed to say anything.
Dad held up his hands in surrender.
I was lying there naked with my skinny ass bare up for my older brother to see so I covered myself with the coverlet. Saw more blood on the sheets.
My father had been naked also.
Not that it was a big deal.
'Take that fuckin' thing off from around his neck, ya sick motherfucker.' Merle spoke in a calm, detached voice. 'No – ya not even that – ya worse.' But anyone who knew him well – like me – knew this was when he was at most dangerous. Most enraged. I knew that he was fully capable of killing our father for what he saw him doing to me. Dad leaned over me to obey but when Merle saw how I cringed away from him and couldn't help the whimpers that escaped me, he changed his mind.
'No, on second thoughts, I'll do it. 'Cos I don't want ya touchin' him. Ever again. In fact - get the fuck away from him. Now.' He ordered and Dad didn't hesitate to obey. 'It's not what ya think, son.' He gabbled, hand raised in appeal. 'It's a game... we were just pretendin'.
But his lies only enraged my older brother more. 'Don't fuckin' lie to me. I heard
the things ya called him – 'ya sweet little whore', 'a dirty little boy who needs to be fucked in punishment for killing his Mama.''' He raged. 'Besides, I jus' saw ya.' Then he just grabbed a pillow to muffle the sound - we didn't want any one calling 911 – not that there was any real chance of that in our neighbourhood - and shot my father in the knee-cap to immobilise him. And Dad fell to the ground, clutching his knee. 'Ya fuckin' bastard' he moaned in agony. 'Ya ungrateful little shits.'
My eyes widened in shock.
'Shut up. That's just for starters. Ain't nothin' compared to what I'm gonna do to ya, ya sick bag of shit.' Merle told him coldly and kicked him viciously – deliberately just where he'd shot him as our father howled in pain. 'Can dish it out but can't take it, ya piece of baby-rapin' shit.'
He strode over to me and when he saw me his eyes were full of some emotion I didn't recognise. Like he was weighing me up somehow and I couldn't help recoiling from him. I didn't know what he was going to do because was some of that rage I saw in his eyes meant for me? Did he hate me like Dad said he would? Did he think I wanted this? I led Dad on somehow?
Was he disgusted with me?
His face softened, especially when he saw how badly beaten up I was. 'Sh...sh. It's me, Merle. I ain't gonna hurt ya, ya know that.' He whispered to me as he gently undid the belt from around my neck. The buckle had dug in to my nape and it was sore – I rubbed it absent-mindedly. My whole neck was sore from the belt. It hurt to swallow. 'Was it the first time he's done this to ya?' He asked.
I shook my head. Looked down at the bed in shame. 'Ain't the first. Done it loads of times.' I glared pitilessly at our father – moaning now for a very different reason as he clutched his bloody knee to him.
Merle put his hand on my shoulder and looked away then and I couldn't read his eyes. 'Here.' He said gruffly as he grabbed a clean bath towel from the drawer and threw it to me. 'Have a shower, clean yourself up and put your clothes back on.'
I looked at our father – still groaning in pain, oblivious to our conversation. 'Wha...what ya gonna do to him?' I pointed down at him.
My brother looked at me in disbelief. 'Why do ya care?' He asked incredulously. 'After what the sick fuck was doin' to ya...?'
'Merle – he's still our father!' Dad looked up at me, face drawn and white from pain and then at my brother, nodding eagerly. 'He's right. Ya don't wanna be like me, do ya, Merle? Ya wanna be the better man, right?'
'I said SHUT THE FUCK UP'! Ya don't deserve to LIVE let alone TALK!' Merle yelled at him and then pistol-whipped our father who immediately slumped to the floor, unconscious.
'Now, that's better.' Merle said with relief. 'I need to think.'
'Look, we can phone the police – tell them what he was doin' to me...'
He looked at me with exasperation at my naivety. Dixons don't grass or have any legitimate dealings with the police. 'Ya know what the people around here are like. The cops included. They won't do nothin'. And do ya want to have everybody know what he...did? You'll be saddled with that for the rest of ya life, ya know that boy?'
I looked at him – I didn't know what expression was on my face. But he frowned. Softened his tone. 'None of the shit he did to ya is ya fault, ya know that but do ya really want people to know? If they do anythin' – they'll take ya away to be adopted or put ya in a foster home. They'll put ya in therapy for years – make ya go over and over again all the things he did to ya.'
I shuddered. I didn't never want to talk about that shit ever again – particularly not with a stranger. Just wanted to forget – pretend it never happened.
'They'll say ya damaged!' Merle concluded his final argument.
I trembled with indignation. I wasn't damaged! Thought I'd coped pretty well – better than most would have done in the same circumstances. I was tough – I was a Dixon!
Then I looked downcast at the floor – my gaze sliding over my unconscious father. Merle went over to him and started tying his hands behind him with the belt he'd used on me. Then he tied the ends to the leg of the bed.
'What will ya do?'
'I'lll make sure he never touches ya again, that's what I'm gonna do. No matter what ya hear – ya stay away until I tell ya to come back in. OK?'
Part of my mind knew what he had in mind but I shut that part down. Went to have a shower and clean myself up. My head was pounding from his savage blows, my ribs throbbing. But I blocked out the pain like I always did.
But no matter how much I scrubbed, I couldn't get the feeling of his hands and his tongue all over me – or his dick pumping inside me –or the pain – especially that - it was like he was still inside me. His filth when he spurted inside me. The taste of him in my mouth when he forced himself inside it, not caring that I choked or felt like I was suffocating.
And the fact that I was still bleeding into the shower and hurting back there seemed to confirm this. I wondered dully when it would stop.
Marked ya for my own. Even when I'm long dead and gone – you'll always belong to me. You'll always remember this as long as ya live.'
I could still feel him. Still feel it. Still felt his filth, his hands all over me, inside me.
Would I ever get rid of the feel of him?
I own ya now.
These thoughts led to, without warning, my emotions hijacking my body as I started to shake uncontrollably, as I slid down the shower stall and began to sob. Letting the water run over me until it turned cold but not caring. Because I was feeling like no matter how long I stayed under it, I'd never be clean again.
Snap out of it! Dixons don't cry!
I heard Merle bang on the bathroom door. 'Ya OK, Daryl?'
'Yeah, fine.' I croaked, trying to muffle the pathetic, whimpering sounds coming out of me as best as I could.
I could tell he didn't believe me but he went away, didn't press me.
I must have been in the shower about 45 minutes after the water went cold – I didn't know when I finally got myself under control.
I dried myself off and warmed myself up. Put on my clean clothes. Looked at myself in the mirror.
Of course I looked like hell. My face was a swollen, bruised, battered mess and my throat was sore. It hurt to swallow. Had red marks on it from the belt and I hoped I wasn't going to scar from it. I didn't think so. Not to forget my ribs – I hoped that they were only cracked maybe and would heal by themselves.
Last thing I wanted was to have to go to hospital and answer their dumb, invasive questions. Them to find out everything he'd done to me because I was still a minor.
I looked drained and exhausted with purple rings under my eyes and the look in them was half-crazy.
ii.
I put a brave face on it – Merle said he would sort it and he would. He'd never let Dad hurt me ever again.
That was the last time he'd ever do that shit to me.
I should be happy, relieved but I wasn't. Especially when I heard the agonised screams and low groans coming from upstairs in our father's bedroom. I couldn't have heard anything from the bathroom downstairs. Or maybe I'd been too out of it to hear or I didn't want to hear.
I didn't know which as I stopped to listen in shock. I could hear the curious mixture of tears and rage in my brother's voice as he shouted, 'I'd hate him forever, would I , if I found out? No, he's right, I fuckin' hate ya!'
Followed by our father screaming high-pitched in agony.
'So, he's a dirty little boy, is he?... Ya sick, twisted fuck.'
Scream... Scream.
'So, he's ya sweet little whore, is he? And he killed Mama?'
Scream.
'Ya fuck ya own son? He was fuckin' cryin', Dad! How could ya?'
Scream. Groan. 'Please...I'm sorry...it'll never happen again...I'll stay away from him, I promise. I'll make it up to ya both... I'll do anythin'...Just don't do it again, please.' Dad was pleading with Merle – sounded like for his life. I raced upstairs as far as I could.
Merle was the one screaming now. 'Ain't nothin' ya can do to ever make this right.'
What was Merle doing to our father? I had to stop it.
'Except one thing.' I heard him say tonelessly.
I ran and burst open the door. Walked in, specifically against Merle's instructions, just in time to see my brother shoot our father in the head using another pillow as a silencer.
Killing him instantly as the goose feathers fluttered to the ground for the second time that day.
'Merle...' I said. He spun round, his eyes full of shame? And anger. 'I thought I told ya to stay away until I finished.' He yelled at me. Deliberately moving to stand in front of our father's body so I couldn't see it, blocking my view.
But I'd already seen.
'Merle...' my voice quivered. 'What ya done?' I trembled.
'Ya weren't supposed to see this. Get out until I tell ya to come back.' He ordered me harshly.
I ignored him. 'Ya killed him, didn't ya? What did ya do to him before ya shot him?'
I'd seen the the blood stain spreading through the pristine white towel – where my father's crotch was.
Where his thing was that he used to hurt me.
'Wha...what did ya do, Merle? I thought we were jus' gonna up and leave...'
Then I saw the blood-stained knife on the dresser. I knew what Merle had done before he put Dad out of his misery. Because death must have seemed like a mercy after that kind of torture. If he didn't bleed from his gunshot wound first. Then I saw that Merle had made a tourniquet out of another sheet on his leg.
I shivered then at the cold calculation of my older brother who'd kept my father alive long enough just so that he could torture him.
Before killing him anyway.
'Merle!' I exclaimed in horror and he shrugged like he didn't care.
'Ya a big boy now, guess ya can take it.' He moved aside to show me all the shallow cuts and burns – probably from his lighter that were all over my father's body. Not forgetting the bruises from the vicious beating he'd given him. His head, his torso were black and blue. His face – beaten to a pulp – almost unrecognisable.Amazingly, he'd still been conscious when Merle killed him.
How could I have not heard anything from the shower? Could I have stopped him?
I started to cry again – not for myself and not for the Dad who'd done those sick things to me but for the Daddy our father used to be. The one that took us hunting and taught us how to read tracks and the spoor of wild animals. Who told us bedtimes stories about Indians and cowboys, who taught us baseball in the garden. Who built us the tree house that was still there - with his bare hands and a few planks of wood from a skip. Who would never ever hurt us – the most he'd done was yell occasionally. We'd been dirt poor but we'd been a normal loving family, once upon a time.
Because he hadn't always been a monster before he lost his job and couldn't get another. After that came more drinking and drugs after Mama went.
Fuck – it felt like I was crying more on this one day than I'd cried in the last ten years. I didn't care that my brother was there. That Dixons never cry.
I was mourning all that I – we - had lost - as I slumped to the floor against the wall, pulling my knees up to my chest. Wrapping my arms round them. My innocence, my parents, my hope as I stared at my father's mutilated and bloody corpse – right in front of me.
Merle didn't say anything. Didn't tell me to Toughen the fuck up or Stop being a little sissy, Darlena.
Didn't say he was sorry for doing what he'd done or for letting me see it either.
Then again, I didn't really expect him to. He just slid down beside me and without a word, put his arms around me. And I flinched because of my injured ribs but it didn't matter. He just held me as he pulled me away from the wall and round so that he was facing Dad's corpse instead of me. Then he started to rock me back and forth like I was a little baby again.
While our father stared at us accusingly from beyond the grave. Because I could still feel his lifeless eyes burning two holes into my back so I buried my bruised face -even though it hurt – because I needed the feeling of comfort and safety more - in my big brother's chest to hide away from Dad.
'Cos Merle never blamed me. Didn't hate me like our father said he would.
Only blamed Dad.
Taken revenge on him for me. The proof of his love for me.
He'd killed him for me. So that I would be safe.
Be free.
