Summary:
In this chapter I try to imagine how, as Thomas said in the series, Grant completely changed after the well.
I try, also, to answer to the following questions:
- why was he sent to the military school?
- why did he suddenly return home to burn everything down?
Here there are references to sexual violence, so be warned.
Comments are greatly appreciated: please, let me know what you think!
Chapter:
The next image was about the Beast taking full control of his life. Grant totally changed after the well: gone was the sweet sad boy; gone were his chats and plays with Cate and Thomas, while he kept obsessively promising Thomas to never let anyone hurt him again, unnerving him; gone were the carefree hours in the nearby fields; gone was his infancy and his childhood.
He had been forced to become an adult before time, and he did.
School became a real problem: he always picked fights with older and bigger boys, even more than one at a time, and fought against them with a fury that made him look really like a demon. And he often won, too.
When his parents or the teachers asked him why, he always blamed others: sometimes it was like he felt guilty, but couldn't admit what really happened; it was like he hurt people and lied to himself about that.
Also his father tried to talk to him, but Grant felt that the man was not involved, that he was not touched; he felt his indifference stretching in the middle of his own stomach, like a white ball, then grey, then black, like an anxiety that showed him that his father refused him.
Oh, he hated the man!
Beatings and punishments and torture continued from his parents and Christian all the way long, but nothing could break his sheer determination in hurting the ones stronger than him and in being involved in dangerous situations.
It was like he desired to destroy himself so that he could dissolve and lose any hope.
…
For Grant it had always been almost impossible to be recognized and loved.
For him there were only perverse forms of communication, badly adapted misunderstandings, until, from trauma to trauma, from threat to threat, from fear to fear, from confusion to confusion, from violence to violence, he implemented the extreme defence: hatred gave a response to the anguish of being overwhelmed, subdued, humiliated, defeated.
He found himself, from the beginning of his life, in an environment that had stifled his hopes and his needs, that had judged and condemned his difficulties, that had feared his predispositions and ridiculed his inabilities, that had fuelled his shortcomings, that had mocked his efforts, that inhibited his creativity, that turned off his trust, that emasculated his ability to establish alliances and friendships, subtracting afterwards even the knowledge and investigation tools indispensable for his development.
And if it is true that life is a "destiny of meetings", he certainly made meetings that helped him to structure and give consistency to the interior Beast of his discomfort, up to encourage him to get lost through violence, and then in criminal acts.
…
He had to change school after school and the thing became embarrassing, until his parents were forced to isolate him, keeping him alone in his room and calling a private teacher to carry forward his education.
They often "forgot" him, leaving him without food or water, for days.
They tried in this way to punish him, to tame him, but the Beast commanded him to resist, to exploit the situation and study hard, because the sooner he became independent, the sooner he would be able to leave that house and be free.
And his results were excellent: he graduated with the highest marks and his father was almost proud of him.
Almost.
But the killer stare never left Grant Ward.
And his father feared him.
The next image was of his sister crying in her room. She has become a wonderful girl, so beautiful that everybody at school turned around when she passed by. She had long sleek shining black hair, two wonderful honey brown eyes and a smile that made you melt, all put together with a tall slender body, sinuous and flexible like the branch of a weeping willow.
She was an authentic beauty, reminding of a blossoming flower, full of grace.
And she was serene, caring, sweet, and she always had a smile for everyone, especially for Grant: she loved him enormously and he reciprocated wholeheartedly and called her his angel.
That late afternoon, after she returned home from a trip with father, she didn't want to talk to anybody, she didn't want to eat, and she didn't want to come out of her room…
After a lot of pleading Grant was allowed inside her room and sat by her side circling her shoulders with one arm, asking worriedly what happened.
She was behind her bed, sitting on the floor, with dark circles under her reddened eyes. She curled in his arms and said these terrible words:
"Dad got me out, he took me in a motel and there… he did things to me…
And now I'm stained with his kisses and his licks and his bites and…
Oh, it hurt so much, Grant!"
He felt his blood freezing in his veins and the Beast roared inside of him with a newfound fury.
"I tried to shower, to bath even, to try to cleanse all the filth, but it did nothing to purify me."
He said:
"Don't worry, Cate.
It will never happen again."
That night his father woke up from a deep drunken sleep in the middle of the night with an uneasy sensation: he felt something cold and sharp cutting his neck and a suffocating sensation all over him.
When he opened his sleepy eyes he remained petrified. Grant was above him like a predator on his prey, with a long sharp knife pressed on his neck and his eyes, full of cold fury, fixed on him only an inch away.
Grant spoke with a low, deadly voice:
"If I find out that you put your filthy fingers on Cate again, if I find out that you hurt her again in any way, I will kill you, slowly, horribly, enjoying every drop of blood spilling from your scum-filled body. Understood?"
And his father nodded without a word, his eyes out of the orbits.
The next image wasn't an image, but a telephone call. After the night he threatened his father of death, he was sent away from home, in a military school. He did well there, he liked the discipline, the orders, the physical training that absorbed him so thoroughfully, burned all his extra energy and gave vent to his ever-present rage.
But that night he received a call, from home.
It was Cate:
"He did it again, with Christian…" sobbing overwhelming her.
"I can't stand this life anymore, Grant!
I called you only to say goodbye.
I love you, my sweet brother!"
"Cate, Cate, wait, await for me, I'm coming to you!
Don't do anything stupid! Await for me, I'm coming!" he shouted, but the hang on signal greeted him on the other end of the communication.
He thought fast: he run away from the military school, stole a car and drove like a mad man back home.
There he found that his sister tried suicide, without succeeding, and was taken to a private hospital for mental diseases.
Oh, how much he hated that house, those people, and everything they did to them! At the end, they managed to ruin her definitively, his precious unique angel!
So he took a box of matches and set fire to everything: fire would be the purifier, burning everything down, destroying that house of horrors once and for all!
The last thing he saw, when he stood tall and black against the light of the arson that night, was the firemen and the police approaching, handcuffing him and taking him away.
He didn't care.